I've been wanting to update this site for some time but have been waiting for the release of Joomla 1.5 before continuing. However, it seems that we'll actually get the Indiana Jones sequel that been rumoured for the past decade before 1.5 appears. In the meantime, I'll simply say that I'll get around to it as soon as the upgrade path from 1.0.11 to 1.5 is solid. For instance, I plan to have a revolving banner at the top of the page featuring dedicated artwork by various comic artists known or unknown. Should be fun. I'll also update the rest of the work section with the two music videos I recently finished. In the meantime, I've enabled the RSS feeds to this blog (see under the main menu). Works, too!

Dinamo has been growing in leaps and bounds in recent weeks. All potential work (and therefore under strict Non-Disclosure Agreements) but the news will be big if everything falls into place. The final leg of Cwm Teg production is upon us and we're hoping that S4C agree to make another series. Oh, so much to tell but unable to tell publicly.

Finally, Ben, Merida and I have decided to stop doing the Film Xulu and WAG nights. I've been running them on and off for the past four years, I think. It may be five but I really can't remember. In that time, our audiences have waxed and waned but recently things have become very depressing. I'm no longer the film enthusiast looking for a way into the industry and our fresh audience have either moved away or joined me among the ranks of professional media types. It was proving more and more difficult to find the time to dedicate to the nights and, given the complete lack of distress at their passing, were clearly off everyone's radar. End of an era but if you don't even have the support of your local community, what's the point?

Anyway, Dinamo is far more interesting at the moment and I hope to be able to share my plans soon. World domination - here I come!

I went to see Zodiac yesterday evening. Unfortunately, because everyone else had bailed on me, I had to go on my own. Rather foolishly I decided to park my car in Grangetown instead of nearer the cinema in the voucher parking zone. I normally park there during the day if I go into town, but on this occasion I threw caution to the wind.

Anyway, the film was excellent - well scripted, acted and directed. From a professional point of view, it's the first time I've seen a digital movie that doesn't belie its origins. It's a beautiful piece of work and definitely a David Fincher production - lots of ambient sodium lighting, anamorphic lens flares and deep shadows. Great stuff. Even though the film was long, it kept me enthralled throughout and I really felt part of the action. It reminded me of 13 Days, another excellent film, that seeks to retell a well-known true story while maintaining the tension. In some ways, the Zodiac killer is simply a catalyst for the film's real focus - the obsession with truth, male bonding and the procedure of law and detective investigations. I highly recommend it.

Coming out of the cinema at 11.45pm, I began the ten-minute walk to my car. Suddenly, I began to get the uneasy feeling I was still in the movie and things weren't as they seemed. The lighting on the dark streets of Cardiff was the same as that of the film, the pavements were empty and only a few cars were driving round. A few groups of drunken friends were shouting from different directions and I began to feel very afraid. As I made my way past the shadowy office blocks that loomed through the yellow glow of the street lamps, I began to relive the scene where the Zodiac murdered an innocent taxi driver. I quickened my pace but it didn't make me feel any less scared. As I made my way out of the town centre and towards the bridge into Grangetown, people started to appear walking on the other side of the road, clearly wandering aimlessly and doubling back suddenly as I was passing. Another man appeared out of an alley way and walked parallel with me. I'd never felt so threatened and intimidated in all the time I've lived in this city. Avoiding them all as much as possible, I raced to my car, locked the doors and drove home as quickly as I could.

Was it my imagination playing tricks? Had I been so affected by the film that I saw anonymous danger everywhere? Paranoia can breed such terror and distress.

I'll probably get the film on DVD.

Random posts from the Cinematography Mailing list describing how to make video look more like film: 

Desaturate, particularly reds and blues. Also lower the luminance a bit in those two colors.
Add grain.

A nice little post trick is to put a very slight blur on the blacks only.

1. Make a second layer of the footage on top of the original.
2. Put a slight blur on the entire bottom layer.
3. With the keyer, key out the deepest black on the top layer, revealing the slightly blurred bottom layer.
4. Feather the key so it's not a harsh delineation.
5. On the bottom layer, adjust the amount of blur to taste. This will give you a rather filmic "velvet" look to the blacks without blurring the whole picture. The whites will still be tack-sharp.

This gives the same effect of placing a light diffusion in the telecine path; since you're dealing with a negative, the highlights on the negative will be blurred, thus the blacks in the positive picture. 

Hurrah! The cold is over and spring is here. Not that is was particularly cold this winter, more like an annoying chill. I think I only wore my Thinsulate hat once!

Anyway, in the two months since my last post, we completed work on the With Temptation video, we've almost finished the effects on a short film and development work has begun on future projects, none of which I can discuss here. I'm going to post some images from the Within Temptation video soon, mainly because the video was rejected by the band causing the collapse of the production company and the loss of over half our payment. We were blamed for that loss but, in our defence, I have to point out that we had about five days to do nearly seventy greenscreen and 3D FX shots - all from under-lit and under-exposed HD which had been captured at the wrong size. In the end, I barely had time to review all the shots before they were sent off, some of which had even been shot without our supervision, and I had to redo some at the last minute because of excessive noise. Because the on-set monitor was a low-quality LCD display, the image looked brighter than it actually was and so when I came to do the compositing, I had raise the brightness of the image by about 225% to compensate, which, in turn, revealed all the digital noise. The director had been working the misapprehension that we'd be working over Christmas - no chance! - and that he could just send us loads of shots to do that he could then choose from - which planet were you from again? Under such pressures and ridiculous time constraints, I'm not surprised we failed. Anyway, lesson learnt and I won't be doing anything so stupid again.

The short film is almost complete and I'll be able to post that soon. Apart from that, there's nothing new on the work front except that I'll be redoing the Dinamo website next week and will be converting everything to flash movies (similar to Youtube) so that everything plays in the same window. I'm then going to do the same for this site, as well as post Something Real on Youtube!

For the past two weeks, I've barely been in work because I was selected for jury duty. I sat on three trials in total, one ended in a hung jury, the others were 'not guilty'. It was a really interesting experience to see the process from beginning to end and I'd be happy to do it again, mainly because I got to be foreman for the last two trials! I could have avoided it for six months but I felt it was the right thing to do and I knew there weren't any great deadlines looming. Life changing? Perhaps.

What I am looking forward to at the moment? Besides all the new development work, I'm looking forward to cinema-going in May and watching Spider-man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and (maybe) Shrek 3. Also Transformers (undecided), Bourne Ultimatum (you know it's going to be good) and 300 (greenscreen!) Out at the moment is the excellent Hot Fuzz and the rather cheerful Music and Lyrics (better than I expected.)

Enjoy.