Posts in category "Video"

Tiana + Molly (Glidetrack demo)

I pur­chased a half-metre Glidetrack Hybrid to get some slow dol­ly shots but with a much, much more portable sys­tem. Smooth hor­i­zon­tal cam­era move­ments can add a bit of depth to any footage, though the effect can’t be used too often.

So I’ve been prac­tic­ing with this new piece of equip­ment for the last month, look­ing for peo­ple to film, and luck­i­ly Tiana is always will­ing to vol­un­teer with one of her off­spring. You can see the Glidetrack shots at 12 sec­onds (the zoom in) and 48 sec­onds (the hor­i­zon­tal track).

It’s an extreme­ly chal­leng­ing piece of equip­ment to use, cer­tain­ly not some­thing con­ducive to can­did shoot­ing. Things like expo­sure, focus, and com­po­si­tion change as you’re mov­ing the cam­era from one end of the rail to the oth­er, and sin­gle mis­take in any one of those aspects will ruin a shot, so all those things gen­er­al­ly need to be care­ful­ly planned. On top of that, sim­ply mov­ing the cam­era smooth­ly takes a lot of prac­tice, as there’s a cer­tain amount of fric­tion in the bear­ings, and you need to bal­ance that with the move­ment speed you’re look­ing for. At only half a metre (the short­est length you can pur­chase), the shots all tend to be slow and lin­ger­ing so you don’t run out of rail.

The per­cent­age of keep­ers isn’t great (I find it takes me about three takes to get it right), but when it works, the effect is very nice.

was I more alive then than I am now

I try to sched­ule my time with peo­ple very care­ful­ly; with intro­ver­sion, there’s a del­i­cate bal­ance between iso­la­tion and over-stim­u­la­tion. I always make sure I get a lot of alone time between major events. The only prob­lem is that means I’m alone for too long when plans don’t work out.

On the oth­er end of the spec­trum is the fact that I can nev­er say no to peo­ple if I’m too busy. I’m the one with­out kids, so my sched­ule is a lot more open than most my friends, and I nev­er know when I’ll have anoth­er chance to see them. This is prob­a­bly why I’ve been film­ing for four days straight.

Luckily, this includ­ed a won­der­ful per­for­mance by the inim­itable André Bluteau, whose debut CD is out now, and which you should most def­i­nite­ly pur­chase after lis­ten­ing and sub­se­quent­ly lov­ing.

I added a touch of grad­ing to give the video a bit of creamy 1950s American din­er feel. I’m thor­ough­ly impressed by Apple’s Motion soft­ware, and the pow­er it has to cre­ate object-track­ing text effects. Text can add such a nice­ly sub­tle cin­e­mat­ic touch, though doing 3D trans­for­ma­tions to make words match the plane of a fore­ground object is an exer­cise that will make your eyes bug out.

Andrew Vincent live @ Raw Sugar Cafe

The only thing pre­vent­ing me from mak­ing out with this man was his green hat. Don’t, don’t, don’t cov­er it up.

Also head­lin­ing was Andrew Vincent, who opened his set with Girlfriend’s Dog, a song I first gave to Bronwen when we start­ed dat­ing. It was right before she moved in for the sum­mer, and she had Bear, who was also a Labrador Retriever.

Now I under­stand why I need to much time in between events. After the con­cert, I did­n’t fall asleep until three in the morn­ing, even though I was exhaust­ed. The strug­gle not be shy and intro­vert­ed drains me, but the sim­ple act of being around so many peo­ple leaves me inor­di­nate­ly ener­gized. It’s too much some­times, but I nev­er know what to think of that feel­ing.

Pendulum — The Island

I’ve always main­tained that a per­son isn’t alive if their heart does­n’t pound out of their chest when lis­ten­ing to The Island by Pendulum1.

It’s a grad­ual build-up, most of Pt. 1 Dawn being the devel­op­ment until Pt. 2 Dusk hits (at about the 5:20 mark in the video) and the beats real­ly kick in. Then it’s just waves and waves wash­ing over my body like small orgasms and every hair stands on end.

It’s mes­mer­iz­ing to lit­er­al­ly see how this music makes me feel, as the rip­ples of goose­bumps crest and sub­side. I can trace the paths of shiv­ers across my skin; some last longer, though they may not be as strong, while oth­ers come and go quick­ly, my body unable to sus­tain the cli­max.

This is the only song that has this kind of effect on me. There are plen­ty of oth­er tracks that give me goose­bumps, but none of them do it so many times or with such inten­si­ty. By far the strongest peak is dur­ing the bridge at 7:10, when every­thing sub­sides to the organ, and it’s like you’re being bathed in the warm light of a sun­rise.

  1. To get the full effect, you def­i­nite­ly need head­phones. Otherwise, it should be loud enough to war­rant a noise-com­plaint by your neigh­bours down the street. [↩]

The Short Life of Leonard the Cat

The hard­est part was putting away his food bowls, and that ter­ri­ble sense of final­i­ty that he’d nev­er be eat­ing from them again.

Spending so much time at home meant Leonard was in my com­pa­ny for a large part of the day. I’m get­ting used to his absence, but I still miss the lit­tle guy.

I had a bunch of ran­dom footage and I nev­er knew what to do with it, includ­ing a few moments from the first time I let him out of quar­an­tine into the rest of the house. When he died I kept watch­ing the footage over and over again until it sort of pieced itself togeth­er into this small vignette of a kit­ty who lived with me for less than three months. I hope they were hap­py ones.

Goodbye, little buddy

The vet’s office called this morn­ing to tell me Leonard did­n’t make it through the night.

I’ve been bawl­ing ran­dom­ly since. Uncontrollably1. I haven’t cried like this since I was a kid. I sup­pose it’s the shock. I always expect­ed Dolly to be the one to go first, and not for many years at that. I know I’ll be alright, I just need time. It was such a big deci­sion to adopt anoth­er cat, and I jumped on it cause I want­ed one so bad­ly, and I made all the prepa­ra­tions, and nursed him back to health so many times, and now he’s gone so sud­den­ly.

____’s been talk­ing some sense into me. I blamed myself for not going to the vet soon­er; maybe there’s some­thing he could have done, maybe being on an IV ear­li­er would giv­en him the strength to recov­er. But I did what I thought was best at the time, and there are count­less maybes in life, and there’s no way of know­ing why he died because the tests weren’t fin­ished. It could have been some­thing con­gen­i­tal, which seems like­ly con­sid­er­ing he was sick most of the time.

Continue read­ing “Goodbye, lit­tle bud­dy”…

  1. I’m so glad I work from home. [↩]