Stardate: December 12, 2006. 10:34AM.
I am currently travelling on the USS Dragon starship. Space smells like… eggrolls. The journey hasn’t been without difficulty, although I fear confrontation in the dark, cold recesses of the Jersey Galaxy.
But seriously. I’m sitting on a chinatown bus headed for NYC to test out our gorgeous new Panasonic DVX-100B (loving called “twentiforpee”). My long time friend Lolis Elie is in town with his father and he mentioned that he wanted to shoot some documentary footage of his father talking about the Civil Rights movement. Never one to turn down a free trip (and knowing Lolis, some good food), I slung a tripod, camera bag and assorted goods over my shoulder at 8:30am and took off towards the unknown on my little BMX. I’m really excited about the capabilities of this new camera, although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also daunted by the prospect of having to learn a completely new interface. Until this point, my entire professional equipment list consisted of Canon digital cameras and assorted film cameras. This is definetly an upgrade and the controls seem intuitive, I’m just worried about shooting an action scene and accidentally jostling a button that wasn’t previously there. I’m really psyched about having 2 native XLR inputs, incamera gain control and the ability to record in 24PA. I’d promise to upload some test footage after this trip, but I’m pretty bad at following through online. You’ll just have to cross your fingers and hope that I remembered to take the lens cap off.
I have designed to date 3 potential versions of the new EH.com site. Both are portfolio centric from the root, but employ different content placements. I had hoped that by version 3 a clear winner would stand out, but this hasn’t been the case. For anyone familiar with the Prickle Pear business card design, I started out with the 25px rounded edge rectangle with a slight drop shadow as my basic form. I was toying with the idea of some javascript enabled sliding that would keep it a 1-page design. The concept was a stack of index cards lying uniformly on top of each other. The bottom edges of two cards formed the header and footer, while two cards in the middle represented a portfolio teaser (on top), and a journal teaser. When you clicked on the background card, it would become visible as the top card slide away. Not only am I a total n00b when it comes to Javascript, the design came out looking rigid and cold. Uninspired use of colors, and lack of accessibility made this one a total loser. After this fiasco, I moved as far away from the “cards” as possible. I created a 3 column design with a fluid width, but this felt derived. In a fit of rage, I went back to v1 and started throwing layers around. I transformed angles, picked the ugliest colors I could think of; essentially I made a mess. Ad what do you know, it came out kind of interesting. At this point it is the strongest design and I hope to finalize it by Friday.
Last week Natasha and I went to see Matt Pond PA at the TLA after dining on some amazing sushi with Cole and Justin at RAW on Sansom. The two opening bands (names forgotten) were interesting, but Matt Pond blew me away. Coming from New Orleans, I am accustomed to musicians who sound as good or better in person than they do on CD. Attending NOCCA taught me that not all musicians rely on digital surgery and pitch correction to make their art enjoyable. I also didn’t attend a lot of punk/pop concerts as a kid. Since I’ve been in college and going to shows I’ve been largely dissapointed by my favorite recording artists. They don’t have the vocals in real life that they “flexed” on the CD, and a depend on overly loud guitars and bass to disguise this fact. It shocks me when people aren’t disgusted by this type of forgery. As long as a group of guys wear the right clothes and jump around on stage, they are exempt from needing musical ability. This was not the case with Matt Pond. He played every single one of my favorite songs and they all sounded great. He reassured me that there is hope for the touring world.
Class is officially out for the semester but I still have exams until the 14th. After that it’s back to NOLA for 8 days (22nd - 30th), and back to Philly to shoot Hegemonster. Without saying too much or jinxing myself, I’m really excited about this film. The actors are strong, the script is locked, and the agonizingly difficult fundraising email is out. Natasha bought a new Macbook Pro to replace Mulder (the aging G5 Powermac). Final Cut 5 mixed with the new camera and my lighting should create something really dynamic.
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