Blade Edge

Computer software | Video production | My life in general

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The New Car – Tiburon or 350Z?

November 15th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So it’s been over a month since I totaled my Tiburon GT and I still haven’t found a new car, although it’s been really hard finding time to search since I first had to wait to pay off the auto loan for the Tib, which cleared at the start of this month, and then before I had a chance to search my friend dies and I’m building this new computer and work gets backed up…

But now I’m back on it finally and tonight I typed “used autos” in my Google search bar and started looking. Now originally I just wanted another Tiburon. I still have a bunch of parts I managed to pull off my old one, and I really liked the car in terms of style and performance. My plan though (before the accident) was to eventually sell the Tibby for an Infiniti G35 coupe. Now that I totaled it, I’m hesitant to go out and drop some hefty cash for the G35. My friend Sash started talking to me about a middle-ground solution, the Nissan 350Z. Infiniti is to Nissan kinda like what Lexus is to Toyota, furthermore the G35 is built off the 350 (name-wise too – they took the 0 off 350 and put a G in front of it). In fact a friend of mine just recently bought a G35 sedan and can take it to either a Nissan or Infiniti dealer.

So okay, it’s a good middle-ground – but I was still worried about price – after all the 350Z does start at around $29k. But when a friend of mine showed me some online that were down to $17k I simply lost my mind . So I looked tonight for both Tiburons and 350Zs and to my surprise I found a lot more Zs out there than Tiburons that fit my tastes (black/black, manual, private seller). In fact I have two Zs I’m going to call up tomorrow to look at and absolutely no Tiburons on my list as of right now. Here are the two Zs in question:

Tomorrow I’m going to call the owners up and make sure the cars are still up for sale, then schedule visits to drive em around, then do a Carfax checkup on the one I like most (if either) and then put a payment down.

There was also this one that caught my eye

But it was too personalized, I want a car that has some mods too it but that leaves room for me to add my own mark on it as well.

So the count so far?

350Z – 2
Tiburon – 0

Stay tuned…

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The Rig is Assembled

November 13th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

It’s time I shared the story of what’s been keeping me occupied these past few days – besides the funeral and the consoling of friends and all that un-fun stuff – and that was building my new computer. I’ve been saying for at least a decade now that I would buy the parts and build my own rig. Being the master of procrastination that I am (or the fact that I’ve just been a poor and cheap bastard until like, last year) it’s taken me this long to do it, but it’s finally done.

I started on Wednesday night, because I knew I had to a) clean up my room so I would have floor space to assemble things and b) clean up my desk so that I could set up all the new equipment. (Note that from here on out I’m just going to say what I did in the order I did it and not mention dates cause I barely slept so I have no clue what day was what when I did stuff :P) Cleaning the room wasn’t so bad – the desk was a bit tougher because I had to clear off all the electronics, all the wires, dust and then wipe it down. But hey it certainly looked cleaner than it has in a long time 😛

Once I cleaned and dusted off the surface I placed everything back where it belonged and also put back most of the wires that I would be hooking up later. Yup, quite the mess down there, but I would be cleaning that all up much later.

So the next night one of my old friends, Mike, came over, one who had built many computers himself, and assisted me in getting through the rough first stages. I already had a lot of the stuff unpacked, and so we took apart the case – the two side panels, the motherboard tray and the PSU cover. In trying to get the PSU in Mike helpfully told me that they usually go in with the power rating label beneath the switch right-side up. So, okay – what do I know – we try fitting it in, but there’s this little bracket on the side that’s not letting it slide all the way in. So  Mike manages to peel off the bracket with his bare hands (I knew I had him there for something) and the PSU fits all the way in. Wheee! Uhm… not? Now we can’t seem to line up the plate that goes over the back and screws onto the case to hold in the power supply. Why? Cause it’s in upside down!! Yup, let that be a lesson to you, kids. See? Upside down is right side up…

Sooo next step was to take the motherboard tray and screw in my standoffs. You have to screw in the standoffs by hand and Mike forgot his tightener tool so he had me take a Needlenose plier to twist the standoffs down a bit more so that they wouldn’t come loose when screwing and un-screwing the motherboard later down the road if need be. Then I screwed down the brackets that would hold my heatsink/fan over the CPU and screwed the ASUS P5H-D motherboard onto the tray.

So next we went to the bathroom to apply the cleaning solvent Mike brought over to the heatsink and CPU core to make sure we got the best transference of heat from the core to the heatsink as possible. After that we came back to my room and dropped the Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz CPU into the socket and tightened down the latch, applied the bb-sized dab of thermal paste, then mounted the huge-ass Zalman on top and ever so carefully screwed it down. Then we connected the heatsink fan and rear case fan to the mobo power slots. Oh and then we also slotted in the two 1GB Corsair memory modules.

The next few steps consisted of sliding the mobo tray back into the case and screwing it down (yey thumbscrews!), slotting in the Sapphire Radeon 1900GT, attaching the power, reset, LEDs and case speaker to the mobo, and plugging in the main mobo power cable, the PCIx power cable for the card and the additional mobo power connector by the rear case fan.

After all that – the moment of truth. We plugged in one of the monitors, plugged in the power supply, crossed our fingers and hit the power button. And PRESTO!!

We had lift off! Once we reached the error screen because there was no OS to load we shut her back down and I gave mike a hearty slap on the back and shook his hand for getting me up and running so quick – less than two hours – I don’t even want to guess how long it would have taken me by myself. Just cause I’ve been reading for years about assembling computers doesn’t mean I think I can actually do it without screwing up the first time.

So yea – this is what my room looked like a few hours later, after I had the Sony DVD-ROM drive installed along with the SATA Western Digital 150GB 10kRPM Raptor so that I could install Windows XP Pro. At first the Sony drive was in the top bay, but then I realized that the IDE cable labeled CD-ROM didn’t actually fit into the Sony’s IDE connector, and I instead had to use the cable labeled HDD. Uh oh. This meant I had to place the DVD drive in the bottom-most bay and pray the slave connection on the cable reached the top-most hard drive bay, since I had planned on installing one of my IDE hard drives. Yeesh. Next I pulled my PS/2 keyboard from the closet and hooked that up along with my USB travel mouse for input. At first I partitioned my Windows install, because I wanted to minimize the damage should Windows crash on me, but Mike told me later that portioning a hard drive like my Raptor wasn’t the best thing to do, so I wiped XP and reinstalled – I kinda had to anyways since I made the XP partition too small. Cause I’m retarded like that. Small set back.

So I again loaded XP and then began installing drivers galore, starting of course with my motherboard, then video card. Next I installed the SATA Plextor DVD/CD writer. Thank god I decided at the last moment to get the SATA version – I wouldn’t have had an extra IDE connector for my hard drive! After installing those drivers I installed the SoundBlaster X-Fi card and then raided an old PC I had lying around for the audio cable that connects the DVD drive to the sound card. Loaded up those drivers and then installed my second hard drive, an IDE Western Digital 150GB Caviar. I had to tilt the drive up slightly so that the IDE slave connector would reach it but I screwed it down in the front so it’s stable.

By this time I had also hooked up the rest of the case fans – one up top to blow air up and out and two in front to suck in air over the hard drives and towards the video card(s). These took regular molex connectors and didn’t plug into the mobo, which kinda sucked because now I can’t control them with a fanbus or an application like Speedfan. Oh wells. I also plugged the firewire and USB cables from the front I/O panel to the motherboard, and installed the extra 2 USB ports in the second x16 PCIx slot.

Now here’s where I almost had a heart attack. The connectors for the USB cables (there are two) on the mobo are colored blue, as is the color of the cable connector running from the extra 2-port USB panel. From the case’s front I/O planel there was a blue and a black connector. Without thinking to check the wiring diagram from the case, I plugged the blue connector from the front I/O shield into the blue USB connection on the mobo along with the one from the rear panel, and the black connector to the firewire connector on the mobo. When the front I/O USB wouldn’t work, I tried switching the cables, but the front I/O still wouldn’t work. That’s when I looked at the cable diagram from the case guide and realized I was plugging the front I/O’s firewire cable to the mobo’s USB connection – something which in both the case and mobo instructions is labeled as a BIG NO-NO YOU WILL RUIN YOUR CONNECTION ON THE MOBO!!!

Luckily no damage was done, and I plugged the cables into their correct ports and everything was fine… well I still haven’t been able to test the front firewire connection. But – oh well, heh. We’ll just assume it works (please?).

So of course the next step was to get the WiFi up and running so I could keep installing apps and drivers, oh and I also hooked up my external drive as well since it had all my backups and I had run out of IDE connectors. Bah! 😛 I plugged in my second monitor and left my case open should I run into any problems. Hooked up the speakers too to test the sound card.

Finally satisfied, I slid the mobo tray all the way back in, tied up some loose case wires and packed the unused power connections up on top of the disc drives to keep the way clear of the two front fans so my video card didn’t choke on it’s own hot air.

Many hours later, after organizing my cables with velcro-ties (those things are teh shiznit) This was the scene I beheld. Ahhhh… so beautiful.

I had to cut away the back paneling of the cabinet because the tower was too deep, but that’s okay because it’s easier now to reach behind and fiddle with stiff should I need to. Looks ugly I admit but everything is bundled up so it’s quite easy to find stuff. I have my external hard drive, computer and both monitors plugged into the APC battery backup, which should give me at least 6 minutes to back up and shut down. Plus my UPS is connected to my PC via USB to manage shutdown should I not be at my computer.

Here’s a shot of the case all badged’ out. Yea baby. The external drive is way back partially covering the top fan to help keep it cool.

So that’s pretty much that. I have a few kinks to work out still – MaxiVista isn’t all I hoped it would be, though I’m hoping I can get the issues resolved. I think it may be the ATI Catalyst panel screwing things up, but everytime MaxiVista loads up the extra display it appears to the right instead of the center where I had it last. And sometimes I can’t see anything but the background, sometimes it makes my window placement act funny, and when I log off to secure the computer (user-switch back to the main login screen) it kills the extended desktop, which means when I log back in I have to reconfigure it again. Bah. I’m thinking I might just use Remote Desktop and run some apps from my laptop instead and have it network-drived to the desktop so I don’t have to sync up files.

But for now I’m happy, can’t wait to get back up to speed with other things enough so that I can fire up some games on this puppy and really kick back! Wheeeeee!!!

Till next time…

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Worst Night EVARRRRR

November 7th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I went to the gym last nite like I always do on Tuesdays to hang out with the crew. Got there around 10:40 and ppl were already well into working out and stuff as usual. Around 11:30 my friend Jon walked up to me and my best bud Sasha and said “Hey Sash you’re gonna wanna see this. Or maybe not.” When we asked what he was about to do he said he was doing a quad-front off mini-tramp into the foam pit.

Let me pause here to explain a few things. First, obviously, a quad-front is four front flips. A mini-tramp is a small trampoline set at a 45-degree angle to help “block” you and translate your forward running momentum upwards. A foam pit is (in this case) a 7-foot deep open pit with foam mats on the bottom and hundreds of 6x6in foam blocks filling it up – think of a kid’s ballroom.

Now, four front flips is severely pushing anyone’s limits, even mine and my friend Sasha. But it was a foam pit so theoretically should he not make it the foam would catch him. Although the level of the foam was about 2 feet lower than the floor (it should be level with the floor but over time the foam blocks compact and need to be “fluffed”) he had piled a good amount of blocks on his intended landing zone. There were about a dozen people at the gym but only a few of us stood witness by the pit as he made his attempt. He ran forth and took off from the mini-tramp, executing three flips before hitting the foam and was still flipping as he entered the pit, missing his fluffed pile of blocks. We heard an audible thunk a mere second after he disappeared under the foam and feared the worst.

After hearing the noise Sash told me to jump in and check on him, which I was already doing. I jumped into the pit and looked to see if he was moving. He wasn’t so I dug down further (digging into a pit is like digging into loose sand – if you don’t fling the blocks far enough away they roll back down into the hole) to try to expose his head, because the foam blocks muffle sound very well, so if he was just in a position where he couldn’t move but was conscious, I wanted to hear him. When I couldn’t hear anything I checked for a pulse, it was rapid but there. His back was sticking up, hunched over, and it looked like his head was ducked underneath still in the tucked flipping position, so I checked to make sure he was still breathing and not suffocating on the foam. I couldn’t hear any respiration when I put my ear against his back, so I called in more people – two more guys who had had first-aid/EMS training in the past jumped in and we talked about getting him out of there so we could start CPR. Wary of his neck we decided to roll him over. In the process of stabilizing his head one of the guys felt wetness – we figured he threw up. We immediately rolled him over to work on clearing his airway.

It gets grisly from here out. To protect those with weak stomachs or who just don’t wanna know I’ve colored the text the same as the background – highlight to read.

As soon as we pulled his head out we realized with horror that all our expectations about the severity of his injury were infinitesimal compared to what actually happened. He didn’t throw up – he was hemorrhaging on his own blood, probably from biting his tongue, but also probably from simple massive head trauma. His cheeks were so swollen with blood and his jaw was definitely broken. His eyes were swollen shut but looked like they wanted to pop out of his sockets. his left brow ridge was clearly fractured. His entire face was just one huge bruise. The two guys (I know one was Ibrahim but I don’t know the other guy’s name – actually I know I just can’t remember) and I worked to clear his mouth of blood and get the tongue out of the way to begin CPR. We couldn’t clear it with our fingers so Ibrahim used chest compression. Lots of blood and something (part of his tongue?) came out as well, but we heard air making it into his lungs. Ibrahim was more recently trained than me and the other guy and even had a capsule on his keychain containing a plastic sheet with a filter we used to place over Jon’s face to begin CPR.

The police medical first response team arrived and we were finally able to get him out of the pit (no mean task, Jon was a big guy). I remained in the pit at the edge to keep his head stabilized while the medical team went to work resuscitating him and applying the automatic defib machine.

We still had a weak pulse and were manually resuscitating him when EMS arrived. At this point they completely took over the show, which was fine with me. I wasn’t feeling sick or anything but I was a bit shaky, and me and the three guys went to the restroom to wash up and get all the blood off our hands and arms. My lower left pant leg too was soaked and I had more higher up in spots and patches. My shirt had spots as well. Blood was on my shoes and even on my socks and inside my left shoe. I threw all my clothes out when I got home. Screw it.

They worked on Jon for a good 15 minutes before carting him off to the hospital, still manually pumping air into him and getting an irregular heartbeat. We had to stick around for another hour and a half waiting for the police detectives to arrive so we could all give statements. After that Sash and I had to clear people out and lock up the gym and finally head for the hospital.

We got to the hospital and were able to see the doctor, who of course couldn’t reveal the status of Jon because we weren’t kin, but he and the nurse dropped pretty convincing hints. The doc, after hearing Sasha re-tell what happened, stood up to shake our hands, saying we did a “good job trying to help him”. And then after the doctor left the nurse told us he “went quick, he didn’t feel any pain”. It’s pretty easy to read between the lines. His ex-girlfriend and her friend showed up for a while but had to leave because they couldn’t stay any longer. His room mate came next with his girl and another of our friends. We got hold of his step-dad around 4am for confirmation that Jon was in fact dead. I finally got back home at close to 5am and hopped straight into the shower.

Today I heard from Sash that the cause of death was a broken neck – his spine had been pushed up into his brain at the moment of impact – coupled with the massive head trauma, the coroner said he had a thin skull and that he needed to get a → 2 CommentsTags:

The first shipment arrives!!

November 7th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Whoohooo! The UPS truck dropped off some early early early xmas gifts for me . It’s unfortunate, but not all my computer parts were able to ship from the warehouse in Edison, NJ. My case is coming in from CA and my power supply from TN. So the PSU will arrive tomorrow and the case on Thursday 😛 Oh wells. P1ctar!!!11

My monitor also arrived today. It didn’t come with a DVI cable unfortunately, just RGB. So I’ll have to add that to the shopping list. I plugged it in place of my current one just to test it tho and it looks awesome – no dead pixels or anything *phew!*. I was going to hook it up to my old little lappie and install MaxiVista for an early glimpse of three-monitor goodness but I can’t seem to find the dongle that I need to connect the RGB plug to the lappie . So I guess I’ll have to wait till Thurs. It’s all set up ready to go tho!

I had to move my A/V switchbox tho – luckily it fits perfectly next to my mouse charger/stand

Schweeeeeet. Well I guess that’s it for now. Gonna try and dig up that dongle again later this evening, and also install the 1GB of RAM I got for this laptop as well.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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Minemineminemineminemine!!

November 6th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Well I bought the compy today. Whooo hoo! NewEgg has warehouses here in Jersey so the parts will be arriving within 5 days. That means I’ll have the weekend to get this baby set up. I’ll def be taking photos of the entire process. Oh yea I also bought 1GB of RAM for my laptop as well. Suhweeeet.

So no word yet still on my auto loan. The bank is supposed to call me today though. And I applied online for a VISA credit card through my bank and while they couldn’t give me instant approval, I do have a number to call tomorrow to see what the deal is.

That’s pretty much my excitement for the day. Hoorah for mid-day updates.

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weekend over. byebye weekend

November 6th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

My insurance check for my car (which was totaled a month ago on Tuesday) finally arrived, paying me a cool $3,213.33. I still can’t believe they valued my car at only $100 less than what I initially paid for it. Hells yea! So now I have to go to the bank tomorrow to see about my approval for my $20k auto loan so I can start looking for the new Tibby. Boo yah.

In other news, Salsa’s thread in the Lounge inspired me to create one of my own for video production. Check it out if you feel you may need some services in that area.

So yea one of the girls who came to the gym today for Sunday Open Workout broke her wrist doing a back handspring on the tumble track. She didn’t even scream or anything she just went “oh my gooodddd!!” and lay down and started crying and moaning. Tough kid. I called EMS while some other parents there contacted her parents for me. EMS put her in a sling and carted her off to the hospital. I had to fill out paperwork. I hate paperwork. Damn kids hurting themselves. Who do they think they are??

Yea j/k. Hope she makes a speedy recovery.

Okay I guess that’s it for me. Hrmmm maybe with some of this “free time” I’ve had lately I should straighten up this room of mine… yeaaa this trash bag that’s been sitting here for over a week could prob go out… ‘scuse me…

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New Computaaarrrrr!!!

November 4th, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I finally finished piecing together the rig I’m building. I’ll list all the parts here for you tech heads out there

My subtotal is $1,987.40. Plus there are some mail in rebates that’ll get me back $140 of that. I’ve already bought a refurbished Samsung Syncmaster 172x to match the one I currently have off Amazon for $190 (not bad considering I paid almost $600 for my first one).

Monday I’m going to the bank to see if it’ll be worthwhile to get another personal loan, maybe help out my credit a bit, or if I should just buy it all at once, cause I can afford to do that too. Keep ya all posted.

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Thunderbird a no-go? Maybe not…

November 3rd, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

In my last entry I mentioned how I was going to look into switching from Outlook over to Thunderbird. Well I looked and at first I thought that I would have to stick with Outlook because there was no built-in calendar program or task list. However today I did some digging, starting first with seeing if there were any calendar extensions. The search brought up a Google Calendar extension but that was just a tooltip/status bar thingy, not really an integrated calendar. However I caught sight of something called the Mozilla Calendar project. After searching around a bit more I finally found Lightning. There’s hope once again on the horizon. After installing Lightning and realizing it comes with a task list, I think all my objections to using Thunderbird have been settled. Now I suppose it’s just taking some time to get used to the new app, migrating all my Outlook data over, and settling in. I’m slowly kissing MS Office goodbye in favor of OpenOffice.org – ditching Outlook is my final step. Makes me feel free! Haha. Any of you guys use Thunderbird? Mind offering up some tips to get me started?

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Yey Firefox 2.0

November 2nd, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Well after much delay I finally got around to upgrading to the latest version of Firefox, 2 point oh, early Tues morning. I’m pretty pleased so far. I miss some of the features of Tab Mix Plus, but that’s about it really. Thanks to Lifehacker I was able to get it up and running all tweaked out on only 2 hours, which was good cause it was 4am when I started, haha!

Here’s what I did. First, of course, I installed FF2 (duh). Next I tweaked the about:config file. Make sure you read through all the comments as well as there are additional tips as well as corrections and additions. Next I streamlined my interface. Again, read the comments too! Reading through these two guides also led me to the following three awesome interface extensions

  • Searchbar Autosizer – keep that search bar from wasting space
  • Stop-or-Reload Button – instead of having a Stop and Reload button, the button you get depends on whether the page is loaded or in the process of loading. Genius!
  • Tiny Menu – Consolidates the menu bar into a single drop-down

Then of course I also added a few custom buttons to the toolbar to launch stuff like FireFTP and DownThemAll! without having to go into the Tools menu.

All in all I’m quite happy. Next project is seeing if I can make myself switch from Outlook to Thunderbird…

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Torch! – A look back on my first production

November 2nd, 2006 · Production

So Torch! is finally released. I tried hard to get the file size under 100MB to upload it to MySpace before I finally said “screw it” and uploaded it to Google Video instead – not that I’m really complaining since I see GV as a perfectly viable platform for releasing my videos. You can see it on Google or my MySpace page.

 

Now I’m going to look back at the process I took to make this video, and take you along for the ride, there are many options out there but these are the best video editor apps to try.

The Equipment

This video was edited using Sony’s Vegas software, version 6. I have nothing but good things to say about Vegas. It doesn’t crash, it’s fast, and it has all the features I need and much much more I haven’t had to touch but can’t wait to find an excuse to use.

My camera, on the other hand, was less than optimal for the task, but I was stuck with it, unfortunately. In retrospect I should have borrowed my friend’s Sony cam, a Digital 8mm, but I didn’t want to risk losing it in case his family needed it the same weekend I did for shooting. So I stuck with my family’s Sony cam, a Hi8mm. Yuck, I know.

In addition to the camera, I had to make use of my TV DVD recorder in order to capture the Hi8mm tape digitally. I then had to use #1 DVD Ripper to get the content off the DVD and on to my computer. Yes, this process was indeed teh suck, and is why I’m going to invest in an HD Sony camera if I get more production work.

For still photos I used my Sony Cybershot 4.1 mega pixel camera.

The First Weekend of Filming

The first weekend I started filming (10/13) was actually the third weekend of the show, so I knew I would be down to the wire in getting this done. We did 3 shows on Fri and Sat and 2 shows on Sunday, which means I had a total of 8 shows to get shots from each weekend. I had a rough idea of how I wanted the video to flow in my head, and so I spent this weekend gathering up a bunch of shots I could use to start piecing together the rough draft of the video. Since I couldn’t capture the video directly to my computer, I had to wait the whole weekend to take the camera home and convert and rip the footage all at once.

Getting Organized – Media

Even before I was able to load some footage into Vegas I started to get things organized. There are 9 main segments to the show, so I loaded the soundtrack into the timeline and used markers to designate where each segment began so I could easily find my way around with a simple keystroke (the number of the marker). I then created media bins labeled with each segment to store clips specific to that segment in so I could find footage fast and easy.

Once I got my first weekend of footage into Vegas I loaded the file into Vegas’ Trimmer and started sub-clipping the video into the various segments I had labeled earlier. This became my routine every time I loaded new footage into Vegas. It was the first stage of cutting the material. Anything I knew I couldn’t use didn’t even make it into a media bin for possible inclusion into the video.

The First Draft

The week following the first weekend of shooting was spent first using the footage I had to create the Teaser Trailer that I posted up on my MySpace that Tuesday to get people hyped up, and then to create the rough draft of the video. Obviously there were huge gaps in the footage, as I couldn’t capture the entire show seamlessly even in 8 tries and not all the shots were usable – for example in some I had fluid droplets on the lens from the poi chains spinning close to the camera and throwing off kerosene.

Still, the purpose wasn’t to make an entire video, it was simply to see what shots I would need the following weekend in order to further complete the video. It’s like a puzzle. You have the missing pieces and you need to figure out what will fit in there.

Getting Organized – Production Part 1

With only two weekends left to film, I knew I needed to know specifically what shots I had to get in order to complete the video. To that end I made up a shot list and schedule for the coming weekend.

I’m not sure exactly why I made two separate pages, but I did. Must have been late at nite, haha.

The Issue of Continuity, Second Weekend

Dispite high winds and me having to participate in some shows due to one of the cast being absent a day (I set the camera on a tripod), I still managed to get most of the shots I needed, but not all. And of the ones I did get not all of them had a certain quality I desired – continuity. We should all know of continuity, it’s what makes movies believable. You don’t have your main characters covered in dust and debris from a collapsed building appear to be pristine in the next shot (although in a film like Blues Brothers this was funny).

So for example I would have a shot of the opening “Sweet Dreams” sequence with Nolan wearing his cloak, but in the next shot he would suddenly no longer be wearing the cloak. I obviously was unable to control every little bit of continuity, this was a live show after all, but I had to make sure whatever the viewer was focusing on carried through properly from shot to shot.

Of course I can ignore continuity issues when splicing together the initial footage, because I still have to get an idea of the timing that I need for shots I need to re-shoot. By the end of the second week I had the whole show and most of the credits reel fleshed out, with only two areas of blank footage I simply didn’t have. Of course it wasn’t anywhere near final because a lot needed to be re-shot and I’d prob change things with new footage gained over the last weekend, but at least it was something to show to the rest of the cast.

Getting Organized – Production Part 2

For the final weekend I came up with a new schedule format that worked a lot better – basically I combined the shot and schedule pages. As I said I don’t know what I was thinking the first time around!

In addition to combining the two sheets, I added bold continuity notes to ensure that the shots would mesh properly.

Getting to Direct, Final Weekend

8 shows. That’s all I had left to get what I needed. Knowing this, I brought the video in to show the cast and so I could use it to demonstrate what I needed from them in each show according to my schedule. It was hard, because we had no opportunity to rehearse anything prior to a show, so I did lose some shots because someone in the cast forgot to put their hood down or move far enough to a certain spot on the stage.

Still I managed to get what I needed, even to the point of doing a little bit of pickups after the last show in front of the people still waiting in line to board the hayride, which was rough because after a while the security guards started to nag us to get the stadium lights back on because people were cutting the line.

Putting It All Together

I only had two days after the first weekend to complete the video, but it was really only a matter of replacing some of the shots and adding in missing footage. Thanks to the way I had organized things initially it was very easy to edit each segment of the video on its own and things fell into place very nicely, although there were some tight moments where I didn’t think I had enough footage of certain areas to make things work.

Doing Better the Next Time

There were two main things that tripped me up along this entire process that I need to address the next time I pick up a project like this

  • Proper recording equipment – the time I spent recording to DVD and then ripping from DVD, not to mention the fact that I had to transport the camera home rather than take my laptop to the park and capture and edit the video on the spot, was pretty much insufferable. Invest in a DV camera? Oh hells yes!!
  • Proper editing equipment – my 2 year old Viao laptop was barely up to the task of editing this video, and rendering a high-quality DivX movie took nearly 5 hours. Even the lesser-quality render I used in the final release took almost 3 hours. I’m building a new Core 2 Duo desktop however, so this issue will be solved soon.

In Conclusion…

For my first real production, I couldn’t be happier. I’ve gotten nothing but compliments from everyone who’s seen it, and people saying straight up they’ll call me if they need any video work done. Hopefully a lot of the Six Flags management will see it as well, I gave most of them links to my MySpace profile, and they’ll offer me some work next season.

Boo yah

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