This dude was really good. I didn’t stay for the awards but I’m sure he made it. Unfortunately, my best shot was a bail.

I grabbed these pictures of my friend’s ride. We rolled up to the comp in a 71′ Vette.

1. You think a RSS Aggregator may be a weapon.
2. You reply to Mailer Daemon, thanking him for letting you know an email address isn’t available.
3. You think the term Delicious only applies to food.
4. You don’t know what Twitter is.
5. You have a Twitter account but you follow more than 5x the amount of people who follow you.
6. You think FTP refers to a government agency founded as a result of the New Deal.
7. You attempt to email a file larger than 16mb and are bewildered if it doesn’t go through. YousendIt.
8. As we approach 2009, You have a dial-up connection- by choice.
9. You use Internet Explorer. (unless your forced to)
10. You see YouTube and Vimeo and think they offer the same service.
11. The only AJAX you’ve ever heard of is the soccer team, if you even know that.
12. You frequent sites with flashing red, yellow & blue text. Attempting to get you to opt-in to an endless supply of Spam.
13. You think Spam only comes in cans.
14. You have a populated blog, but not one site in the entire world links to it, EVER.
15. You can’t see a reason why an Instant Messenger can be a productive tool.
16. You think the best websites have to use flash OR You like sites that are entirely flash.
17. You wait for a site to load longer than 6 sec. (Don’t you value your time?)
18. You don’t have a Facebook account but you have a MySpace account.
19. You use CC as opposed to BCC with a large group of individuals who don’t know each other.
20. You’re not familiar with any of these abbreviations. (List contains hundreds I’ve never heard but w/e)

• IMHO - In my humble opinion
• OTOH - On the other hand
• IDK - I don’t know
• NP - No problem
• Ty - Thank You
• Lulz - Plural of LOL. You do know that, i suspect.
• BTW - By the Way

Well I’m done my rant. It’s all in good faith- I’m just annoyed at varying levels of involvement with the internet

This is a design for Kevin Dewalt’s, latest venture Many Wheels. I took a different approach using considerable retro flair, as GR is my testing ground. I really like the car logo– I enabled comments, and look forward to your critique!

{More…}

I like GR as their local (Bethesda, MD) and generally have pretty cool RFB’s (Request for Brilliance). I hadn’t particpated yet becuase most of the video spots require you to make something from NOTHING. No Audio Mix, No script, No producer… While they encourage teamwork- I don’t intend to call in favors on these projects.

Graphic Design RFB’s make more sense because the time, although significant, is less and one person can typically generate a pretty solid campaign.

Most professional, professionals would balk at the idea of working without the promise of pay. For me, design sections offers a refreshing break for a freelance designer and a chance to practice new techniques with possibility of cashing in on one.

Overall, GR is great for undiscovered talent but pulls business away from serious designers. The award prices are generally less then having a design firm create similar works- with ‘comparable’ quality.

I say that because I strongly believe that you get what you pay for…

There are many reasons why a good designer costs. As your brand grows you’ll learn this.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

This mini-reel includes several projects I’ve worked on for BLI, some for use with flash others as standalone animations. Additionally, I kept several shots that never made it to the finished pieces, because I liked ‘em.

All the concepts, clients and graphic design belong to BLI, I just do the Motion.

Special thanks to Silverado and all the sponsors. I plan to use this opportunity to shoot a new reel to take to NYC or LA in a couple years. I also plan to repay favors, for everyone who has supported me in my very short career..

The top 6 we’re very good.

J. Zeller’s was my favorite http://www.vimeo.com/1847756

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

I tried embedding the vimeo version here but it broke the php ‘loop’

“Please be patient, I’m with an Alzheimer’s patient.”

It’s a simple yet powerful phrase. Mainly for use with doctors and other professionals it quickly and discreetly discloses the information. As a professional, you expect precise answers to your questions- and when you don’t recieve that it is frustrating. These cards eliminate any misunderstanding–

 When she ran out of these cards, she tasked my Mom with finding more. After a quick Google Search we decided that these weren’t easy to come by- and I could do a better design job.

I put together a quick sketch and some guidelines and had Christine work up some designs- the above design was uniamously liked by all involved and we had them printed. If you’d like some for one of your loved ones (I have like 200 extras…) shoot me an email.

With the conventions closing up, it feels like a good time to compare the campaigns from a advertising and design standpoint. The idea has been on my mind, along with many other designers, after seeing the Obama website. Coincidentally,  this month’s edition of Print Magazine ran an article praising the design and usability of the site.

   CD: Each candidate has an image to uphold,  but do each of their campaign websites reflect them and their efforts well? Putting all politics aside, and solely based on design, I’d have to say that that Barack Obama would win my vote. Although patriotism is an essential theme to each website, Obama’s website is more vivid, colorful, and eye catching, without going overboard and looking cheesy or too flamboyant.

MG: The Obama site sports a good mix of gradients, icons and photography. McCain’s site is still good but lacks a certain element of coherence. When it comes to layout all the modules are strongly defined with borders. The gradient flow of Obama’s really serves as a focal point directing you eye where to go.

  CD: Both candidates have the same website layout for the most part,.McCain’s website definitely is well designed as well, but the color choices are a tad dull whereas Obama’s choice of colors are more refreshing.

MG: I think that odd teal color is a direct result of the “Make Mccain Exciting Challange” from the Colbert Report.

  CD: McCain’s website is clear and simple to read or find information easily. Obama’s downfall here is mostly because of his lack of simplicity to an extent.

MG: Speaking of simplicity, “BarackTV” always KILLS my flash player and forces me to abort the script or quit firefox. I’m surprised that hasn’t been fixed yet. I’d say both sites are about equally navigatable. I thought the choice of typfaces was very telling. The use of Gotham on Obama’s site was refreshing, I don’t think the font has been in existence for more than 10 years. I read that Optima (McCain’s logo font) was used on the Vietnam Memorial coincidence? One final note about fonts, why would you ever choose Trebuchet MS in anything related to an election?!?! It’s ALMOST as bad a Papyrus…

  CD: Both websites are clearly democratic versus republican IF your aware of each candidate and their stance on each issue.

  MG: True, I’d say that both are good for their target. Although, the Obama site is a design masterpiece. We’ll see next election if it raised the bar for everyone.

Check out the websites and decide for yourself!

Recently I created some graduated filters for easy use in FCP and figured I’d toss them online. That way you don’t have to create your own, might save you 10-15 minutes. I wanted to by a set for my Z1U but frankly the cost, IMHO, is not worth it.

Download Zip.

Well– despite the fact that I could really use a week with a RED, I didn’t have the winning cut on OpenCut 1. The winner, Carsten Karpanek, had a very good cut- which deserved to win. Susannah was actually the first narrative I’ve ever cut. It was a success for me in the sense that a 19yr old with no formal film education was able to hold his own.

OpenCut 2’s Registration is open now featuring 120fps material from Alpine Meadows and some time-lapses. I caught a glimpse of the material in the new Silverado reel posted on Tyler Berry’s blog. As a snowboarder, I look forward to getting my hands on the footage. There’s definitely some things I’m going to change in my workflow this time around:

1. Do a once-over in RedAlert before touching the footage in FCP.
2. Hire (Read As: Barter or Beg) a friend to do a mix.
3. Troubleshoot why Color Crashes whenever I send a project to it. (All CC was done in FCP last time)

This time around the registration changed up a little bit. I was excited at the proposition of a student entry, but the system passes people like me over. To run my company, I take classes online, therefore I don’t have a physical body to receive footage from. The costs went up- a little high for my tastes– but I can classify it as a business expense. I can’t state the previous statement without mentioning that the stakes for prizes also rose.
On a cool note, OC1 was submitted to the Guinness Word Records under the category of ‘greatest number of cinematic film edits from a single set of source media’ with that number being 51. OC2 aims to set the record for “greatest number of commercial spots from a single set of source media.”

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

I’d also like to think that Silverado could cultivate new workers from this program. You have younger guys, far from the LA scene who are building experience and following the moves of Silverado employees. Myself for example, I’ve spent considerable time on some of their blogs thinking, “Gee– These guys have awesome jobs. Perhaps somday Silverado would want to take a look at my résumé.” Their silently building a little fan-base of motivated and “becoming-qualified” up and comers.

OpenCut 1.0 - Susannah is the story of two guys, Jacob & Ed who are vying for the love of Susannah. It was shot on a RED ONE in Southern California. The way the project works, you receive a drive with the .r3d files (Basically a .raw but for video) and the audio files. From there you can go many directions. I used the Red Log and Transfer Plug-in because I was eager to start editing. The plug-in converts everything to 2K ProRes. In retrospect I would have done a basic grade in RedAlert (4k- 4:4:4), that way I wasn’t demanding to much when it came time to fine tune my grade in FCP (2k- 4:2:2). I didn’t use Color because everytime I sent the project over it crashed… So much for round tripping.

In it is the solution I have been looking for to one of Motion’s most vexing problems. How to quickly change the depth of a layer whilst scaling it so it doesn’t appear to move!

The answer is with the canvas “in focus” Command Click the Z-Depth Button on the HUD and drag it forward or back. It won’t appear to make a difference but if you pull up the “perspective” view you’ll notice that it is working.

Hooray! - This will literally save me an hour a project. Why I never thought to try command-clicking is strange, generally I’m on top of this type of trick…

In another useless “quality media coverage” several stations babbled about this New Yorker Mag Cover:

Summed up, the cartoon gathers and magnifies all the ludacris rumors floating on the internet into one image. Yet we’re expected to dilute our media to the plebeian level- The fear being readership may not understand that it is a satire (as it features victim’s not accusers). - Let me phrase that in blunt terminology.

The average American, as deemed by other Americans, is not intelligent classify something so outrageous as satire, despite the fact that it originates on the cover of a very creditable source. [lcd - brain overload]

My guess is that these same people would pick up a copy of The Onion and TXT all the current events their friends.

Truly Sad, I blame our reporters. Real news hasn’t been broadcast since I was a baby, as the Cold War fizzled away.

Today marks the first day in which my old blog is finally dead. When I began using wordpress I had no idea you could host it on your site, I viewed it much like a facebook profile, or myspace page. Now several months after moving everything to my own domain I’ve deleted the old site.Generally SOP would include domain forwarding, or a redirect– but I didn’t have access to any of those features from the other site (as it was hosted by Wordpress). I didn’t want it to plain disappear either as I was geting over 3,000 hits a month. The solution ended up being a BIG link saying “Article Moved” and over 85% of people click the link and found my own site.

While this site still doesn’t command the same respect from Google as the other did, It’s position on Alexa is up 4,000,000 in 3 months. No complaints!

Yet a little while back they released a plug-in for FCP which allows you to export your project out and send it for approval, or to another editor. This is a very cool initiative on their part, but since it is in Beta it comes with several drawbacks. The Plugin resides in you export options, but really isn’t “exporting” by definition. What it attempts to do it round up all your media and the project file and send them along. I hope your beginning to catch on.

1. The 2GB limitation isn’t a lot of video time.
2. If you have media in folders, it doesn’t see it.
3. I’m having trouble using the plug-in with any project containing RED footage

In the next round I’d like to see the plug-in access QT Conversion and export a compressed version to send. Additionally, if their developers are feeling up to it, run it as a background process. That would be ideal. Overall a very cool concept which I applaud YSI for.

–The templates focus on animated drop zones, without forcing you into a color scheme or background. This is critical because most templates are not time efficient to modify for an out of context use.

–The price tag is extremely reasonable and the sets come in large bundle’s.

–As often as practical they utilize behaviors to animate as opposed to keyframes, making it easy to understand and modify

I recently purchased Drop Zones Vol1 for use on some motion graphics projects (& perhaps a fall reel..) and have been extremely pleased with the results. There are a few extremely useful and unique templates (roladex and wallet photos) which really blow people away.

That said, no first generation product is complete without some requests.

• Full 1920×1080 Templates (easier to scale down than up..)
• Templates that involve serious use of the replicator (How cool would that be..)
• A static “cloud template” with 10 drop zones at various Z-depths for last minute 2.5D moves

The templates are HD720 (SD & DV too…) So before I replaced the drop zones I changed everything to 1080 and resized for my project (1080i60). I didn’t see any pixelation so I *believe* you can scale up in a non-destructive manor if you apply images after the scale.

Overall, a great product, highly recommended.

Also, the county has closed shop for the past 3 days due to contaminated from a water main break nearly 20 miles away. Enjoy the clip expressing my frustration.

Meeting Details on the DCFCPUG site, where you should RSVP. Oh, it’s free too.

Date: Monday, June 2nd
Time: 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Place: GW University Campus (Downtown DC)
Jack Morton Auditorium
805 21st St, NW
Washington, D.C. 20052

(Metro Accessible off Foggy Bottom)
It’s official DC has a revitalized Final Cut Pro User Group (DCFCPUG)!

That’s right LA we taking this to the web. *chuckles*

“I am used to the “export to disk” function is Adobe….. I will use DVD Studio Pro to build the senior video, but how should I export and import into DVD Studio? … the full length [video name] that [jerk “boss”] wants on Monday. It is nearly 2 hours and when I export to Quicktime, it is 21GB!!! (how the hell do I always end up with the biggest files? lol) I really just need something that will autoplay in his DVD player, no fancy menus and sh*t.”

I’m glad he made the switch to Mac, now I won’t have to answer so many gosh darn PC Video problems. but for the time being its “pwnage” season on his mac rookie-ness.

Easiest Question- Why is my QT 21GB?! (Get Bitrate Pro) 1 Hour of DV video is roughly 10-12GB so two hours would be ~20Gb.

Now here’s the useful information:

There’s two methods to make a DVD. One is to encode the files and author it or the other is to use a DVD recorder to burn a screener. For Matt I hope he has the available option of #2, because encoding a 2 hour video is not really fun. (Note he’s on EXTREMELY tight deadline on his first FCP project.)

1. In FCP go File>Export> Using Compressor

   

2. Then in the settings window (lower left) Select the DVD option which makes the most sense. There’s two flavors of each bitrate. Fastest encode vs. Best Quality… All it is 1 pass VBR vs. 2 pass VBR. Use one pass for anything that’s urgent of a screener. Use 2 pass if quality is worth you losing a lot of time. (You can use inspector to modify any settings, like aspect ratio, bitrate, cropping, and all sorts of things but this is a beginner’s guide)
3. Then set your destination and Compress Away!
   

As far as Authoring is concerned here’s a good YouTube tutorial, although ignore the beginning steps I would not advise bringing your QT directly into Studio Pro its nice to have the M2v and AC3 first.

Option 2, and the more time effective method is buy a DVD recorder hook it up to some out (breakout-box, kona card or even firewire converter) and play it out of the computer whilst recording it to DVD in real time.