some photos(recent and not)

on a branch alone... strange and quiet before winter bike reflector on the way to work

Christmas eve

I was severly sick most of this week but I'm getting over it now. I'm off to Arizona for a week to enjoy the holidays in a warmer climate. Oh, and what I want for Christmas is this Camera when it comes out: www.red.com 4520 x 2540 Resolution?! PL mount film lenses, Variable framefrates at 4k or HD, etc...

the Geneva Rd. footage

I uploaded the footage that Jordan edited together that I did camera on. Check it out from my works page. Or if you just want to D/L it straight: geneva_rd.mov

movie weekend

This weekend I watched Narnia, Syriana, The Greatest Game Ever Played, and Hotel Rwanda(on DVD). Narnia started out really strong and I expected to be fantastic after just 10 minutes. At first the music and editing were great as well as the cinematography. The lines were good and funny. The story was pretty tight. but after about half way through it totally lost pace and momentum. It felt like the critical scenes weren't given the attention detial that some of the other scenes were. I also didn't care much for the aslan's voice (was that Liam Neeson?). Also I found it irritating how they kept trying to hide the violence in order to keep the PG rating. I mean, Yeah, I know we don't need to see blood but all of the cuts were too quick and hurried during the battle scene. It felt like they just wanted get through it quickly and it ditracted because instead being a monumental epic battle climax to the movie, it just felt rushed and nervous. Syriana I found to be almost totally boring and uninteresting. The problem with movies that have a political agenda is that they sometimes forget that they should be entertaining as well. The story moved way too slow and the payoff was minimal. everytime the story started to pick up and get excitting, they just slowed right back down again in the next scene. I thought Lord of War was a good entertaining movie with a political view point. Anyway, the race and battle to secure energy is an interesting topic but Syriana while decent, just fell short of being a good film. Hotel Rwanda was a good film. It addressed something I didn't know much about. I had heard about the attempted genocide some years back but did not really know the extent of it. It was an event largely ignored by the western media. I can remember hearing hardly anything of it at the time of the event. The film told an important and devastating story and it was a good film as well. The greatest game ever played was decent but I watched it at the dollar theater and they had messed something up with the framing of the projector. I could see a boom in shot for about roughly, half the movie. It was really distracting. At other times, characters were dropping out of frame. I don't know what the deal is with that but if I was the director I would surely want the final print to be cropped to the right aspect ratio even if I had the assurance of countless people that the boom would not show in the theater. Anyway, back to work.

waiting period

I felt the impulse to design a new look for the blog last night. As usual, the design took a mere ten minutes and then getting the blogger tags right for the template and getting the links functional and ftp'ing took an 1 1/2 hours. I'm about ready to give blogging up since I could just as easily keep a web design on my desktop and simply write in the updates manually. It's really cold lately. It was 16 °F this morning as I set out for work. The himidity was quite high, making for an even chillier feel. So cold in fact that some stranger pulled off the road and asked me if I wanted a ride. He was wearing a silly tie, like one of theose gag ties, so I didn't quite feel intimidated by him and accepted the ride (note to stalkers and abducters: dress rediculously). The weekend passed without incident, although I got a chance to see a piece that Jordan edited together from some footage on which I did the camera work. The footage was for a short film but was filmed in a different aspect ratio so we weren't planning on using it. He put it together for his show reel to apply to a film program for grad school. I hope he gets accepted. That'd be really cool. Oh and I will try to get a hold of that footage and upload it to the web someplace. Winter makes it feel like I am hibernating. guess I am just waiting for the winter to end although it has just begun. So I'll leave you with these wintery pics and try to stop complaining about it thus forth: