New Modern Science

The State of Media Content Delivery

Chris — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:10:36 +0000

I had an interesting discussion with Carey tonight regarding the current state of media entertainment. We got into a discussion about buying the new Terminator:Salvation movie, and then I kind of started musing about the future of video entertainment. Taking a step back for a second, I have this personal stance these days regarding what I call the “Convenience Tax” when it comes to just about anything. You pay $10 to get your car washed instead of doing it yourself. You pay $8 for a roasted chicken instead of paying $5 and roasting it yourself. I’m constantly examining my spending habits based on how much of a “convenience tax” you pay for what what is essentially instant gratification.

Anyway, the way this works into entertainment is that, despite the fact that I have a decent current library of DVD’s, I have a hard time buying them anymore. For one, we can’t really watch about 90% of them while my daughter is awake because of violence, language, whatever. Second, there are really only a handful that I care to watch over again with any frequency. The rest, I feel could just be rentals.

I’m not even sure if I want to buy Blu-Ray discs, because I feel like even it is a transitional delivery format, but the biggest reason for not buying now is because the future of media, I believe, is digital content delivery. We’ve already seen Netflix on all kinds of devices, Blu-Ray players, PS3, and we ourselves have a Roku that we use with frequency. The Roku, and devices like it, are the future. The Roku has pretty much changed the way we view media. We have ditched cable TV completely. We have a slow and steady queue of stuff coming from Netflix, and we use the Netflix Instant Watch. Occasionally, we rent a movie or TV episode from Amazon Video On Demand. We listen to Pandora, we look at Facebook photos, I catch shows from Revision 3 andÂ Blip.tv.

Back in September, Dreamworks Studio simultaneouly released “Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs” to theaters AND Sony Blu-Ray players testing out how viable that would be. Of course, it was $24.99 to rent it for 24 hours, and at that price point, you could almost buy the movie. BUT, it does indicate where things are going. I could see in the future, friends gathering in front of a nice home theater system, and renting a first run film, and splitting the cost with your buddies.

Hopefully in the future there will be a balance struck between the convenience and low cost of digital content delivery for the consumer, and a way for the industry to still make money and support the creation of great entertainment.

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Button Mashing: The Monome 40h

Chris — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:14:20 +0000

Last year I went through a phase of interest in the grassroots movement of DIY control interfaces for software. One in particular caught my eye: the monome. The monome is basically a grid button interface that you can use to control things. People mostly use it for music, but i’ve seen it used for video, lighting, games, etc. All sorts of stuff. The beauty is that it’s infinitely flexible, only limited by your imagination and programming skill. Sadly, this is the same thing that killed it for me. The program used to control it primarily, is Max/MSP, though it does support other apps using OSC, it’s primary method of communication. Max is difficult, and expensive. You could run all sorts of patches built by the monome-ing community, but in the end, the things that you missed were things like a good save/recall system for presets, and all the hoops you jump through to get it up and running. I found myself messing with getting patches to work, rather than any actual music being made. That being said, it’s a great performance tool. I had the original 40h, then a 64, then a 128. In the end, I sold it because it just took too much time to do something useful, so it ended up being a really cool decoration in my office. My philosophy about gear is always that if it’s not getting used, it needs to go to someone that will, so I sold it to a nice fellow in California.

Now since then, Ableton has teamed up with Cycling ‘74, makers of Max, and developed a Max4Live, that allows you to run Max patches right inside Live. This has been the tie in that everyone has been waiting for, and now has once again piqued my interest. I think this time i’d like to build one though. Here’s one of the original videos that sold me on it:

Here’s a bit of work I did when I had mine:

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Client Profile: The Northern Sound

Chris — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:11:34 +0000

Out of all of the different types of projects I get into, studio engineering is definitely at the top. The nerdy, techy side of it is alot of fun, but the thing I love about it the best is producing. I’m not such a great songwriter, but I have an ear for arrangement, and I LOVE helping someone take a song idea to it’s conclusion. The same way an artist visualizes a painting, or a sculpture, I like to “auralize” songs, hearing countermelodies, rhythms, and changes for raw song ideas people give me. Then recording the different tracks, and sculpting them the same way a digital artist sculpts layers in Photoshop, we take what started out as a simple guitar or piano song, and turn it into a finished piece.

The Northern Sound is one example of a project that grew out of someone coming to me with a few simple songs, taking those and trying different instruments, and textures till we got something that we liked. What I really like about how these turned out, is that they have drive and atmosphere, but yet still have their acoustic coffee shop vibe.

The Northern Sound – The Widow’s Song

The Northern Sound – Collapse

The Northern Sound can be found here:

Facebook
The Northern Sound Blog
The Northern Sound on Reverbnation

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Client Profile: Laura Morett

Chris — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:12:54 +0000

Laura and I go back a few years; we attend the same church and have gone on a mission trip to South America together. I found out after noticing her gone from church for a while, that she had made it onto the 19th season of the CBS show Survivor:Samoa. When she returned, I offered to set her up with an online presence with the goal of building a personal brand; something she wanted to leverage post-show to do public speaking engagements.

I knew the show would pick up speed quickly, so we hit it hard and fast: Twitter, Facebook Page, IMDb profile, website/blog. Because of the legal restraints and CBS imposed media blackout on all cast members, Laura wasn’t allowed to actually blog till after the show, but she was welcome to Twitter and Facebook. We used both of those to network, and build a fanbase through frequent interaction, and by leveraging these we Â organized a migrating “Survivor Party” that moved every week, frequently packing out the venues they were held in. Her combination of charm, personality, and transparency, helped her cement relationships with her fans on a personal level.

We lined up a local photographer and shot a number of promotional photos, one which was a geometrically straight on shot that I used for her website. We shot it with her leaning on some appleboxes, and then masked it out. That along with a few other handpicked shots were used for promotions, and b/w headshots that she would sign and hand out to fans.

Laura is Hawaiian, so for her website I wanted to do something that would be a balanced representation of her feminine side, and the tough girl that landed the spot on the show. We ended up going with a flower motif, and sand/ocean tones that complemented we wardrobe in the shot.

All in all, her personal branding has been a success, and it’ll be fun to see her continue to leverage that in future endeavors.

www.lauramorett.com
twitter.com/lauramorett
www.youtube.com/TheLauraMorett
facebook.com/TheLauraMorett

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Flickr Batch Download

Chris — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:42:40 +0000

Most of the time when I go grab something from my Flickr account, or something from the Creative Commons search, i’m contented to just download them one at a time. Every once in a while though, I come across a situation where I need to download a whole set of images, say, for a media project or for prints or something. Flickr doesn’t really have a great way of doing this, so usually i’m forced to do it one image at a time, which can be time consuming. It has a batch upload, but not a batch download. Recently I found that someone had developed a program that’ll let you authorize the app with the Flickr API, and then download your own images in sets, which is FANTASTIC. It’s a quick download, quick set up, and you’re off and running. Tell me if you like it

FlickrDown

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