dcinput

Its April fools day today so watch out! I slept in till late so no one managed to get me.

I’m blogging using the OPML editor and it seems to work pretty good! Houray. You can find the instructions of how to set it up to work with your Wordpress blog here.

You might have noticed a lack of presence the last few days. I’ve been really quite ill all week and it’s been pretty unpleasant but I’m on the mend now, finally.

While I was ill I started buying good old fashioned newspapers and actually had time to read them cover to cover, with all the supplements. Really quite refreshing. Some interesting articles.

Did you know that in the UK the Sale of Goods Act offers rather a lot of protection against faulty goods even when the manufacturer’s guarantee has run out? The act says the goods must last a reasonable time and can be anything up to 6 years.

The article in the Guardian that I was reading gives the example of a faulty ipod. Even after the 1 year waranty has expired you should be able to demand a complete refund so long as the fault lies with the goods manufacturer rather than abuse to the machine. I’ve had to get my ipod replaced a whoping 4 times so far so this might come in useful for when it fails out of waranty.

I’ve ended up about a week behind in my listening to the Daily Source Code due to being ill. So I’m currently playing catch up. Adam is running a golden ticket competition. They have chosen 1 listener at random who ends up with a slightly different show to everyone else’s. I guess when this person listens to the show they get told they’ve won. Great idea for a competition.

Looking at his weblog no one has claimed the prize yet. I’ve still got like 5 shows to listen to…it would be funny if I was the winner.

Nice April fools from Scobble. I’ll admit he had me for about 2 paragraphs. It made the top of memeorandum.

I’m loving using the OPML Editor to blog but I can’t find an easy way to stick pictures in the posts. Maybe I’m just being dumb.

Looks like I didn’t win the golden ticket

Josh Oakhurst has been making good use of Netflix to do some documentary watching. He lists his top 10 great documentaries.

Fox anounce that they are going to make a Simpson’s movie.

The Hollywood Reporter: “Phone and cable company executives contend that they need to be able to charge some companies premium prices if they demand secure networks, virtual private networks or higher speeds for the transfer of movies or other large files. They contend that their pledge not to harm consumer access is enough”. Hollywood wakes up to net neutrality.

According to Joe Barton, who is pushing the Net Neutrality Bill, “We just had eight gentlemen that represent the largest trade groups and the brightest minds in the country, and not one of them gave a concise definition”…”We’re tied up in knots in this bill, potentially over something that we do not yet even have a universally recognized definition of what it is”.

Ha ha so no-one understands it yet. You got to love it. I’ve held my hands up all along saying that I was confused about this topic. I think the penny is starting to drop though. The one thought that I keep coming back to is that I don’t think people understand what the net actually is, today, as in now.

The question people need to answer first is “What is the Web?”. You might think that’s an easy question but I get the feeling that it’s actually a very big rusty can of worms.

Following up on yesterdays NYTimes link, according to the The Hollywood Reporter it seems the first steps have been taken by the National Assembly to force Apple to open the door on its remarkably popular iPod. The music industry won’t be too happy about this, after all they probably only trusted iTunes to sell their music in the first place because of this lock in feature.

What did they expect? If all BMW cars were fitted with a special device that only allowed you to refuel with special BMW made petrol, how long do you think they would last before goverments would start to smell anti-competitiveness over the smell of the fumes?

I’ve mentioned several times over the last few months how impressed I’ve been with YouTube. Judging solely on the uptake with non-techie work collegues and friends I knew this thing was going to cause a big ripple. Interesting to read an article by Andrew Wallenstein who takes a Hollywood perspective.

Andrew Wallenstein: “However, the relationship between this Internet upstart and Hollywood isn’t as adversarial as you might assume. For every corporate lawyer firing off angry letters to YouTube, there are two more executives exploring potential partnership opportunities — maybe even an outright acquisition”

Got a secret? Why not post it?

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.

Though it is still squinting into the distance with the hope of catching sight of it, for quite a while now the film industry has been looking out to the horizon for a wave that has been predicted by technology forecasters the world over.

With a look much the same as that of the famous archeologist as he turned to find some water to cool his foot following a particularly hairy mine cart chase, the film industry is about to realise that not only is the wave definitely a reality, it is a mere 100 feet away and as tall as the Empire State building.

Riding this wave are three men: Mark Cuban, Todd Wagner and Steven Soderbergh, who, if you listen very carefully, are yelling “Narly Dudes….surfs up!”. You see these guys have had a hard look at what digital cinema could mean and they’re doing something about it. They have announced that the release of Soderbergh’s new film “Bubble” is going to be in theatres, on dvds and on HDNet simultaneously. Many cinema chains in the US are unhappy about this new development and are refusing to show the movie. Mark responds to his critics in his blog and raises some excellent points.

It was only a few months ago that while re-designing some film out workflows people thought I was joking when I said we should be looking into getting our ipod video deliverables sorted. I wasn’t joking and Ben Barren doesn’t think so either.

The big question though is what’s going to happen to Dr Jones? Is he going to get the girl and save the village by delivering the shankara stone back to them? I’m just so tired of listening to people saying that digital cinema is going to destroy this and ruing that. Its simply an unbelievable oportunity. Fortune and glory kid.

Tonight was the first class of the documentary course that I’m taking at City Lit. I find that first classes always have a really interesting dynamic to them: people tend to be initially nervous and apprehensive but as soon as group discussions start, a sort of realisation that everybody has similar interests starts to filter through the room. That’s a great moment. It also became apparent that if this class is at all representative, then 75% of the worlds documentary makers are female.

In this first session we looked at the role of the documentary in defining who we are and how we live, how rather than being a window on the world, the documentary in many ways acts more like a mirror, reflecting various viewpoints back at us. We watched extracts from 2 documentaries:

The first was 49 Up directed by Michael Apted, the latest installment of the Up! Series. Started in 1964, the series follows 14 seven year old children as they get older (revisiting them every 7 years) and explores the notion of class. In order to give a feeling of coherence throughout the series which spans many decades, the style is rather conservative. It focuses on personal lives and the subjects tend to fit certain stereotypes. One wonders how much of an influence the documentary itself has had on the people it follows and indeed whether it has simply helped to lead them down the paths set out by their class. Nevertheless a very interesting series which is ongoing and who’s next installment will coincide with the London Olympics in 2012.

The second documentary by Nicholas Barker, Unmade Bed, is set in New York and follows four heterosexual singles. In contrast to the UP series, this is very stylised can be described as a hybrid documentary / film, the director having asked the subjects to replay themselves under his direction in certain parts. Very beautiful shots of New York in a wide aspect ratio, combined with interesting choices of music and a complete absence of voiceover give this a real cinematic look. In a way the subject matter and also the portrayal of the people give this a black comedy feel to it which can leave you with a certain voyeuristic taste in your mouth. Although it did at first seem a bit strange, I really liked the idea of a hybrid as it helped to push the boundaries of what you think a documentary is. I like looking at things in new ways.

Very much looking forward to next weeks installment which will be looking at the categorisation of documentaries. I’ve also arranged to exchange a list of my favorite documentaries with several of the people I met. That sounds like a job for the opml editor. I love Dave Winer’s idea for reading lists…but what I want is a watching list!

Xinhua News Agency: China getting ready to lauch a digital cinema server. I’ve had several conversations about this sort of thing lately. Very interested to see how this pans out. Its the sort of thing that could make it far easier to get smaller film makers to get their work on the big screen. Though with the Digital Cinema Initiative being a consortium of all the big industry players, including Disney, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Brothers Studios, you kind of wonder how they are going to try to keep their grip on things. If a trend similar to that in the music industry starts to materialise, where podcasts and networks like the PMN are sprouting up…these guys aren’t going to be too happy.

I’ve started to read “Down and Dirty Pictures” by Peter Biskind which is a historical perspective of the rise of the independent film industry. I’ve only got as far as the Preface but already it tells the story of a pretty scarry world. You can bet these guys are keeping a close eye on this thing we call the web.

In June 2005, 3 vfx programmers disappeared in the catacombs of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, London UK while taking pictures they were to later post on their blogs.

27 days later their pictures were found.

Motorola V3 Razor
Some fancy welsh camera

Tags: london, vfx, film, animation, cgi