David Wolpert and me collaborated for an entry to a contest for the next fluter magazine [1].
fluter is a magazine published by the The Federal Agency for Civic Education in Germany. The topic of the next issue and therefore video clip was USA. We created a fake old propaganda education movie titled »On the track to world power«. Beware of sarcastic humor and exaggeration.

Concept and Idea: David and Blazej
Illustrations: David
Animation and Compositing: Blazej
Software used: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Maya, eyeon Fusion, Avid Xpress Pro

[1] fluter (fluter.de)

..................................................

bfMOV2DPX is released as beta at my output section [1].

This python script automates the process of converting multiple quicktime files in a folder (captured with the Multibridge) to DPX files using the Blackmagickdesign [2] tool called framelink. So far it only works with OSX.

It has a nice little gui and several useful features like progress dialog, email on completion and saving of default values.

Screenshot 01

Screenshot 02

Screenshot 03

It is licensed as open source under LGPL [3].
See the included readme.txt for more instructions.

[1] output(bfloch.com)
[2] Blackmagicdesign (blackmagic-design.com)
[3] LGP license (gnu.org)

..................................................

Randy Pausch rests in peace. The inventor alice [1] died on 25th July. But he left something for his family and for the world.
Now that every media reported about it you should also watch his very inspiring last lecture.
I highly recommend the lecture on time management:

[1] alice educational software (alice.org)

..................................................

I really like this short film by Ryan Jeffry.

Fallen as Quicktime (roamation.com)
Ryan Jeffry’s site (wrongturn.org)

..................................................

Jazz Animation by Michael Levy, Music by John Coltrane [1].

[1] Giant Steps (michalevy.com)

..................................................

The shooting is over. I had real fun shooting in Paris. The people in public were kind and open minded. I have to confess, that I was under pressure because of the time constraints. The weather on the weekend was said to be bad. So we had to finish the shooting with both actors on Friday. But due to their experience everything turned out well. The pictures are stunning. This is a big effort of the great acting. I hope that I can do justice to this with the completed short film. Marko will start the music composing as soon as the rough edit is decided.

THANK YOU
I would love to thank everyone who helped to make this shooting happen.
Here in Paris thanks to
Arianna Véronesi and
Sébastien Bourlard
for contributing their talent and valuable time.

Of course huge thanks to my partner Marko Ostojic. Thanks for the producing effort, trust, exchange, fun, problem sharing and sources of inspiration.

Thanks to the staff and support
Maja and Srdjan,
Bojana and Ivan.
At Aachen big thanks to
Pawel, my father, Kuba and
Lutz Tegeler
who helped me constructing the camera rig and supported me with equipment.

Of course big thanks to my professors
Michael Brucherseifer
for his guidance and supervision and the trust in this project.
Thanks professor Matthias Knézy-Bohm for his invaluable hints and teachings.

Thanks to the owners of the bar Le Muller and the city of Paris for being our scene.

Thanks to coffee and cigarettes.

I hope I didn’t forget anybody. Please tell me if I did.
I am sorry that this thanks come before the project is finished but I feel that the people really deserve this.

Here some photos done by Maja:

“Cut. It’s a wrap!”

..................................................

We have decided on the actors. Arianna and Sébastien will take the lead roles. We established the details with Arianna yesterday and I’m glad that she looks forward to participate in the project. I am confident that she matches the role and it really pleases me that she shows the same enthusiasm as we do. The shooting will start on Thursday.

This evening we will meet Séb. From what I saw on pictures he will be the right choice for our character. I am sure he will feel the role because of his great experience in acting.

We really love Arianna and Séb to evolve the characters they play. Marko and I have a certain understanding of what we are looking for but we don’t want to limit the actors performance. It is them who will make the character feel, think and behave. We want the actors strongly to be in the process of developing the story from the characters point of view. This whole short film will be a team effort. And we want every person to participate in their way. I am glad Arianna seems to be happy with that. Although it possibly means more work for the actors the artistic freedom will greatly influence the result in my opinion.

Marko will compose the music. I am so excited about this. Not only will the whole short film be original work but also, with Markos deep understanding of the story, we can really work out a symbiosis between the picture and music. This is an often underestimated aspect of motion picture.

We’ve done some test shooting yesterday and the rig seems to be stable. The Parisian sun smiled at us. The picture we made look promising. It’s time to fill the picture with life.

..................................................

[1] Creators page (blublu.org)

..................................................

Preparation is progressing.

The production dates are decided, 21st till 25th May. Marko and I work on the story. We exchanged ideas and are getting closer to the picture. Since I don’t want to become the slave of my own planning I will try to sketch the story details to a level which allows the documentary-like progression on set. I want to evolve with the acting.

On technical side I did some tests with the promising SGPro/HV20 [1][2] rig. I will use a X4-Tech Zelo T8 [3] for monitoring. The quality is quite good for such a device. 8″ panel, resolution of 800x480. The support is responsive. There is lots of use full stuff included. And there is an extern LiIon battery module available which worked here for 4 hours on the device. The shoulder rig will be hand made. I got most of the parts here or on their way.

[1] SGPro (shoot35.com)
[2] Canon HV20 (canon.de)
[3] Zelo T8 (x4-tech.de)

..................................................

After the BBB premiere and the little conversation with Jon Phillips about Creative Commons I decided to change the topic of my presentation at the design marketing seminar [1] to Creative Commons.
The main intention of this presentation was to show why a licensing model like CC is relevant for marketing and even commercial business. Of course the idea of common property was an important part too.

What is Creative Commons?
It is a flexible licensing model which extends or to say more accurate restricts the copyright under certain custom conditions. This way the author can control the spreading and use of his works. The main idea is to be able to give the commonality access to your works while still preserving certain rights. Creative Commons (some rights reserved) is therefore to be seen a license between copyright (all rights reserved) and public domain (no rights reserved).

Why is Creative Commons?
Because it is necessary to have a flexible license model in the digital world. Accept the fact that every unauthorized copy and usage of a photo on the web is a violation in copyright of the author. But authors had no easy way to allow usage without giving away all rights. Now they have!

How is Creative Commons?
You have different factors like attribution, commercial usage, editing of your work and how the edited version has to be licensed. You define what rights the commonalty receives. This give certain combination like e.g. you can use and change the work as long as you name the original author, don’t use it commercially and publish the edit under same restrictions (BY-NC-SA). It is really easy to setup a license. Just browse to the Creative Commons site [2] and click on “License your work". One click later you get the license and instructions how to include it.

Why should I use Creative Commons?
Because CC is a motivation to use, share and therefore spread your work.
Because you can decide about the license and faith of your work.
Because you can allow editing and progress of your work.
Because you extend a big pool of material which you of course can have access to as well.
Because you still can make separate commercial contracts in combination with noncommercial license tag (see CC+ [3]).
Because you assist the commonality and you can wear cool Creative Commons T-shirts while doing so.

Big Bucks, no Bunny?
Not necessary. You don’t have to give away for nothing. So from the marketing point of view you can use Creative Commons as a marketing instrument. You can e.g. license a trailer or certain qualities of your video with Creative Commons so they will be spread while still demanding money for the high quality / complete version. Or you give away your work and make money from service and support (Red Hat anyone?). Or you just give it away for noncommercial usage and still make big buck from contracts with commercial institutions like TV Stations etc. Or give it away and hope for donations. Don’t underestimate the past called open source scene. There are lots of possibilities. I repeat. NOW THERE ARE POSSIBILITIES. Your creative mind makes the rules. Think about it and don’t forget to inform yourself at [2].

You can have a look at my presentation, too. It is, as a matter of course, licensed under creative commons. You can grab it at my new output section. It is written in German though.

..................................................

So there we go. Two experimental expired films, too little light for a tele, two hours of stunning drug-like music, a great time with Silva and countless beers later you can see some photos.

It’s clear as daylight that I don’t have to write much about the performance, there is only one way to experience it. Check the tourdates [1]!

[1] Portishead news (portishead.co.uk)

..................................................

NAB [1] is running. From time to time I get to see some fascinating news on the web.
RED blows them all [2]! They announced three new systems after the revolutionary (at least marketing-wise, if not technological) RED ONE 4k digital camera.

RED EPIC will be a 5k camera for about 40k USD. Already got a RED ONE? Swap it for a EPIC and pay only the difference.

RED RAY will be a player that plays up to 4k from RED DISC, RED EXPRESS and Compact Flash memory for under 1k usd!

And now for all the independent filmmakers.

PLEASE SIT DOWN FIRST!

RED SCARLET will be a 3K digital camera with scalable frame rates. For under 3k bucks! If it will do what they say then Sony, Canon etc. will have a hard time to keep the so-called “semiprofessional” market.

Release date given is early 2009.
Check the video report here [3].

[1] NAB 2008 in Las Vegas (nabshow.com)
[2] RED Digital Cinema (red.com)
[3] Report on RED at NAB (studiodaily.com)

..................................................