Work has been pretty crazy for a while, but we finally pushed our latest release, playa (that’s burningman playa, not someone who sleeps around). I am very excited about it, as we added a bunch of cool features and improved things all around. Of course, immediately after releasing, we started talking about improvements.
For those of you who use jumpcut (*silence, owl hoots*), here’s a rundown of new features.
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For all the people I know who own cameras, few make movies. I think it has something to do with lack of time/interest. Pity. Anyway, for those of you who are interested, I bet your camera has a video mode. Try it out. You paid for the feature, might as well see if it was worth it.
After making a few movies I thought I might share a few basic things I have learned along the way.
Filming:
Don’t use zoom. When you zoom in, camera shake is more noticible. Resulting footage reminds one of Blair Witch Project. Also, digital zoom lowers the resolution of you footage, so the zoomed in bits look more pixelated.
Pan slowly. We have a lot more perifial vision than a camera does, so if you pan at the rate that you would turn your head, the scene appears to move too quickly.
Tripods are your friend. I carry a small 4-inch one in my purse all the time.
Lighting:
If you can’t afford nice expensive studio lights, putting a small light behind your camera works wonders. It will illuminate the whole scene evenly.
I’m also going to start posting movies and writing about technique. I think about film too much and I’m hoping that if I write it down, I can get it out of my head.
haha, i just got hit
[11:20] thehatsofwrath: i say, old bean, have you seen my hat?
[11:22] thehatsofwrath: hello!
[11:23] Karebearinmind: hi!
[11:23] Karebearinmind: er, who is this
[11:23] Karebearinmind: not that i’m opposed to talking to strangers
[11:23] Karebearinmind: despite what my mommy says
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A few years ago while I was hanging out in Soda, I bumped into an acquaintance who had already graduated. We got to chatting, and he was telling me about the “roses” his company sold. He worked for a dating site, and they had this idea to sell flower graphic that show up on the receivers profile page for a few days (because flowers wilt, duh!). They had $1 and $2 dollar flowers, and the $10 red rose. They didn’t think anyone would buy the top flower; it was supposed be the ‘top shelf scotch’–taken out only for special occasions. It turns out that people bought more red roses than any other flower. Receivers often got confused and upset when the flowers ‘wilted’ and disappeared. This was brilliant. The ROI on this was huge. It would only be a matter of time before this plan caught on.
Enter facebook. They have introduced ‘gifts’ for $1. I suspect that these gifts will make facebook a tidy chunk of change. When they take it a step further, they will probably will introduce tiers of gifts, and the more expensive pngs will be better designed (one would hope. They could simply be the most popular pngs, hence the free gift to gather data. The first one is always free.)
And yes, they are popular. When I was musing about who I should give my one gift to, Ashot immediately claimed it. Why? Well, of course you know why. My berkeley self cries out. And while I am laughing at the absurdity of paying money for these pictures, would you be so kind as to give me your one gift?
Blogged with Flock
I’ve been following the jumpcut movies of livingonthedge and her latest is the best so far.
She does a great job timing the pictures to the song. It’s very much a “wtf?” experience.
So I was just told that in order to get my degree, I have to go to Sproul between 1pm and 4pm. Seriously, were they expecting that their recent graduates wouldn’t have jobs?
And I wanted to share some wise words from my darling Sean:
“Physical stature is an important intimidation tool. Your opponent is more likely to concede an argument if you appear to be bigger than he is. Shortness is associated with children, who are dumb, while tallness is associated with authority figures who know better”
Hahahaha. This immediately brought to mind, “You mean your leaders are just TALLER?!”*
I am currently experiencing nostalgia for academia. I just printed out “On the Computational Practicality of Private Information Retrieval” (posted by
*from the completely brilliant cartoon Invader Zim
I have 1 extra ticket because CARL LARSSON decided to flake on me. It’s gonna be fun! Any takers? Are Bri and Icka still going?
I’m inside the microsoft blogger lounge…blogging. Oh yea… I wish someone would talk to me.
My latest movie:
I really enjoy making these short movies. It’s so much fun to film and edit and I’m learning a lot.
This movie was much faster to film but took a few hours to edit. I used my digital camera and my isight to shoot it from 2 different angles (multiple cameras are awesome), but the result was that I had a ton of footage to sift through. It was difficult to make the editing look smooth since I made the angle shift every few seconds. The titles make that smoothness unnecessary for the most part, but here is the non-title clip that better illustrates my attempt at smoothness. I’m a little annoyed that in one of my shots the framing doesn’t give me enough space above my head, but it worked out fine.
Big things I learned in the past few days:
- putting a light behind the camera is a cheap and easy way to light up your whole scene.
- review all shots before cleaning up, because you might want to film something again.
-the isight is a little shitty because:
– resolution and framerate are low(ish)
– not enough feedback on whether or not you’re recording. one of my movies was never made because I ended up recording the parts I didn’t want and not recording the parts that I wanted.
- the isight is great because:
– you can see yourself on the screen which helps a lot with framing
– clips are instantly imported into imovie
I’m also giggly-excited about going to macworld, and meeting ijustine(!!!!!) I am so completely enamored with her.
