Over a year ago my personal branding went through a bit of a change. You see, when I first started using Twitter, I created an account under a variation of my nickname. Later, wanting to change my twitter name  but not really knowing what I was doing, I inadvertently stole the name that I wanted to use from myself.  You can read all about this huge mistake that has taken a year to un-do here.   Digging deep into the posts that I had published over a year ago led me to attempt to get the name that I had wanted to change to, but this time I did it the right way!  Yes-  I had to wait a full year to get the name!!!  So, please learn from my fail and follow these seven simple steps to correctly change your name on twitter.

How to Change

Your Name On Twitter

1. ) Start a new email address - You’ll need this to claim your old name in later steps.

2.) Log-in to your existing twitter.com account.

3.) Click On Settings.

4.) Change you Username to the New Name (it will check the availability)–

In the Username field, change the public profile name to the new account name.  Twitter will tell you whether or not it is available and if it is, you’re in business!

5.) Save the changes — you’ve got your new name, but beware!

Now that you’ve changed your name anyone can claim your old name once you’ve changed away from it.  This is why I had you create a new email address (I just use a new nick name under my google apps user – so that I will get any DMs that come to the old account).  What I recommend that you do now is to claim the old name so that you can point it to the new name.

6.) Log-off of  your newly created Twitter account and  then start a new account as the old name. –You have to use a unique email address, which is why we started a new email account in step one.

7.) Post a new tweet with the  account that uses the old name– This lets everyone know that they can find you at your new name.
I’d also suggest that you update the photo and background to make it look uniform to the main account.

I hope that this as been both educational and… well, at least not too boring.  Changing your twitter name is easy if you do it right the first time. And if you do not, you will have a long wait in which to ponder the error of your ways!

Photo used on post: twitter_Good_Bad by Rosaura Ochoa

Numbers can be deceptive…
The Numbers CAN and DO lie
The Numbers DO NOT make YOU who YOU ARE.

I have had to train myself to keep the numbers in mind, use them to shape my behavior, but not change who I am. Recently I read (and if I can find the source – I’ll post it in the comments) that somewhere around 75% of site owners obsess about their Google Analytics but only 20% of them use that information to do something differently. In his book “Crush It”, Gary Vaynerchuk warns us about not paying attention to metrics for the first year as it will only distract you! I love that – but cannot bear to ignore them all together. So here are three reasons that I’m going to tell myself that I need to focus on analytics less.

1. ) It’s not about the amount – it’s about the amount that they care.

Not having the right kind of numbers is about as bad as having no numbers at all. The fact that I have a small number of people who really care about who I am, and comment about what I do is awesome. I think back to others that I have worked with who have a huge number of followers (in the 6 digits) but they could not get any of them to come to a FREE web event. They had numbers, but their numbers only wanted the reciprocal follow back to make their numbers big too. FYI – if you are involved in internet marketing, having a ton of other internet marketers following you doesn’t matter at all; they don’t care about you. If you un-follow them, I’m sure that they will do the same (some automatically) and with that being the case what’s the true value of that relationship?

2.) Your self worth is not in the numbers – nor it should not be.

I know that I said this above, but it needs to be said in more than just one line. After three years of trying, I still consider myself a budding blogger because I am still not where I want to be. But maybe the whole issue is tied up in “where I want to be”.  My wife summed me up and called me out in one reply to a rant on Facebook.  (I’m so grateful that God gave me a wife that understands me more than I do!) When I posed the question of why I am never happy with my own site design, she said , “Because you need to be constantly creative and when you don’t find creative satisfaction in the work given to you my others, you pursue it in your own endeavors. Also you become dissatisfied/bored easily and therefore seek change for something bigger and better again and again.”  At times I have place parts of my self-worth into things that I become unsatisfied with – making me unsatisfied with my self-worth.  Regardless of what Fight Club said, you are not your job – you are special, you do matter, and you have meaning.  (At least you can!)

3.) If it’s YOUR numbers that YOU are worried about it will remain about YOU.

If the focus of your life is about you – then you’re missing it. Let me tell you from personal experience, you can live with a purpose  when you come to regard your needs as secondary.  In ignoring your analytics and truly analyze what your readers, your viewers, your audience, regardless of size, needs and answer that call you will win without question every time. If you make them the focus (note that I didn’t say to make them first) they will take notice in your posts, videos, and interactions.  Yes, you can get a glimps of what they need via the data trail that they leave in coming and going, but  you will not find it if it’s not there.  The best way to do this is to flat out ask what they need more of!

On a more personal note:

If I can ignore or make analytics or metrics less important and in the process recognize your needs more, I think that I might have a shot a getting to where I want to be.

So I guess the next question is:

What do you want more of???!!

I was going to post a poll – but then I’d have to guess what it is you’re looking for – so I’m going to leave up to you in the comments to tell me.  We’ve had tons of response regarding backup solutions, and becoming a better computer users.  I’ve also had guest writers who have spilled their guts about what’s working for them in their new DSLR workflows.  Because I’m making Powered Production about you – you’ll need to tell me what you want (please).

BTW – If you’ve not read Seth Godin’s book, “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?” I would highly recommend it! (Amazon Affiliate Link)

If you have not read my three previous posts (if you have not, go and do it now, please….pretty please) you know I have forsaken my low budget video production methods for a Canon 550D and a bad hunger for L lenses.

I’ve been happily riding the tiger of HDSLR production for several weeks now, and as I predicted, the learning curve has a pronounced tilt. Triumphs over the limitations have been frequent however, and the light at the end of the tunnel may not be a train. Perhaps a Yugo with a headlight out, but not a train.

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb: Cineform & Transcoding

What if I told you that you could improve the speed of your NLE by at least 8x and up to 16x for only $129. Think about what an 8x speed improvement in your post workflow would mean to your income. You’re going to save hours a week – gain back weeks every year.

The enemy is AVCHD (and .h264 in general). It’s a wonderful codec for what it can stuff into a tiny container. The deal with the devil comes when your NLE has to decode it on the fly for post. It’s really CPU intensive and a huge choke point for your system’s abilities.

Along comes Windows 7, multiple updates for Quicktime and AVCHD all in a short period. Now, Vegas 9 handles all of these well, but that means a very expensive upgrade.

I’ve decided to move to Premiere and the CS5 platform (more on that soon) but while waiting for that to actually ship to this end of the earth, I’m S.O.L. And I’m not paying to upgrade Vegas in the interim.

Playback of the files from my 550D on Vegas8 is hit or miss. It seems that every other week something gets lost and I get audio playback but no picture. Ahhhggg.

The solution – an intermediate codec. Or, for the rest of us, get my movies out of AVCHD and into something that works better for editing.

If you use FCP, you have ProRes (and Cineform’s Neo Scene outputs that with some advantages, so read on).

This leads me to trying the CineformHD codec.

My original intent was to get over the spotty support for AVCHD on my now aged NLE – and CineForm did that wonderfully. What I did not expect was just how FAST…I mean NASA test flight fast…the codec runs under Vegas like a V12 runs under the hood of an excessive German motor car. You don’t see it, but the performance is worthy of a Greek legend.

From Cineform.com:

“…camera formats are designed for recording, not editing. With Neo Scene you will convert your difficult-to-edit HDV, AVCHD, Canon 5D Mk II / 7D or T2i camera footage to CineForm AVI or MOV files and then benefit from the same theatrical quality and real-time editing performance as professionals.”

http://www.cineform.com/neoscene/features.php for the tech stuff

So how it works is you download their encoder  (the cheapest being NeoScene @US$129.00)  import a list of your footage, the encoder ‘transcodes’ or rewrites your footage into the Cineform codec, saving it to your hard drive as a new file. Your originals remain untouched for archive if you want.

What you get is file birthed for editing, color correction and compatibility among many programs.

The pioneering desktop HD production of “Dust To Glory” was cut several years ago on Adobe Premier Pro using this codec – before Dual Core chips! And it’s After Effects friendly (the kind of friendly I don’t want the kids to know about).

You get a jump from 4:2:0 to 10bit 4:2:2 in color space. This means way more room to move for color correction. And Magic Bullet thrives in this environment. The reduced load on the computer working with CineformHD means all my color correction is done in 32bit as well!

Before Cineform, my PC with Black Edition Quad Core AMD struggled to render in 32bit mode – basically incapable with AVCHD. Let’s be blunt, it crashed 99% of the time. With Cineform, no problems.

The real kicker is it runs so much faster I can preview Magic Bullet cc’d footage at 4-12 fps. What’s remarkable about that is we are talking about Magic Bullet Editors (the less efficient older version) with only a Nvidia9500 GPU in the box. Before Cineform I was getting 1 frame per 4-6 seconds. That’s right, it took 4-6 seconds to render a single frame for preview at full quality. Do the math!

All my effects run in real time on multiple layers at full quality in real time – something I had not seen since the last project I cut in DV (standard def).

If you cut on a laptop, you need Cineform. If you want stupidly fast renders of anything in any format, I think you owe it to yourself to try the demo.

And while we are on the demo subject, be very careful to install the version you want to tryl – NOT the player. The player is great for making sure you can play your newly transcoded files on any computer for free! And it means your friends don’t have to pay for NeoScene or any of the Cineform products to edit it. They can download the player for free, though I understand Premiere natively supports the format (others may too).

What you pay for is the encoder – the ability to get your footage out of the Hatchback and into the Nascar and run it round your hard drives.

Also, be sure to uninstall any other version before installing a new one. I tried to use Cineform last year and it never worked on my 64bit XP box – probably because I installed the player then the encoder, and I could never get it to work.

Even if you plan on getting hooked up with the Mercury Engine and you have a quad i7 mobo and a raid that would scare ILM, getting 10bit 4:2:2 files out of your HDSLR will make the vital task of color correction far more powerful. And, anything that gives me an average 8x jump in speed (and a peak of 16x) for less than the price of a 2 year old video card…

Your caffeine intake will cut down, saving you another coupl of years before the bypass, your clients will think you have a super computer, and your pics will have a new color depth that even youTubers might notice. If they weren’t waiting for someone to get hit in the man bag. (Brad, you can substitute something less offensive there…like hackey sacks, ‘nards, wedding tackle…)

It’s all good.

PS – on my system, the transcoding process was so stupidly fast that I forget to mention it earlier.

What needs to be backed up? What constitutes a real backup solution to protect your assets?

What to backup:

1. Main internal hard-drive – OS, apps, configurations, and typically your contacts and email.

2. Media assets – raw recordings, effects, plug-ins, project files, fully rendered video, etc. If you feel its important enough to keep on your external “media” hard drive, its important enough to backup.

The common rule of thumb is if you don’t have three copies, you don’t have a backup.

The first of the three copies of your data, of course, is your main hard drive(s) including external hard drives used for mass storage of media files used in projects and that must be readily available for those projects.

The second of the three copies is usually on site and can consist of either a separate external hard drive or DVD data discs and is used strictly for the purposes of backup storage. If you are a Mac user and you don’t have a 1 Tb external drive setup as your “Time Machine”, it’s time to drop $99 on the 1 Tb drive and turn on the Time Machine software included with Mac OS X. Within the first few months of owning my Macbook, due to some faulty non-Apple RAM, I crashed my internal hard drive. I literally purchased a 1 Tb hard drive and made a Time Machine backup the day before the crash. It saved my business from total failure. I got lucky. Don’t wait for some day. Do it today. This will allow you to put the OS, apps, configurations, etc. back into place as if nothing happened within hours or less of the crash and replacing or formatting your internal hard drive. Cheap hardware + free software = saved business. Don’t learn this lesson the hard way. Wisdom is learning from other people’s failures without having to experience the failure yourself.

To make a backup of your external drive(s) to your on site backup drive for Mac OS X, you can use software such as Carbon Copy Cloner . It is “free to use until you trust them” (a.k.a. freeware, please donate). For Windows users, try HDClone. The key to choosing a software package is to ensure that you can backup from one external drive to another, and have the ability to schedule those backups to run automatically. If you depend on your memory to manually backup your data, it won’t be done effectively if at all. Don’t trust yourself as part of your backup solution.

Having a second external copy (hard drive or DVD data disc) of your data on site will give you the ability to recover data back to your main hard drive(s) and restore your work environment to full functionality quickly.

The third of the three copies needs to be off site. In the old days, that meant backing up to a tape drive and shipping the tapes off site to a climate controlled media storage facility equipped with fire suppression. But things have changed for the better in this wonderful age of technology in which we live. Thanks to the Internet, the age of “Cloud Computing” and readily available high-speed Internet connections, meeting the requirement for off site storage of one of your copies has become much easier than the older method of shipping tapes off site. Online backup comes in many flavors. Do a Google search for online backup and you’ll find plenty to choose from. The most commonly advertised online backup company is Carbonite. I personally tried them first because it was the first one I’d heard of due to the advertising. However, I chose not to go with their online backup service based on one major lack of a feature. Carbonite, although its not obvious on their website, does not backup external drives (hard drives, CD/DVD, USB “thumb” drives, etc.) This is huge requirement for implementing this backup solution. You must be able to backup all of your important data to an off site (online) storage regardless of whether its an internal hard drive or one of the many flavors of external storage as mentioned above. This led me to iDrive. This service allows you to back up any drive attached to your computer including mapped network drives and USB “thumb” drives. They have a “basic” free service plan that gives you up to 2GB of storage. This is obviously for trying out the service. You may be able to store your important internal hard drive information with 2GB, but it’s obviously not enough to backup your media assets. You can purchase 150Gb of storage for $49.50 per YEAR, or 500GB of storage for $149.50 per year. The iDrive software allows you to choose what specific folders or files you wish to backup and has a scheduler for automatic backups. It also can run in “incremental backup” mode which is constantly monitoring your drive(s) for files that change, and immediately sends the changed file(s) to the online backup servers. The iDrive service is available for Windows and Mac OS X.

Having an offsite backup gives you the ability to recover data back to your work environment after a catastrophic event such as a fire, flood, or hurricane.

Although not officially part of a backup plan, two solutions for keeping a quick copy of fairly small amounts of data that you may need to quickly retrieve from virtually any location is Dropbox and Evernote. Both are Internet based systems and allow you to quickly store and retrieve data from multiple devices.

Dropbox is for storing files (or sharing files with others) using simple drag and drop within the Finder (or Windows Explorer). Dropbox apps are also available for iPhone, iPad, Anroid, and soon on BlackBerry devices. See www.dropbox.com for details.

Evernote is for storing information (i.e. text, audio notes, small video notes, and photographs such as a business card). The text that you type as well as the text on photos is indexed and easily searchable at a later date. Notes within your Evernote account are accessible via the Evernote.com website or apps running on your Windows or Mac computer, iPhone, iPad, or other mobile devices. See www.Evernote.com for details.

If you are doing a job, make sure that you are using the right tools for the job.  It brings me great pain to see people not using the proper tools. Whether it be going with cheaper parts or not upgrading your system when your system is a decade old, if you plan to drive income from a task, that task requires tools.

You don’t always need to get the most expensive, latest and greatest  gear.   You have to know what you are going to use it for. For example, someone who is just surfing the web and writing blog posts does not need the same kind of system as someone who is cutting HD video.  In these cases it’s important to enlist the help of a pro and make sure that you are investing in the right equipment to get the job done efficiently.

Here are the top five things that people often forget to factor in when dealing with their computer system:

1.) Your computer is not like a fine wine –
Age is critical

You need to remember to schedule a system upgrade every 3 – 4 years.  This keeps you on track with operating system release and upgrades in software versions.  Let’s face it – new software is written to function on new hardware.  If you can discipline yourself to not upgrade every time offered, you can extend the life of your system – but there are nice things that come with a new version of software, namely new features that will bring time-saving productivity, and security increases that they discover along the way.

2.) If you have one copy – you don’t have a backup

I was very fortunate to have a close family friend who would constantly challenge me when it came to my practices on backups.  Most of us don’t fully value the data that’s stored on our PCs until it’s mangled or just flat out gone.  The fact is if you only have one copy of something, you don’t have a solid backup. Unless you have been living under a rock you have probably heard of cloud based backups like Mozy.  These services allow you to back up securely to the internet. It works – and you don’t have to worry about it.

3.) Choosing the right hardware

The wrong components can sink you! Not understanding how your computer will handle the tasks you plan to throw at it can be even worse!!  When it comes to video editing systems there are key components that you just can’t skimp out on. Video editing systems need fast throughput to the drives, solid GPUs, and buckets of RAM never hurt. The main thing is to know what your jobs will require- if you don’t know, be sure to read number five on my list.

4.) Power is critical

Most, if not all, computers are just not as fun when they don’t have a power source.  Too many times we forget that our tools require good, clean power to make them run.  Not only are our tools not fun when the power cuts off – the process of the power jumping on and off can kill them too.

Here’s a fun tip: the power strip that says it’s a surge protector, isn’t going to protect you!  For those of us who make our living off of our workstations we need to be sure that we can properly shutdown our machine if we have an outage or in the event of a storm rolling through. Uninterpretable power supplies are sold according to VA ratings (Volts * Amps) to see how high of a VA you need, I’d suggest APC’s UPS Selector.  This doesn’t mean that you have to go with an APC model, but they do make great products (with very easy to exchange battery blocks).

5.) Hire a PRO!!!

You do not have to know everything!  I have assembled a team of folks who know their way around a motherboard and have hundreds of thousands of hours of experience doing top level, real world research into what works best in all situations. When it comes to the machine that you are going to be working on every day- the one you rely on to make your paycheck – you don’t just want some toy.  When you hire a pro (like my team) you insure that your machine will be up to the task of doing what you need it to do,  whatever that task might be.

With all of the above being said,  if you need to upgrade your machine or you need pointers on how you can make your backups easier to manage or more secure, contact me!  I have a team of geeks that can walk you through the paces to make sure that you have what you need to get the job done.  This is by no means an exhaustive list of things that we all forget to factor in. What have you forgotten to factor in when maintaining your system?

Photos used in post:
Vintage Wine by Guttorm Flatabø
Power to the people by Boliston

If you ride a tiger, you had better have a good reason for going to all the trouble.

Do NOT confuse ‘the film-look’ with making an actual film.

I’m gonna puke the next time I see duck ponds at dawn and cloud montages that clog the interweb listed as “Test Footage” or “Just bought 78 Mega Pixel camera, check out my tiny depth of field”.

Playing with yourself is called…uh, er…playing with yourself. No one wants to see that in public. It’s up there with slide shows. Remember slide shows in the 70s and 80s? I do, and I want those hours of my life back.

Stop posting your ‘film-look’ and make an actual film. You know, with actors, dialog, a score. Even if everyone dies in the end (like every blasted student movie I ever worked on).

Now that I’m shooting DSLR, I want an Epic or and Alexa (I’m not proud, give me either one) because I’m on that image quality kick.

So, some of the things that bother me are not going to get fixed without spending a LOT more money and time perfecting the rig and my skills.

But none of that matters a flying heap of [insert scatalogical reference here] if you don’t actually use your gear to make a film. Tell a story, or work with those who can, and make something. And make YouTube a better place for all of us. It’s too late for Vimeo, there are already too many out of focus trees in the wind cluttering up the server.

Review

When I was approached by Scott Cantrell of Tapeworks Texas to review and assess the aspherical lens for the Sony PMW EX3 by Zunow, I was pleased to assist.  Scott and indeed all the personnel at Tapeworks, offer a higher level of customer attention than any of our other vendors.  This combined with their competitive pricing has made Tapeworks our first point of contact for equipment acquisition.

Now to the lens itself:

Basis of the test

As we have also been using the Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 wide-angle lens specifically designed for the EX3, it seemed this was the best comparison.  If it were to compare favourably to a task-specific design then this would give video professionals the best assessment.  The images were assembled on to a DVD, which is available at Tapeworks.

The images acquired were fractal for the most part with complex and varied texture and were shot in varying lighting conditions.  In addition, the test sequences chosen varied from close (1 meter) to mountainous areas at a range of a mile or two.  The full range of field of view and focus were captured.

Physical build

When I first opened the box for the Zunow I was struck by the fact that this is a very substantial piece of glass.  It is well made and possesses a simple and robust bayonet locking method for direct connection to the standard 1/2” Fujinon lens for the PMW EX3.  This is true example of the benefits of “keeping it simple”.   Mounting did require the removal of the protective UV filter that was installed on the Fujinon lens. There is little doubt that this adapter would provide a long period of service.

Due to the fact that it is aspherical and is meant to cover such a wide range, it is comparatively heavy.  The Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 is lighter than the WEX-075a Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 combination, however this does not preclude its use as a field adapter.   If it would be used for prolonged periods one may become a bit concerned about stresses to the lens mount on the camera.  This is most likely not an issue as the most likely use of this adapter, and indeed its benefit, is that it can be mounted only when required.  For those who feel the PMW-EX3 is too light and should feel more substantial, attach this adapter and you will have the weight your desire.  As an aside, as we will frequently trek into very remote areas carrying significant amounts of gear (often in hostile circumstances) the light and agile capability of the EX3 is welcome.  The WEX-075a is of course lighter than the Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 and much easier to place in backpacks, etc.

There is a distinct advantage to the approach of using a wide-angle adapter, as it does not involve the removal of the lens and therefore exposure to dust and the elements.  There are several times in the past when this would have been a most welcome part of the kit.  To prove the point, during the tests a few particles of dust inadvertently found their way on to the lens mount and are visible in shots of the sky.  We left these particles in the final images to make the point.

The lens hood that comes with the WEX-075a is roughly the same size as the Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 as would be expected.  Here again design simplicity was key with a straightforward slip on and tighten method of attachment being used.  The lens caps are of the slip-on type but are adequately snug.

Considering the value and price point of this lens and its greatest potential use for the field, I would like to have seen a more protective case rather than the nylon pouch that is provided.  For our purposes it will require more protection.

Image performance

A series of four tests were conducted to test the characteristics of the Zunow adapter against the Fujinon wide angle.  Each test was conducted with no Neutral Density on the first test during which the full range of the zoom function would be employed and then a subsequent identical test with a neutral density of 2 set on the PMW-EX3.

A variety of image surfaces were chosen in four separate lighting conditions.  Test Number Four was conducted with a strong backlit situation to attempt to force Chromatic aberration to be apparent.

In all tests the following characteristics were consistently observed:

The Zunow adapter provided a surprisingly sharp image especially when considering the large amount of glass being introduced into the image stream.  In some cases it would rival the purpose-built Fujinon lens.  On some images of relatively small objects in motion, the difference in clarity between the two lenses was difficult to distinguish (if at all).

Of course with a large aspherical adapter there is a tendency for distortion to form in the corners and depending on the degree of magnification, along the outer edges as well.  While the Fujinon lens held the clear advantage in this regard, the images made with the Zunow were still useful and the distortion hardly noticeable when the images were not being “zoomed”.  Corner distortion was also most apparent on those sections of the image, which were highly fractal.

As regards the equivalent focal lengths are concerned, the Fujinon actually allowed a wider angle of view whereas the Zunow enabled a closer focus when fully zoomed in to the subject.

A remarkable and distinct difference between the two lens arrangements was the narrower depth of field achieved by the Zunow adapter.  It was in fact a most pleasant surprise, which yielded some above average images.  This characteristic was naturally most noticeable when a narrow field of view was used and the Neutral density on the camera was set to 2.  The bokeh is acceptable and perfectly usable for a video lens.  It was certainly more dramatic than the Fujinon lens.  Therefore this could be used in certain circumstances when the use of a 35mm adapter is not available.

There was a difference between the two lenses in regards to contrast and colour representation.  The colour presented on the Fujinon was more vivid and the contrast more in keeping with the camera settings.  The characteristics of the Zunow however were well within adjustment tolerances both on the camera settings as well as in post-production.

Chromatic aberration was only apparent in several conditions and only in the outer extremes of the image, as one would expect.  It was however far better than was expected.

Summary

Some may feel that putting an adapter up against a dedicated design lens to be a bit unfair, however I would assume that at the price point, that would be the consideration most videographers would be making.   Therefore I felt it was important to see if such an adapter could serve the professional to an acceptable standard.  To me the answer is yes, under certain circumstances.  Indeed as previously mentioned, it would be extremely handy in the field and can be quickly applied when needed.  Certainly the unexpected benefit of a narrow depth of field provides a creative solution to many situations.

If one is aware of the potential shortfalls of using an adapter of this size, it can be of significant value.  In our case it will not replace the Fujinon lens but is being seriously considered for inclusion in our field kit.

Well done Zunow.

Review Provided By:
Philip E Hewitt
Seventh Victory
P O Box 1123
Qunicy, CA 95971

(( Disclaimer – Powered Production was not paid to post this review nor did we conduct the tests of the equipment, TapeWorksTexas is a friend of ours, and is who we choose as our vendor in the Houston, Texas area.))

Let me be transparent at this point about my motives. I’ve shot a lot of video for TV, Indie films, YouTube, etc. and I’m buying into the idea that you can make a great looking film with HD DSLR cameras.

I’m coming at this as a film guy who’s shot and worked around a lot of 35mm motion and stills and medium format – hyper SDoF and heavy grip trucks. I know it takes more than a camera and some fairy dust post tools to be a film, not just look like a film.

But, for those of you who came up shooting fast and easy video with fixed lens 1/3 chip cameras, there are probably a number of areas you have not considered. If you want the film look, the Colonel has a few secret herbs and spices you need before it goes from home grown to the big time. Here are the big ones.

1. Lenses

You can see for mile from here – if you forked over the dough for a good prime lens. The $100-200 ‘kit lens’ that came with the camera is entirely useless. As soon as I slapped on my shiny Canon 50mm 1.4 lens, I realized why I had paid nearly $900 for it. And no, the 50mm 1.8 won’t cut it either. Once a crew I know of threw their 1.8 to the ground, smashed it up and used it as a ‘Lens Baby’ alternative. This is appropriate behavior.

Canon make a 50mm 1.2 L lens. If I was dumb enough to put that on my camera, I would have to sell a kidney and buy that and forsake my 1.4. Why? Because you can REALLY see the difference in quality between the different levels of lens. And you can’t go back. And your audience can see it too. Even on the ‘interwebvimeotube’

Vincent Laforet has a large collection of L lenses, and it shows in Reverie. It’s part of the reason that video created such a stir.

You will need 5 prime lenses and 2 zooms. You will probably invest $5k-$10k depending on where in the world you live. I would suggest the 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm, 10-22mm and the EF 70-300mm.

The faster primes will get you a sharper image, better color rendition, SDoF and low light performance the zooms can’t touch.

The zooms will get you out of trouble time and again when the distance between the subject and the camera is fixed. Like the other day when shooting a waterfall. With only a 50mm prime, I was forced to ford the river and setup in the splash zone…

2. Sound

According to George Lucas,  the audio is at least 50% of the motion picture experience . And it is typically the most abused aspect of video production. Pfft, radio lapels are not God’s answer to every situation. Most DSLRs are poor sound recorders. It’s not just the inter-channel crosstalk that you get from a 3.5mm stereo jack (wha? It does what?). It’s also the lack of manual recording levels, the REALLY compressed sound quality, the lack of any other meaningful control, having to menu dive for whatever control there is…

Look, if we keep our 35mm film paradigm in mind, record the sound separately if you can. Buy a reasonable portable digital recorder (most things around $400 US and up) and stick it to your camera. They record and run all day on SDHC and a few AAs. Due in part to better design and a better recording format, it will sound better. Imagine that…

Oh, and trample those blinking iPod ear-buds and get some full cup headphones (closed back) like Sony’s MDR-7502 (sort of a standard, like Avid once was- more because everyone had one, not so much ’cause it’s the best).

Use this software: PluralEyes to re-sync picture and sound in post without the tedium.

If you treat sound separately, chances are you will get a sound recordists, or pay more attention yourself, resulting in better sound and therefore a better film.

Don’t ever use a built in mic (or on camera shotgun) if you can possibly avoid it. Get the right mic on or near what you need to hear. Think, people. Think. For the love of Pete, stop using the 20c mic built into your DSLR unless you need it to sound like it is under water in a submarine.
Oh, and stop editing and mixing on those Logitech computer speakers. Man (or woman), up and get some studio monitors! You don’t edit on a 1960’s portable tele – if sound is 50%, then spend the dosh on some real speakers.

3. External Monitor

I will tell you now (if you have not already discovered), that the screen on the back of your 550D is not as bright as you need in broad daylight. Even in subdued light, ambient light will make it hard to judge anything on what has to be the shiniest (and most nose-fog catching) screen made to date.

Zacuto leads the way with a strap on (ahem) viewfinder gadget…look, I’m a pretty normal human being, my head being attached by a short neck. If you pan the camera more tha 30 degrees in any direction you have to move your whole body to maintain a good seal on the eye cup. Turn 90 degrees, and you will consulting a contortionist for help or a chiropractor for salvation if you did it without thinking first.

Get a monitor on an external arm (I likeManfrotto magic arms, half the price, longer and versatile mouting options).

Get a Hoodman shade or whip something up out of black foam-core and gaffer tape. The DV Rebel should endeavour to home-brew at least 25% of his/her kit.

The 550D has a neat zoom in feature with pan and scan to see a 100% magnification and check focus – but you can only use it OUTSIDE of record mode.

4. MatteBox and Follow Focus

I listed them together because it’s silly not to buy them as a package deal – and if you have a mattebox, there is nowhere for your fingers (unless you look like ET) to fiddle about with the lens. Your arm and wrist will be on an unnatural angle all day if you try and rack focus on the lens body. It will annoy you at first, and hurt if you go all day.

And you need the mattebox for 2 reasons. The first is: it’ll look cool. Yep, I said it. You are going to have a Dickens of a time explaining to your client that you ditched your old AVCHD camcorder (that looks 4 times larger) to shoot on a teeny tiny 550D with a lens that WON’T EVEN ZOOM!

Slap on the mattebox, call it Digital Cinema (and unlike Panasonic, who coined the phrase) as you could really project this stuff at the movies (ask the boys at Zacuto). Rodney Charters,  a fellow Kiwi and DOP of 24, validated what we all suspected when he shot episodess on little video cameras and the only complaint was that without the mattebox the actors felt unsure – nothing about image quality.

The second reason: lens flare. You can have the best (or 2nd best, in my case) lenses on your trusty tiger of a DSLR – but like every camera in the world, stray light off axis kicking back down the lens will wash out color and create uneven brightness or slow pulsing in the case of moving light sources.

Unless you are J.J. Abrams shooting on anamorphic lenses for sci fi, light kicking back down the lens is bad.

35mm guys have used matteboxes for decades because it improves the picture quality (not because it looks cool- that’s for people on the other side of the camera).

If you can handle the bulk, get one with actual matte inserts to match your lens collection. Get the side flags and french flags. Use them when you are on a tripod or shoulder rig. Derig for handhold in tight spaces – a french flag has a built in desire to lobotomise lead actors – this can be bad for the DV Rebel who is probably not paying talent and needs them to stay happy.

5. Filters

I list this separately so you will pay attention. Your video camera came with ND filters built in (if you didn’t buy it at Walmart). I hope you used them. SDoF is totally dependant on wide open lenses (large apertures of f1.2 and friends). If it’s bright outside, you are stuck with an exposure time of 1/50th and the lowest you can con the ISO is 100, you are going to have to stop down to f16 or so. Suddenly the whole world is in focus and you are not getting 2″ of focus you need to see the tears on her cheeks, but not the bus in the background…back to video – blehck. (Blehck – noun – the feeling in the pit of your stomach when things stop looking like film and start looking like it was shot on a 12 year old’s Flip Mino).

You will need Neutral Density filter (ND) and Graduated ND filters. And a few of them. Magic Bullet II does such a good job of color grads in post, I would hesitate to use a colored graduated filter on the camera unless I REALLY new what I was up to (i.e. I was Storarro incarnate).

UV filters are important in my neck of the woods – we have very little ozone layer in New Zealand – so lots of sunburn and UV mucking up the sharpness of colors.

A polarizer is a great investment, and if you have read this so far, you probably know what it does, otherwise wikipedia (it’s never wrong!?).

Filters, like lenses, are not cheap, and you get what you pay for. Get the glass ones for $50. If you get those gelatin / plastic ones, be sure to call me so I can make you an offer on those L lenses you will be wasting.

Remember, you will probably need a mattebox to hold them. Then you will look cool

6. Motion Artifacts

No really, there will be some. Keep the camera still, and let things move about the frame. If you move the camera about excessively (even less some times) you will get judder and false / soft edges that even YouTube won’t hide. Part of this is the (relatively) low speed at which the CMOS is read from top to bottom. This is what leads to Jello-cam – the earthquake effect of moving the camera to fast particularly in a horizontal direction.

Rodney Charters suggests this will lead away from throwing the camera about and getting a decent tripod and composing shots again. Finally, after 20 years of MTV / NYPD Blue (how old am I) camera-as-blind-man-with-flashlight-shooting, we might be allowed to used a tripod again. I blame Garret Brown for getting us used to the camera being far more mobile, but not giving us all a free Steadicam to do it right.

This is one issue that’s going to hamper us until Scarlet and similar cameras with higher data rates and faster chip read rates join the fray.

This is your wake up call to ditch the plastic tripod and get something in a nice carbon fiber with a real fluid head. It’s also a challenge to ‘video’ people to spend a little time thinking about holding the wide-shot longer instead of lunging for the mid-shot.

I am personally looking for a miniature geared head.

7. NLE Fun And Games

Being cheap, and not wanting to randomly fork over anywhere from $400-1000 every time a software company has the itch to make money and release an update, I am one of few, the proud, the Vegas Users who is still on version 8. Version 9 is when they discovered fire…I mean H.264 – that wondrous format that makes cheap video a reality for so many cameras and formats.

Vegas 8 on Windows7 (blast it, paid out again) is not great – h.264 support is kinda iffy in places. Trying to run footage from the 550D at 32bit into Magic Bullet Editors (yeah, another oldie, but I paid for it, you pirate scum!) at 1080P makes even my Quad Core sag and I get about 10fps playback before I add plug-ins. Sad.

This is mostly my fault, and I know I need to consider a MAJOR upgrade. CS5 is…well, it’s fast, but it’s still Premier (and adding the word ‘pro’ is marketing BS).

For those of you jumping to DSLR, upgrade or die. Hey, it’s not mini DV out there any longer, and you will have to update to the latest version of…well, probably everything.

And consider using an intermediate codec like CineformHD or ProRes if you are serious about release formats, color correction, etc. Just ’cause your NLE can play the file natively does NOT mean it’s safe to edit in that muck.

8. Lighting

Really want the “Film-Look”? – it ain’t just the 4 magic ingredients mentioned in part one of this ceaseless rant. And it ain’t celluloid with sprockets running through a heavily modded sewing machine with a bottle of Zeiss’ finest on the front.

Cinematography is about lighting, framing, motion, complimenting the story, motivation for lighting and movement…it’s all the stuff you learn at film school while you are waiting your turn to seize control of the class to produce your opus.

One of these that you can beg, borrow, steal or (gasp) purchase is lights.

Get some good ones you won’t have to make a joke about in your director’s commentary.

At least get a couple of Lowel Totas, some reflectors and a couple of Pro-Lights.

I would personally say get 3 Arri Fresnels of a matching size and couple of big ones – say 3×300 watt, 2x 650 watt and a 1k. Then you can light large areas with one light and get in close with the smaller instruments. Less moving around for your basic lighting, and easy finesse.

Fantasy over for some of us (’cause all my money is going on lenses and a new NLE), use some light / reflector / well placed flashlight with some diffusion. Go and read ‘Painting with Light’ if you really want it to look like a movie.

Video is fraught with washed out, flat, under/over exposed, just plain badly lit junk.

You finally have a camera that can see in the dark- great!  But you can improve on the floodlighting in the subway with just a small battery powered lighting kit.

A long time ago in Sydney, Australia, I was a humble camera operator and film school grad who was heartbroken when I worked out that it cost $250,000.00 to hit the road as an owner/operator shooting BetacamSP and that there were over 1000 crews competing in a town of only a coupla million people.

You might not understand that price – but back in the 90’s it was nearly $90,000 just for a camcorder body (Sony BVW 400a). Add the price of a lens, batteries, tripod and the obligatory SUV to drive the ‘talent’ around in, and I couldn’t bring myself to go the ‘industrial route’ and invest in SuperVHS – little better than U-Matic.

I opted for Hi8 and a shiny Sony VX5000 – I got a lot of little jobs off that camera and rented for anything ‘real’

I’ve owned a succession of cameras from the shallow end of the pool ever since. I think a Sony TRV-8 MiniDV handycam was the best of the bunch. Great pictures, tiny camera, good lowlight, cheap…

And with the advent of editing your own work (Premier 1.5!) and color correction (Magic Bullet Editors) suddenly we could care about image quality again.

But try as we might, the new generation of Coppolla’s “fat 12 year olds” just couldn’t cut it with the big boys.

They had wonderful HD images which just looked (and I’m sure Kodak coined the BS term) “Film-like.”

And in the 2000’s, we all started wandering on the same path, in search of the holy grail – “The Film Look”, which Kodak assured us we could only get on film. I have 2 things to say about that: Epic, and Alexa.

So I went back to film. One time. Super8. Long story- no result. The cost was astronomical,  but I continue to love what Super8 birthed on the unsuspecting music video scene – crapulence. That grainy, interpretive, weaving, flickery, indeterminate, smokey, loveliness that is the ‘grunge look’.

How could I get that look? Ah, now you know why my favorite camera of the past was a standard definition, single chip handycam in low light…Step one of the film look, almost.

The path to righteousness, ahem, the steps to “the Film-look” turned out to be:

1.) Progressive images – not interlaced. Thanks to Adobe Premiere defaulting to this whenever it had to change the playback rate of footage or move it – if you slowed your film by .01% Premiere re-rendered a progressive frame that looked… filmic.

2.) 24 frames per second – NTSC was just too damn clean at 30, even PAL at 25 was not quite there. We needed the herky jerk of 24.

3.) Color Correction – Before Magic Bullet, CC was a mystical art practiced by few  (hey, Stu was doing this stuff before feature films were doing DI regularly). With faster computers, GPU support and a masterful stroke from Apple (giving you $25K worth of Color for free with Final Cut) now anyone with half a clue can do CC. Just use the presets if you really don’t know…

4.) Shallow Depth of Field- The one you couldn’t (really) do with software and electronics.

Three of these things could be achieved in camera, if only such a camera existed – freeing the DV Rebel to make films that “looked like a film”.

No really, I sat through a few SXSW winners that had great stories, great soundtracks, but just didn’t look…well, we used the word “expensive” back then because SDoF implied 35mm film and buckets of cash.

Stu Mashwitz, in his masterful work “The DV Rebel’s Guide” first mooted the Panasonic DVX100 (I had a B version) as the ultimate rebel’s camera – it shoots (sorta) 24p (sorta p, sorta 24) and with a bit of care in post…magic, or poor man’s 16mm – depending on your perspective.

Then along came a couple of guys on DVX User with some spinning CD blanks and old Nikkor lenses…gasp – through the murk and moire you could get SDoF. Stick one of these confabulations on the front of your DVX100 and be instantly translated to Nirvana…the mystical realm, not Seattle.

Now we had a true holy grail to pursue. One of those guys on DVX User realized that and started Red Rock Micro. It turns out the 24p with good color correction is half of the film look (and Magic Bullet could do all that with software!). The other, much sexier, half was Shallow Depth of Field.

Like a tiger in the jungle, she was elusive, captivating, hard to pin down, and many hunted her. Unfortunately, just like the Holy Grail, many perished or suffered in the quest with rigs that ran your exposure down to 50 ISO, cost three times as much as the camera or were ten times longer than your rig was wide (see cumbersome in the dictionary).

Then Vincent Laforet gave us “Reverie” – in all it’s 30 Fps compressed glory. Half of us said “You can’t shoot on a compressed format”, and the other half remembered that if it looks good, people will watch. Vincent won, by the way, with 24, House M.D. and even Lucasfilm using the 5DmkII.

And after a mob with pitchforks and burning torches assembled at the gates of Canon, we even got 24 frames per second. Wasn’t that nice of them?

Yes, after a year of staring at wonderful show reels full of 2″ Shallow Depth of Field images (SDoF), and then laughing at guys with 4′ long camera rigs, I made the plunge to DSLR.

The only problem was that a 5DmkII is a little on the expensive side for a true DV Rebel.  Enter the Canon 550D (part of the Rebel range in Canon’s own parlance).

What makes the 550D so great is that it allows for shallow depth of field, it shoots 24 frames per second progressive, and in a true high definition 1080 format. It also has built-in sound (sorta) and only $1,500  Pacific Pesos ($800 in the ol’ USA).

So, I would humbly suggest that the 550D is the official DV Rebel camera of 2010. Red will sell 10,000 Scarlets, but Canon can sell that many 550Ds in a week. And the first Scarlet (at this time) will ship with a 2/3″ sensor- inferior SDoF performance. And it will cost a whole butt load more than a 550D. Understandably. DV Rebels are a scrappy lot, and if there is a cheaper option that actually looks better in some ways, the choice is obvious.

So, the day finally dawned that I needed a new camera. I spent the day with the Sony NX5 – a “proper” video camera- balanced audio in, full control of exposure, zoom and focus, sorta broadcast video format- .as I said, a “proper” video camera. It made “proper” video looking images of it’s 3x 1/3″ chips too. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I ran to the nearest photography store and got the 550D, vowing never to spend 3 times the money to be “proper” and boring again. I drank the kool-aid – “If it looks good, people will watch.” I plunked down the dough to ride the tiger. And only a couple of weeks in, I’ve felt like that famed Indian peasant who rode the tiger more by accident than design.

In part two, I will share some of the joys and some of the perils of shooting on the 550D. Tigers look great, but they have teeth. If you forget about the teeth, you get eaten. But it’s worth the ride.

What is Spam?  (Not Shoulder Parts and Meat)

Spam has many definitions (type define:spam into Google and see for yourself) the most common is unsolicited information, unwanted repeated calls to action, and sometime letters from your long lost Nigerian cousin who happens to be a prince and is desperate to give you millions of dollars. The best part is that spam is something different for everyone, but the one things that is universal is that no one wants spam.  In the good ol days of teh interweb we only had to deal with a Russian picking up your email address that you posted online somewhere. You knew that you’d been found when your emails in-box would start to fill up with offers of cheap (but real) pills.

In an age of “Opt-in” what is spam?

First, why do I say that we live in an age of opt-in?  We have all grown accustom to giving out our email address to receive an offer, or if you don’t – do you follow people on Twitter?  The process of following, is a form of granting permission for them to send you messages – the purest from of opt-in.  So when we follow the wrong person, do we have right to shake our fists at our lcd(s) rip our garments and cry out, “STOOOPPP  SPAMMMMING MEEEEEE”.  No, we just un-follow – in some cases, we block – or report them as spam.

Dude, you opened the door to their sales message, you have to be responsible and slam it shut!

But, What If  YOU are Labeled a Spammer?

There are a number of Twitter Cleaner services out there (TwitCleaner & TweetBlocker to name a few) these services take a look at your following list and let you know at what level a twitter user that you are following is a spammer.  So what are some of the things that they are looking for, things that in moderation are fine, but if you’re doing it non-stop you’re going to start looking following due to spam filters on twitter!

Top Three thing that if you do, you might be a spammer

1.) Do you bomb your twitter stream with @replies

Once a week (for #FollowFriday) is okay — well not really, but it’s not going to label you as a Twitter Spammer.  Sending constant @Replies is a tactic that some bots use to gain following, they send you a message (often with a link) to a person that they are not following, and have had no interaction with, and these bots typically send the same message to hundreds of users, who never asked for their message. This activity (sending repeated messages to people who were not expecting and did not ask for them – IS SPAM.

So of you send 300 @replies to people on #FollowFriday – you might be a Spammer.

2.) Do you use spammy speech in your tweets?

What is “Spammy Speech?” You’ve been to those sites that will sell you this snake oil system that will cause you to want to quit your job because in 4 hours a day Google and Bill Gates will just start sending you cash!  These get rich on the internet sites are loaded with what I call “Spammy Speech”. They make stupid claims and often have ridiculous headlines, don’t follow these broken patterns, the era of mile long sales pages is over, I would even venture to bet that sales letters on the net are dead altogether!  If you make hyped up claims and send people to a unrelated or irrelevant link – IT IS SPAM.

If your message is clouded in a vail of hype – you might be a Spammer.

3.) Do you send nothing but links?

This is a real gray area for me, but none the less it will get you registered as a spammer quickly.  If every message that you send on twitter is going out with a link, it’s bad form.  Some times we just have to make statements and that be the final word.  It can be bad form if every message that you send is targeted to get them to click a link.

If your twitter steam look more like a RSS with “Read More” links, you might be a Spammer!

Are these hard and fast rules, NO, not at all – and as twitter goes, and more people figure out how to exploit new features the rules that will label you as a spammer are going to change.  The best way to not be labeled as a spammer is to treat others as you would want to be treated, would you want to be bombarded with a list of names telling you to follow these people? Would you want to be told about a new system for getting hundreds of followers, non-stop?  If you wouldn’t want those things sent to you, why send those kinds of messages into the world?

Oh – also note, don’t publicly spar with a person who might be a spammer, as you can be labeled as one too!

Here’s what’s cool

Larger Screen that Flips – For the first time with the Flip, people like me who spend more time with their Flip pointed at themselves will finally be able to see themselves as they are shooting!  We have also been told that we’ll have a larger, but non-touch sensitive.

Wi-Fi network connection - This is what I’ve been waiting for, but there are a lot of questions that are still up in the air and things that we’re just not sure about.  I believe that this will take the same direction that the Eye-fi (shameless affiliate link) products have taken where there are configuration files that allow you to connect to the networks that you’re near – if private, then you can make provisions for that.

What I’m hoping for
(but not holding my breath)

Better exposure control and real white balance - This is has been my main gripe with all pocket video devices (I still won’t call it a camera – even though I own one!) Why do I want this…  If I could just get exposure lock, so I don’t get the slow reaction – but just dropped below the threshold for the auto-exposure.  Having real white balance would allow me to make videos that were warm or cool, or with the combination we’d be able to shoot very flat and then color correct in post production.

Auxiliary Audio Input - The ability to plug in a microphone that would be better suited for the situation that were shooting in would be a massively cool feature.  There’s an odd side (the hacker in me) that really wants to open it up and see how I could add this to my flip, but don’t want to break it! I’m not asking for a XLR interface – but the ability to add a small lapel microphone, or a small boom like what’s used on some of the iPod recording accessories.

1080p – It would be cool, the Kodak Zi8 has delivered this resolution – would be nice if the new Flip Wi-Fi cam could match this.  (Having 1080 24p / 30p and 720 60p would be a bonus)

Live streaming – The ability to connect to Ustream or Livestream to stream live from a Wi-Fi connection would be EPIC!

Threads on the lens – Like I’ve said before – I really don’t want to hack my shinny new flip (until I can replace it when something goes wrong). Having threads so that I can add a wide angle adapter, or even throwing a telephoto to get some reach would be nice!!!

Am I asking or expecting too much
from a tiny handheld video product?

photo credit

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rog2bark/ / CC BY 2.0

Gary nails it (once again) in another video – finally someone puts all of the dots together and shows us in plain english that regardless what you call it (media, social media, web 2.whatever) it’s all still about caring at the end of the day – and big business won’t be able to hide the fact that they don’t care.  We as media profesionals have to wrap it around our head that it’s not just about production, we now have to deliever the total package!Am I wrong?!

I want to be more like Chris! Also, I’d love to get a shot of his camera rig…  I’m guessing that it’s shot on a Flip HD, but it looks a bit too steady for being hand held…

Editing (in terms of media production) is the juxtaposition of time and events (the rearranging of events in time to tell a different or more compelling story).

What does that mean?

Have you ever seen or heard the old adage, “Commas save lives!”  We here it is…

Let’s eat Grandpa!

Let’s eat, Grandpa!

Both have the same exact text – but without a pause in the right place you say something all together different! The same is true with media production (audio and video) you place, or remove a pause at the right place, remove the audio with a bleep sound and you can have a totally different video.

The other day I found this post on TheNextWeb.com – this shows a video posted my microsoft to show the public how easy it is to host a house party for the upcoming Windows 7 Launch.  First off, why is it that it is way too much fun, and way to easy to make fun of microsoft!? Not that I’m a PC guy, have been for year – I don’t own a Mac (but would love to).

Here’s the orginal video:

Here’s the edited version
Note that nothing is said, but may not be safe for work – as a lot can be implied!

This is how editing can portray a negative image of the original message (that’s easy) as any one can take things out of context and make them say anything! People have been doing that for years – what can you do as a producer, video blogger or business owner to make better media with the the help of editing?  When you realize that you don’t just have to shoot a video and post it in it entirety you will see video in a completely different way! Some vloggers will hate me because of that last statement – but I’m okay with that.  ^~~^

My challenge to you – find a video that due to editing has a deeper impact, or more compelling message.  Use the feature in the commenting tool to embed a Youtube video, and tells us all why it is this video has merit, or re-cut it and show us the before and after!

Photo credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kichigai/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

The superficial friending of everyone is pointless – the truth in this video released more than a year ago still rings true.  If you have a million “friends” but no one really has your back – what’s the point!

My family gave me the gift of pocket video in the form of a Flip Ultra HD.

You’ll see in the coming days the fruits of this new prized possetion as I embark on a new journey of video blogging.  Today, I picked up some more kit that I’ll be talking about that soon enough (camera support systems that will allow me to posts

Gary Vaynerchuk hits it on the head – I know that I’ve been guilty of this in the past and will watch my aditude in the future about this!  How has the numbers game effected what and how you look at things?

Today’s vLog – Letting a Dream Die, Not always a bad thing – it’s allowing me to be more focused on what’s ahead!

Dealing with the vacuum of social media, how do you over come this? Is it just me??!

]]> http://poweredproduction.com/video/my120-9-14-2009/feed/ 0 http://poweredproduction.com/video/my120-9-14-2009/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PoweredProduction/~3/xemV6JrgBQA/ http://poweredproduction.com/video/why-i-always-have-my-flip-with-me/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:38:09 +0000 Brad http://poweredproduction.com/?p=739 http://poweredproduction.com/video/why-i-always-have-my-flip-with-me/feed/ 0 http://poweredproduction.com/video/why-i-always-have-my-flip-with-me/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PoweredProduction/~3/Iv6A2uzS4PM/ http://poweredproduction.com/news-events/unofficial-user-generated-conference-guide/#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:12:06 +0000 Brad http://poweredproduction.com/?p=614 I’ve been to a few BarCamp.org styled User Generated meetings in my time, and I’m by no means an expert in this field. (I wasn’t at the 1st official BarCamp – nor have I been to any “official” camps). I have been involved in the planning of a few of these camps and hope that this post will serve as your unofficial guide from my observations at past events.  At the heart of the issue these are User Generated, yes by attending them you become a user – but semantics aside let’s take a look at these 5 points that will make sure your not “That Guy” at the next camp!

1.) These camps are not about you, they are not about your company!

At some point you need to learn to leave your soap box at home – come to share, but not to preach or pitch! Even if your company is a sponsor of the said camp – no one is there to hear about you! Pitching your company or hard selling your widget is a cardinal sin that will (or should) get  you booted from most of these meetings.

These camps are all about the community, if you feel that you can help someone with your widget – you should ask them to talk about that at a later date, get their contact information and tell them you can talk sales later.  The important thing is to talk about the topic – and you can do this without selling your product!

2.) These camps are not for you to show off your power point skills.

These camps are about starting public discussions and not a place for you to talk to the back wall as you show your slides.  Community is the focus and public conversation is key – you’re not leading a talk, but shaping the conversation as a discussion facilitator.  If you have screen shots of what you know is going to be brought up or if you’re talking about a case study and have slides that’s one thing – but please don’t just talk along with your 20 – 30 slides and not involve the room with discussion (especially after lunch – as it will become a snooze fest!)

3.) Tweet, Live Blog & Interact on the meetings Live Stream
(take Photo & Videos too)

Most people show up to these events and they look like they have no clue as to what’s going on outside of that little room they ended up in.  I keep saying this but it’s about community – so while at an event, become the live blogger for the rest of the world (who’s not in that room) and tell us all what we’re missing out in.  Many of the break out sessions that I’ve been involved in evolved as people would join in via Cover-It-Live or Twitter with other questions an comments.  Also if you’re taking photos – don’t just shoot crowd shots, be sure to get in close and make sure that you tag your photos so people can find out who was there.

4.) Bring your business cards

I’m always shocked at the amount of people who come to networking events and don’t bring any means of sharing their contact information with those that they meet.  This seems rather old school, but it’s still a necessity! There’s nothing like trying to land a client or make a meaningful contact by writing down your contact information on a scrap piece of paper!  Is that really the best way to transmit your brand?!

5.) Stay on topic with the conference

If you are attending a conference that is central to a specific topic you have to remember that everyone else is there to talk and learn about that topic – please don’t focus on tangents that can could lead to you being able to pitch your business.  User generated conferences work best when there is a central vision and goal, a singleness of thought and everyone can add their perceptive to – if you come with a hidden agenda to talk about something else (i.e. yourself or your business) you will stick out like a sore thumb and hopefully asked to leave the event.

So there it is, my 5 tips to get the most out of user generated conferences (BarCamps). Follow these tips to make your experience and the experience of those around you a pleasurable and worthwhile!  I know that this is a short list and there I must have left something out – please add to the conversation by making a comment here on the post…  Please don’t hold anything back (except for profanity – my Mom reads my blog so keep it clean).

Additional Resources

Link to great stuff concerning BarCamp:

BarCamp.org – Find upcoming camps in your area / in your country
The Rules of BarCamp – A must read page – don’t follow these, and you’ll be “That Guy”
The Pocket Guide to “Organize A Local Bar Camp”

Photos used in post:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/franzlife/ / CC BY 2.0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/monsieurlui/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lox/ / CC BY 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mathplourde/ / CC BY 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffmcneill/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71737580@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

Is it just about being at the right place at the right time?

Recall the downed plane in New York (US Airways 1549). The TwitPic that were sent from the ferry, crashed the website – when 7,000 people tried to view the photo at the same time – I didn’t take a screen shot of the views at the time, but I recall it had more than 100k with-in one week for the event happening. I wonder how much they made from adverts on the page…

Now, Imagine if there was live video from the scene and how that would have changed the news coverage of the event online. I think that this will be more than being at the right place at the right time, and to be willing to put yourself out there to capture the event.

Live Video Via Facebook or Qik or where ever…

Regardless of where it’s from or what service it’s deployed with – these video devices are a game changer, their are here to stay, and they are changing the face of video production as we know it!  If you don’t believe me, and you’re holding to your hard and fast rules of what a real camera is (like I have been) then you have to see what the guys over a Pixel Corp (link to article about the rig) have cooked up using a RedRock Micro shoulder rails kit and some other accessories.  Camera Rig maker Zacuto is also getting in to the game with their new hand grip for the 3Gs.  And a new player – Owly, turns that shinny new phone into a mobile media work horse!

What will Live Video do to the way that news and events are covered, how long before we all see a shift social news?

“There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.”

Ansel Adams

When you are Directing, your show will only be as good as you prepare!

1. Show prep One of the critical things that I learned during my career in radio broadcasting, the more show prep that I did, the better the broadcast went.  The more prepared you are going into a show the less that can go wrong that you’re not already going to be ready for. You cannot prepare for everything, but for most things. At the height of my radio career I was the executive producer of my own two hour prime-time Saturday night show, “Binary Radio” was a live DJ mixed radio program there was no safety net, no live delay, my one and only line of defense was a prerecorded mix CD only to be used if I needed to re-boot Final Scratch.  Because of this there were times which  it was like juggling five chain saws and 3 bowling pins, and on rare occasion it was like watching a train wreak in revers and in slow motion.  The weeks that I would afford myself a 4 hour session of practice and programing my show it would go so nearly flawlessly  that it was scary.
2. Pre-Flight Checklist
   

   “I’ve got a checklist with 3,200 items on it. At any time, 150 of them are burning.”

   Fred Reid

   When you work from a checklist – it’s like having a silent assistant that keeps you on task, reinforcing your preparation.  (Provided that you make the time to make a worth while checklist that is.) What are things that you need on your checklist? During the course of your show prep you will run into areas that need work – marking a note of things that could go wrong, and what you can do to get around it.

3. Limited Stimulus before, during, and after the show This, honestly is just a personal thing that I’ve done dating back to my live theater experience.  I try to lay low before an event, to reflect and rehearse what’s necessary to execute the show as best I can.  Also during a show – I don’t want any kind of stimulus, and once I even had to spit out my gum as I ran out of things that I could do at one time (which at that time was seven.)
4. Post show exit meeting After you wrap a show, it’s a good practice to strike while the iron is hot and capture as much feedback about the show / event as you can – going over every triumph and tragedy that occurred.  The process of debriefing is critical to growth as a director, if you want to grow you’ll have to learn to take the good with bad.  This often is not a very comfortable meetings (when things go very wrong), and things can get heated – the important thing is to not take it personal, and not to make it personal!

So, What’s the “One” thing that makes for great live production?

Prep, prep, and more prep!

Your show will only be as good as you prepare for it to be.

]]> http://poweredproduction.com/production/what-makes-for-great-live-production/feed/ 0 http://poweredproduction.com/production/what-makes-for-great-live-production/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PoweredProduction/~3/WW6ciqhr6t0/ http://poweredproduction.com/production/the-rule-of-thirds-a-cheap-knockoff/#comments Fri, 08 May 2009 17:08:33 +0000 Brad http://poweredproduction.com/?p=536 Most people have no idea what the “Rule of Thirds” are, nor can they look at an image and tell you why the love it, or why it has striking composition if it was using the “Rule of Thirds”. I saw a post today (found here) that called the Rule of Thirds both lazy and a sham…
While I agree that all rules are made to be bent and at times even broken, you can only do so – when you fully can understand the rules that are in play!

I was first introduced to the Rules of Thirds for the first time in a Nikon Manual that my Grand Father (Popo) gave me when I inherited his Nikon FE (manual 35mm camera and lens kit – Thank God for Popo!) I later studied these rules via an Eastman Kodak VHS that we watched over and over again in High School (Thanks to my photo teacher Mr. Charles Scherbel – where ever you are.)

I’m not really sure if it’s just because the word rule is in name, which is causing the author of the post to question its validity.  I’d have to agree that the Golden Mean is mathematical at its core and therefore for the faint of heart easily avoided and I agree that the Golden Ratio while found in nearly every thing in existence (wonder who put that there -  well that might be a topic of conversation sometime other than now.) Does it negate the simplicity of breaking things up in thirds?

I have to say that this has really opened up some areas of thought and will cause me to question the composition of my shots next time I do a set up, but to say that the Rule of Thirds is a sham – come on, really? I’ll concede the point that the rule of thirds is a much more simple means of looking at it, and it’s not exact science as the Golden Ratio.

Is Not being Exact all the time – lazy?

Also super huge thank you to @TGaul – I had no idea that was in there!!!

Photos used in post:

golden spiral 2 by Shannon Henry