Archive for the ‘Dissertation’ Category

Post production

Monday, May 11th, 2009

I have been looking into post production techniques for a while now but it seems to be something that is never discussed in great detail on the web. I get the impression that if you want to be really good at it you just have to keep trying lots of different things!

Obviously tweaking the levels and hue/saturation in After Effects will make some difference, but tutorials on the act of “grading” film are sparse.

During my search I did come across one thing that will certainly speed up the time spent adjusting the levels and hue adjustment. It is a preset called Rebel CC which uses advanced expressions in After Effects to determine the blacks/whites/greys and shadows across every frame of a movie based on one sample.

This appears to be a really useful preset and I will definitely be using it on my pre-composed video.

I have also been experimenting with the Remove Grain effect. If applied correctly this smooths noise and grain in the footage by blurring it slightly, but without removing any of the detail within the video. For example, if you have a grainy blue square, which has crisp edges, then Remove Grain will smooth the contents of the square without blurring the crisp edges. I’m not sure how it works but it is very efffective!

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Open Web Content

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Something that I have failed to mention so far in relation to the Work Mates project, is my passion for promoting more open Web content. As a result of my dissertation research, and the conclusions that I arrived at, I have really started to believe that the best route forward is to push for more open access to everything that is published on the Internet. The Web inspires people and breeds creativity, and we should embrace it rather than try to stop people from “infringing copyright”. In many ways it benefits the producer of such material, especially as it allows more people to see/hear/play with it. If people respect the purpose of the original material then I see no reason for everything to be freely available.

I may sound naive in saying this, because obviously there are many other things to consider. However, even though my dissertation is purely focussed on music, many of the arguments can be applied to most of the content on the Internet. It discusses the most significant of these in much detail and rationally puts them to rest. (”The Future of Digital Music: How to Overcome the Copyright Crisis” will be available to download in the near future if anyone is interested).

Anyway, back to my original point… My interest in promoting this whole idea has lead me to add as much content to the Work Mates website as possible and encourage it all to be downloaded, shared, and creatively edited (so long as appropriate recognition is given). The episodes will be downloadable in two both SD and HD, the scripts are available, as are many backstage photos and interviews with the cast and crew.

This is something that i really feel strongly about and will push as much as possible. It will be really interesting if people take my material and make something new with it… push it beyond its original intensions and reach more people than I ever could on my own.

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El Mariachi

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Last week I invested in the book ‘Rebel Without a Crew’ by Robert Rodriguez and managed to work my way through it over the weekend. It was very inspiring.

For those of you who don’t know, Robert Rodriguez is a director/scriptwriter/producer/editor, in fact he knows how to perform almost all of the tasks required to produce a feature film. His book (which dates back to 1996), follows his rise to fame and is subtitled, “How a 23-year-old filmmaker with $7,000 became a Hollywood player”.

After speaking with a friend about my video project over the Christmas holidays, he recommended that I check Rodriguez out, as in his first film, he performed all of the roles which you would usually employ a crew to perform; just as I will be doing. (Except the script writing, of course). This book, which follows diary entries throughout Rodriguez’s rollercoaster ride into Hollywood tells all the secrets that a young filmmaker might need to know.

The film is El Mariachi, and is about a young musician in Mexico who accidentally finds himself caught up in the middle of a gang war, through no fault of his own. It was shot in a small Mexican town (the hometown of the lead actor) on a budget of $7,000, and was originally intended for the Spanish straight-to-video market. Rodriguez wanted to practice his film making with a full length movie while making some money at the same time. His idea was to produce this first film, make a profit and then invest the cash into a second film, which would cost more and be even better. And then make a final third movie which would hopefully be good enough for him to get noticed by Hollywood.

However, with his raw talent, along with a bit of luck and a lot of dedication, El Mariachi was picked up by Hollywood agents and he was subsequently propelled to fame without the film ever making it into Spanish video stores, and before his second and third films being made. (He later did make these other two Mariachi films, titled Desperado, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico).

The book is an inspiration for anyone wanting to get into film making. It is very simple, to the point, and Rodriguez lets the reader into all of his secrets for creating low-budget films. It is also quite humorous and manages to make the impossibilities of making a successful Hollywood movie quite possible.

I will be taking his advice and using it to my advantage during this project, and will hopefully be confident enough in the final outcome to submit it to competitions and short film festivals.

Fingers crossed!

Movie Poster

Movie Poster

Book Cover

Book Cover

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The Subscription Model

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Back in September 2007 Rick Rubin, whilst settling onto a velvet sofa, spoke to the New York Times about a music service that was going to revolutionise the music industry. It would save the record labels from collapse due to falling CD sales and the copyright crisis, and transform the way in which we listen to and purchase music…

“You would subscribe to music, you’d pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you’d like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You’ll say, ‘Today I want to listen to … Simon and Garfunkel,’ and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now.” – The New York Times Online

This, in some respects is coming true, but is its potential being maximised?

There are various websites out there now which allow DRM-free digital downloads based on a monthly or yearly subscription, but I don’t think that they are being promoted effectively. iTunes is still the most popular source of music on the internet but it isn’t necessarily the best, or cheapest for that matter. It does offer DRM-free downloads, albeit for a slightly higher price than the standard download, but the probable reason for it’s popularity is simply the fact that iPods are still the most popular portable music device; providing direct access to iTunes every time you connect it to your computer.

However, iTunes is being caught up by better services such as eMusic. Apple are yet to allow a subscription service, something which eMusic, along with other websites such as Rhapsody do allow. You gain unlimited access to DRM-free downloads for a fixed monthly sum, which is exactly what consumers need to begin migrating away from the illegal aquisition of MP3s. Nokia’s latest ‘Comes with Music’ service is the latest addition to an ever growing base of next-generation online music providers.

‘Comes with Music’ allows unlimited music downloads from Nokia’s website once you purchase their pay-as-you-go mobile phone for £130. It is not completely restriction-free though. The music can only be stored on one computer, or the Nokia handset itself, and once the year long subscription ends you are forced to buy another phone to continue.

“Nokia’s Comes With Music, available from October 16 in the UK, allows unlimited access to songs for a one-year period, but after that time a customer has to buy a new phone. Any songs downloaded are tied to the particular handset — the first Comes With Music model, the 5310, has 8GB of memory and can store 6,000 songs.” – The Times Online

This, in my opinion is a step in the right direction and could potentially become very popular. However it does depend on Nokia’s promotional tactics. The people who should be targeted are ‘hardcore’ downloaders, they need to see that for a comparatively minimal charge they can avoid the risk of prosecution and still download as much music as they like. The other websites out there are not currently doing this. Yes, you can easily find them on the web through a simple search, but only the people who actively want to legally purchase their music are going to do this. If the benefits of these services are not pushed in front of the people that matter then they are simply going to carry on as normal.

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Posted in Dissertation, General, Research | 3 Comments »

Hot topic

Monday, October 20th, 2008

The future of music was being discussed only this Thursday by leading figures of the digital world at the ETRE08 conference in Stockholm. In this short article published on the DigitalArts website on Friday, Mikael Ricknäs reports that Ian Henderson, vice president, EMEA Digital Music Development at Sony BMG Music Entertainment, sees three major trends emerging in the next year or two.

‘Two of them are à la carte downloads in a non-copy protected form and selling music bundled in with other products (including Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets, broadband or mobile access packages). “The consumer pays for a device or a telco tariff, and the music is bundled in,” [...]

The last trend is free for the user ad-supported music. “MySpace has an element of that, and there is a fantastic company right here in Stockholm called Spotify, which I think is going to be a leader in this space,” said Henderson’

It was also suggested that the record companies will have to adapt to the changing environment, but that they will never be lost, there will always be a need for them at the core of making artists huge stars and propelling them along with the cash and expertise needed to sell a lot music.

Read the article here http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/index.cfm?email&NewsID=11590

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“Internet is the new radio”

Monday, October 20th, 2008

Over the weekend I read a very interesting transcript of a presentation by a guy called Seth Godin on ‘The Future of the Music Business’. It was originally delivered to representatives of the record industry to try and open their eyes to a new way of marketing to consumers; ‘Tribal Marketing’.

The presentation is witty, relevant, and has some very intelligent suggestions that I would be tempted to agree with.

This ‘Tribal Marketing’ that he is talking about is a way of marketing to niches, rather than the masses, and getting people to talk to each other and talk back to the record industry, and trying to get the record industry to listen rather than just ’shout’ things at people…because people won’t listen anymore.

People like to have something in return, they like acknowledgement. One very true point that Seth makes is that if he asked the representatives that he is talking to, to name 50, 000 of their best customers, they couldn’t do it. He suggests that the industry should give something back, or even better, that the artist should give something back. If I own every single Radiohead album, or Cure album, and I’ve been to their concerts and supported them for years then I want Thom York or Robert Smith to say “thanks mate, I really appreciate it”, because then I feel involved, I feel a part of that ‘tribe’ and I’ll probably be willing to pay for that persons music even if I can get it for free, because I feel like they deserve it.

Nowadays there are so many avenues for promoting music, and in turn a fair few ways of listening to it, they should be being used to culture these ‘tribes’. If I’m in a tribe, and I’m loyal to an artist, then why not treat me for it? If my favourite band is working on an album and they finish a few tracks then what’s wrong with them saying “Hey! You’re a good fan, what do you think of this?”…and releasing me a mastertone for my mobile or something similar of one of their new tracks? Now that isn’t a full song, it’s just a ringtone version, but I can still get a feel for the track and maybe I’ll give my feedback to the artist, and maybe it’ll be useful, but most importantly I’ll feel valued and I’ll be anticipating the full release even more, and I’ll most likely buy the album the minute it hist the shelves…

Finally, just to relate back to my title of ‘Internet is the new radio’, Seth makes the point that in the past all that record labels did was fight for radio airtime, the top 40 was what mattered because that’s where all the money was generated. This is not the case anymore, no one cares about the top 40 (and the majority of the top 40 sales are digital anyway, i.e. from the Internet), so the industry needs to use the Internet as a way of reaching the people that need to be reached. You have INFINITE airtime, you don’t have to fight anyone for it anymore, so why not use it to develop and culture your tribes? You shouldn’t be restricting the music that people hear, you should be using the net to let the people that matter hear as much music as possible, so they can tell people about how great it is and your tribe can grow and grow.

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