Tuesday 27 November 2012

MUGATU VS PRODUCTIVITY

Got the iMac back, everything is running smoothly!

I got all my recent DV tapes uploaded and I am assembling the first draft of the Tug Of War video from  this recent weekend shoot.

However I have hit a bit of a wall.....

Thanks Mugatu.

Thursday 22 November 2012

25% CLOSER TO FINAL CUT X

We get the iMac back tomorrow, at which point we'll be able to see how much damage I inflicted upon our back-up hard-drive. I'll keep you posted. My fingers are crossed super-tight. Typing is very hard.

On the right of these pages you'll see a green and red donut. This is my little interactive fundraising graphic (go on, hover!) that shows how close I am to having enough money to afford Final Cut X, the new and powerful video editing software which would replace my outdated and buggy version of Final Cut Express. The money is made through my Amazon associates account and youtube views. I recently pipped the 25% mark! A really big sweaty uncomfortable hug to everyone who has navigated through my blog when buying anything on Amazon.

It's true that Final Cut X is hardly bank-breakingly expensive at £200, if anything the price is eminently reasonable given the price of previous instalments, but as I'm living a financial hangover of debt clearance (we're succeeding!) a purchase like that is not really possible, so I'm putting my blog proceeds (which always go towards filming equipment) towards the goal of affording the software.

For those who have no clue what I'm yammering about, you can search Amazon through the box on the right hand side of my blog. I also review and link any products I use as a budgetless filmmaker that I buy through the site. If anyone gets to Amazon via my blog and makes a purchase (of anything at all, not just things I review/recommend) then I get a 5% commission which goes towards equipment  for filming projects. It's a small and infrequent revenue stream (a trickle really) but every little helps.

If you're ever interested in helping out a struggling videographer, you can start your next purchase on Amazon from these pages. It won't cost you a penny, just a mouse click! You can even bookmark me for future purchases. I would be totally cool with that!

Ah, now to await the fate of my data. Tomorrow will reveal all.

.....


Is it bad that I just want to coccoon myself in a duvet for a week and play Borderlands 2?



Sunday 18 November 2012

THE DANGER OF IDIOTS

So, here I am, without my computer while it is in the repair shop having it's hard-drive (and motherboard!) replaced. We have the hard drive and everything on it (including all my video projects past and present, such as the almost-finished videographic paeon to life alone with felines - Where's My Milk You Bastard - backed up on a precious external hard drive that holds the entirety of mine and Dee's digital life.

 Meanwhile, our house is in a disarray of reorganisation (for reasons I won't go into here) as Dee and I spent over 6 hours assembling an absolute monster of an Ikea wardrobe in the bedroom. The second room (previously my "editing suite" aka room with desk and sometimes biscuits) is full of bits of stacked furniture, busted old wardrobes and ungainly piles of generic home-fodder as we struggle to erect a chipboard stonehenge next door using only the power of blunt drill bits and swearing.

While moving lumps of stuff from one room to another in an attempt to maximise space around our new Godless monolith I found myself in the second bedroom manoeuvring a huge cuddly stuffed gorilla across a chest of drawers towards a chassis of an old wardrobe.

Blammo crash bang, said the external hard drive as he toppled off the chest of drawers that some utter imbecile had left it sitting upon. The imbecile began hopping up and down in a stupor flailing an inanimate primate around as it slowly dawned on the increasingly panicked imbecile what was ON that hard drive. Everything. Every edit of video work. Every piece of footage. Every colour correction, every fade, every exported movie. Every photo ever taken by the imbecile or by Dee. Every song we had. Every document, every program. We put our digital lives in a box for safe keeping while our computer was being repaired and an imbecile walked by and smacked the delicate vault to the ground within 48 hours.

Until the computer is returned and we attempt to reinstall our data we won't know what the damage is. But a google prognosis carried out at work is not encouraging. The drive shows no physical damage but they are delicate complicated things that can be utterly destroyed internally without a single crack to the exterior.

It's entirely possible that I have just wiped out several years work. It's true that the original DV tapes sit in a drawer undamaged. I could start from scratch. But the very idea of undertaking so many hours upon hours of work without any references or notes is distressing.

It's not just the work that galls me. It's the pictures, the personal little videos, the photos, the memories.

I'll keep you updated when I know more. For the next few days you can find me hiding under the carcass of a dusty decommissioned wardrobe, repeatedly punching myself in the face.

Thursday 15 November 2012

COMPUTER OFF FOR REPAIR AND A FILM RECOMMENDATION

General Comings and Goings:

The iMac was taken away today for repair, but not before I managed to finish the video work I was helping a friend with first despite the delays due the slow computer. Once we get the new hard drive we'll be good as new and I can finish up my other jobs! In the mean time I've been sketching out some ideas with an old friend I've always wanted to work with. We're going to do something together that may or may not involve two naked arses with faces painted on them kissing each other for ten minutes. I say it may involve this. He says it may not. Time will tell.

Quick Film Recommendation: 

Speaking of naked dudes rubbing each other, I saw a film a while back called Warrior
  with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton as estranged brothers from a broken family (one is a marine, one is a physics teacher) who both find their lives falling apart and drift into a big-bucks mixed-martial arts tournament. It's basically an MMA version of Rocky and came out at the same time as the similarly themed (and better publicised) boxer-brothers film The Fighter, which overshadowed Warrior at release. The film ended up making a loss at the box office, which I think is a crying shame.

It's actually a cracking film and you should check it out. It's a classic sports blockbuster in the Rocky mould which is never going to appeal to everyone but it definitely transcends the the scope of an MMA movie with great characters and a genuinely gripping story, plus some brutal fighting scenes. I don't know a thing about MMA and that didn't impact my enjoyment one bit. Dee loved it too. It doesn't steer entirely clear of cheese and sentiment, but sometimes you just need a good movie that makes you fist-pump the air and spill your nachos.

Help out the poor buggers that worked so hard to make this film and give it a rental or get the DVD for a few quid online.

Trailer:


Thursday 8 November 2012

WHADDYA MEAN WEBSERIES & HD REPAIR

After the elation earlier this week I am very sad to report that the new Battlestar Galactica series: Blood and Chrome will be a webseries totalling two hours over ten episodes and not the epic new television series I was hoping for. Feeling a little bit gutted! Happy and sad at the same time. I guess I should have followed events more closely.



The iMac is booked in for a hard-drive replacement. Luckily it is covered by the warranty and we won't have to pay a penny. Even small tasks have become nearly impossible. I am helping a work colleague by doing a very simple bit of video editing but just rendering the videos within Final Cut takes up to two hours. A ten minute job has so far been spread out over three evenings as the render and export times are so very long that my evening is over before the work is finished. I can only assume the computer has somehow filled with quicksand. Hopefully the warranty covers that.

Once we get it back, I can finally get back to work on my backlogged videos, namely the Three-Sided Football (can't wait to see how that came out) and the final stages of Where's My Milk You Bastard?.

Should be seeing a friend next week to do some research regarding a story I want to write a screenplay for. I'm prepared for it to be pretty bad as it's not an area I'm very experienced in, but we can't just give up at the first hurdle, can we?

Have more for you soon, stay awesome :-)

Tuesday 6 November 2012

BACK FROM HOLIDAY? BLOOD AND CHROME?!?!

BLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROME

Got back from a much-needed week of peace and quiet locked away from the world in a New Forest cottage (with Dee, Louie Ad and Jen, love you guys) and I found out the new Battlestar Galactica series comes out on friday!

Battlestar Galactica - BLOOD AND CHROME!

Set during the original Cylon War a few decades before events of the current series, and featuring the captain of  Galactica, Will Adama as a young fighter pilot. I cannot hide my excitement.

If this post means nothing to you, I apologise! Trailer here:


Original blood-pumping teaser from months back, before Syfy dropped the show (BOOOO!) and Machanima picked it up (Yaaay!)

http://www.thegetawayvan.com/2012/03/movies-cometh-blood-chrome.html

If you never got round to catching the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, give the 90minute pilot a shot and see how you feel. If you love fearsome robot baddies, intrigue, world-ending warfare, enemies walking among us and crazy space battles, you'll dig it, I swear.