Science, Mad. And some movies.
Someone left a grocery cart on the street about a block away from my house. I looked at the handle and realized it was one from Berkeley Bowl! I live on the south end of Oakland, so it was very far from home– over 10 miles as the crow flies, 13 miles by the freeway.
I called the grocery store and they sent a dude with a pickup truck to retrieve it. I guess a street personality must have taken it and used it to shuttle their crap all the way over here…
Hello Gwyneth [Julian’s widow]-
I am a computer programmer and independent filmmaker living in the San Francisco bay area. I grew up in Palo Alto, and like many well-educated, liberal parents, my parents provided me with a bunch of hand-made wooden toys as an alternative to the plastic toys that were becoming more popular in the 1970s.
While on a break from editing a movie today (June 10th 2008) I was idly playing with one of these toys I still have, a hand-cranked music box, and I turned it over to see the Creative Playthings logo. On a whim I surfed on it and found your late husband Julian had designed it. I also learned of his passing in 2005.
I am now 33 years old and I still love my music box. It’s such a simple design, and apparently rugged with long-lasting “repeat play value,” since I still have it and use it. I’m a bit sad I couldn’t thank Julian while he was still with us, but a close second is thanking you.
Thanks again
Dear Brian
Since my beloved husband died I have had several emails from folk in USA who still have a working model of the music box and such fond memories of it. I don’t know if Julian had such emails before his passing — maybe he did. I do know that he would be pleased that something which he created has brought pleasure to so many AND that it is still in working order. I have the original on my shelf here– it plays ‘Sur le pont d’Avignon’ as well as the model which was produced for retail which plays an excerpt from Swan Lake I think. I guess that is the one you have. It really is something to realise how long since its creation and how durable. Guess you parents choice against the plastics was a good one!Thank you for taking the time to email.
Go well.
Gwyneth Evans
So it looks like they all play Swan Lake. It’s such a great design; maybe I should make my own based on the shape.
Analysis of music video cuts:
Music video is all about jumpcuts. Watch the new Vanessa Hudgens video which is very fast…
To really properly analyze one of these jumpy videos, I would really:
When I was writing/directing/editing (at the same time) the 15 second commercial we did for the Watchmen contest, I realized I’d never tried to convey something in only 15 seconds before.
15 seconds is barely enough time to establish a rhythm, and not really enough to establish more than one rhythm. Especially for a product promotion, if you include an establishing shot and the product shot, you basically have only 10 seconds left at the most.
In a 15 second spot, the audience uses the duration of the establishing shot to acclimate themselves to the new setting of your film. So shorten that or drop that at the risk of losing the attention of the audience!
Can’t do too many jump cuts in a 15 second spot– there will be barely any cooldown period of slow shots afterwards, and there isn’t enough time to make the audience care about the subject to endure jumpcuts, nor to refer to previously-established images.
Maybe I’ll make some more of these.
BRAIN: check this out
STEPHANIE THE DESIGNER: ummmm, why did you send this?
BRAIN: you’ll find out!
BRAIN: keep it
BRAIN: you’ll need it real soon
STEPH: I’m reading it and it’s boring
BRAIN: save it for later
BRAIN: trust me on this one
STEPH: i don’t ever use corel draw
STEPH: ever
BRAIN: I know
BRAIN: that’s why you need this
STEPH: why would I ever use it?
BRAIN: you’re not very good at this game
STEPH: I don’t even have it
STEPH: I don’t get it
STEPH: is this a joke?
BRAIN: no
BRAIN: well… sort of
BRAIN: I’ll walk you through this
STEPH: like the end of the world is coming or something?
BRAIN: assume for the moment that I sent you this for a reason
BRAIN: and I know you don’t use Corel anything
BRAIN: now why would I say you’d need it real soon now?
STEPH: the end of the world is coming?
BRAIN: be serious
STEPH: ummm
BRAIN: (where do I sit?)
STEPH: you overheard someone who is going to give me an assignment
BRAIN: getting warm
STEPH: we got some files from a client
STEPH: and they’re
STEPH: corel files
BRAIN: very very warm
BRAIN: but not hot
STEPH: something to do with [client name]?
BRAIN: dunno which client actually
STEPH: ryo just sent me an [client name] style guide
BRAIN: someone wants something in corel draw
STEPH: that someone is tripping
BRAIN: and I happen to know no one here has corel draw
STEPH: who is it????
STEPH: joel?
BRAIN: someone JFi is talking to apparently!
STEPH: sprint maybe?
STEPH: damn them
STEPH: they can go right to hell
STEPH: in a handbasket
STEPH: who uses that?
BRAIN: I’ll quote you on that one
STEPH: corel
STEPH: please
BRAIN: ha ha, that is what [CTO] said
BRAIN: “who uses Corel Draw?!”
STEPH: I’m not sure why it can’t be made in photoshop
STEPH: it must be for some ass backward red neck client
BRAIN: draw is the illustrator equivalent
STEPH: who lives in the woods
BRAIN: so I think they want a vector
STEPH: so they will get illustrator then
STEPH: do they live in the woods?
BRAIN: time to bust out Live Trace
STEPH: deep in the woods?
STEPH: get to the 21st century people!
BRAIN: you rule
STEPH: sounds like an annoying project
STEPH: when are they going to talk to me??
STEPH: I have never even set eyes on corel draw
STEPH: is it like mac paint?
STEPH: DEAR GOD
STEPH: he is on his way now
BRAIN: ha ha this is so funny
STEPH: funny for you
STEPH: how about if you had to code with sticks and stuff?
BRAIN: a magnetized needle
SAMIR: now i have this weird image of hillbillies using old macs
BRAIN: isn’t that awesomely cranky?
SAMIR: I’m just seeing some guy named cletus making moonshine and like running WordPerfect
BRAIN: yeehaw!
In between rendering the “1923 remix” of The Artist and continuing work on The Templetons, Diane and I shot a quick entry for a contest related to the upcoming movie adaptation of The Watchmen, due for release summer 2009.
One of the characters, Adrian Veidt, “the smartest man in the world”, was once a costumed hero but now is a captain of enterprise. He has many businesses, and one of them is a scent called “Nostalgia.” The producers of The Watchmen provided a number of assets (including green-screened product shots) for a bunch of different products, including shoes, the Veidt airline, and the Nostalgia perfume. The contestants post onto YouTube and a few entries will appear in the background of the movie.
So here’s ours. Be sure to vote for us here on their YouTube channel between June 2nd and June 20th!
15 second version:
30 second version:
You’ll be happy to know that a WSDL document defines the following elements for describing services:
Happy Happy. He’s this old Chinese man with thick glasses and a grey moustache, wearing a straw coolie hat. He says repeatedly “happy happy happy!”
He is usually seen standing on a stepladder holding an enormous sign. The sign is made from a thick posterboard, like you’d use to make a project in grade school. It’s generally covered with all kinds of incoherent ranting about news stories.
Happy Happy used to hang out on Sproul when I was at Cal. For some reason, he and a number of other “street personalities” moved to San Francisco (including Frank “12 Galaxies” Chu). Nowadays Happy Happy stands on Grant in the middle of Chinatown.
Back in those days (the late 1990’s) he’d switch between “Happy Happy Happy” and “*evil celebrity* no good for America!” Example:
HAPPY HAPPY: Tonya Harding– no good for America! Michael Jackson– no good for America!
BRAIN: you may have a point there.
So the other day I was walking around Chinatown and I saw him there, so I thought I’d say Hi.
HAPPY HAPPY: Happy happy happy!
BRAIN: Happy happy happy!
HAPPY HAPPY: Happy happy happy!
BRAIN: Tonya Harding no good for America!!
HAPPY HAPPY: ?!?
BRAIN: Do you remember Tonya Harding?
HAPPY HAPPY: Yes!!! Tonya Harding!
BRAIN: Tonya Harding no good for America!
HAPPY HAPPY: Tonya Harding no good for America!
BRAIN: Yeah!
HAPPY HAPPY: Good to see you again! Happy happy!
He was beaming– I doubt he actually recognized me, but he seemed to key that phrase with something he’d said in the past.
Maybe he was just thrilled someone remembered what he was saying over ten years ago.
I’m so glad this got recorded. I remember seeing this when I was little.
I just showed it to my wife and she said “this is just like our house. Except without the deal at the end.”
Guh.
I have spent 25 of the last 30 hours editing two new shorts I’m turning in to Scary Cow Round 5, to be screened June 1st at at 3pm at the Victoria Theater. Tickets are available for sale here for $5.
A couple notes on the headaches:
Workflow for Sagar:
The painful part was for about 6 hours there I was getting video that was ever so slightly slower than the audio… by the end it was over a full second late. This is BAD mmmkay… The solution was to go to this QuickTime intermediate, which has hints in it (there’s a dialog that talks about “markers”) to keep the audio in sync with the video.
Workflow for The Templetons trailer:
These were projects that were roughly the same length! Ghastly. I’m going to need a faster system if I’m going to be editing any more HD.
The thing that made the Templetons render so slowly (for miniDV) is the crazy effects I came up with to make them look like drawn comic book characters. Originally I had a workflow that included filters in Shake, and also using Adobe Bridge as a renderer with Illustrator… that would have sucked, because I would have had to separate every single clip out of the project for rendering, and re-assembled them afterwards…
Anyway, now it’s entirely in Final Cut Pro, but still uses a whole pile of video filters, typically 4 layers of video for a simple shot with around a dozen filters.
More notes, buncha Ken Stone: