I’ve been doing a bunch of media production recently,
Some work as cameraman, some as producer, some as editor.
Here’s a few links!
Albania
I was the director and producer of this and a couple other pieces. Myself and two cameramen travelled in 3 cities in Albania, meeting the OM team there, interviewing them, and finding out a lot of what they’re up to.
The night show
Currently still unreleased, “almost done”, I was the 3D set design and animator, did all the 3D compositing, and helped with a lot of the 2D compositing and editing. I also did the sound recording and initial scratch mix for the puppeteers.
Matt’s Blog
A 12 part video blog from ‘Matthew the Tax Guy’ about the certain teacher he met who messed up his life. I’m the main actor, and also co-wrote it, and helped with editing.
OM 50 years in Poland - an unusual history
I worked as senior editor on this project, helping Moray to bring together many different interviews into a single history presentation.
I had the enormous privilage to speak at the Blender Conference in Amsterdam!
I was talking about the latest large project I’ve been working on together with a
team from Ireland, building a full virtual 3D set for a “late night” comedy show
for puppets, going through the christmas message.
It was great fun, a lot of work, and a really cool project to be part of.
Some of the 3D stuff was pretty complex to work on, and so it was interesting
to show off some of how we were doing the compositing and working with the puppets
and greenscreens & everything.
So I guess I’d better try and get back into the swing of things.
Well, it finally happened. Doulos is officially ending. In just under 3 weeks time.
Surprised? Well, I wasn’t. We’d known that many issues were coming to light during the drydock, and it turned out the issues were more than were worth trying to sort out, for an increasingly short possible length of time.
It’s been public for about a month now, I guess… and so my girlfriend and I will be leaving Doulos in exactly 2 weeks.
We’ll be going to work with OMNIvision for a few months, hoping to get a clearer notion as to whether we should go back there for a few years longer, later next year.
Right now, I’m pretty tired. I’m officially not AV any more, but working in training department, but still with many AV commitments, and jobs. I’ve not been able to hand over some of the last bits to my friend and replacement, as too many bits were caught up in the whole drydock thing, which didn’t really end solidly, so stuff just dragged out.
I’m getting bits of my new jobs kind of messed up to - down to forgetting to organize someone to lead music this morning at the “Tuesday Morning Devotions”.
I’m horribly behind with email, blog, newletters, packing and preparing to leave here soon, I’m behind on days-off, I have large projects I don’t even know where to start on, and so on.
I’m writing this at 5am, after having stayed up all night working with the videographer on finishing an “End of Doulos” presentation video which is needed later today. I was mainly doing audio engineering / cleaning up work. We still need one shot, and so a couple of guys are heading out at in half an hour to go shoot it - us sailing Doulos into Vivo City in Singapore for the final time. Then it’ll be rendering all day until getting shown this evening.
I also need to rig up an amplifier for some speakers in the bookshop this morning, and then I’m going out off the ship with the other Training Department people for the day.
If you’re not interested in video, then this may be boring as anything for you.
Then again, you might find it facinating.
OK. Here’s the deal. A conference, and it’s Mandarin. The main speaker is American, and speaks no Mandarin whatsoever. So he has a translator. No problem. Now say you have an audience of 300-ish, and are using live video to show the speaker on TVs around the room so people can see. OK, again, no problem. But, since the speaker and the translator decided to stand far apart, if you show a shot wide enough to get them both, they’re so small on screen that it’s totally pointless putting them on screen. Usually, I believe, it’s normal to just go for a close-up of the speaker. So, then, if you have audience who are all old people and probably somewhat hard of hearing, they’ll want to lip-read the translator at least somewhat. So. What to do? Cutting back and forth between two cameras is too much work, and tiring, and probably more annoying to watch than anything else.
I tried to be a bit clever and “TVish” this time, but I still am not totally pleased with it.
If the speaker and translator decide to move around a lot, remote cameras just will not cut it.
