Ernie Kovacs - Kitchen Symphony

Ernie Kovacks ispossibly the greatest video artist if not the best music video director. His attention to music and surreal performace allows for a certain comedic wit rarely seen today. A step beyond slapstick, his humor is witty without a word being spoken

Ernie Kovacs Nairobi Trio (original music)

Growing up in the age of the anti-hero like so many of my peers it is hard to imagine someone who broke through the malaise to inspire me as much as ernie kovacks. Cerebral humor that borrowed from the surrealists combined with the excitment of playing with technology that was being defined. Some stuff worked, some stuff did not, but all of it was pure Kovacks. Most of it has been sampled by so many artists it seems stale but before Monty Python this was as odd as TV could get my friends and really these kinescopes are still pretty odd in a charming sort of way.

Barbara Marx Hubbard

Funny how the threads of people and work tend to pop up when you least expect it. I worked with Barbara Marx Hubbard and Buckminster Fuller when I was 19 at Xavier University. I was a camera assist and the makeup person for Buckminster Fuller. I am sure Dave Smith the director has this interview available somewhere for viewing. I even think it was recorded onto 1 inch videotape for all the OTs out there.. original tapers. I told Barbara that I have not washed my hand since then "not because I do not want to .. because I don't have to..." we had a giggle. I normally do not take photos with people but I took one for Dave Smith so he can see his student has not strayed too far from path of enlightenment. Well at least the witnesses to the contrary are not talking.

I was shooting at the HUB launch where I met a great deal of nice people. I was a hired gun helping out my friend Fran. HUB is an organization that combines fundraising with a profit sharing component for non profits and the people who invest in them. There is so much donor fatigue and competition for resources that HUB thinks this is a better way. Their focus is to heal the earth and ourselves.

I rather enjoyed the micro loan opportunities that people can invest in so villages can have clean water and the fair trade products they are starting to offer. There were a few good examples of this approach helping an Amazon Tribe reach sustainability.

I think for the empty nester looking for a legacy and an investment this approach will be very appealing. I also think the networking and personal growth portion of this group will have a certain appeal. Something to look into at hubhub.org.

Ok long weekend of shooting going to focus on this week of madness.

KADIN (The Goat) Movie Trailer

You had me as soon as the Jeepney drove away. Very cool film about a boy who has a goat, loses goat, struggles to get goat back. Now I want a goat. Maybe a pygmy goat.

Normal Map technique

Using the high res model data and mapping it to the low res poly or using Crazy bump to create normal maps are very worth it.

A shot of my rig with cine adaptor and 16 mm prime lens

Shot of my rig with prime lens. Depth of field is pretty and the stop loss minimal.

A simple and easy way to create normal maps, specular maps,

One can easily create normal maps from a single image by using this tool.

http://crazybump.com/

It is an amazing tool that uses the latest video drivers to your video card to create an ambient occlusion pass, a specular pass, a normal map pass, and a displacement pass. There is no batch encoding but it is very cool and very useful when creating complex shaders in Maya.

Normal mapping is an amazing tool to create complex surfaces without the heavy poly load. Watch this video on youtube for a demonstration - http://youtube.com/watch?v=RSmjxcAhkfE

Essentially it is better than a black and white bump map because it uses 3 lights to calculate the height and distance of the texture. The colors depict the amount of displacement the texture is creating in real world terms. Later when rendering instead of having polys to create a crease in the face, the single normal can create it. Animation and rendering times are greatly reduced by using normal maps in creating animation. The latest generation of gamin g consoles heavily relies on normal mapping to create complex, heavily textured environments.

Indie dolley system

Setting it up for the first time can be a bit challenging.

Indie dolly

Another indie dolly setup.

Production Flow Tool - buzzword sharing notes

Finally a Decent tool to share shot list, time code, images, and notes using a flash interface. It is a drag and drop word interface with the ability to insert images, notes, and comments from people.

This document then can be exported to a pdf document for printing.

This is better than Google Apps in terms of ease of use.

Likes: It is free, I can see who is editing and reviewing the document, easy to use, easy to comment and delete comments.
Easier to share with multiple people, different email addresses.

Dislikes: Does not support the adobe notes format.
This truly is something that would make this tool a film makers dream tool in creating timelines and storyboarding.

Adobe Notes. Only available with Adobe CS3 Can be pushed up using google apps. So do not throw out google apps yet.