I’m sick.
I woke up sick. I had a really nasty sore throat, I lost my voice, I felt like I wanted to throw up. I called in and told my boss I wouldn’t be coming in. Well, I told his voicemail, because it was six-thirty in the morning.
At around eleven, my phone rang. It was my boss.
I got called in anyway.
Exciting.
I feel like crap and I want to go home.
I got to move to a new desk.
They aren’t putting anybody at my old desk or anything. I just got moved.
My new desk is smaller than my old desk. It’s more visible, as in, everybody can see what I’m doing now, and I’m right by the door to the department. I can’t put as much stuff on it. There’s glare hitting my monitor now from a window.
I enjoy it thoroughly.
Also, more fun with timesheets.
A couple weeks ago I was told to start keeping hyper-accurate, to the minute time sheets, instead of just logging 8am to 5pm. This resulted in a lot of 7:58-5:11, 7:49-5:25, etc.
Today it was announced that time before 8am and time after 5pm will not be paid. Not as overtime, not as normal wages, not at all.
Exciting.
I love my job.
I’ve been sitting here for the past hour watching the first four minutes of Selling The Faith on the TV over and over again, because I’m worried it has a “soap opera video” look to it.
I’ll apply a filter, render part of it, watch it out on the TV, then remove the filter from part of it, watch it to see if I can tell where the filter turns off, then turn it all the way off, see if it looks better, turn it back on… it’s obsessive.
Now that I think I’ve finally nailed down the first four minutes, I’ve moved on to the end credits. I feel like they scroll too “videoishly.” They don’t look like real credits. They look like credits I tacked on digitally with Final Cut.
Which is what I’ve done.
But I don’t want it to look like that.
It’s hard to explain.
This all goes back to a comment Adam made the other day. We were watching The Monitor Skit and he pointed out that it had a soap opera feel to it. He didn’t know exactly how it was manifested, it just did. I knew, though.
Here’s your video lesson.
Soap operas are shot on the cheap, written on the cheap, etc., etc. They are cheap to make because they have to be. They shoot so many episodes of soap operas, that if they were to shoot them on film, they’d go poor. So they shoot them on video. There is a difference that people don’t think about. See, film is an emulsion. It’s dyes and chemicals on substrate that react to light and produce pictures. Video, on the other hand, is, well, different. Video is generated using an analog sensor known as a charge-coupled device, or CCD. Photons of light hit the surface of the CCD, and the resultant energy is stored in a capacitor. Y’know what? Let’s skip the rest. Suffice it to say, video is NOT the same as film. Let’s do the easy breakdown.
Motion film is in strips. Each strip has “frames”. Each frame is a certain size. It’s measured in millimeters. You’ve heard 35mm film, 16mm film, 8mm film. That’s the size. A complete picture is contained in each frame. When you expose the frame to light, the chemicals on the substrate react and produce the image, which is different depending on how much light is getting to the frame, and how long you let the light hit the frame. This is called “exposure.” You can cut film up and splice it back together however you want. This is called editing. Film has no way to capture sound; it’s just strips of pictures. Motion film has to be developed just like regular film. If you rip open a shiny new roll of motion picture film to check it out, you just wasted it all — the same as with standard camera film.
Video is encoded magnetically onto a tape. It’s got nothing to do with being exposed to light. You can expose video tape to light all you want and it won’t be affected, unless you let it get all hot, in which case it’ll probably melt, because video tape is effing fragile. You can’t cut video tape up or you’ll ruin it. In addition to picture, there’s also sound. You can put sound on a video tape because it’s not just reacting to light, it’s actually data being magnetically encoded. Video can be recorded and then played back right away.
Film is shot and presented “progressively.” That is, each frame is its own image, and when the frame advances, the entire picture can change. Video isn’t usually like that. Video is usually what is known as “interlaced.” I say usually, because some types of video don’t work this way. Most do, though. Interlaced video means there are twice as many frames, but each one only has half of a picture. For example, you have a single frame of film that shows a complete picture. Now, if we take that same frame as interlaced video, it will only have half of the picture. The frame immediately following that one would have the second half of the picture. That’s called interlacing.
Film is usually shot and presented at 24 frames per second. That is, for one second of time that elapses, you have seen 24 separate and distinct pictures, collectively known as a “motion picture.” It’s called a motion picture because it’s a bunch of pictures that, when run together, show objects in motion, rather than a sequence of still pictures. Video is usually shot and presented at 60 interlaced frames per second. That means, for one second of time that elapses, you have seen 30 separate and distinct pictures, which were assembled from the 60 interlaced pictures that were actually stored.
Since the video is running much faster than the film, it looks “different.” It’s faster. Motion is more fluid, because there are more “in between” pictures to show all of that motion. Most people don’t know why video looks different, but they can notice the difference. Well, now you know. The difference is that video runs faster.
There’s obviously so many more differences, but that’s the primary one that sticks out for most people.
So I worry that people are going to watch my stuff, and say, that looks ridiculous. That looks like a soap opera. So I use filters to “fake” 24 frames per second, like film runs at.
It looks pretty good.
And that has been your video lesson for today.
Marc: <-- WINNER
Ivy: yes you are
Marc: keep telling me
Marc: it’ll boost my ego
Marc: Ego boosts are also accepted in the form of yelling YES!! YESSSSS a lot
Ivy: i have a knife
Marc: so cut me with it
Marc: it’ll make me feel alive!
Ivy: i wish you were dead
Marc: love you honey
This is a plea to the drawbridge on U.S. 1 between North Palm Beach and PGA Blvd.
Stop going up when I’m trying to get to work.
Honestly. You’re upsetting me.
Let’s cut to the core of the issue. You see, the thing is this. I leave my apartment at around seven-thirty each morning. I have a 12 mile commute up U.S. 1 to work. I start work promptly at eight a.m. Between me and my destination, there are approximately seven traffic lights, spread across three towns. There is also yourself.
The traffic lights do not concern me. It is you, and you alone, that defeat me on a near daily basis.
When you go up to let some random rich person cruise through on their sailboat, you’re causing me a great deal of inconvenience. This isn’t limited to me, though. There’s a lot of us out there, in our Ford Contours, our Nissan Stanzas, hell, our Volkswagen Golfs, and we’re all desperately trying to get to work on time. We honestly don’t care if you don’t open the bridge, and the rich person crashes their rich person boat straight into the bridge, causing it to capsize and subsequently break like matchsticks against the rocky shore. Broken boats do not concern us.
Of course, there is the matter of your structural integrity, if you were to allow boats to simply crash into you. I wouldn’t want you to put yourself at risk. I will let you make that call based upon your past experiences, as you’ve been a drawbridge for much longer than I’ve been driving across them.
I don’t want to make a federal case out of this. I realize that, as a drawbridge, you have certain needs, and society expects a certain behavior out of you. A standard you are expected to maintain on a daily, no, an hourly basis. I understand that this can be a great burden for you. So, I cannot ask you to simply stop doing your job. That’d be inappropriate, unethical and unprofessional for the both of us.
I’m just asking for a little leniency.
I know what you look like. I see you every day. I’m sure you know what I look like, too. Don’t deny it. I’m up there, every day, at the head of that line, waiting for those gates to go back up. You’ve seen me. Here’s what I’m asking. If you see me barreling towards you, headlights flashing, windshield wipers scraping dirt around on a dry day, and, quite possibly, horn blaring, do me a favor and just stay down for a good thirty seconds more.
How long is thirty seconds? It’s nothing. It’s practically like not waiting at all. This might be too much to ask, though. See, I’m not aware of your true motivations. I can only infer.
This might just be how you get your jollies.
Is that it? Is that how it’s going to be, then? You get your rocks off by making young upstarts like myself late for work? That’s how you have your fun?
That’s despicable.
I see how it’s going to be, though. I tried to reason with you, but now I see what you’re really like.
Just you wait, drawbridge on U.S. 1 just south of PGA Boulevard. You’ll get yours.
Just you wait.
The hardbound strap-closed little pocket notebook is now considered by me to be the apex of advancements in note-taking, far surpassing primitive substitutes such as the personal digital assistant and the tablet PC.
This is now my drug of choice.
I’ve been using it heavily since last night, and it’s really helping me to flesh out ideas and keep track of what I’m trying to say and do. And since I’m a “think outside the lines” kinda guy, I have no problems devoting a page or two to writing words across the storyboard panels. Heck, it’s even better that it’s not lined, cause I tend to write diagonally.
I’ll have to scan in my storyboard pages and put them up after the short is finished. Then again, maybe you’d all be better off if I spare you from having to look at that crap.
I hung a can from the ceiling of our department.
It was a crushed Coke can with a sign on it that said “Knock me down and win a prize.” It was hanging from a paperclip.
We were just told to take it down.
“If we had a visitor, it would look unprofessional.”
We wouldn’t want any other companies to think anybody here had a personality.
I guess it clashed with the plain white walls and the brown cubicles.
I woke up twenty-five minutes late, via snooze button. Jumped in the shower and was struck by a revelation about the script. Ran and storyboarded some stuff until I was even more late. Realized I was out of black socks. Took me a few to recover from that. Watched the first half of the short a few more times. Listened to some Bleed the Dream. Really late at that point.
Hauled down to the car and sped towards work. Plenty of time to make it before eight.
Draw bridge on U.S. 1 was up.
Got to work three minutes past eight. Rode up in the elevator with someone from Sales and Communications. That always sets my mind at ease.
Grabbed a Chocolate Smores pop tart and a can of Coke from the kitchen on the way to my desk.
This is how geniuses start their day.
Sometimes, I put the needs of my movie over the needs of my friends.
Case in point: recently, I needed a female to play a part in a video. I didn’t care who it was, I just needed one. I knew one. So, I asked her if she’d do it. She said yes. Problem solved from this end.
It was someone that everybody else in the group hates.
Good job, Marc.
I caught shit for it from some people, and rightfully so. It’s not the first time I’ve done it, either. I think this all ties back into the whole “I expect too much from people” thing. It’s all the same root issue. I will do anything to get a movie made, no matter what.
Back in the day I had a real problem with quitting. I would start something, and then just give up and never finish. The project would sit unfinished, usually in the form of a partially written piece of code, and I would rarely, if ever, look back. If I did look back, I would sometimes even say that I intended to go back and finish, but I never actually would.
It hasn’t been like that with videography. In fact, that’s the main reason I wanted to keep making videos. The first video project I ever really took on, I finished, and each subsequent project that I have gotten past pre-production on, I have completed. I have a website full of completed videos for people to see. Not only am I finishing my work, I have something to show for it, and people can see it and comment on it. Good or bad, my work is out there, giving me an outlet for my creativity (if it can be called that.) It’s the greatest feeling in the world to me, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The exhilaration of completing a video, start to finish, posting it on the internet or burning it to DVD, and showing it to people, is the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt.
Unfortunately, it’s this same “passion” for videoography that is ultimately leading me to never want to do it again.
I keep doing things without thinking. Like inviting someone everybody doesn’t like to hang out with the group. Someone who rudely insulted another member of the group. Maliciously. All in the sake of getting the shot.
Hang on a second. I’m going to give myself another pat on the back for that command decision.
I wish everybody could just get along. I wish certain people would just apologize to certain other people. Not that it would change my point of view re: putting said people in videos, as that is now out of the question. It’s just frustrating that I’m causing all these problems.
Selling The Faith will be my last short, if we even finish it. At least for a while.
Music will be heard. And It will be good.
Bands I’m looking forward to hearing:
How much I care if you don’t like my music:
Good on you for having an opinion, though.