Visualnary

This weekend I got to see a fun film about the film business, The Last Shot (and don’t let the first 5 minutes of the film misguide you). Joe Devine pretends to be a movie director, and gets Steven Schats to believe that his film will be produced. At one point this dialogue entails between them:

Joe Devine: Have you actually seen a person die, watched them bleed to death, seen them take their last breath? I’ve seen that… many times.
Steven Schats: Why have you seen that?
Joe Devine: I used to produce music videos.

Which is especially funny if you have worked on music videos. Or pop promos as they are often referred to in the industry.

The types on a pop promo set

Pop promos are a totally different type of films from all the others; most notably there often isn’t a story, no one seems to worry about continuity, and generally there are 4 to 6 types of people on set: Read More…

Tags: behind_the_scenes, camera, camera-work, crew_member, Film, film_business, information, kodak, music, music_videos, pop_promo, production, shooting, studio, thoughts

Gems from the Web:

• SPHERICALROBOTS 2004 – Using plain water to display images. Wow. I would love to find out how much that costs.
• This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord. Beat That, Punk – Changing your driving habits can make your car much more fuel efficient. This guy managed to get it down to 4l per 100km.
• How-To: Make a solid-state A/V switcher – Do you have more boxes than your TV can handle? Grab a soldiering iron, and off you go!
• Free Vector Downloads – Nice collection of free graphic, ahem, inspiration
• My Ipod – A frank iPod modification
• Upgrading iPod Hard Drives – If your music library is bigger than your iPod, you can upgrade rather than buying a new one. Cool
• Tricks For Saving a Dead iPod – Before buying a new one, you might as well try
• The Complete Project Precita – A properly geeky home. Many buttons to push, signs, fun.
• MATTER Pierre Sculptor – Amazing sculptures
• “Pocket” Gramophones from the ’20s – Music was already portable way before the iPod. Hey, way before the Walkman. 1920.
• Avid investors prepped for Apple surprises at NAB – …”the ‘talk on the Street’ is that Apple is planning an event for April 15th at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas”

Tags: 1920s, Apple, art, clipart, creative, cut, design, diy, driving, electronics, environment, final, fix, gallery, geek, graphics, hardware, home, howto, hybrid, hypermiler, inspiration, installation, ipod, links, mod, music, photos, pro, riaa, sculpture, studio, technology, tips, tutorial, water