Apologies if you haven’t heard from me lately. I’ve been working on finishing two projects and getting them out. All of my spare time is going into these projects. I think that’s a good thing. Nothing clears the head like clearing what has been stressing you out.
I went to two Bellydance workshops in Shoreditch today. The first was a Hat and Cane choreography; the second, a choreography for veil. The classes were from The Arab Quarter: Bellydancer Melanie Norman taught the classes, with support from live musicians: Hassan on tableh, Georgie on synth, and Emile on violin.
The workshops were great. I can highly recommend them. Melanie is a wonderful teacher. It was really great having live music there; not only for the experience of dancing with musicians (which every dancer should experience), but because one can avoid the issue of having to go from the start of the CD track every time you want to go over a part of the dance. But, I digress.
The Valtari Mystery Film Experiment is a crowd-sourcing project from Icelandic band, Sigur Ros.
sigur rós have given a dozen film makers the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever comes into their head when they listen to songs from the band’s new album valtari. the idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom. among the filmmakers are ramin bahrani, alma har’el and john cameron mitchell.
“we never meant our music to come with a pre-programmed emotional response. we don’t want to tell anyone how to feel and what to take from it. with the films, we have literally no idea what the directors are going to come back with. none of them know what the others are doing, so hopefully it could be interesting.”
They have opened up their experiment to all filmmakers over the world. You too can make a video for Sigur Ros. Details are on their website. What you need to do is download their album, pick a song, make a music video for it, upload it to vimeo or youtube, and enter details on the Talenthouse Facebook app page. You can vote on your favourite music video (so expect posts coming up with links to our entry saying, ‘vote here!’).
The winners get a great deal of promo on Sigur Ros’ websites, and masses of kudos. And $5000.
Last weekend, I was a camera operator on an entry by filmmaker Matt Thomas.The song? Varuo
A couple of weekends ago, I shot a series of short clips for comedy duo, Alfie’s Birds. I’m currently editing the footage, and shall share the webisodes once they’re online. Check out more about Alfie’s Birds at their website.
An Indian, A Chinaman, and a White Guy walked into a bar…
and created ICW Productions.
I studied Film at Vic with Rajeev Misra, Chris Tse, and Andy James (the aforementioned ICW). They joined with Chad Moffitt and Paul Johanson to make the comedy web series, Tetris Cops.
Tetris Cops: solving crime, 8 bits at a time.
I was the sound recordist on a couple of the episodes. The web series will be released soon. Check out the website: tetriscops.com
And, on the website, not only can you see cast and crew profiles and the episodes (once they’re released), YOU CAN PLAY TETRIS!!!!
PLAY. THE. GAME!
WATCH. THE. EPISODES!
TETRIS. COPS.
Today I used my work iPad to try the iMotion HD app. I set my the iPad up on my bag, pointed it, and shot for about 10 minutes. The resulting video is now online.
It is somewhat grainy. iMotion said you could upload it directly to Facebook; it didn’t like that, and hasn’t worked. You can share the photos through your Apple Cloud, but not the video itself unless you pay for the app. I exported the photos, and then edited them on FCE.
There’s no audio. So I’ve made the video downloadable. Feel free to add music or sounds to it. Actually, I actively encourage it.
Please to enjoy.
I attended the Guerilla Filmmakers Producers Masterclass about a month ago (the blog post about it is still in my drafts section). There, I met some wonderful filmmakers. One of whom I got on so well with, we decided to collaborate in future.
That filmmaker, Kira, asked me to be third camera for filming a choral gig last weekend. It was the Pink Singers concert at St Johns, Smith Square. I was shooting with Kira and her film partner, Andrew. Boy, did I miss shooting and then handing over the footage to other people to edit. [Also, no matter if you have two 32GB CF cards, one 8GB CF card, and two fully charged batteries, the 7D will still overheat by the last song of a 2+ hour gig, and will tell you your card is full. (in actuality, I was 1/3rd full, but what are you gonna do?)]
I also got a boom pole (finally!) and a 32″ fleckie (reflector to non-kiwis). And a 50mm prime (two lenses!). I’m building up my film kit.
I was listening to The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith podcast for The Artist, with writer-director Michel Hazanavicius. By the way, totally subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or listen to it from the Blogger website. There are some amazing Q&As there, and Goldsmith is a great interviewer.
In response to an audience question, Hazanavicius lists the silent films that influenced him for The Artist, or that he recommended to cast and crew. They are:
I am pleased to announce that Copper has an IMDb page. You can view it here.
Continue reading “Copper on IMDb, & IMDb tips”
iPad’s are good for their versatility. I’m experimenting with their functionality with photos and video for a project I have coming up.
The Photoshop Express app seems reasonable for fixing up photos.
These photos are taken near my work, on the iPad. What do you think?
Heavily pixellated, non?
They’d be better for close-ups than landscapes, that’s for sure.
Busy Times 