Writing: An Introduction
Ted Golder wants to help people to write better.
My desire to write this 5 part blog on WRITING comes from an awareness that despite our highly technical and visually oriented culture things still seem to pivot on the written word. Even for something non-literary like a TV show someone has to write the script or cue cards; someone has to write the advertisement and promos, the legal contracts, the emails, the memos etc.
When needing to communicate with a prospective partner, a high tech software company is reduced to making sure there are no sentence fragments, or dangling participles in their mission statement. In the legal world I recently read a quote stating that, “more litigation results from bad drafting than you can imagine.”
Another reason for this blog is the need to address a shocking barrage of mediocre and incompetent writing in supposedly professional forums. With regularity I have seen run-on sentences and fragments in the London Times and I have seen just about everything on the internet. The prose on the blogosphere, as one feisty blogger puts it, tends to be “slapdash, fragmented and drearily prolix.”
Capoeira: Fly Away Beetle
Please visit the movie website at www.flyawaybeetle.com for additional information on this exciting new project!
Reviews of DSLR rigs
They’ve done a great job over at the Cinema 5d forums on a shootout on should and tripod rigs for the DSLR filmmaker. These cameras are incredible, but ergonomic they are not! This review will help you find your way in this new world.
Seems that Redrock’s rig didn’t do too well on their review, in fact… before Redrock had them pull it, they had the brief opportunity to let us all know how poorly designed their rig was. I remember that it would sit on their follow focus, and the weight distribution was so far off it wouldn’t sit on your shoulder.
Statement by Brian Valente from Redrock Micro:
“For concerns too numerous to list here, Redrock has requested that our participation in the cinema5D rig review be removed. Redrock will provide an additional detailed statement at a later point. While we cannot support the methods and resulting conclusions of this isolated review, we continue to be supportive of the cinema5D community.”
It must have been a really bad review! I am really surprised that RedRock would take such a hard stance in a public forum where word travels fast. I have used quite a bit of RedRock stuff on our prior JVC HD100, such as their DOF adapter, follow focus, rail system & whips. I thought their workmanship good, albeit I did have to have them replace the FF gear before it was usable. I found the DOF adapter to be a major pain in the field, and shooting docs, it just wasn’t worth the effort. Now using DSLR’s, we have all the DOF we could ever want!
Personally, we’re using the “not ready for primetime” Zacuto knockoffs Magic Spider is creating, and having great luck with them! Sorry Zacuto, but how can you expect independent film makers to afford your stuff?
Gimme that data!
Now that we have a couple of Canon EOS 7d’s here at the bluedot studios, we’ve been researching what is the easiest and fastest way to transfer this data to the laptop so we can open the card back again for shooting.
We started with a Lexar FW800 CF Card reader like the one here. It’s quick! Fast enough that you can preview your footage and photos without downloading right away, which is quite nice. But, not enough bandwidth to run the video at full frame rate.
So I was plugging in my jack out to the stereo on my MacBook Pro, and realized… hey! This thing has a PCIe ExpressCard slot! The PCIe is what our RAID system here runs 11tb into, and it’s a blazing method of thru-put, allowing editing of HD footage. I wonder if I can find a CF card reader for it the laptop?
Well low and behold, there is a company doing this with the outrageous speeds of 2.5Gbps rather than USB 2.0 speeds of 0.46Gbps. Here it is, the CFEXpress Pro.
Three Keys to Good StoryTelling
Stories, stories, stories.
In the end it is all we have, in truth, it is what we crave.
The venue or genre is not important; whether we are writing a book, making a movie, talking to a friend or making a corporate video – we are telling stories.
After reading blogs and talking to people in the corporate video industry, I am under the impression that most are aware of the need to bring storytelling to their video in order to keep it from becoming boring.
Then why, I ask, are so many corporate videos boring?
The answer is that storytelling is a craft, and the reality is that there is good storytelling and bad storytelling.
The Quantum Activist
Please visit the official website at www.quantumactivist.com for additional information on this award winning documentary.
Power of One Dialogues – Washington DC 9.02.09
A selection of a few stills. These are available in size suitable for print.
