Walking. Stop. Motion. Stache bash!
Here’s a quick stop motion I made for fun the other day. Truth be told, when I was in high school, video was my main area of interest before photography. I liked the story telling power that video had and was really excited when a few wicked people taught me Avid software at the age of 17. Evidently, I came out of that world a little but in the last year, almost by accident, I’ve started way more video work. I’m excited to see where this leads but for now, here’s a 72-photo 20-second clip. Big ups to my friend Meaghan for holding the microphone.
Now, for the second year, the dudes at M4K Ottawa had me on to take photos of all the Growers. This year, they managed to raise $28 000 for the Children’s Wish Foundation. Amazing. Check out the fruits of everyone’s labour by clicking the banner.
Stylusts & weekend wrap up…
First weekend of November was crazy busy. Friday night, I was chilling at Babylon with my boy Tom Wrecks, who was performing with Drastik and Illo as The Stylusts. Cashtro was partying too.
Afterwards, I stayed up all night editing a video for my one night exhibit at La Petite Mort Gallery. It isn’t often that I show work in this way so huge thanks to everyone who was able to make it out! I liked being able to invite my friends for a drink in a gallery instead of a bar for once. The photos might stay up till Thursday or something but the gallery is closed Monday and Tuesday. A lot of people who couldn’t make it are asking if images will be posted online anywhere. We’re sorting that out but in case you didn’t already see it, a image from the show:
Got a few things coming down the tube which is very, very nice and appreciated. Winter’s not even here and I’m already thinking of spring and summer 2010.
Last night, I finally got to sit on my couch for first time in about a month (long story) and watched some movies by Michel Brault and Claude Jutra. One of them was called Entre la mer et l’eau douce (1967) and the last one I watched was Rouli-roulant (1966, English title: Devil’s Toy).
This movie might be one of the first Canadian skateboard videos ever made and it ends with a great song sung by the actress Geneviève Bujold. I don’t think it was ever properly released so I made an mp3 from the DVD. Please listen and let us know what you think of this quiet québécois pop song about skateboarding.
Pierre F. Brault – Rouli-roulant (feat. Geneviève Bujold)
PS: Shop at Invisible Cinema. 319 Lisgar at Bank in Ottawa. Over 13000 movies.
Baggy Bottom Boys & Pride Parade
After several months of production and post production, Jokers of the Scene’s video for Baggy Bottom Boys finally dropped a week ago. Bummer. I’m not in it a single time…
Jokers Of The Scene “Baggy Bottom Boys” from Mr Goldbar on Vimeo.
OK, I made it into the video… the spirally thing was a blue balloon that I inflated for ten minutes to a size of over a metre in diametre. I then threw it into the crowd where it didn’t even last five seconds.
To brighten things up, here’s a photo (also involving balloons) from this Sunday’s Pride Parade in Ottawa. Somehow, this pyramid of balloons and colourful parasols completely eclipsed the National War Memorial looking north on Elgin Street. A few more photos on xtra.ca but you’d already know that if you followed me on Twitter.
Video about a new building in the Market
This past Winter, I was invited to contribute to an interesting project aimed at promoting a new apartment building that will get built on Cumberland Street in Ottawa. The ambitiousness of the project was a large part of what drew me to it. After a few meetings, I figured out how I could produce a collection of photos with the intention of stitching them into an engaging video spot using motion graphics.
I’m pretty happy with the end result, which was carefully pieced together by Garry Tutte. Huge shout outs go out to all the models and locations we used to create these. A special mention is owed to Models International Management for providing a significant amount of talent and being awesome to work with. Merci, merci! Also to my pal Hayden Menzies whose art happened to be on display the day we shot the gallery scene.
Suffice to say, a lot of people were involved in this project. Maybe even someone you know. So, give it a watch!
More info on this new building can be acquired at 360lofts.ca.
In other real estate/photo-related news, about a month ago, I covered Urbana, Dharma Developments’ annual charity fundraiser. This year, over $17,500 was raised for Options Bytown, who offers affordable housing and counseling to “individuals who may have very low incomes, a history of homelessness or special needs that may relate to mental illness, HIV/AIDS or substance use.” Great cause. Photos from that are now online.
This week, editing + a shoot in Wakefield + si j’ai le temps, catching up on some French horror movies. C’est vrai.
Man on Wire + The Bridge
Been catching up on a few movies lately. First, The Bridge, which came out a few years ago. I didn’t really think it was super awesome but still I found it to be pretty challenging and brave. Next up was Man on Wire. Someone told me a few months ago that while the trailer was good, the movie didn’t add much to it. Wrong wrong wrong. Man on Wire was really well edited and everything from the expressionistic re-enactments to the talking head interviews were executed in a way that made you feel like you might as well have been watching The Usual Suspects.
What impressed me most though was the archival still photography. I was initially impressed by the photo used on the movie’s poster but being able to see a collection of similar photos throughout the movie is awesome. Here are a few examples.
look closely and you can see Philippe Petit as a black speck floating
can you see him now?
On that note, if yr in Toronto this month, check out Contact and Hot Docs festivals. Tonnes of stuff happening.
Ghislain Poirier
Ninja Tune recording artist Ghislain Poirier played a DJ set at Disorganized last night. The fourth or fifth time he’s headlined this party, I think. Basically, he is to Disorganized what Steve Martin is to Saturday Night Live.
Clickity Click!
Just for fun but I’m at the Genies tonight. Hopefully Ce qu’il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life) wins some awards. Hopefully I’ll run into my pal David Davidson.
I should have some photos from my second weekend with Buried Inside and also a few from an online magazine I contributed to last month in my next post.
À+ dans le bus.
Animation Festival sneak peak
After interning at the Ottawa International Animation Festival a few years ago, they asked me this year to cover a bunch of the events that have been going on since Wednesday. I’m sick sick sick now but it has been a good week and I’ve met a lot of interesting people. Tomorrow’s awards gala at the Museum of Civilization should be pretty amazing. The winning films will also be shown at Ottawa’s Bytowne Cinema at 8pm.
Here are three photos from the last few days.
Seth Green (Robot Chicken)
Animation party people.
Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit)
Seriously, the screenings at the Bytowne and at the Museum of Civilization tomorrow will be awesome.
HOW TO be creative.
Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid.com wrote a list of ways to be creative that can be applied to nearly all “artforms”. It doesn’t pretend to have all the answers but it is a great list to start with and if you want more, he goes into detail further into the article.
PS: I found it on another Ottawa photographer’s blog.
Six movies I just watched.
My school was on a week-long holiday so I hung around to watching some movies. Does anyone else feel productive when they watch movies?
Black Snake Moan (Craig Brewer, 2006)
War Photographer (Christian Frei, 2001)
Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)
The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006)
Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass, 2002)
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
I had been meaning to watch most of these for years now so I’m happy I finally got to it! These along with that Chase Jarvis video I wrote about and I think I’m ready to read a book or something.
How to make a Soundslide
AKA, how I make a Soundslide.
OK, so I am only on the second one I’ve ever made so maybe I’m no expert but I would be embarrassed if I didn’t intuitively know a thing or two about how this stuff works.
In my first project, I had some trouble with the images and the audio syncing up. Turns out my 32-bit mp3 was too much for poor little Soundslides to handle, so remember, folks(!), when you export your audio, 16-bit audio makes the world go ’round.
Now that that’s settled, here’s a bit of insight on how a beginner (me) produces something using Soundslides. First, you need Soundslides, which you can download for free or buy for $40 (Plus edition for $70). Then, you need a still camera. Got one? Good. Next, you need an audio recorder. This could be anything…you could even record onto a styrofoam cup if you want to go through the trouble of transferring it to a digital format. In these first projects, I’m using a MiniDV camera and an external mic. Pros adhering to the industry standard might understandably prefer the M-Audio MicroTrack II. To be honest though, I’m a little surprised that we aren’t hearing more about installing Podzilla on iPods and using its high-quality recording capabilities. I know this requires a bit of effort as it works best on the obsolete 3G iPod, which I now regret selling after getting a 5G iPod video that doesn’t seem to be keen on properly recording audio in Podzilla. In anycase, using a MiniDV camera might not be the prettiest solution but it does the trick.
After recording your audio (interviews, sound effects, ambient noise, music, etc…), take your recording device and dump the content onto your computer. If you are using a MicroTrack or a 3G iPod, you can just drag but if you’re using MiniDV or MiniDisc, you’ll probably have to record it in real time. I’ll focus on how I do this with the MiniDV camera.
First, plug the right firewire cord (4-pin to 6-pin!) into your camera and your computer, then open up iMovie and create a new project. From here, I could just import both audio and video to iMovie but I think this takes up a lot of unnecessary hard drive space and involves a lot of rendering time. Instead, I use iMovie to control the camera as I record using a nice program called Audio Hijack Pro ($32) in System Audio mode. From there, I clean up the audio in Audacity (free!) and finally, lay the audio out in Garage Band.
When you’re doing this audio work, remember to go at it with a plan about how you want to order the corresponding images or else you might find yourself going back on it later. Lets say you get everything right though! Now’s for the fun part. Open Soundslides and create a new one.
Tell the program which folder your selection of images lives and where your audio file lives. You should try and keep everything in a centralized folder so things don’t get too lost. From there, the program will populate the audio and every image in your folder. Since it will take every image in the folder, keep in mind that if you have 200 images in the folder but you really only plan on using 50 of them, you’ll save yourself lots of time by moving or copying these 50 images into a separate folder. Personally, I like to do this by adding stars and labels to my favorite images in Adobe Bridge.
When everything’s imported properly, you’re free to order the images however you like, choose transitions, captions and a bunch of other stuff. When it’s all done, you can Export it and the final product is saved to a folder called something like “save_for_web.
Interviewing is something I’ve got very little experience in but what I’ve learned so far is that you should try and get your subject to avoid answering questions about him or herself with “I” and that when answering questions about others, your subject should refer to these people by name or title rather than use “he”, “she” or “they”.
So how does it look? Take a look at my first project about my Latvian friend. Rolling Stones, please don’t sue. I think we’re even after you shot a music video outside my apartment at 2am.
Powered by WordPress with Hiperminimalist Theme design by Borja Fernandez.
RSS: Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS.