5 seconds and counting
Nov. 3rd, 2007 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkWork is odd at the moment. Not particularly intense but low level draining. Time to read but not to post.
I have this vague memory of following a link from a comment on some random post to the journal of someone who said they did legal work for Fox and that they’d just had to check through the paperwork for a new Joss Whedon series. This was about a month ago. Related or not the “new Joss Whedon series” part seems to be true, which is very good news.
Produced by 20th Century Fox TV -- the studio also behind "Buffy," "Angel" and Whedon's late, lamented "Firefly" -- "Dollhouse" follows a top-secret world of people programmed with different personalities, abilities and memories depending on their mission. After each assignment -- which can be physical, romantic or even illegal -- the characters have their memories wiped clean, and are sent back to a lab (dubbed the "Dollhouse"). Show centers on Dushku's character, Echo, as she slowly begins to develop some self-awareness, which impacts her missions. Beyond Dushku's character, the show will also revolve around the people who run the mysterious "dollhouse" and two other "dolls," a man and woman who are friendly with Echo. Then there's the federal agent who has heard an urban myth about the dolls, and is trying to investigate their existence.
The concept is creepy enough to give the whole thing some edge but the project has already meta’d itself onto the side of the angels by crediting Eliza as a producer. And since everyone seems to be giving their own high concept summary of what it could be (The Matrix meets Joe 90 meets Quantum Leap in drag), I’m hoping for some amalgam of The Girl who was Plugged In , The Remains of the Clones and Asylum!Buffy’s autobiography.
Another distraction from posting, commenting or, worst of all, feedbacking is that I’ve started vidding again.
Nervous about this one, I think it will be mostly for my own satisfaction and a way of exploring some tech/technique things but that’s not a bad thing. It’s based on a movie I love but don’t know if anyone else feels that way or if they do it will seem like gilding the lily. Also not sure about how the black and white source will work. When it was purely a brain vid I wanted to Sin City it but technically that seems to involve overlaying or masking colour source with a desaturated copy so way out of my league for this movie.
Am also trying the m2v approach. This has the advantage (on top of the potential better output quality) that clipping just speeds by. Converting all the parts to DV used to take so long I’d more or less committed the source to memory by the time it was over but this way allowed time to write production notes on each segment which are much more searchable than neuronal connections even when handwritten by a spreadsheet luddite like me.
The m2v clips have to be rendered on the time line but rendering is quick and I think it will be good for me to be discouraged from tinkering with individual clips before laying down a basic draft. FCE seems to have no problem with playing back things on the timeline but it does get unhappy with previewing longer clips in the canvas window. Seems to prefer it if you scrub through them to the good parts. I did also try adding a motion blur to one clip and first time it failed so potentially there may be problems using some filters. Any way, 5 seconds in and so far so good. The iMac is getting a bit old and cranky anyway so will try forcing myself to save frequently and press on.
I have this vague memory of following a link from a comment on some random post to the journal of someone who said they did legal work for Fox and that they’d just had to check through the paperwork for a new Joss Whedon series. This was about a month ago. Related or not the “new Joss Whedon series” part seems to be true, which is very good news.
Produced by 20th Century Fox TV -- the studio also behind "Buffy," "Angel" and Whedon's late, lamented "Firefly" -- "Dollhouse" follows a top-secret world of people programmed with different personalities, abilities and memories depending on their mission. After each assignment -- which can be physical, romantic or even illegal -- the characters have their memories wiped clean, and are sent back to a lab (dubbed the "Dollhouse"). Show centers on Dushku's character, Echo, as she slowly begins to develop some self-awareness, which impacts her missions. Beyond Dushku's character, the show will also revolve around the people who run the mysterious "dollhouse" and two other "dolls," a man and woman who are friendly with Echo. Then there's the federal agent who has heard an urban myth about the dolls, and is trying to investigate their existence.
The concept is creepy enough to give the whole thing some edge but the project has already meta’d itself onto the side of the angels by crediting Eliza as a producer. And since everyone seems to be giving their own high concept summary of what it could be (The Matrix meets Joe 90 meets Quantum Leap in drag), I’m hoping for some amalgam of The Girl who was Plugged In , The Remains of the Clones and Asylum!Buffy’s autobiography.
Another distraction from posting, commenting or, worst of all, feedbacking is that I’ve started vidding again.
Nervous about this one, I think it will be mostly for my own satisfaction and a way of exploring some tech/technique things but that’s not a bad thing. It’s based on a movie I love but don’t know if anyone else feels that way or if they do it will seem like gilding the lily. Also not sure about how the black and white source will work. When it was purely a brain vid I wanted to Sin City it but technically that seems to involve overlaying or masking colour source with a desaturated copy so way out of my league for this movie.
Am also trying the m2v approach. This has the advantage (on top of the potential better output quality) that clipping just speeds by. Converting all the parts to DV used to take so long I’d more or less committed the source to memory by the time it was over but this way allowed time to write production notes on each segment which are much more searchable than neuronal connections even when handwritten by a spreadsheet luddite like me.
The m2v clips have to be rendered on the time line but rendering is quick and I think it will be good for me to be discouraged from tinkering with individual clips before laying down a basic draft. FCE seems to have no problem with playing back things on the timeline but it does get unhappy with previewing longer clips in the canvas window. Seems to prefer it if you scrub through them to the good parts. I did also try adding a motion blur to one clip and first time it failed so potentially there may be problems using some filters. Any way, 5 seconds in and so far so good. The iMac is getting a bit old and cranky anyway so will try forcing myself to save frequently and press on.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 03:29 pm (UTC)My iMac is four years old now, which seems like forever in computer years, but it's recent enough that I have stubbornly resisted buying a new one. I recently added more RAM (technically going beyond the manufacturer's specs, but hey, it's out of warranty anyway) and it seems much happier for the moment.
Glad you're vidding again! Looking forward to seeing what you do.
And I can't help being extremely excited about Joss being back on TV. (:
no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 04:03 pm (UTC)Where did you get the ram from?
no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 06:51 pm (UTC)K is all "Look! Shiny new intel chips," and finding articles to show my model is the second dodgiest in the history of the range. It has 1 GB of memory installed and I have a feeling the current flakiness may be mechanical. Had a scare with it cutting out at random around Easter and read a whole load of mac site horror stories about swollen capacitors and blown power units. We opened up the back to see if it looked like the pictures and could hardly see any of the components for dust! It seemed to recover after blowing away the worst of it with a turkey baster but 6 months is a lot of new dust time in this city.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 04:39 pm (UTC)I need some sort of borders on that front as well. Good luck with the vid. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 07:54 pm (UTC)