Look3: Festival of the Photograph 2008 wrapup

I'm still a little fried from this year's activities (in a very good way) but I'm more inspired than I've been in years. Since our first year was so hectic, I made a point to step away from our productions this year (thanks to the wonderful volunteer video crew of Mike Hollander, Tiffany Horst, Peter Hedlund, Kevin Fagan, Sera Tabb, Seth Butler, Charlotte Hornsby) and see the Festival outside of the Paramount Theater.

Of course, it was a privilege to be present and capture presentations from Flip Nicklin, Mary Ellen Mark, Joel-Peter Witkin, David Alan Harvey, and James Nachtwey. Even better were the wonderful folks I meet and became friends with over three short days of Peace, Love and Photography. It's difficult to relay the experience in words, so I'll just include some links and give it a few weeks to simmer ;-) One thing worth noting now is that the multimedia exhibited at the "Works" finale in the Charlottesville Pavilion was, for a moving-picture person such as myself, really mind-blowing. I've decided that my next personal project (shouldn't they all be personal?) will be predicated on finding a great still photog and following a story with him or her.

Some really cool people I meet, whose work you'll be seeing more of and is worth checking out now:

Seth Butler
Liz Kreutz
Heather McClintock
Jamie Rose
Allison Shelley

...and PDN provided some great coverage:



as did John Harrington and the crew from Photo Business News:






(with more video here)


Perhaps I'll report more after I've really absorbed it all ;-)

and here's really nice coverage from NPR...

YouTube Header Ache...

I've been trying to stay away and/or get out of web design as much as possible over the past few years, but every now and then something needs to be done and it's just easier to do it yourself. The real lesson here: When in doubt, View Source.

As we've been working on setting up Darden's YouTube Channel (complete with unrestricted file durations and all the other great things that come with having an Enhanced Channel)I decided that while we wait on the content encoding it would be a good idea to get the look of the channel up-to-date. This doesn't take a great deal of work, just adjusting the color scheme to match our main website and getting the few graphic options one is given (hey - simple is good) created and uploaded.

If you have a YouTube "Enhanced Channel", one of the privileged options you receive are what they call "Branding Options", under Channel Design. within these branding options, there are three additional ways you can complement your channel design: using a Video Page Banner, a Video Page Icon, or a Channel Banner.

As of today, the Channel Banner upload dialog advises as follows:

Upload a thin banner that will display at the top of your Channel page (maximum 850px by 75px).

So I took a logo that looked like this, with the above following specs:



and the resulting image on the YouTube Channel did this:



As mentioned above, I've been trying to get away from web design ever since the late 90's, so I didn't jump through a lot of hoops trying to figure this out. I did what I do best, which is to find someone with the answer, and this is what I got:

"The YouTube page is embedding it at 875 pixels wide while the image is only 850 pixels. Did they say to make it 850 or 875 wide?"

So, I adjusted the canvas size of the image and voilà, as they say.

This is not a gripe about YouTube - Obie has been wonderful at cultivating and managing educational channels on YouTube and I'm going to pass this along to him so they can make the fix, but I know someone like me is out there Googling this right now...

Hoos TV

I haven't placed much of my broadcast work on this blog. This summer I had the opportunity to co-direct (with UVA's Rob Smith) a few new image spots for The University. If you're watching any UVA Football or Basketball this year, you'll be seeing these.

Go Hoos!

UVA Faculty:


UVA Students:

The Panic of 1907

Shot in the Studio at Darden, we went for the "Movie Junket" look - a decision arrived at as soon as the poster arrived ;-)It was a real treat to read a book over the weekend and then have the opportunity to sit and pick the author's brain on-camera.

(by the way, the book is a great read - check it out here)

Look3: A Huge Success

Charlottesville's Downtown Mall was transformed this summer by the amazing photography of Nick Nichols, and for three days (June 7-9) we had the pleasure of welcoming thousands of photogs and three very special guests to the Paramount Theater. Walking on the mall over that weekend you felt like you were suddenly in a different country - kind strangers from around the world descended on our hometown, and it seemed like every other person had beautiful new M8 slung around their neck.

We also had the good fortune to welcome NPR's Alex Chadwick who performed live interviews with this year's guests of honor: William Allard, Sally Mann, and Eugene Richards. When I got a call to "run the video" for this event, I had no idea I'd be directing a shoot with such legends. You've gotta love a little town like Cville where a "community event" like this can take on such a life of it's own. All in all, it was a great way to make some new friends and reconnect with some folks I hadn't seen or worked with in ages.

Sound Men: Alex Chadwick and Gary Green

We shot HDV (1080i) on four rented Sony HVR-Z1U's; my first work with that format. The few bits we've looked at (out of 32+ hours of interview footage and 16+ hours of on-the-street tapes!) seem to befit the subject - the color is great in the theater, the images sharp and detailed but very kind to the subjects. Even with nearly no prep time, the camera menus were easy to navigate and the displays were clear, providing a great deal of confidence without clutter. Even in low-light audience shots the noise was quite acceptable and I'm looking forward to seeing how far we can push some of that in post. We just picked up the Canon (XH-A1) flavor of this camera at work and I'm looking forward to shooting our first project with it next month, a series of video podcasts for the Batten Institute.

Of course, I'm just realizing it's taken me a month to post this, and I think that's because I'm still recovering from 8+ hours of crouching under the curtain of the stage to get our talent's "beauty" shot, above. I am way out of practice on the yoga, but this has me encouraged to get back in to it.

Many thanks to our sponsors at National Geographic, Apple, and Canon (and I'm sure there are many more) as well as the numerous wonderful volunteers that helped make this event happen. The end product? The festival returns for Round Two next summer. In terms of the video, I'll definitely post when there's an answer on that, but right now there is a whole lotta footage to sift through. Definitely look for DVD's in time for next year's festival. Likely too, some broadcast versions of the wonderful interviews. I'm crossing my fingers on that one. Stay Tuned!

Some other cool festival pix, done by what looks like real photographers:

(fotonorth)














(cmak)

The Day You Became A Better Writer

Amen, Scott Adams.

Does your voice need more than... a voice?

My morning RSS reads took me to the (relatively) new Odiogo Voice App (thanks to The Official Lair of Daniela). Odigo claims:

Turn readers into listeners, and transform your blog into a high quality, ad-supporting broadcast that can vastly expand your audience reach!

• Automatic podcast generation
• “Near-human” quality text-to-speech
• Drag-and-drop integration on your blog
• Detailed download statistics
• Make money from embedded ads
• Leverages RSS feeds of all blogging platforms such as Typepad and Blogger

In truth, I can't really take exception with any of this, and I was pleasantly suprised at the quality of the robot-reader. We've come a long, long way since Ray Kurzwiel first brought us in to this territory, nearly half a century ago.

Love the "Near-human" voice. Love the automagic nature of converting text to voice. Love that I can listen to your blog while I'm cruising the highway. Well, at least I love the idea.

What strikes me almost immediately is the subtle, yet severe difference in writing for voice vs. print. The Odiogo reader sounds good - don't get me wrong - it just doesn't sound quite right. I can tell in the first sentence or two that, while this is being read well, it was written to be read - but not read to the reader or audience.

Take the example of how even the best book requires the intermediate step of going to a screenplay before it can be produced for film. It's not because it has to be trimmed down to 100 pages - it's because people just don't talk that way (notice I didn't say speak that way - Odiogo speaks fairly well). The auteur is generally a master of her medium, and understands that when you have a book (or a blog) in hand, the audience will bend their mind to that way of "listening". When you're really listening (with your earholes), you expect it to be natural, to be involving, perhaps to be conversational - all things one can pull off in print just as well, but have to be pulled off... differently.

Some of the best print writers I've known have had trouble making the jump to broadcast (and now, podcasting) for this very reason. It's not for lack of great ideas and strong creativity, but working under the assumption that the delivery (one's voice) isn't nearly as important as the package being delivered.

The good news for writers is that the fix is easy: practice, practice, practice. Unfortunately, a robot can't get you there (yet), but if you're trying and it's not working, you'll be able to hear it.

There's a lot more to be said about Voice, but in the voice of a blog, my gut tells me that I should keep it short.

Mad (Money) Jib Shot

Every now and then you need to get out of the studio. Kinda.



Good friend Victoria gaf-taped a mini-DV cam to the jib just prior to a rehearsal. The Director and I (unwittingly, if not handsomely) show off our thinning hair in the foreground of the first audience sweep. Doug, Jib op and owner of Bird's Eye Crane and Victoria are the first voices you hear. Doug did a brilliant job during the show.

Mad Time Lapse

click here for the higher quality WMV video.