Ben Thomas story

This week I had the privilege to work on a story that was both personal and a technical challenge. Ben Thomas is a close friend and one of the Godliest men I know. I enjoyed the opportunity to edit and composite his story.

As for the technical challenge, we chose to shoot this piece green screen. B-roll, stock footage (bet you didn’t know the train at the 0:43 mark was really a toy), and real photos and articles from the accident were layered in to add a second time line of backdrop. Stylistically I’m really happy with how it turned out. To make it extra personal I created the soundtrack myself with Reason. It’s nothing flashy, but I wanted something pretty specific and I think it fits well.

Ben Thomas interview from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

You can watch the final version here.

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Thanks Adam for providing brainstorm and camera support.

They say the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. I’m not so good at that… give credit where credit is due. This piece was inspired both in vision and tone by the PC3 “One Word” series. Great work, guys, and great inspiration.

Portland Rescue Mission needs producer

A faithful avclub.us reader Nathan Smith (Portland Rescue Mission) is looking for a video producer. If you’re a video producer interested in a full time position, here is their official posting.

Portland Rescue Mission (Portland, Oregon) is seeking an experienced video / audio producer to shoot and edit video stories of life change for our website and other venues.

We are a Christian non-profit organization bringing hope to men, women and children affected by homelessness, addiction and abuse. Our emergency services provide food, shelter, showers, restrooms, clothing and other care. Our long-term recovery programs provide counseling, spiritual guidance, emotional healing, education, job training and case management.

Learn more about us at www.portlandrescuemission.org. Job description available here (PDF).

To apply, send resume and cover letter to:

Alissa Goble, Staff Ministry
Portland Rescue Mission

700 NE Multnomah, Suite 400
Portland, OR 97232
alissag@pdxmission.org

Pushbutton

Today the Wilson family welcomes our newest member of the family, (as named by our 4-year-old) Pushbutton. We found him Clover Run Rescue in Jefferson, GA and he’s a Wheaton Terrier (plus something else).

I’m stoked that he is microchipped, meaning he packs more tech than me. Enjoy a few pictures, especially the first one, Pushbutton’s first trip to Starbuck’s.

Legos

Now that’s my kind of Legos.

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Clayton King Q&A

Here’s a little Q&A we ran before having Clayton King to speak here at NewSpring. I think Adam did a great job with this one.

To give credit where credit is due, this is the piece that inspired us. Great job, guys.

Quirky Culture Wednesday

Let’s call today Quirky Culture Wednesday. As much as I find this quirky and fascinating, I’m sure that any Japanese viewer of Yo Gabba Gabba is thinking the same thing about the United States. Are there any avclub.us readers in Japan who can confirm this?

Make something new

In following with the theme of “make something new” I spent some time with Reason the other night. As much as it’s fun to pull up a preset synth or electronic sound and play away what I really appreciate about electronic music and synthesis is creating sounds that have never been heard before.

That’s what really fascinates me about this whole electronica / synthesis / monome / music world, the fact that there are so infinitely many variables that you can quite quickly create a sound or tone that is truly unique. No one has ever heard it before and unless you save that preset or patch no one will ever hear it again.

Following this thread on through it’s good to note, too, that not all tones you produce are musically viable, usable, or even pleasant. But sometimes you do discover something excellent. Other times you just have fun exploring, turning knobs, discerning relationships within the confines of the programming.

Tonight I found a new sound. Yes it was fun. Yes, I do have some reasonable level of understanding as to how I made it. If you look at the screenshot from the patch I programmed I’m pretty excited that I could reasonably explain to you how each module interacts with the other, how the sound is constructed.

Alas, it’s not a musically viable tone (though I did play it with the monome). That’s where the art exists, I suppose.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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Yes and no.

Yes and no (via @Chipez)

Make something new

If you’re a designer with an hour or two to spare might I suggest, instead of watching youtube videos or reading twitter, you consider making something. I like to take an image that inspires me (pictured below) and try to recreate an animated version of it in After Effects.

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The result of 1 hour of work. (view here)

The benefits are several. First, it’s not a tutorial. You’re not studying the same technique that every single animator is learning at the exact same time. It’s constructive to push yourself in a unique way.

Second, you learn to problem solve. Working backwards from a result (the example picture) helps to hone more creative ways to process. In turn, the next time you’re faced with a project you have a new tool in your arsenal.

Third, because the project you create doesn’t have a home you can file it away for the right time. Keep that *.aep for future use. I’m sure at some point you’ll wish you had it.

Evernote for color grading ideas

Yesterday we talked about using Evernote to catalog inspiration and images. Here’s another use I’ve found much along the same lines. As our department grows I find it is useful for me to have visual examples at my fingertips for various things. If I’m looking for a particular look and feel (ie. color grading) in a video piece rather than say “oh, you know, I like the dark tones with a hint of purple and some glows in the red channel and some grain but not too much,” I would rather have a visible example to work from.

Enter Evernote.

Step one, use yesterday’s technique and create an note called “Grading” in your “Ideas” notebook.

Every time you come across an image in your web browsing that catches your attention drag it into that notebook. Done, saved, references are always available. You could get advanced and starting creating various notebooks for different moods, “Grading – cool,” “Grading – warm,” “Grading – sepias,” you get the idea.

And just for fun, here’s a cool way to implement this color grading technique into Photoshop. There’s no easy way to do this in After Effects, but you could render a JPEG sequence and create an automated action to process each frame. Or you could just learn to master color grading in AE to get a similar look.

The Match Color tool can be used to treat one image to look like the colors from another image. This tutorial explains how it works. Where we add to the technique is that you can literally drag a photo out of Evernote and directly into Photoshop making it available for the Match Color tool to use.

iPhone links

Here are a few loosely related articles of interest to iPhone fans.

First, if you’re considering upgrading to the new iPhone 3GS consider using Nextworth to sell off your old iPhone. My 8 GB 1st Gen iPhone goes for $106 and that includes me keeping all of the dock connectors (it’d be nice to have two).

Second, you are probably getting numb hearing me rant and rave about Evernote. But if you’re traveling this summer here’s an article on how to Evernote to keep it light.

Evernote for creative filing

It’s no secret that I love Evernote. Here’s a new use I’ve found for it. If you’re a designer or involved in the visual brainstorm process you will likely find this useful.

The problem I’ve faced is that though I’m good at looking at a lot of inspiration over the course of a month I struggle with a way to catalog the things that inspire me. I regularly use Bloglines to read material. It provides a way to “keep post as new” or clip an article but I rarely make it back to those files, and it’s cumbersome to browse them.

I also find myself on different computers when I have the free time to browse. I use a desktop to edit on at work (where I rarely have spare time), I carry a laptop, I use my home computer on occasion, and I use my iPhone for blog reading about 50% of the time. I needed a system for filing and amassing digital images (primarily JPEGs) from all of these sources. The images also need to be viewable from anywhere.

Enter Evernote.

I created a notebook called “Ideas.” About every week or two I create a new post within that note called “Inspire #,” incrementally increasing that number just to keep track of things.

With the Evernote Desktop client I can literally drag a JPEG directly from the web browser directly into that Inspire note. Drag. Drop. Evernote automatically syncs everything.

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A few alternative variations are required to make this solution fully ubiquitous. First, on the iPhone there isn’t a drag and drop.

1. Click and hold your finger on an image for about 2 seconds, you’ll be asked to Save the image.
2. Launch Evernote. You from the title screen choose Saved Photo Note.
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3. Save it to your “Ideas” notebook.
4. When back in the Evernote desktop application select your Inspire note and the newly uploaded image note. Do this by selecting the first note and either Command-clicking (Mac)or Control-clicking (PC) the image. Right click either of the selected notes and choose the last option, “Merge Notes.”

If you are on a computer that does not have the Evernote desktop application on it (like my poor OS X 10.4 machine at the house) just save the image to your desktop. Then using the online version of Evernote attach the images to the Inspire note.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about another use for this image archiving technique.

Birkey Murky Modular Madness

Nice free sample set of some analog modular bleepy-ness over at Birkey Murky. If you’re asking “what’s a modular?” read on.

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Eclipse

My bro spotted this bad boy out and about the other day and set the image to me. Why is it significant? I owned (and loved) and 1991 Eclipse all through college. It was awesome. It was the first ride I’d ever purchased for myself. It had a sun roof.

And ultimately it self-destructed just before college graduation. It was fun while it lasted.

Quick and Dirty camera car mount

I really like this… a home made car camera mount. I will be trying the next time I drive through a city with actual traffic. (view it in action here)

More Buchla modular clips

Looks like Blindoldfreak is at it again, creating more lovely analog synth sounds with his Buchla 200e.

Retractable jam

Careful, an instrument like this would cause a riot at the old cantina.

Rokkaboy reel 2009

The Rokkaboy Reality 2009 reel. It’s hot.

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Chuck Anderson interview

I’m a huge fan of Chuck Anderson’s work and therefore recommend ths interview with with from PSD Tuts.

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G and java

Here it is, definitive proof that my son is fully capable of being an AWAKE barista. I’ve edited for brevity, (do you really want to see the full 6:30.00 cut?) but he completed the entire process himself.