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So on Saturday Morning at 5:30am Kendra and I ushered in a big change into our life with the addition of a little baby boy. Keaton Daniel Miller made his appearance at South Suburban hospital weighing in at 7lbs 4oz. Its been a fun ride so far albeit a tiring one. I thought I was late night person creative before, well now I tend to be a realllllyy late night or no night person.
Wow how time flies I just realized I had abandoned my blog when I noticed my last post was about a new year and figured it was high time for some updates. I have been keeping busy, we filmed alot of new segments and tutorials for FreshDV and who knows when we’ll actually get those edited and out. I also had alot of fun working on a camera test and shootout in tandem with our FreshDV team and Zacuto and RDS here in Chicago. That was very revealing and we had alot of fun. Then in the last month I had a shoot with Dir. Pablo Korona for Sargento Cheese which also was alot of fun. I finished up production Thursday night and jammed off the the airport on Friday morning to go cover NAB2008 with FreshDV. If you are interested in seeing that you can find it at FreshDV.com/nab. While that trip was fun it was exhausting full of meetings, production work and more meetings, most day finished around 3am with us arriving back at the convention center around 9am to continue coverage for the next day. I arrived back home tired and ready for a day or two to catch up. I have been working on production with Cultivate studios on Marty Ozingas campaign ads which has been interesting we just wrpped up those last weekend and then Sunday I fly out to Philly for a 3 day shoot. I’m tenatively scheduled for a 10 doc the end of may that wraps on June 5th giving me 3 days to pack before flying out to Maine on the 8th of June to do some cinematography workshops. Okay maybe I’ll sleep in july….
Happy New Year Everyone!!! Bring on 2008!!
Well we made it back from PA just fine and with no real issues, other than a small 2hour delay, boy was I glad for my iPhone, I was able to catch up on a whole batch of After Effects Tutorials, I know, riveting material for all you non-geeks.
Here is to looking forwatd to 2008 with fresh insight and vision, and wishing the very best of this next year and God’s blessings on all of my wonderful colleagues, friends and family!!
So its one of the few opportunities that we often take for granted, the opportunity for a little time off and some R&R. Kendra and I are spending the week with her folks in Oley, PA catching up with family and spending some time together over the holidays! Also catching up with a little Halo 3 on Xbox 360 with my brother in law. Hope to get a chance to see some of my side of the family in Bellville PA as well. Until I return here is wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!!!
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Here is a quick link to a Red One commercial I worked on as Director of Photography for Producer/Director Pablo Korona of Rockford, IL. The footage was shot on newly the released Red One camera with Zeiss Super Speeds.
Novasure - Rock Valley Women’s Health Center from pablokorona on Vimeo.
Okay so today I was working on a PC and I don’t know what it is about PCs that for some reason makes me feel like I’m back in 1997, 1998 again, but today was one of those cases. We were just marveling on FreshDV the other day during on of our podcast at how fast and far technology has come in 10 years. Tapeless media and workflow combined with the promise of 4K acquisition make us techno nerds heady at times. We live in a day and age of blogs, the iPhone, YouTube, and social networking sites such as MySpace. Its a different world, technology is good, or so you would be lead to believe. Then suddenly something comes along and crashes you back to earth dashing all dreams of a stability and technological utopia evaporate. While working on VideoToaster system today there was some issues with stream hangaing and freezing on ingest so it was suggested by Newtek that I flash the bios. Now I’m very proud of my techno geek status and very few technological feats scare or intimidate me. I have flashed my share of bios in the day (mostly in the late 90’s early 2000s) so I figure no sweat. So I proceed to the SuperMicro site and after a short perusal through the documentation am able to ascertain with a relative degree of certainty that I have in fact downloaded the correct files.
So I unzip the files to flash drive and head over to the system to get to work. Against my better judgment I decide to read the text file readme file first. Perhaps it was the warning that read “Warning: Flashing the wrong BIOS on system can cause harm to the system. “or the fact that I could no longer remember whether CD/ or CD\ was the DOS command to change directories but I think it was somewhere close to that point when random flashes from the 90’s began to indubitably invade my mind. Continuing against my better judgment I read further:
1. Extract <filename>.zip file under Windows into a floppy disk
2. Prepare a 98 bootable floppy disk
3. Boot up system for which BIOS will be flashed from 98 bootable floppy disk.
4. Insert disk with BIOS file and flash utility into floppy drive
5. At the prompt, type: [flash <filename>.rom] and hit enter.
6. Program BootBlock
update the BootBlock sector of the FLASH part, please answers ‘y’ to this prompt,
BootBlock sector will be updated.
Ooookay at this point vaguely from the past the name “Floppy Disk” emerges along with the term boot disk, I quickly try to recall the last time I had seen a floppy disk. Near as I could recall it was 1 of a 5 disk set containing some game boasting new improved 256 color graphics. Bummer, no floppy disk close by I grab a CD and put it in when I realize that windows XP has no native way to create a boot disk other than as a format option to a floppy disk. IT seemed my earlier premonition of doom was closer than I’d hoped. Matt Jeppsen quickly reminded me that Nero or other burning softwares often contain options to format boot disk. Fortunately I had a copy of Nero Express installed on the system, I through in a CD only to be informed that this is an invalid format and the disc must be a DVD, huhhh, minutes later I emerge with a successful DVD boot disc complete with the flash files on the disc. I rescan the direction one more time, could they be anymore unclear!!! Geeze people! Step 5. At the prompt, type: [flash <filename>.rom] and hit enter. I quickly glance at the files, 4 total none with a combination of flash.rom and nothing named <Filename>. This whole process while seemingly archaic at the outset now decided to ad a pinch of insanity to the mix, at this point I lost it. Who in their right mind rights instructions litered with <Filename>.zip. Is this the downloadable set of generic bios instructions that someone forgot to completely fill in? Finally by looking at the properties and once again with the help of Matt we manage to trace down which file was the .batch file. I reboot the system with the boot disk holding my breathe, in the back of my minds I hear all the voice of reason and warning about flashing bios, how a simple mis step, wrong BIOS firmware, power failure, sneezing, coughing, abdominal pains and sweaty feet can all turn a motherboard into brick. AFter some quick recollection from the good ole days, which I’m no longer certain where “good” a few pinches of DIR/P commands and come CD\ and I finally manage to locate the correct directory to run the flash file. I execute it and hit enter, the DOS shell loads, only to give me an error. it can’t locate the .rom file. I nearly replace to 17″ LCD monitors thrown from a two story balcony. A quick boot back to dos and I confirm the name and directory of the .rom file as 6dal1197.rom oh of course, why not? Re-loading the flash program I manually tell it where the .rom file is and voila. The BIOS is updated and the system reboots. I calmly wipe the sweat from my palms and slide my set of unused floppy disk into my trapper keeper next to my #2 pencils and Nintendo Games.
My point is simple, unlike the convoluted process I just described, is it seriously necessary that in 2007 we are still using processes that archaic? Oh how far we have not come! So today when you pick up your wireless controller for your new 360Xbox and start slamming villains in HD, pause and consider the fact that for all of our advances there are still those times when technology, in spite of all efforts to move on, clings tenaciously to the past in a desperate effort to remain unchanged. Please engineers, can we move into 2008?
Many people don’t know or understand the job of a cinematographer or director of photographer. I wrote the following little blurb for my website and thought I would share it here as well it describes what it means to me to be a DP.
Cinematography is a craft, learned over time, honed by trial, earned by sweat. Its a long arduous task to work towards and achieve, but the rewards are unrelenting. What is that compels someone to work long hours sometimes with little sleep or food, working in cold or unforgiving circumstances, waiting patiently for the moment when the light plays perfectly in the right spot? Passion for the craft. You must work hard to hone your craft, a constant student of your subject, always ready to learn never willing to quit, the fist one on set, and the last to leave, a diligent hand ready and willing to work. You must be willing to take and give advice, provide leadership by example, extend and receive respect. This is the job of a Cinematographer, this is my job.
