harold eastman

George the Cat is often a big help deciding how long to let a shot run, and whether that transition should be a dissolve or a cut.

In these pix, he’s taking a well-deserved break.

George’s “muffin tin” is on my desk these days because my larger external monitor went into a coma last week. It’s now in the shop and I’m waiting for the dreaded estimate. When the monitor comes back, I’ll have to find a new spot for my assistant.

But there’s no way he’s leaving the desk.

Okay, this will be a really nerdy post, but it’s is the kind of stuff I think about, okay…?

Dianne and I bought a Canon T2i digital SLR this spring to use in our video business. The primary reason is that the camera’s large sensor – for technical reasons I won’t go into (partly because I don’t fully understand them) – allows us to more easily shoot footage that has an out-of-focus background, often referred to by the Japanese term bokeh. It’s a nice look, and one that’s used extensively in film and TV. Prosumer camcorders can’t deliver bokeh because they (at least the current ones) have much smaller sensors,.

The capability has made DSLRs a huge seller for the last year or so, and has spawned a surge of what’s called “bokeh porn” on the web – stuff that uses shallow depth of field for… no reason at all.

This post below looks at the surprisingly recent roots of bokeh in film and TV, and questions the current obsession.

Fellow nerds, enjoy…

Check out this beautiful film adaptation of a Samuel Beckett theatre piece – brought to me attention by my friend Jacquie Lopez. One of the many things that struck me about this piece is its stately pace. Best enjoyed by setting aside 10 minutes with no thought of what’s next. Just get a coffee or a glass of wine (depending on time of day) and savour Beckett’s gorgeous words, Irons’ gorgeous voice and the director’s gorgeous black and white imagery.

Cue the eye-rolling.

Yes, I’m going to have another go at posting my fantasy novel and asking for input. Things got a little stalled this spring and summer, but the back-to-school spirit has seized me.

This time I’m using a very interesting plug-in/theme combination from WordPress that will enable readers to comment not only on a chapter generally, but paragraph by paragraph. The interface takes a little getting used to, but overall the system is ingenious.

So far, I’ve only posted the prologue, which is now considerably shorter. I’m currently revising Chapter 1 on the basis of an incredible line-by-line critique (very constructive) by a very good friend. Expect a shorter, more readable version when it goes up. You’ll find the link in the sidebar to the right.

Nine months ago (!) I posted about the then-just-announced iPad, raving about its potential and regretting that I had, just weeks before, pledged to buy only used or refurbished Apple products from thence forward.

My sister-in-law, Laura, came to the rescue. In June, she gave Dianne and I an iPad as a gift. (Thank you, Laura!!)

Having lived with it now for three months, I maintain that the iPad will be huge for Apple. (Well, it already is: over 3 million sold.) This isn’t because it has a “killer app” or that it does any one thing spectacularly well. It’s because the little thing has the potential to insinuate itself into daily life in so many ways.

Ours often sits on the kitchen island, where we use it to instantly check our email, the news, the weather, etc. We use its streaming capabilities to turn it into a portable radio for listening to music and the news via wi-fi. It has a guide that allows us to identify the birds that land on the feeders outside the window. And it delives the newspapers (New York Times, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, you name it) that Dianne peruses in the morning and I browse in the evening. I’ve also started reading books on it. And I’ve started to use it to revise the novel I have been writing since forever.

The latest news is that Apple will soon introduce a streaming application that will let you play audio and video content – including your own movies and pictures – directly from the iPad to your TV or stereo.

Fearless prediction time. As prices drop on entry-level iPads – and the multiple imitators that will hit the market this Christmas – tablets will be everywhere, and that even those of us who don’t have a sweet tooth for gadgets won’t quite be able to figure out how we ever did without them.

Getting my feet wet in the blogosphere again after half a year’s absence.

And speaking of wet feet, here’s a video I shot this summer with my nephew Paul and niece Emma. A serendipitous loss of focus on a shot led me to a new and softer way of seeing things.

Music and SFX courtesy of Paul, Emma and Apple loops.

In December, I mentioned that Dianne and I were going to shoot some video of interesting research being done at Queen’s University.

Here’s the finished product…

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The Canada Foundation for Innovation ended up being an exemplary client, and we’re hoping to do more work for them.

The video was shot in part with a video-enabled DSLR (thanks, Deb Moxam, for the loaner of the Canon T1i!) and also with the faithful old Sony A1U HDV camera. The quality match is about the same, but the great depth of field in the interview shots was courtesy of the Canon.

The animated graphic opening was designed by Dianne and created by in Final Cut Pro by yours truly. I wasted the better part of a day from my remaining years  trying to do it in Apple Motion – then gave up. More about Software That Humbles You in an upcoming post.

After a month-long hiatus – Latin, I believe, for “an interval of inactivity brought on by laziness, distraction and too much Christmas turkey” – I’m back posting.

And what better subject than the (yum!) iPad.

Why, oh why did I go on record in this space as never buying a new Apple product again? I should have said new laptop or new conventional computing device – anything that would have left me some weasel room.

However…Dianne has made no such promise. So as long as she swipes the debit card, I’m okay, right? (See “Pharisees, shopping practices.”)

But on to the product itself. Wow. Despite the nerd-naysayers – no multitasking, no camera, no ports, wah wah… – this is a game changer. Some of you will know that I’m a big fan of inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who predicted that the computer would disappear in 2009. He only missed by a two weeks. I think the iPad represents a watershed moment in this process.

Yes, I know that computers have “disappeared” into smart phones and washing machines and cars. And I know there have been takes on the tablet computer before. [A moment of silence here for the Newton...

...] (And speaking of the Newton, it’s amazing that Apple got so much right in 1993.)

But we are 17 years on in technology development, and this is the Apple of Jon Ives and Steve Jobs. And what we have here is not a device that anyone will confuse with a computer. (“Hey, wanna look at my tablet computer…?”) It’s a new category. With the touch interface on the iPhone, Apple began a process of intimate interaction with information that is now maturing with the iPad. And with its larger surface, the iPad will make this interaction much easier and compelling. (And better than working with a keyboard and mouse by an order of magnitude.) So this isn’t a computer, this is the magic window through which I interact with information that’s important to me, and through which I reach out to people and places everywhere.

If you haven’t already, watch the demo video on the Apple site. Yes, it’s almost overpowering in its self-congratulatory tone, but it gives a glimpse of how the interface is going to revolutionize the things we do. My favourite moment: the demo of how you can partially pinch open an album of pictures to peek at the contents. It’s a small thing, yes. But you apply that potential for innovation to the way we interact with all our information, and the possibilities are amazing.

And this is just the beginning. Yes, nerd whiners, it will soon have a camera, be able to multitask, and maybe even get more ports. But It’s The Software, Stupid. As developers with imagination get a look at what this thing can do, we’ll be inundated with apps that will make the iPod (and its inevitable competitors/imitators) something we’ll tote with us from morning til night.

And in the meantime, I also hope that Apple, in a burst of social conscience, will produce a ruggedized, subsidized version of this for education and entertainment in the developing world. It would kick the One-Laptop-Per-Child project’s ass!

So let’s see…two months til release, then two or three months until these puppies start appearing on Apple’s Refurbished pages.

Five months. I can make it.

I think.

Dianne and I had a great Christmas, with Matt, Sue and new son-in-law Jason here to celebrate with us.

Being resident nerd, I decided to shoot only video this Christmas, but all lo-res on the older Nikon still camera I recently inherited from my friend Wes. Here’s the result:

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I cut it in Final Cut Pro, and colour graded with Magic Bullet Quick Looks. The filter was entitled, appropriately, “Warm and Fuzzy.”

Dianne and I had a great gig this past Friday: shooting video at the Queen’s University BioMotion Lab. The footage is for a 3-minute piece for the Canada Foundation for Innovation – a federal body that funds advanced research across Canada. The edited clip will be used on their web site.

The lab is headed up by Dr. Niko Troje, a psychologist who’s looking into how we decode information about other people from the way they move. It’s a skill we use every day – discerning a person’s mood by the way they walk, for instance [hence the BeeGees reference above] – but getting at the roots of the process quickly takes us into some of the thorniest problems in neuroscience. I wrote this article about the research a few years back. [Go ahead, click. It's got pictures...]

And here’s a link to the lab’s web site. Check it out – lots of cool animations, and an opportunity to contribute to the lab’s growing motion perception database.

Meanwhile, here are some other pix from the unedited video. Watch for the finished product some time in the last half of January.