Teaser for Upcoming Video of Alma Upholstering Cleo B's Retro Fiat 500

Recently The company I work for (Spritz Creative) put two of their previous clients in contact with each other, namely upcoming fashion footware designer Cleo B and leather experts Alma, as Cleo wanted to refurbish the interior of her Fiat 500 with leather. They have also decided to shoot a short promotional video for Alma documenting the job, which I will be shooting.

To do this we have acquired the following equipment:

A Canon 5D
A zoom lens (Borrowed from Vixx)
A remote shutter release(Also Borrowed)
A £20 home made shoulder mount (courtesy of instructables)
A tripod
A memory Card

The shoulder mount works surprisingly well for a bunch of PVC pipe, and has now been clad in leather courtesy of Alma - making it the most expensive looking £20 shoulder rig I've ever seen.

I also uploaded the most recent build of the Magic Lantern firmware to help make the DSLR work more suitably as a film camera. I highly recommend you check it out if you shoot dslr video and use a compatible camera.

Shooting time lapse for the first time has been incredibly fun! I'm very excited about the final edit.

Call back soon for the final product, the leather for Cleo's car was ordered today!

The music for the video is John Beltran's remix of 'Minor Swing' by Django Reindhart

In other news, the EP is almost mastered now, and I will also soon be shooting a short documentary about the studio we recorded at (Dropout Studios, Camberwell). And we're gonna be recording a new song!


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Dig On For Victory

I went to the coast this weekend and bought this book. The man on the front is my role model.

Following up my rather negative and apocalyptic post 'Increased Chances', I've decided to try and make some positive action myself. Thinking about things whilst at dover castle, specifically the secret war time tunnels made me consider the fact that the attitude during the war of 'make do and mend' and 'dig for victory' are still more than relevant now. Although we're no longer facing lack of supply due to trade routes being cut off, we are experiencing increasingly dwindling resources, and this is being hidden from us to some extent by large corporates because they depend on our dependency on them. As a result of that I have now started preparing my garden for the cultivation of vegetables, and should you feel compelled to join me I heartily encourage you to! I'd also like to encourage any sort of dialogue about gardening too, so please chip in if you'd like advice, or conversely have some advice for me!

I wasn't really planning on making this post until after I'd finished work for the day so I don't have any images of work in progress. But here's the result of a few hours work on my day off - a large hole, about a foot deep, by two wide by four long.

Why is there a large hole in the end of my garden? I'm guessing that this is a question that both my housemates and the reader might be wondering.

I'm doing what is known as 'double digging', illustrated by the diagram below:

This is going to take a very long time, I have to dig up the entire garden, but considering it's been neglected for a very long time and not been used for vegetables, I think it's worth it. It also has a very high clay content, so over the next few days I'm going to buy some garden lime to help break it up a little.

My housemates have the allotment covered up with a tarp for now - to prevent weeds from growing, and killing off the ones that are there at the moment.

Another thing I've found from my new book is that it can really make a difference how clean you keep your tools. The garden tools in my house had routinely left with mud on them in the shed and have developed a smattering of rust. Fortunately I've found a pretty good recipe for removing this. It's just vinegar, baking soda, and a piece of tinfoil scrunched up with the shiny side facing out. Mix the vinegar and the soda, dip the foil into the mixture, and give your garden tools a scrub.

It works surprisingly well, and although they're not rust free yet, they look significantly better!

I'm going too keep at it with this garden, hopefully this series of posts will help spur me on.


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#Snowdonbuild post 1

So some of you might know I've been here the last few days

I've been working with the guys at open energy monitor pretty closely over the last week on several projects with the guys at nanode.

As a side project I also drew the house in google sketchup

And here's a couple of shots of the real house:

More coming very soon,

M


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Video Feedback

Some pretty incredible effects seem to be able to be achieved by pointing a camera at the screen it's projecting onto, these infinite regresses are really interesting. You may well see some experiments soon.

However, I must find a way of avoiding making this;

New Links

You may have noticed some new links crop up in the side bar recently. Here's a summary of what they are and why they're here:

Digital Guyana:

For obvious resons. Site contains musings and information about the team's experiences out here in Guyana.




gotoAndLearn():

A fantastic resource if you want to make the step into programming flash applications in Actionscript. This site includes the tutorial I used to program the Dead Cat Player. Lee Brimelow's video's are informative and comprehensive. I haven't made the jump to Actionscript 3.0 yet, but when I do I have a feeling it will be using one of his videos.


Creative Cow:

This website facilitated my learning of After Effects and is another great resource. Thanks to this site I was able to do the special effects for my one minute star wars movie having only touched the program for the first time about eight weeks or less before.


Instructables.com:

A website I use a lot when experimenting with home-brew electronics. Learn to make all kinds of things on this site, from a high-voltage tesla coil or a CRT ocillioscope to udon noodles in miso sauce or a cheesy onion casserole







Hacked Gagets:

DIY technology at its best. A great site to check out for inspiration, and just to be awe-inspired by what some of the geeky tech-heads our in the world have been up to. One of my personal favourites includes jet-powered flying man!

Check them out, there's some incredible stuff out there.

M

An Introduction to CSS Layouts

Being out here with the team has made me start to consider to reasons why I have a blog, as well as the capacity for blogs to be not only a glorified version of the 'round robin' letter but a way of providing resources to a wider community.

In light of this I have decided to open up the doors a little bit when it comes to how I have developed and persue my practice. I decided to start with possibly the most useful and relevant development in relation to my blog, which was the switch from layout tables to CSS (cascading style sheets).

To those who are not HTML-savvy this may all sound like gobbledy-gook. For this I apologise and if you are interested in learning more you could do worse than to have a nose around W3 schools for some HTML training.

In any case, assuming you are already familiar with HTML and a little CSS, this tutorial is a great way to introduce a clearer, more organised approach to website design. It's also incredibly useful if you want to customise your blog. This tutorial has aided my website construction process infinately and I highly commend it.

Zine Sale

The sale went quite well, organized by DADDY FLIRT, the design collective that has started in our graphics group. After electing to help them set up their gear, it was complete and utter chaos - I had no idea so many customers could squeeze around one table.

...Unfortunately, I believe the rather dark tone of my Zine scared potential buyers off. I don't know how many I sold yet, but I believe it was quite possibly in the area of two.

In addition to that, I've been asked to start my next project - an 'image bank'. Out of the many choices of subject, 'habits' was the one I picked - mianly because I can continue to follow my unhealthy obsession with the number 47. I think I might be turning slightly mad, but at least I don't yell at mice with my shirt off.

The rest of the week I have been occupying myself with getting shouted at by my parents and doing MAJOR ROOM MAINTENANCE. The feature wall is now orange, and the carpet comes in on Teusday

Finally anyone with an interest in Half-Life at all (as I am), should probably check out this site, it looks rather amazing

'Zines

A zine, according to that great web-based phenomina WIKIPEDIA, is as follows:

'A zine—an abbreviation of the word fanzine, and originating from the word magazine—is most commonly a small circulation, non-commercial publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest.'

To summarize: A zine is an artist's, usually small print run publication. Zines can be incredibly facinating, inventive, and informative. Occasionally you might find one you really connect with and feel the need to pay for.

The reason why zines are suddenly peaking my interest is because all last week I have been making my own for the latest project. It's called '47' - a number you will come to realise I have an OCD-like fixation with. Actually, here's a link which I found by chance on the net.

47 the zine - is a twisted children's book based on the first scene of a novel in which a young girl commits suicide


My room is making steady progress, it is now covered in lining paper and looks as such:




I just realised I should mention that the game is NOT my work. Someone else put a lot of hard work into it, so check out their sites, Other one