Heroes

OK, so last week I lost my faith in Heroes… just a slight bit. But it redeemed itself this week. Seriously, wow. That was an intense, gritty episode. I can’t wait to see how this season turns out. And you can discuss theories at this site.

news from the web

I’m about to hibernate to finish up a little piece for this weekend, so here are a few links to keep you inspired. I’m enjoying Studioben’s sketches (especially this one), and they inspire me to spend more time in my sketchbook. Maybe I’ll find time for that on my vacation later this week.

These acrobots are fun and interesting. (reminds me of the little guy from Flight of the Navigator). I like how you can change the gravity. OK, it’s fun for about 30 seconds.

And a sneak peek of the piece we’re putting together for Sunday… right now, I’m treating footage DJ and Will shot through the streets of Atlanta.

Before:

After:

Daddy’s girl

No story behind this one, really. But here’s a picture of my beautiful daughter. At the moment, it’s all about Mommy for her. But my day’s coming, I’m sure of it… she’ll be Daddy’s girl.

Pig Roast pics

I forgot to post a set of Pig Roast 2007 pics last weekend… here you go.

date day

Friday, Meg and I had an awesome date day (with two small kids, we’re more awake during the daytime). We went to Greenville, Meg had a hair appointment with Melody (husbands, go with your wife to get her hair done… she’ll love it).

Then we ate at a little place in downtown Greenville called “Paris.”

I’d highly recommend it… great French-inspired cafe food and desserts. Mmmm.

optical illusion.

Now this is an optical illusion. I’m seriously not convinced it’s not animated.

Babel

Meg and I watched Babel tonight. I feel like I should be smarter, but I’m just really confused (nice cinematography, however). Maybe I’ll understand it when I wake up tomorrow.

Lost poll.

I enjoyed Lost last night, have been for most of the second half of season 3. As for that final line about flight 815 being confirmed crashed with no survivors… I’m screaming “cover up.” I mean, the Others have had a submarine… and anyone who has a sub is capable of a lot. What’s the consensus about our once-favorite TV Show?

iTunes recent plays

Working hard this week… the whole team is slamming out a ton of videos / pieces over the next few weeks at NewSpring. As Perry often says, something coming up here than you’ve probably never seen before. Today, I’m behind After Effects building some scenes for DJ. And listening to a lot of music, mostly old favorites at the moment + a new album or two. Here’s what I’m seeing in my “recent plays smart playlist”

Sigur Ros – ()
Led Zeppelin – IV and Physical Graffiti
Four Tet – Rounds / Everything’s Ecstatic Part II
RJD2 – Since we last spoke
a perfect circle – thirteenth step
Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero

tech overkill.

I’m all about screen space, but this is ridiculous.

old and new art

Just a few pretty things I found on the internet: You can’t smell these, but it’s a nice comprehensive digest of scratch ‘n sniff stickers from the past. I remember sweet corn, leather, and dill pickle… those stand out from my childhood.

Next, the belt buckles from Fosterworld have that meterosexual look down… it’s tough and artistic at the same time. And the EVB reel is very sports-heavy (Adidas, etc.), not a fan of sports. But I do appreciate that it’s cut to an RJD2 track… mmmm. Also cool that it’s a web design firm (mostly) that demos its products in a video reel. Neat concept.

That’s all for now, don’t forget Lost tonight.

screenwashes.

We call them “prereels” or “announcements.” Turns out, the proper term is “screenwashes” and you can read about the art of screenwashes here.

AE tip. fade object with camera distance.

I’m building a piece at the moment that requires some 30-40 layers to be positioned in 3d space. I want them to fade in to view as they approach the camera. Sure, you can do this by hand, but that would be tedious, and what if you want to change it as the composition progresses? Enter expressions. Found this article on the AE site.

I modified it slightly, mapping the startFade and endFade parameters to a null with slider expression control so I can easily control the distances on a global scale. The final expression:

startFade = thisComp.layer("control").effect("close")("Slider"); // Start fade 500 pixels from camera.
endFade = thisComp.layer("control").effect("far")("Slider"); // End fade 1500 pixels from camera.
try{ // Check whether there's a camera.
C = thisComp.activeCamera.toWorld([0,0,0]);
}catch(err){ // No camera, so assume 50mm.
w = thisComp.width * thisComp.pixelAspect;
z = (w/2)/Math.tan(degreesToRadians(19.799));
C = [0,0,-z];
}
P = toWorld(anchorPoint);
d = length(C,P);
linear(d,startFade,endFade,100,0)

Final cut to AE script.

Nice free script for exporting Final Cut sequences to After Effects. That’s all I have time for today, but it’s a time-saver if I ever saw one.

tronic / target

What a beautiful, great piece by tronic for Target.

Team Board.

Meet the team board. We have a saying (or not really, but I say it). “You’re not just a name in a database, you’re a name on a big white board.” We started using this board for several reasons a few months ago and it’s proving successful. Why do we have the team board?

First, the team board lists all members of the team. It has names and pictures. “I don’t know who that is” isn’t an excuse anymore. Notice the red and blue dots, Beth fills in those on Sunday mornings for the team members that will be there either the morning (red) or evening (blue) or both (wish for purple, but we use red + blue).

There’s a spot for photos from recent events, announcements, and a place for people to request further training. With 70+ members, it’s hard to remember everything so this board captures the important info.

There’s a place for “notes,” members on hiatus who will be returning (so we won’t forget them), announcements, and other things crucial to our central hub.

And that’s it. The board is just outside of A-control, which is where the volunteers huddle. It gives me an easy way to communicate to them, and an easy place to capture information from them to improve what we do. And it helps to define the scale of team we’re working with. In the end, find ways to continually improve your team. Look for weak areas and fix them. For us, I was losing people. They were on a spreadsheet somewhere but with so many, they’d get missed. This keeps everything visual and insures no one is overlooked. We also found with rotating crews, it’s hard to keep unity and that feeling that “everyone knows everyone.” Now, that’s not the goal just for itself. But to run a successful production team, some charisma is needed. The team has to gel. And it helps to know names.

(note the picture of Naboo, sent to me by a great friend who was traveling Sevilla, Spain, and saw the movie location… cater to your team’s strengths).

obelisk chairs

Too bad my birthday has already passed (and I don’t have $9k to spare)… these Obelisk Chairs would make a great addition to, well, anything.

Pig Roast 2007

Pig Roast 2007 was a huge success. I’ll be blogging the finer points later, but for now I’m totally exhausted and ready for bed. In the meantime, this photo says it all.

(or was it this photo?)
(or the CSI shot of the evening)

In the end, everybody was served and had a great time.

pig roast

Today, we’re hard at work getting the house ready for the pig roast. The entire production team is descending upon my house on Saturday to dine on swine, and the cooking festivities kick off tonight with an elite team of expert pig cookers staying up all night to tend to the Sherman-tank-sized cooker in my backyard.

Today, it’s a lot of grass cutting and trash hauling and food receiving from Charlies Bar B Que in Greenville. One of the owners is joining our team, and he’s helping tremendously with getting this event going. Jeff Spearman, what an awesome guy… he’s just been around for a few weeks, and he’s already jumping in head first to serve the team.

Sidenote: If you’re coming please consider parking at the church and carpooling over (or walking, it’s very close)… that’ll save on the number of cars parking in my yard. Also, don’t forget to bring lawn chairs, or blankets. Bring extra if you can, I only have so many chairs!

Back to the post. Why do we do the annual Production Team Pig Roast (subtitle: “this little piggy went to market”)? Because we have the best volunteers in the entire world. They absolutely rock. They arrive at the crack of down (it’s often difficult for me to beat them there) and they stay all day. With four services, we leave around 1:00 and get back at 3:30 in the afternoon. Then it’s out by 8:00 that night. Volunteering in Production requires dedication, and this crew doesn’t think twice about it. They just jump in with both feet and get the job done.

And they are excellent. Don’t believe me, watch a service online. That which you see is a direct recording of volunteer camera ops, volunteer director, volunteer technical director, volunteer shader, graphics op, teleprompt, engineers… the list goes on. Other than recording and some minor cleanup, the product you see was created by volunteers. A volunteer records and produces our podcast (and has it online quickly).

These guys (and gals) are excellent, and driven, and will do anything to see the Gospel spread. They use their gifts of technical ability and artistic sensibility to bring God the glory.

And that’s why we’re cooking a pig… to honor this crew and to make a large team (70+, rotating over a few weeks) seem small.

See you there, production team!

Streets comp 01

Here’s a comp from a piece the team is working. You may recognize the hand writing from our walls of NewSpring. Wanna see the rest, get here next week.

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