dcinput

It’s been a quiet a day on the blogging front today due to being in the throws of the final phases of a big project at work.

I’ve also been spending lots of time exploring the inner workings of Wordpress with the aim of re-designing the site to both look and work better for the sort of writting I tend to do.

Wordpress has a feature called asides which allows you to post small amounts of information that might not deserve a full title. I tend to do this lots throughout the day and keep longer posts requiring titles for when I have time. I just need to figure out how to display these two types of posts nicely together. Ideally I want to be able to group all asides and title posts I make on any given day under one date.

D-Cinema Bond

Last night I went to the Odeon in Leicester Square to go and see the new James Bond film Casino Royal. I chose that cinema because I new that they had a d-cinema screen there. Now I’ve seen what the d-cinema screen at work looks like but never actually been to a big theatre with one. I knew that the trailers and adverts most probably weren’t going to be digital but as soon as the feature started it was obvious to me that film is dead. If you don’t believe me then watch the opening credits to Bond on a massive d-cinema screen. The colours are so incredibly vibrant and everything moving on the screen so incredibly crisp that you find yourself looking with your eyes wide open in amazement.

Google Video: “This short by Neill Blomkamp depicts a fictional world where extraterrestrials have become refugees in South Africa. Producers: Neill Blomkamp, Simon Hansen, Sharlto Copley, Shannon Worley”. Amazing what a few people can do these days. I’d love to know how long it took them, what tools they used, what workflows they were using, how they colaborated etc. Great short.

Another great short by Vancouver Film School graduate Ori Ben-Shabat. Lots of neeto vfx in this one.

More on the disintermediation of film making

Wired News: “You wouldn’t show a sitcom at a movie theater, right? […] You make movies for the big screen, sitcoms for TV, and something else entirely for the Internet. That’s the lesson of Lonelygirl15″.

A few days ago Penelope Trunk’s post Thinking about videoblogging? You should probably forget about it caused all sorts of discussion on the videoblogging mailing list. Anne from Loaded Pun explains why people on the videoblogging mailing list were annoyed and also ends with what I think the crucial question is: What are you hoping to get out of your vlog?

After reading my post on the disintermediation of film making, Penelope asked me via email whether I thought that the lonelygirl15 affair (check this article) on YouTube was what I was talking about and yes that is absolutely an example of disintermediation of film making. There is a guy, he has this idea for a web based show, he shoots it and puts it out there. Classic disintermediation. What was Mesh Flinders hoping to get out of his vlog? There’s no doubt about it, he was wanted to make money.

So to make money you have to have a product. What’s his product? He’s giving away the show for free to his audience, so it’s not that. He sells advertising space. That’s his product. It kind of feels like it’s the show, but actually it’s the advertising space. The more people watch his shows the more his product is worth. Seems simple doesn’t it: that’s how you make money in videoblogging.

The truth however is slightly different. In fact to see the truth you have to think a little differently. You see lonelygirl15, Rocketboom and ZeFrank are special cases. The thing they are selling, their product, happens to be the videoblog itself (well the advertising really). The vast majority of people in the world sell things we more easily associate with the word ‘product’ like software, food, televisions, holidays.

Blogging, podcasting and videoblogging are all personal media platforms. They are personal information processors that you can use in any endeavor you choose, from making a web based show to raising money for charity to making people aware of a particular issue, to building a business and more generally for selling products of any kind. Use them for communicating, for publicity, for feedback, for gererating new ideas. You’re in control.

You think Adam Curry just has a hit podcast called Daily Source Code? Wrong. The Daily Source Code is his media platform for building his business called Podshow. He also sells advertising so it’s a little confusing. Wait until people start using these mediums to sell products, build companies or to run political campains. That’s when things will really get exciting. That’s what I saw at Podcastcon UK last weekend: normal people who run normal businesses using the mediums in new and interesting ways.

Film making won’t disintermediate with people in the film/entertainment industry alone. There aren’t enough people and there isn’t enough money to be made. It will disintermediate when every person in every industry can use it to build their business. Sure you’ll need some talent, but you need talent to be a good at anything in life.

In the mailing group the title that linked to Penelope’s post was “Disturbing opinions”. I would disagree entirely. I think her piece was a fantastic conversation starter. It got everyone thinking. No doubt some people will think I’m talking a lot of crap, but then we’re all learning as we go along.

The Cinema Expo 2006 kicked off yesterday in Amsterdam.

One of the nice things that came out of my brunch on Sunday was some great reader feedback. I’ve known Pete for around 5 years now and he’s been a reader of the blog from back when I didn’t even talk about digital cinema. At the time he told me that he liked my style of writing, that he found it quite engaging. What he’s noticed of late is that since I’ve taken to the digital cinema route, that not only is he finding it less interesting for him but that he doesn’t even understand a lot of the stuff I link to.

Why did I take to writing about things in my field of work?

One important aspect of having a blog is how it helps you to find out things about yourself. The simple act of writing on a regular basis about things that cross your path and catch your attention changes the way you look at the world. It makes you more curious, more engaged, more interested. It helps to structure your thoughts.

The idea behind giving dcinput a digital cinema direction was to help me explore my current field of work and discover where my interests lie within it. The world of cinema is in such an exciting period of change right now, the boundaries of what is possible are being pushed on a daily basis. Understanding and being interested in this ever-changing environment is of the up most importance.

Using the internet as a tool for finding information and the blog as a way of structuring that information in a way that is meaningful to me is certainly one aspect of the ‘why’. If this was the only reason for having a blog then why bother making it public? Why take the risk of saying the wrong thing and end up with an unhappy employer?

These changes are without a doubt happening on a global scale. The blog then is also a tool to get around the problem of large distances. You see with this blog I can join into the global community of people involved in digital cinema. I can for example find out what technologies are being talked about, what social changes are occurring, and I can take part in the conversation.

In many ways I am still trying to find this digital cinema community on the web. It may be that there simply are not many people from the industry using blogs in this way. I am hoping that this will change. Taking part in Bloggercon IV over the weekend have made me sure of the importance of this new medium.

Even if I have not found the community I am looking for just yet, blogging it seems has another trick up its sleeve. Seen in a bigger picture sense, blogging is perhaps the most useful and powerful as a tool for building bridges between communities. In this new digital age, fields that have traditionally progressed on their own are converging massively. A blog allows you to have a foot in many communities at once. It helps you to build bridges.

Shaping a Blog around reader feedback

Now that I’m on my way to understanding why I do this blogging thing in the first place, I’m going to try to take Pete’s comments on board. Over the last few months my busy work schedule has meant that simply linking to digital cinema related articles has been faster and easier than actually putting across my personal views on issues that matter. I find that most of the things I actually work on I can’t actually talk about for several months and are in any case of a pretty technical nature.

Over the next few months I am going to try to identify certain topics that are of concern to the digital cinema landscape as well as others that cross into other areas. I’ll then concentrate my exploration of the internet somewhat around these areas and write about them as I learn new things. Though you will certainly find me occasionally talking about some new geeky piece of hardware, I will also do my best to venture into themes like Net Neutrality, Intellectual Property and Copyright for instance. I welcome any suggestions!

Thanks again Pete, I really value your opinions.

Looks like the Frontier kernel is heading for a spot of performance tuning. I have certainly noticed peoples blogs on blogs.opml.org acting real slow lately. It’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to stay with Wordpress for the moment.

Rex Hammond has also been thinking about why he blogs: “remember that: The core product, the core brand is you and your cause and your product or service”.

The making money angle is interesting. Making money is definitely not something I am looking to do with this blog. I have no plans to put any advertising in the sidebar and I won’t be pushing any products. This blog belongs to me, only me, and I like it that way. It’s my tool to explore, to experiment, to learn and to communicate. I won’t compromise on this in any way. Ah-ha.

Wired News: “But despite the 21st-century tools that put awesome publishing power in the hands of total novices, the blogger’s ultimate weapon is as old as the first storytellers who sat around prehistoric campfires”.

Today I’m off to have brunch with Pete and Nana from Aganovich & Yung. Their site seems to be down currently but this is the sort of things they do.

[Update: You can now find them at Aganovich]

Those of you who visited the site over the weekend might have noticed this page here instead. I managed to exceed my bandwidth for the month and have had to double it. It’s nice to see more people are reading! Sorry for the outage.

I was up in Nottingham this weekend with Toby Harris (*spark) doing the visuals for a huge bank holiday Sunday club night called Detonate. The night brought together the Rock City, Stealth and Rescue Rooms venues to create one big drum & bass / hip hop / electronic bonanza with a few live bands thrown in for good messure. We were in the main room and Toby’s incredible VJing onto two enormous screens each side of the stage was the focal point for the 1000 strong crowd during sets by LTJ Bukem, Andy C and others. Many thanks to James and Kath
from Detonate for putting us up in a lovely hotel and thanks to Toby for showing me the world of VJing.

I’ve been finding Ze Frank pretty funny. Especially the ‘poop’ showdown with Rocketboom in last Friday’s episode.

Creative planet have put together some video footage of interviews at NAB 2006. Great if you couldn’t be there.

The Burning Man 2006 funded installations. I like the sunflowers.

The Wall Street Journal tells of how hedge funds are getting into movies.

There’s been much talk of the LindenLabs online game/virtual community Second Life recently. Adam Curry has been having parties at his virtual Castle attended by listeners and podcasters alike.

I bumped into one of the producers / designers of the game last week and had a very interesting chat about future plans for the game. The infrastructure they are building to accomodate their predicted number of users is simply stagering and it seems they are looking at improving image quality too. The sort of definition they are talking about is going to take some serious bandwidth. When countries like Japan can get Gigabit speeds to their mobile it’s no wonder they are planning big and it’s no wonder they are looking at what part mobile technology will play aswell.

Project Entropia which competes directly with Second Life is offering a real world cash card to gamers so they can spend the money they accumulate in the virtual world…in the real world.

BBC News: “Last year $165m passed through the game and the founders of the online Universe expect that to at least double in 2006″. Is there a virtual tax man too?

Engaget: “Apple patent embeds thousands of cameras among LCD pixels”. Old news but I hadn’t heard about it till last week.

Jobserve: “The successful candidate will have excellent experience of Web editing/content management within the on-line space and ideally have experience or an understanding of blogging, on-line communities or user generated content”. Oh how new media.

I’m on a Redhat Linux training course all week in the affluent suburb of Guilford. The course has been pretty good so far, maybe a little slow though the pace seemed to be picking up a bit this afternoon. The commute is taking me a little over 2 hours: bus, underground, overland fast train and finally taxi. For such a small place, Guilford sure has a serious congestion problem. I’m not keen on getting up at 5:45 but it does mean I get to catch up on all those podcasts I never get to listen to.

I’ll be at the Gronland Records Showcase tomorrow night at 93 Feet East. It’s the beguining of my effort to go to interesting gigs this summer. Thanks to MK of NYUB for making me remember how much cool music is still out there.

Michelle Conlin of Business Week Online warns about the dangers of blogging: “Today there are two of you. There’s the analog, warm-blooded version…” “Then there’s the online you, your digital doppelganger; that’s the one that is growing larger and more impossible to control every day”.

Heather Green looks at the claims that Digg is being used for stock manipulation.

Jenifer Lopez to star along side John Travolta in Dallas feature film.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone: “So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun”.

The future of motion pictures as seen by Dolby. Quite a slick looking demo.

Cory Doctorow: “Marvel and DC comics jointly filed a trademark on the word ’super-hero’”. For god’s sake, where do these guys get off?

I listened to a podcast by Will Wright, the creator of the Sims video game, on IT Conversations about a year ago. I think it might have been this one. He seems like a real interesting guy. At the time he was talking about a new game he was developing based around evolution, where you started out as an ameoba and then evolved to land animals, tribes and eventually get out into space to discover how big the Universe is. Here’s a google video of a presentation of this new game which is called Spore. Thanks to Kosso and Doctoe for the link. I’m not a massive games person but this I could get into.

Lately I’ve been finding it hard to find time to put fingers to keyboard and turn out a consistent amount of content on the blog. It can be partially attributed to a massively hectic work schedule, the documentary making course I’m attending and the need to fill every last minute of my day nerding away for my RHCT course and exam at the end of the month.

However I’ve realised that it might also be the way that I’m bloging. Let me explain.

The default title-then-post format of the Wordpress blog is starting to get me down. It just doesn’t fit in right to life when you’re busy with other stuff all the time. You see this format kind of forces you to write about 1 theme per post…essay style. The reality is that its just too time consuming. The other thing is that a lot of the time I don’t want to write an essay. Often I just want to link to a whole bunch of different articles that I’ve come across throughout the day with really short comments. Other times though, when I’ve got more time, I like to spend some time researching a piece and write about it in depth.

So I’ve decided to try a slightly new format. Starting tomorrow there will be two types of posts:

1. “dcinput daily” posts - One each day (hopefully) which will grow throughout the day with small posts to interesting things I come accross (a la Scripting News)
2. Longer essay type posts - whenever I have time to go into something in a little more depth.

I’m hoping to figure out how to get the OPML Editor to work with Wordpress. I’m pretty sure I remember reading that someone figured it out. Anyways let me know what you think.

Last weekend was pretty hectic with an early start to Friday, following the NME fun on Thursday night, I met up with some old buddies from my UCL days and we made tracks for Bournemouth where we met up with Henry Van Der Beek. Henry was on the MSc course at UCL with us and I later worked with him at the Creature Shop for a time. He’s doing the MSc in Animation and plans to take the world of rag doll simulation by storm. The man has an unhealthy obsession with manga and martial arts fight sequences. I very much enjoyed hearing geeky stories of what he’s doing with their render farm. Amusing that little bits of Python and SQL in just the right places can keep you at the top of the render queue without anyone noticing. He’s running rings around them. Hehe.

I did try to moblog this photo as we left Waterloo but I had forgotten to rewire by moblog setup what with my new Wordpress blog. So here I am testing out the the new setup. Left to right: Lloyd, Dan and Patrick. Great night in Bournemouth. Hmmm…shall we say, a very interesting night life….from my mobile

[Update: Urrrgh the moblog test was a miserable ugly failure. I had to go and edit it all by hand afterwards. The picture was in the wrong place and the text was all over the place. I was using the functionality that flickr offers - blog via email using the MetaWeblog API. Anyone got any better ways of doing this?? Thanks.]

[Update 2: God what a mess. In the end I had to delete the post and redo it from the normal wordpress admin interface because it somehow totally screwed up the sidebar of the blog. Urgh. I like it better when things just work.:(]

After an incubation period with Blogger of nearly 9 months, the dcinput blog has moved to Wordpress. Though Blogger has served me well, making it possible for me to take my blogging babysteps with relative ease, I decided that the added functionality of Wordpress together with the needs of some future projects, have justified the effort of porting everything over. Many thanks to Ali McClymont who is now hosting the site and who spent the time this evening to help make it possible in a marathon Skype session. I’m pretty excited about all the things that will be possible. I still need to update some things so bear with me.

I’ve just enrolled on course 5HF002 at City Lit called Re-imagining the documentary: the documentary today in film and television. Thankfully they had some places left as I had kind of left it to the last minute what with all my traveling lately. It starts in two days! The course will last 12 weeks and consists of a two hour class on Wednesday evenings, all for the very reasonable price of £76.

From what I can gather, the course will be led by Gail Cole, a Film Theory Lecturer from Westminster University and Adam Kossoff who is a postgraduate researcher at the Royal College of Art.

Documentary making is something I’ve been interested in for a number of years. For some reason the time just seemed right to do something in the documentary realm now. I’ve got some ideas that I’ve been churning over for a while now. Needless to say they involve the web.