New logo

As I was asked to write a tutorial for a new magazine on using shape layers in After Effects, I thought I'd use the opportunity to make a logo screen for my own documentary production company....

I think it's turned out quite well (although trying to work out shape layers was quite a job and I'll probably need to tweak the timings. I had to install a new version of Adobe CS3 to do it, and for some reason it installed in Japanese - which took me a while to correct... Still it looks pretty good, I think.

The tutorial's turned out quite well too.

All I've got to do now is write a website to go around it... that's something I've got part way through, but I don't think I'll have time for a while - I'm doing another interview tomorrow and another After Effects tutorial the day after....

launch day

Well, having read about and thought through the documentaries I want to make this year, I've finally sent out emails to selected paleontologists asking if they want to get involved.

It's always a bit scary doing this first contact thing - hoping that your ideas are good - that the research you've done doesn't make you sound like an idiot - that the people you're talking to are interested, that they're the right people and that they're actually still at the addresses you've found online.

That's made worse as I'm trying to do four documentaries at once.

The response so far has been great - lots of people have got back to me and almost all have been positive - even those that can't help have passed me on to people who can and the research they're all doing is fascinating.

That's the great thing about doing science reporting - people are enthusiastic and they all believe in the freedom of information - they want to talk about stuff and they're glad to share their ideas, knowledge and enthusiasm.

There's a real childlike joy in everything and it's infectious. They're also usually pretty pleased when they see that I'm not out to create a "cheap thrills" style documentary which just goes on about the same old things "ooh, isn't Trex big - let's see what would happen if it ate a car"...

The only downside right now is that so many of my potential interviewees work at the natural history museum and although the scientists are generally keen, the organisation itself is a little difficult to navigate...

Useful work? hmmm not sure

I managed to make lots of notes today on future documentatry projects, and I now know what theropods I'm going to need to animate and what scenes i'm creating for trilobites... however, I'm not sure how much use it all is.

I feel like there's an awful lot of useful work I could be doing, but I'm not sure if I'm actually doing it or not. In fact I'm not sure if the most useful thing i could be doing is simply to read all the books I've ordered and get a thorough grounding in all my subjects....

My plan is to work on several projects at once - all with a science/natural history theme. the idea being that by doing this, I can always have something to be getting on with when one project has to pause. Plus, there's an economy of scale because there are a lot of places (the natural history museum, the university of Edinburgh, manchester, etc. where if I can schedule lots of interviews in a day, I can cover a lot of ground.

The downside is that I need to know what I'm doing and be very organised as well as knowing the subjects thoroughly so I can ask sensible questions.

Will it work? stay tuned...

why macs are so crap

I finally got to write the tutorial for Computer music magazine on editing today. I had to write two tutorials on how to edit a rock video using cheap software on a Mac and a PC.

The PC version was relatively straightforward and as expected, the mac version was a real pig.

Obviously, the fact that I'm using cheap and free software means there aren't the options i'd like and that's a bit frustrating, but worse than that is the Apple ethos which pervades everything they do.

It's not that the mac does things differently to the PC - and that I'm used to the way the PC works - it's more that the very thing the Mac is sold on is fake.

let me explain:

Macs are sold on the idea that they're the arty person's computer. They're creative where the PC is businesslike. However, in truth, the mac makes it very very easy to do the things its programmers think you'd want to do. The predictable dull, businesslike things work perfectly and intuatively in just the way you'd expect them to.

However, if you deviate. if you want to do something different. if you have, horror of horrors, your own creative idea of what you want to do or how you want to do it, the architecture makes it virtually impossible.

The mac is built on the impossibly arogant notion that the programmers will have thought of everything you might want to do and planned for you the perfect way to do it. This is almost never true in real life.

It's a bit like having a car which has just one button on the dashboard marked "go home". Press the button and the car will go home. It's a triumph of engineering - the easiest car to drive ever created.

Unless you want to go somewhere other than home.

in which case you have to take the engine out or buy a new car.

and this extends to other apple products: take the ipod - beautiful piece of design and I wouldn't be without mine. But what if you don't want to use the clumsy Itunes? what if you just want to drag your tunes from the desktop to the ipod - you can do it with every other mp3 player on the market. But with the ipod, all your files are renamed and re-positioned so you can't tell which song is which file. so when itunes stops working -or when you're on a computer you haven't installed it on or when you're using your machine for something else and don't want to have it getting in the way - you're stuffed.

By contrast, the PC allows gives you options - creative possibilities - everything you want to do can be done several different ways and if one doesn't work, proves difficult, or you just don't like it, you can pick another.

Now that's an artist's computer.

The computer's still trying to copy my hard drive and that means I can't work on anything but the laptop today. It looks like it'll be a few days before it's finished. I'm supposed to be writing a tutorial on editing a pop promo but I can't do that either because I don't have the footage,

Still, I do manage to rough out a company web page so people can get some idea of the projects I'm working on - I don't need anything special - just a bit of info on the documentaries I'm making. I've also been checking out elance - I'm thinking possibly of farming out some of the animation work to others - as there's such a lot of it to do in my proposed projects.

slowing down

Finally got the disk copying software so I can back up my hard drive. That will be done over the weekend – everything’s slowing down including the hard drive, the internet and me, so I’m hoping once the clone is done, I can get back to editing next week (although I’ll have to spend Monday on the Computer Music tutorial).

There are just so many things that get in the way of the stuff you want to be doing. Still, I managed to get some research done for my other planned docs and I’m well into researching theropods and ungulates now….

My article in the Guardian will come out on the 26th, which will be nice....

I really should get a company website up which I can point people to - nothing too flashy, but something that will outline my projects....

another job for another day.

Robots, trilobites and disk copying utilities

Pop videos
Headlong back into work yesterday, I’ve got a tutorial to write for Computer Music magazine. Basically they want me to show people who’ve never touched video before how to make a pop promo on PC or Mac.

The software they sent over wasn’t really up to the job, but luckily they were able to switch for more workable programmes (Sony Vegas for the PC and Imovie for the Mac). I did the PC edit fine using the 2 camera shoot they’d done at a live venue, but since imovie can’t syncronise two tracks of video at once, I’m going to have to adopt a different approach for the mac version (which is good anyway because it will make the feature more interesting).

The band who sent the footage are going to shoot some more over the weekend – a bit of a pain for them, but I’m sure they’ll get a lot of publicity out of it – not to mention a free video on youtube.

Although the tutorial is easy enough to do, it’s a bit frustrating knowing that if I was using Premiere or FCP, I could produce a much better piece of video. Still, it should give a good set of pointers to people new to video editing.

Robots, trilobites and disk copying utilities
I can’t do too much work on the documentary right now, since my computer’s hard drive has slowed right up (I think there’s a corruption there somewhere and it’s going to give up). I’ve bought a replacement, and bought a utility for cloning my disk, but the company selling me the software (regsoft) are having trouble with there servers so I can’t download it. They’re also refusing to answer my emails which is annoying.

Anyway, can’t edit with Premiere Pro right now, so I’ve been doing two things today:

Making a mock-up of a video podcast on paleontology using footage from my last doc and some 3d animation. I want to sell the idea to the Natural History Museum – because I’d love to make it – I’d even give them a knock down price because it would allow me to do interviews with lots of their experts which I could then edit into my own productions! The result needs polish – but this is just a taster, so it should be OK. Hopefully should be getting a meeting with them in the next couple of weeks.

Starting to research my next projects. I’ve ordered lots of books on lots of subjects I’d like to make programmes about (from robots to trilobites) and I’m now trying to track down people who might be able to help with advice and interviews. It’s quite a process, but I think I’m covering a lot of ground. I want to make programmes in parallel rather than one at a time because whenever I hit the roadblocks on one programme (which frequently happens when you can’t get interviewees or you’re waiting for rendering to be done for 3d sections) you can be working on something else.

There’s also an “economies of scale” thing – if I’m doing several interviews for different projects then it will be worth my while traveling a little to do them – hopefully I can schedule all my Scotland or Paris or New York interviews over a couple of days.

Tax does have to be taxing

With George back from hospital I can now try to start putting my work life back together. This means there's a whole raft of bitty things to do today the most pressing of which is my self assesment tax form.

I do a lot of adding up of recipts and even though I've been freelance for years, this process always leaves me with a vague sense that I've missed something big or got something wrong that will come back to haunt me some time in the next 5 years.

I'm hoping not, but who knows?

It's a little like being back at school - kn0wing your homework will be marked and knowing there will be consequences if you get it wrong, but not having any idea of the marking criterior or what the examiner is looking for.

"Tax doesn't have to be taxing" the revenue's slogan is relentlessly repeated on TV and the radio- but the rest of the advertising is nothing but thinly veiled threats. No hint of why it doesn't have to be taxing or indication of the help they're offering to stop it from being taxing. Like a doctor claiming "this will hurt me more than it hurts you" it's simply untrue.

If the adverts were made by any privately owned business they'd be illegal - judged to misrepresent the facts.

Natural history, the meaning of life and racist taxi drivers

Turned on my PC on New year’s day to discover that it didn’t boot. The problem turned out to be a bad sector (which I discovered when I took the hard drive out and put it in another machine to check it). The problem seems to have been solved but worryingly video isn’t playing back correctly and the whole system seem s to be slowing down. I resolve to buy a new hard drive and copy everything to it – just in case there’s something more serious going on.

In any case, I can’t edit video properly – which is going to cause problems not just for the Gliese project but for another reason.

Having talked to my friend at the Natural History Museum, we’re going to put together a proposal to create a regular video podcast for them. I’d love to do this and it will give me the opportunity to do interviews I can then use in some of my other project ideas… however, the museum has no money and although I’m prepared to do it cheaply, I’m not going to work for nothing.

In order to convince the museum I want to edit a pilot from the footage shot for my Prehistoric shark documentary. I can’t do that until I get my editing machine working. And given that George goes into hospital for his operation on Monday, time is going to be short.

Anyway, I’m, seeing Raoul from the museum over the weekend and we’ll see what kind of a proposal we can put together then.



Article on documentary making
This morning I finished (in rather a rush) my article for Digital Video Magazine on documentary filmmaking. It included a diary of my shark documentary which was interesting to write – and I could have gone on and on - as it was, the article over ran by about 700 words. This would normally mean I’d re-edit it, but I know the folks at Digital Video and they know my situation with George and so they’ll understand that I couldn’t be quite as fussy as I’d have liked to be about the length.

Still, I think I’ve put a lot of good detail in the article, and it should be an interesting and informative read.



Interview
Today I’m interviewing a microbiologist about setting up colonies on alien worlds in Milton Keynes. Ok – I’m interviewing a microbiologist in Milton Keynes about setting up colonies on alien worlds… interesting stuff and got some great material from him. He’d obviously been interviewed before, and knew how to keep his answers brief and clear. He was also well aware of talking in complete sentences so should be very easy to edit.

He’s involved in some really interesting speculative ideas – for example he’s set up a group to fund experiments which link environmental research and space science – and he’s also got prizes set up for (among other things) the first person to circumnavigate the moon and the first person to climb the highest mountain in the solar system. He’s not expecting the prizes to be claimed yet, but sees space exploration as fundamental to what it is to be human. It’s these attempts to make the future graspable that I’m interested in for the documentary. Before you can reach for the future, you have to SEE it.

“we’re all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars” as Oscar Wilde said.

Racist taxit driver
On the way from the station to the university I got stuck with the traditional talkative genial racist taxi driver. He told me of how new Polish homless people are pushing our own good honest British homeless people out. He told me of how areas which were once happy and thriving are now no-go areas because of immigration. He talked a lot about people who he called “belligerents” – I’m not quite sure who these are, but I now know they carry machetties and come from “god knows where”.

I tried to point out that all the areas I’d lived in London (New Cross, Deptford, East Dulwich, Brockley) had been no-go areas 20 years ago and were now thriving and happy, but he didn’t seem to want to know. I even mentioned that statistically you’re safer on the streets today than you ever were – but this didn’t seem to sway him.

On the way back, I thankfully got a Muslim taxi driver who’s only worry was the traffic. In contrast to the previous driver, he thought Milton Keynes was a nice place to live. I suppose life is what you make it.

I'm back to work for the first time since before Christmas.



The first day back leaves me picking up the pieces and trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing at work. I quickly ran out a list of things to do and it looks long and complicated. when comparing the list to how long I've got to get back up and running, things get more tricky...



I'm off to film in Milton Keynes on Friday to do an interview, so will have to spend some of thursday preparing,



I've got two deadlines (for Digital Video magazine) for Friday and on Monday, George goes into hospital, so I can write off the rest of the next week.



In the meantime, the todo list gets longer as it occurs to me that the long shadow of the Jan 31st tax deadline is looming. In addition, you can't have a break from work without returning with a list of new ideas and the New Year is a time for stepping back and taking a longer term view of how you're going to focus. When the first few weeks of the new year are a crazy, unpredictable mess, it can be a little frustrating to your new year plans.... still, hopefully if I can get some of my future plans down on (digital) paper before they vanish into the turmoil of the Now, maybe I've got a chance... That leaves me spending a valuable day doing things that aren't urgent and leaving the urgent things like my deadlines to become more so...

Books

Having decided that instead of working on documentaries in a strict order, and being constantly frustrated when things stall which they frequently do for a thousand reasons, I'm going to start on the research phase of several - get things moving on finding interviewees - and then move each project forward as and when I can. To this end, I've ordered a very diverse collection of books from Amazon...



That said, the animations the computer has been rendering over Christmas are mostly looking pretty good - here's a sneak preview: