Published on December 25, 2005
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Well, the day before we began shooting our documentary, we had to put the brakes on it… for now. Being regular guys with no previous film/video knowledge really… we didn’t know a damn thing about permits. We certainly didn’t know it would cost us $250/day to shoot in Santa Monica even without a crew! So we are working on solutions… step 1 will be to talk to the woman in charge, who is on holiday until Tuesday. Hopefully we can work something out, because tapes alone will end up raching up a big cost for us… there is no possibility of us coming up with $250 each day we want to walk around the street and do some interviews, especially since we have no intentions of making any money off of this project.
So… we’ll just have to see. More news next week.
Published on December 12, 2005
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The meet went really well yesterday. Everyone was cool… no weirdos (except maybe Aaron and I) and no assholes. It pretty much went as well as it possibly could have. I took lots of pics, but as usual, only a few came out good. The rest are useless… mostly due to focus problems because of the aforementioned problem with f/1.8 and the fact that I manually focus everything on the stock focusing screen, which is really not meant for manually focusing anything.
This little girl was walking behind her mom, and she didn’t look at me until the moment I took her picture. The expression on her face was already there… so she’s not pissed at me. At least not yet at the moment I took the shot.
Published on December 12, 2005
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I am unhealthily addicted to shallow depth of field (actually is there such a thing as a healthy addiction?). I can’t seem to stop down the lens and shoot with some depth (with very few exceptions). It means that any photos I take have a subject and then some blur. They almost never have a background.
Actually, I suppose a lot of this has to do with the fact that I pretty much only shoot with my 50mm lens now… which is the equivalent to an 80mm on 35mm with the 1.6x crop factor. So it will be a big difference when I buy the 17-40mm again. I guess I shouldn’t have sold it, but at the time I was convinced that f/4 was just too slow for me to use. I know better now, and if it gets dark then the 50 1.8 comes out. Simple.
Published on December 6, 2005
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Calling all photographers… there will be a Los Angeles Flickr meetup this coming Sunday in Chinatown. Read about it here.
I like the idea. I’ve wanted to do it before… but never had the opportunity. To be able to just meet up with a bunch of people you don’t know, who you may or may not have had any interaction with online… but you’ve seen some of their photography, and you’re out with them creating more. I think it’s great. Then again, it might also be very competitive. I have no idea. But Lan, Aaron and I will soon find out. And hopefully it won’t just be a day of meeting new people, but also of some good new photography. It’s cetainly a new subject for all three of us.
Published on December 3, 2005
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I have watched lots of short films, and lots of vlogs, and lots if vidoes of various things on the internet. This one, as far as planned comedy is concerned, is definitely one of the best. Completely worth watching. I’m right now downloading the iso for the DVD, but since my router sucks I am having problems and probably won’t have it for a few more days… but here’s the thing… I’m not pirating it. For whatever reasons, probably not the least of which is the fact that the creator, Jesse Cowell, didn’t get the licensing rights to the music he used for the film, he is not selling the movie. He instead has a compressed version available for download, and a DVD version floating around on the “Play It Forward” system.
The premise is that he basically made a bunch of copies of the DVD and gave them out… and only asked that they in turn make copies and give them out… and so on and so forth. This method of distribution, while not a way to make money, is an awesome way to get something widely distributed and seen by lots of people with minimal costs. It’s genius. It’s also available via torrent, which is how I am downloading it.
The movie is basically a comedy about a pack of friends who decide to teach their one kinda asshole of a friend a lesson for all the bad things he’s done to them over the years. The premise is pretty simple, but the story plays out very well and the characters are all different and very dynamic, yet work together in a strange sort of way. The entire film was shot for $2,000, which is awesome… though of course if they had actually paid for all the music they used it would have been significantly higher.
It’s really worth the 290MB or so download to watch the web version of the movie, but if anyone wants a copy of the DVD, just let me know and I can probably send you one, once I have finished downloading it. If not you can get it via the torrent file.
It’s inspiring to see work like this… so what am I going to do with this inspiration? Hmmm…
Published on December 1, 2005
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I just saw 2 really good documentaries. Lately I have been renting mostly Korean movies and documentaries. The ones I just saw were My Date With Drew and Murderball. I’m quite impressed. Murderball doesn’t surprise me at all… I knew what it would be and what to expect and I liked it… a great film about some amazing people. My Date With Drew totally caught me off guard. I watched it because it looked like an interesting concept… but I wouldn’t have even known about that concept if Blockbuster didn’t have an entire wall dedicated to it for some reason… and I’m glad they did.
I won’t go into too much detail, because I don’t want to give anything away, but I was extremely impressed with the movie and with Brian, the main character, who has had a crush on Drew Barrymore since childhood and now has a “borrowed” camcorder from Circuit City which needs to be returned in 30 days and $1,100 he won on the game show Taboo. His goal is to get a date with Drew. Sound stupid? Maybe. But really the concept is quite simple… follow your dreams, no matter how stupid they may sound. It’s not just a movie about a guy trying to get a date with a movie star… but about a man with a dream and a goal and what he is willing to do to try and achieve it, no matter the odds (which, by the way, are obviously ridiculously against him). It’s brilliant. And it’s good to see someone trying for their dream, and it makes me feel really really lazy and wasteful of my time here on Earth… because it really isn’t just the goal and attaining your dream which is the greatest part… it’s the journey. Sometimes you might fall way short of your goal and still be extremely better off than you were before you attempted the near impossible.
I’m not much one for optimism and for positive introspection… but I do believe that I need to start doing what I love, and not just talk about it. I am going to become a pirate. Oh wait, no… I’m sure I can think of something better to pursue… but give me a sec…
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