All posts by Tim

Search Terms Update

site news

Just thought I’d give you guys an update on our most popular searches. I always get a kick out of these. For the month of August, the most popular search term was “monkey bread” with 88 hits. The second most popular was “bot fly” with 9 hits. There must be some kind of internet fad going on with monkey bread right now; why else would it be generating 10 times the hits of other search terms.

Regardless, the full top 10 in order are:

  • monkey bread
  • bot fly
  • heathcliff
  • mandingo
  • zucchini bread
  • rice bugs
  • big bag big bag lyrics
  • homemade ant farm
  • really free mp3s
  • presto pizzazz

Two quick comments on this. First, of the top 10 search terms, 4 concern food (“monkey bread”, “zucchini bread”, “rice bugs”, and “presto pizzazz”1).

Second, only 2 of the top 10 represent “projects” of ours: “homemade ant farm” and “big bag big bag lyrics.” This of course assumes that the big bag search is referring to our song.

The combination of these two facts leads me to believe that we should retire from our creative efforts and make protozoic.com an online food magazine.

1 The Presto Pizzazz pizza oven is actually a popular search term and it shows up in various forms. It’s ranking would probably be higher if one counted all the variations.

It Doesn’t Matter Which Camera You Buy

writings

Intro

Mike and I were discussing tonight that we need more content up on the site about our experiences in film/video making. So, here is my first installment. I’ll use this as a chance to talk about something we all know but sometimes lose sight of as well as introducing myself. There will be some foul language in the course of these discussions; blame my father.

One more note: All of this assumes that you, the reader, are much like us. We are not professionals, we are making independent film in any manner that we can because it is a passion for us. If you have a seriously professional schedule, often times choice of equipment and workflow is dictated by someone other than yourself and you clearly don’t need this kind of advice.

Continue reading It Doesn’t Matter Which Camera You Buy →

Shake and other things

the mindlab

Recently, Apple cut the price of Shake drastically. Like from $3000 to $500. The educational version is now only $250. I had a $100 certificate for the Apple Store that I had to spend by the end of the summer. So that means I ended up with Shake for only $150 (5% of the original price).

That might sound like a lot of money, but as Mike and I have found out, you can’t take a piss for $150 when it comes to making film/video. So this seemed like a good deal. We actually used it twice last night while finishing up the Green Machine. There was a problem shot were the best take of a particular line was marred by a jiggle in the camera. We used Shake to stabilize the shot (took all of 30 seconds) and while it isn’t absolutely perfect, I think it did a pretty good job. Nice.

In other news…

Tears for Phil Collins

songs

I finally purchased a decent set of monitors and the Logic Pro 7.2 upgrade. While playing around with the new software, I figured it was time to start putting up some of the other songs that Mike and I have recorded in the past 2 years. I think this was one of the first serious ones we did here in NJ. It’s called “Tears for Phil Collins.” I’m sure Mike will explain some more about it.

Post Production: Day 4

the mindlab

Well, all the footage has been imported. It looks good. It’s all been labeled and sorted, and the sound has been synced. We burned 2 dvds of the footage to review. We watched those tonight. Now it is time to start editing.

Here’s a frame capture. Looking good!

Scene 6

I am exhausted

the mindlab

I should probably let Mike write this, but I won’t. He can do another post or reply in the comments.

We finished taping The Green Machine this weekend. Very tiring, but we finished 21 mins ahead of schedule. I’ll try to get a few pictures up in the next few days.

Pete, I think you will like what we did with the Green Machine itself.

Getting Ready…

the mindlab

We begin filming “The Green Machine” on Friday. Should be… interesting.

I just ran a test tonight for syncing sound recorded on the external recorder with the video from the camera. It works pretty easy. The clapboard (slate) is essential.

I also grabbed a frame from last night when Mike and I threw up some quick lighting. I think we made the right choice with this camera. Click on the image to see it in full 720p glory.

I just realized that nobody has mentioned the camera. A quick note is in order. We were originally going to go with the Panasonic DVX100, the original 24p DV camera. However, for a bit more cash, we ended up with the JVC HD100. The JVC is an HDV camera which is high definition. It records in 720p30 and 720p24, as well as DV modes of 24p, 24pA, and 60i.

For all you non techies out there, 24p is is 24 frames per second, which is the rate that film is shot at. 60i is normal TV video; it’s what makes the news look different from movies (or at least one of the big things). DV resolution is 720×480, whereas 720p is 1280×720. The JVC records in 16:9 widescreen in the HD modes and is capable of 4:3 or 16:9 in regular DV mode.

It’s a shoulder mount camera and it has a detachable broadcast style lens. When Mike ordered it, he also got a free $800 professional battery system. It’s a pretty amazing device. Hopefully we can live up to a fraction of it’s potential.

Harness the Wind

songs

When Mike and I first moved into the house we currently live, we were recording a lot of music. Most of the tracks we haven’t put up on the site yet. A lot of them were for an aborted project called “Night Caller.” It originally started out as one song, then it grew a sequel, and in true “Mike” fashion it spiraled out of control into a 12 song concept album. Needless to say, that fell apart.

That however is not the story of this post. This post is about the song that ruined music recording for me. I haven’t recorded a song since this albatross of a song landed 9 months ago.

Continue reading →

DNG Workflow

the mindlab,

Here’s some workflow helper scripts for digital photography. A couple of assumptions are made with these scripts:

  • You use OS X 10.4 – mandatory since this stuff uses Automator.
  • You use Adobe DNG (version 3.2) – not mandatory, but you have to take out the dng conversion steps.
  • You want your photos stored in a date hierarchy, specifically /yy/mmddyy/yyyymmdd-xxxx.dng. The xxxx is the original number from the raw file. As an example, a photo taken on Aug. 11th, 2005 would be stored in /05/081105/20050811-2927.dng.
  • I use a Canon Digital Rebel, so the naming conventions are CRW_xxxx.CRW, CRW_xxxx.THM, and IMG_xxxx.JPG

Continue reading DNG Workflow →