Compressionista

DIY Smart Slate Tutorial

This tutorial guides you through the process of creating your own Smart(sort of) Slate. Comment away with any questions. Don't make fun of my generic fish background. ;)

Compressionista Goes Mobile

That banging you heard last week was another nail in the coffin of my productivity as I discovered digg.com's mobile site. We'll, my render-bar-watching brothers and sisters, here it is: The quick and dirty Compressionista mobile site. Now you can catch up with your favorite new media production blog on the go. Tell your boss I said: "Your welcome."

Turn Your iPhone Into a Smart Slate

Never let it be said that we don't shower our readers with free stuff. Ok, so it's kind of a light mist at this point, but give it time, we're pretty new.

We've all been there. It's a multi-cam shoot, and your digging around in the ditty bag for the slate, which is really, really um... not there.

You could clap. Like a dork. Or worse yet, have the subject clap. Always great for the interviewer when you totally pull their subject out of the moment. Or, you could whip out your awesome new Compressionista iPhone Smart(sort of) Slate to sync all the cameras. And when your watching Reaper instead of trying to find any common reference point in all the footage, pat your pocketed iPhone knowingly and smile.

Ok, so it's a one minute mp4 with one minute of 29.97 Drop Frame burned into it and our URL on the bottom. But doesn't it sound much cooler the other way? And obviously it's not crystal sync, but it will get you with in a frame or two, which is plenty to line up the waveforms to perfection.

Just download it, load it on your iPhone and forget about it. A week from now when your bacon is officially saved, drop us a line and tell us about it.

No iPhone? We've got you covered as well. Stay tuned for a post where we walk you through creating your own Smart(sort of) Slate for just about any format.

Smart Folders Tutorial

We're using Smart Folders allot now around the office. Only took us a whole new OS to start using updates from the last one, right? Anyway, here's a tutorial about our Smart Folder workflow. Check it out here.

Echo Chamber 2.0: The Romney Whisper

Regardless of your politics, the soon to be infamous "Romney Whisper" shows us how old top down methods of distribution don't work anymore.

There's been "gotcha" moments in politics since someone ran for president of Pangea. The difference now is, as Marshall McLuean noted, it's no longer "one to many" comunication. Everything on the interweb has to be considered many to many comunication. When MSNBC deleted a comment asking, to my mind, a perfectly legitimate question, they really missed the point. Instant and voluminous feedback looks like the holy grail of marketing to me. How much would MSNBC have paid for that information under the old structure? The difference is that you don't own that information. Wether on your comments page or not, these conversations are happening.

*Grunts as he climbs up on his soapbox* Credibility and honesty are the new currency. The feedback is telling you The extent to which you censor and control the feedback rather than incorporating it is the extent to which you are increasingly irrelevant. Listening to our viewers, and using that feedback to shape our content, that's the new structure.

BTW: From a techy nerd standpoint, how do you think it happened? My bet is on this conversation. "What frequency do you think we should..."

Footage Calculator

For those of my iphone rocking brothers and sisters here's a handy little web app that I'm using more than I thought I would. It calculates how much disk space a given format will use at a given frame and bit rate. Get it here.. Incidently, how awesome would a link button be in Typepad's iPhone interface? I'm just saying...

Shadow Play's Juno Intro

I'm not nostalgic when it comes to production. My SLR's adopted the prefix "d" squarely in the middle of the adoption curve. I've never said: "Man, movies have to much CG these days." That being said, there is allot to be said for Shadow Play's "handcrafted" intro to Juno. So glad I got to experience it in the theater.

The Littlest Team Member

While not technically "New Media," she is new. Meet Izzy.

Macworld Redux

So having had a walk back to the hotel to process a little of the deluge of information that was Macworld, I can say I what I really picked up was a "wetware" upgrade. "Wetware" is what Alex Lindsey calls the knowledge to create content.

Two things in particular struck me. While its possible to run yourself into the poor house creating content to distibute online, what Alex kept comming back to was the notion that you really can create professional results with about a grand worth of gear. I think we are poised to see more democratization of media, not only in production, but anyone being able to at least theoretically produce content we might want to spend time watching.

The second thought was one was a thought that hit me listening to Buddhist Geeks while trudging up California St. Adapting broadcast models for new media only work so far. Time and space mean much less here than in broadcast. Timeliness takes a back seat to relevance in most cases. I'll happly listen to old casts of the VFX show because I'm still learning the craft and its relevant to me. Makes me wonder how we really meassure podcast viewers when there's a long tail of people like me comming late to the game.

macworld

I'm posting from the midst of all the toys at the 2008 macworld expo. Some favorites so far: my new pair of Ultimate Ears ear buds. A little spendy, but you'd swear Mouse on Mars was running a direct line out of the tables and into your prefrontal cortex. Gridiron Software's Flow, which really merits its own lengthy post. Surfice it to say it's a whole new way to look at and think about your workflow. Sorry kids, public beta not until April. Alex Lindsey and the guys from twit and pixel corps droping all kinds of podcast and web media knowledge. Oh, and blindly trusting in drink suggestions at after parties, with interesting results.