| Conrad
Hall, legendary cinematographer dead
 Conrad
Hall, who lensed more than a dozen notable films in
a career that spanned the 60s to this year died of cancer
today. This year he will likely receive a posthumous
Oscar nomination for filming Sam Mendes "Road to
Perdition" but he was also responsible for enduring
70s images in such films as "Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid", "Marathon Man", "Hell
in the Pacific" and "Cool Hand Luke".
I
remember his work best in the little known "Electra
Glide in Blue",
where he painted a beautiful palette of pale sky blues
and dry yellows in the Arizona desert.
Press
Conference
Tomorrow
I'll be videoing my first press conference: Vancouver's
Winter 2010 bid with my XL1S which I will be showing
live on Clipstream™ Live. Yesterday I ran around
trying to arrange a shotgun mic but two places told
me they would only rent it to me if I had an XLR
adaptor and theirs were out. Finally I found Commercial
Electronics would rent both the XLR and shotgun
to me. Monday morning I'll have to pick it up and then
try and figure out how they attach.
Hit
and Run video
 With
three days to go in my Christmas vacation I decided
to get cracking on the Fidgital video for which I had
shot most of the footage three months ago as the "Umbrella
Killa" shoot. I've been experimenting with motion
graphics using AfterEffects and Illustrator. Really
just a lot of tracing and simple animation. I like the
results so far. Take
a look in my video section >>
MailWasher
For
the past two weeks after I formatted my main drive and
reinstalled Windows 2000 to try and fix a drive error
problem (it seems to have done the trick) I have been
using a new anti-spam program called MailWasher. This
is different from other spam filters in that it checks
your mail at the server level before allowing you to
download it to your email program on your local computer.
This also provides you with the ability to bounce and
blacklist mail. Seems to work simply right now.
New
Years 02
My
New Years celebrations were low key. I spent it in a
room full of Newfies and we played table hockey. To
chill out we sat in front of the TV and saw bits of
Flesh Gordon 1 and 2. I realized that a friend of mine
from university had lied to me when he said he had been
in Flesh Gordon II. |
For
Christmas my roomie gave me one of the Takeshi Kitano
yakuza movies I haven't seen: "Sonatine".
When I first was introduced to Kitano's movies I was
struck by his quirky pacing, use of negative space and
black humour. Now I think I've seen enough to really
appreciate how much his films are a blend of amateurism
and static detail. He lays out his frames like pictures,
challenging the viewer to let their eyes roam. His direction
is unconventional but fascinating. His movies are very
much wide screen pictures. They would suffer if you
saw them on a small TV. "Sonatine" is his
best film. "Brother" is his most accessible
(set in the U.S.). "Dolls", which I saw this
year at the VIFF was his most reaching. Next up: "Boiling
Point". 
The
Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver is hosting a month-long
retrospective of Akira Kurosawa's films. This is a group
of 15 restored prints of his tremendous body of work
(only half of his output but these are most of his greats)
that is touring the world. There are a handful I haven't
seen so you will probably see me there. Plus, I want
to see Ikuru again. 
cameras)
and set up a workstation for the Clipstream Live streaming.
It was really cool seeing the pros set up with their
heavy Betacams and I got a handful of tips. There was
another XL1 operator there who was also very helpful.
I discovered that my borrowed tripod was barely adequate.
It doesn't pan well and it just wasn't tall enough
when it came to shooting over the top of people's heads.
It was also interesting watching the other operators
work as they shouted directions at the people they were
shooting and yelling at the still photographers to get
down. I got a nice buzz out of the whole experience
especially as my footage was being webcast on the Winter
2010 site.
