Your City, Your Vision, Your Ad

During a press conference last Monday, Austin Mayor Pro Tem, Brewster McCracken announced a nifty little ad competition. While not officially a campaign ad, the winning 25 second ad will be aired on Comedy Central with funding coming directly from McCracken campaign funds.

Because of campaign finance laws, the winning ad will be accompanied by the all to familiar disclaimer that reads something like this:

"Pol adv paid for by Brewster McCracken for Mayor, Martha Smiley treasurer, 3616 Far West Blvd Ste 117-231, Austin TX, 78731."

Left: Brewster McCracken
Right: Lee Leffingwell

Although the folks at McCracken's camp are quick to point out that this is not a campaign ad, all the hub bub will surely result in increased and ongoing focus on McCracken and will no doubt involve plenty of website hits.

Hub bub you say? Surely a contest judged by four of Austin's most acclaimed digital media professionals will create a stir, right? Well the blog boards are a buzz with postings on the matter. The Statesman, The Daily Texan, and The Burnt Orange Report have all weighed in and it looks like there will be quite a strong interest in this little PR move.


Below are the technical specifications and timeline from McCracken's website.

Timeline (subject to change)
February 23 – Entries Open
February 23 - March 20 – Select entries will be featured on the campaign website
March 20 – Entries Close
March 25 – Finalists Selected and Notified
April 3 – Winner Announced
April 6-10 – Winner Aired on Comedy Central (TimeWarner) in the Austin region

* Must be NTSC format
* Must be 25 seconds in length
* Quicktime file (finalists must provide an uncompressed version…see below)
* 720 x 486 aspect ratio
* Lower field first (interlaced)
* Data read no larger than 8 bit
* Embedded Stereo Audio
* Audio must be at least 48KHz
* All graphics must be within safety title zone

MAKE WATCH LOVE FILM

With an old airport hanger and an HD camera, a stellar film could be produced at Austin Studios (and on an Austin budget).

Add air conditioning and soundproofing provided by Austin voters (and a million dollars) ...and you'd better find a little money for film stock 'cause now we're talking about a world class studio space.

Tonight at 6pm, the grand re-opening will commence with ribbon cutting and all. Speakers to follow: Linklater, Brewster McCracken, and Rebecca Campbell of Austin Film Society.

I'll be there along with tons of other filmmakers and several cool sponsors. From what I've heard there will be food, drink, tunes, and even a little job fair (presumably the sponsors) which you can find at the AFS page:

http://www.austinfilm.org/make_watch_love_film_party

For a more detailed article, I recommend the Austin Chronicle piece written by JOE O'CONNELL featured here:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A732840

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

At CES this year, one of the products I was extremely interested in was Canon's new 21MP digital SLR camera. I love still cameras as much as the next guy, and there's certainly a real craft to telling a story in a single frame. That being said, even a photo purist has to love the dynamic possibilities of 30 photos a second.


Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, performs like an HD video enabled racehorse?
An awesome 1/4 resolution video shot by Vincent Laforet can be viewed here:

Sample EOS 5D Mark II Video: Reverie

...more on this little (big) camera coming soon...

C E S - Sneak Peek

Just found a quick sneek peek from CES. enjoy



I'll be catching up with these folks in Vegas. Let me know if there is anything Austin wants covered! I'll track it down.

Check me out for regular updates, plus a tutorial on LIVE HD content on the Web!

New Year - New Resolve

I'm going to the Consumer Electronics Show!
I'll be updating daily with tons of tasty pictures and as much video as I can shoot.

For a bit more about what I might see:
http://www.cesweb.org/default.asp

"Bi-definition" Premiere Party

Host: Blu Cafe
Location: Blu Cafe

360 Nueces St, Austin, TX 78701 US

When: Thursday, December 18, 7:00PM
Phone: 512-904-5666

Join All American Productions this Thursday the 18th for a pre-holiday Happy Hour and then the premiere screening of Bi-Definition at Blu, a brand new European Lavazza Cafe (They have the best Martinis in town).

Happy Hour Commences from 5-7pm | Movie Premieres around 7:30pm

Director: Kai Salim | Producer: Norman Lieder | Executive Producer: Marco Martinez Trevino | Starring: Spencer Greenwood | Christina Spurgeon-Yetter | Rodolfo Cortinas | Yesenia Garcia | Madi Goff | Casey Threatt | Nikki Boudreaux | Niki Dawson | Written by Dustin Wills & Doug Long

Project Direct Entry

This year the winner of Youtube's Project Direct will find themselves at Sundance, mingling the best and brightest of the independent film universe.




Here's our entry this year: Happiness
Dir: Jeremy Cohen




Shooting was done in a day. We had a blast, and I love Troy!

I'll have more to say later, but for now I'll leave you with Project Direct's website so you can find out more for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/projectdirect

Check back for the Tutorial on Frameforge and regular updates on projects in progress. Plus, we've done another piece for Trojan and I'll be talking about mimes, clowns and condoms- so check it out.

Trojan Man Music Video

Music by Shanka and D-Russ
Directed by Jeremy Cohen and Gopal Bidari

Safe Sex | STI | Contraception | STD

Shot in a single day, this shoot had talented people all around. Thanks to Trojan Evolve, Jeremy Cohen, Gopal Bidari, Niki Dawson, Billy MacCartney, Iskra Valtcheva, and the rest of our amazing cast and crew.

Working with the Brevis depth-of-field adapter

With DOF adapters all the rage these days, we decided to put the Brevis to work on our last shoot.



My main concern during pre-production was how much we would (or would not) be slowed down by using a lens adapter, after all- until this project I had never even touched one. This meant more planning, but in the end, a better image. For us, using the DOF adapter was a return to a more refined shot list that gave us just what we planned to use in the edit. The Directors on this shoot were very good with the shot choices and lenses they wanted, and I'm really thankful that they knew what they were doing- if not, it would have taken forever.

This project was produced strictly for the web, and I was really happy to find out that the premise by which this adapter works (vibrating ground glass) is an ideal pairing to compressed video. The unfortunate noise that often appears within compressed video is reduced somewhat by the use of DOF adapters- awesome!

Now the drawbacks.

On our shoot we experienced a couple things that you might want to be aware of if you plan to use the Brevis. First off, we were using Nikon lenses and an HVX; our AC, Billy MacCartney, quickly noticed that we could not rely on the distance measures of the lenses when attempting to get focus. We were lucky enough to have a large HD video monitor to assist us in this task. I recommend the same to anyone using this adapter or HD video at all for that matter.

The other snag we ran into was with the on/off switch for the brevis. There is a LED next to the toggle switch to indicate if the Brevis is on. During our second set-up we noticed that the light was on but the adapter wasn't vibrating.



Not good. We switched it on and off and on and off but got nothing. Very scary. Apparently there is a rather simple flaw with these switches, because Brevis is offering a free "servicing" (presumably to tweak a few things and fix this glitch).

We ultimately got it going by being steadfast in our fiddling. (We tapped on it while turning it on)- once it was running properly, we dared not turn it off again until absolutely necessary. I don't need to tell you that this is not a good approach to troubleshooting any electronics. That being said, it worked for us when nothing else did.

To summarize: it works for gaining more control over depth of field. It requires fuller, more traditional preparation, and when using with Nikon lenses, the distance measure alone is not sufficient for proper focus. Most importantly for those thinking of using this particular adapter- it gave us quite a scare by not always turning on like a good toy should.

Trojan Condoms music video shoot

This shoot was relatively smooth. We actually finished 6 minutes early!

Video directed by: Jeremy Cohen and Gopal Bidari.
Song by: Shanka and D-Russ. Check out the pics!