Videocracy Blog

Well, today is a sad day for me, I am going to put my analog Hi-8 video camera to pasture.

I was doing some reading and the term broadcast safe has come up…or Broadcast legal…and it occurred to me, that even though I’ve learned what this term is, I don’t really know or understand what it means.

It was announced today that Toshiba will no longer be selling or manufacturing their HD-DVD players or HD-DVD media…which means that as of March, the HD-DVD/Blu-ray war is officially over…

According to the HD-DVD web site, they will continue to support the DVD players that were previously sold and they will continue to sell standard DVD players.

So I suppose that means that that HD-DVD will join the ranks of Beta, and Laser Disc in home video history…

Interesting turn of events…for more info check out www.HDDVD.com (a website we may not see for too much longer I suppose).

I learned something new in Final Cut Pro…

Over the weekend I was working with a friend on his Final Cut Pro editing machine, and I noticed that his layout was set up for a two screen display, a little bit differently then mine is.

A hot topic around town these days is the idea of Copyleft…which would be the opposite of Copyright…

According to the dictionary copyright is…

cop

 

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I took another photo walk yesterday, tested the limits of the camera, and what it can do with the white of the snow…

I went up to the Kettle Moraine State Park, one of my favorite spots in the Wisconsin, I’ve camped there before, and wanted to see what it was like in the winter time.

I spent most of the time doing what I like to call “Curbside” photography, basically what that means is, if I see something interesting, I pull over…leave the car running, snap a few shots and move on…Part of the reason I did this is cause as soon as I got up there I got caught in what seemed like a small blizzard, definite

I discovered a site to help me learn more about working with blender, the site is www.BlenderArtisits.org the site is dedicated to users of Blender, and forums to help each other out…

I’m in the process of modeling the mesh on a microphone so it looks less like an ice cream cone, and I’m hoping that this site can help me out…

More to come on that one…

Had an opportunity to go out and shoot some photos yesterday…Wisconsin got hit with a snow storm on Wednesday, but by Thursday everything was fairly cleaned up…

I took a ride out to the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, it’s one of those things that exists in the city…but people often forget that it does exist.

So I am a video guy, I create…I’m not a sports fan, never really was.

So if you ask me what I thought of the New York Giants vs the New England Patriots, I’d shrug and say I have no idea…

But if there is one game I watch every year, it’s the Super Bowl, but for two reasons 1) the Half Time show, and 2) the Commercials.

It started for me when I took a History of Advertising class, and I was required to write a paper about the Super Bowl Commercials, I learned about the Apple Computers’ 1984 commercial, and all other famous SB Commercials. But from that point on I went out of my way to pay attention to the commercials during the big game.

And this year with a price tag of 2.7 Million Dollars per 30 second advertisement, you know they better be good. And attention grabbing…but, I’m here to say that I was completely disappointed by the commercials I saw this year.

Often times we see commercials that are both funny, and/or heavy on the CGI…with a few movie trailers thrown in for good measure.

This year was no different, except I found that most of the commercials were only mildly amusing, but yet still heavily laden with CGI.

Some of the commercials I did like, were the Career Builder Commercials, especially the one with the Jiminy Cricket like character coming to the aide of someone looking for a new career. I liked the Macy’s Day parade commercial for Coca-Cola, where the Underdog balloon, and the Stewey Griffen balloon fight for a balloon of a coke, only to have it taken away from them by Charlie Brown. I thought that was my favorite of the evening.

I did like the Pepsi commercial with Justin Timberlake getting dragged across the street, I thought that was a clever play on the idea of “Getting you closer to something”

Any of the other commercials that aired, if it didn’t get my attention or it isnt’ one I can remember, then chances are it wasn’t that good… And out of all the commercials that aired, those are the ones that garnered the most impact. A lot of them I felt as though I’d seen before, a lot of them I probably have…

The Budlight commercials which in years past have come up with some clever advertisements, and that remains to be true with one exception…Will Ferrell dressed up as his character for the new movie Semi-Pro, pictching Bud Light…that was clever in a two fold way, 1 because it advertised the movie, and 2 because it advertised Bud Light, and people like Will Ferrell so that could help out both campaigns…however the commercial wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Overall I was completely disappointed by the commercials this year, I thought for awhile that maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but reviewing the commercials that aired today, I find that that’s not true…I do remember seeing these commercials and they just didn’t do it for me…

Well there’s always next year.