May 31, 2005
Under pressure... as always
Amazing how much rosy things look when you've a) had sleep and b) are not sick. First day back in the right headspace for a week and things are looking up. To start the day off, tuned into ABC Radio National to hear The Law Report interviews on Sanctuary. They introduced my segment with "Under pressure" (Queen, smiles all round) and then segued nicely into "Ice Ice Baby" (Vanilla Ice)... ouch!
Finished a new set of animatics for the rig UI. There's no getting away from it, it isn't going to be entirely clear to anyone except me until this thing is built but it's getting clearer all the time!
Hope to have editing underway within days. It's about time.
May 30, 2005
May 26, 2005
mode changes
Mode changes are going to be a focus this month.
May 25, 2005
SANCTUARY NEWSLETTER > MAY 25 > 2005
DVD TAGGING
Researchers in Los Angeles are developing a new form of Piracy Protection for DVD's that could make common practices like loaning a movie to a friend impossible. University of California at Los Angeles engineering professor Rajit Gadh is leading research to turn radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags into an extremely restrictive form of digital rights management to protect DVD movies. http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67556,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
NEW MOD TOOL FROM SOFTIMAGE
Softimage, the leading developer of high-end software for all areas of professional visual content production (including tools for both 2D and 3D animation) has just released a nifty little tool to allow gamers to MOD their favourite titles if they are modelled/animated in XSI. http://www.softimage.com/products/Mod/v4
SPOOKY REMIXES THE REMIXERS
DJ Spooky, (alias Paul D. Miller), relies heavily on sampling in his work as a DJ and musician. So it shouldn't be a surprise that his new book and CD 'Rhythm Science' sample audio recordings of some of literature's most prominent Remixers like James Joyce and Gertrude Stein: writers whose work essentially 'sampled' other people's material. http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67261,00.html?tw=rss.ENT
STORE WARS
If you wanna see an er... alternative and 100% Sith-free 'take' (as opposed to Remix) on the Star Wars saga by the Organic Trade Association, check out their groovy and horticulturally-aware remake of George Lucas' most renewable Meal Ticket here: http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html
EXTRA SEN-SONY PERCEPTION
Imagine a movie or video game in which you can feel the bass, taste a flower, and with any luck.. even smell the coffee. Hey wait, that didn't sound right! Anyway I think you got the general idea, but sad to say guys.. Sony had the idea before you, and what's more.. they bloody patented it! http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624944.600
FEATURE FUTURE QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"If 3-D lasts, it will survive as a medium of its own, not as an add-on to a typical motion picture." - Petro Valhos
May 24, 2005
Softimage XSI MOD tool
Softimage release tool to allow gamers to MOD their favourite titles if they are modelled/animated in XSI.
SOFTIMAGE|XSI Mod Tool version 4.2
May 23, 2005
basha and fireman
drxian has put up some lovely stills from the shoot on Flickr.
May 18, 2005
SANCTUARY NEWSLETTER > MAY 18 > 2005
BACKSTAGE WITH THE BBC
The BBC's latest project Backstage.bbc.co.uk is aimed at giving people who create computer programs, applications or graphics the chance to put their stamp on BBC digital content by offering a collection of feeds, and plans to offer APIs, and other tools for remixing and re-purposing the BBC's offerings in more flexible ways.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4538111.stm
MPAA IS DOWN ON TV DOWNLOADS
Continuing its war on Internet file-swapping sites, the Motion Picture Association of America claims that it has filed lawsuits against a half-dozen hubs for TV show trading. The trade association said that piracy of TV programming is growing quickly online, and that shows are as important to protect as big-budget films. This is the first legal action from the group that has focused most heavily on TV content. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5705142.html
RINGTONES FOR REMIXING
The new CD single 'Baby' from rapper Fabolous allows U.K. consumers to choose which part of the song they want to use as a mobile phone ringtone. Until now, the 30-second ringtone clips packaged with singles have been pre-determined by record companies. The Fabolous single from Warner's Atlantic Records includes built-in software that lets listeners isolate any part of the song and load it onto their phones. http://broadcastengineering.com/newsletters/audiotech/Ringtone-audio-remix-20050517
FEEDING FRENZY
If you're interested in a couple of very well designed and non Geeker-friendly (ie: easy enough for me and your mum to use) Newsreaders and RSS Feed Aggregators, may I recommend two that I've been using quite a bit lately.. especially to gather some of the articles you've been reading in our Newsletter. Feedmarker is a fast, funky and free Web based RSS/ATOM aggregator and bookmarks manager: http://feedmarker.com/index.php
Rojo goes the extra mile by not only giving readers the ability to flag stories they find important or interesting, but also by enabling them to draw on the insights of friends, family, colleagues, and others in their social networks, as well as its own in-house Online Community: http://rojo.com
POETIC SEMANTIC WEB QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"All the goods of the Information Age - All of the expressions once contained in books or film strips or records or newsletters - will exist either as pure thought or something very much like thought: voltage conditions darting around the Net at the speed of light, in conditions that one might behold in effect, as glowing pixels or transmitted sounds, but never touch or claim to 'own' in the old sense of the word." - John Perry Barlow
May 12, 2005
Disaster Recovery
The good news about the recent hard disk crash which wiped out thequality.com and modfilms.com is that it hasn't crippled either operations and most data has been recovered. The bad news is that not all Team Sanctuary data has been recovered and the process of recovery has revealed a number of bugs in the project's backup strategy which now have to be addressed.
The following info has been lost:
* Any twiki pages that had been created before Dec 7 and since modified, this for the most part means that up-to-date index pages are lost even though newer pages are available - use "Index" to find orphaned pages or Search.
* There are also many orphaned photo albums (e.g. http://thequality.com/flics/10weeks/gallery/album50) is there but not linked from anywhere - work to fix this pending
The following has been restored:
* All database content
* All blogs (apart from a small number of page templates which had been stored as files)
* All video content
The following is yet to be restored, data not lost
* Changes to the image galleries between 7 Dec and 30 March
May 11, 2005
SANCTUARY NEWSLETTER > MAY 11 > 2005
LADIES & GENTLEMEN.. IT'S A WRAP!
"It is with great pleasure that I announce that Sanctuary wrapped principal photography on Saturday. It's been an incredible couple of months fraught with all kinds of political and technical mayhem but we made it, and the rushes look great. Thank you thank you thank you. Looking forward to working through the next phase of the project. It's all been worth it. Stay tuned for pics. Best.." .M.
AUSTRALIA'S DIGITAL MEDIA FUTURE
Brendan Harkin, the executive director of the X|Media|Lab, talks about how his international digital collaboration projects (including a new one shortly at 'Broadcast Asia' in Singapore next month) help Australia's digitial media industry by fostering both skills and relationships, as well as the creative, conceptual and technological issues that the creative industries face in the lead up to digital projects actually getting made. You can see a QuickTime Mac version of an interview with Harkin here: http://homepage.mac.com/jason_romney/NetvideoMOVBrendanHarkin040505.htm
or alternatively a Flash Video version for PC here: http://homepage.mac.com/jason_romney/NetvideoFLVBrendanHarkin040505.htm
STAR WARS 3 - REVENGE OF THE CENSORS
Star Wars' long-awaited Episode III 'Revenge of the Sith' will premiere tomorrow in 10 cities across the United States, but not without a 'generous helping' of controversy."The new Star Wars film is a 'bloodbath' which deserves its parental guidance PG-13 rating" a critic claimed after an early screening of the movie. 'Revenge of the Sith' is in fact the first Star Wars movie to receive a cautionary PG-13 rating in the United States. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4513837.stm
STAR WARS GAME PRECEDES MOVIE RELEASE
In a bold move LucasArts decided to unleash their colossal Console Game for Episode III 'Revenge of the Sith' for both the Xbox and PS2 platforms weeks before the worldwide release of the film. If you can handle a Death Star's worth of spoilers, read on: http://ps2.ign.com/articles/608/608359p1.html
INTERGALACTIC BADASS QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force." - Darth Vader
May 07, 2005
SANCTUARY NEWSLETTER > MAY 4 > 2005
VIDEO SEARCH WARS
In recent weeks, Yahoo, Google and MSN have each rolled out services designed to make it easier to upload or locate video online. The portals' rollouts come as a handful of startups and independent film sites are creating tools to make putting video online nearly as simple as publishing text. Read article here: http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67302,00.html
HURLUBERLU
Hurluberlu Films has been set up to bring to public attention a huge array of international short films, which, up until now have been unavailable outside their country of origin. As well as providing a bevy of engaging short films with comprehensive content descriptions and subtitles in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, the site also aims to be entirely 'user-centric', allowing visitors to charter its progress. http://www.hurluberlu.com
CONCRETE TV
Concrete TV is the brainchild of Concrete Ron, a skilful video editor with a penchant for splicing up Cartoons, Cult Movies, Schlocky (and frankly quite shocking) ads, as well all manner of TV & Video footage in a veritable Megamix-style pastiche. http://www.concretetv.com
RESFEST FINAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Resfest is an international Digital Film Festival which aims to entertain, educate and inspire its global audience as the 'touring companion' of the bimonthly lifestyle magazine RES (which includes a 90-minute RES DVD in every issue). The Final Deadline for submissions to this year's Resfest are on May 13 so you better hurry up and put those final touches to your film by next week! http://www.resfest.com
UBERLORD OF SUSPENSE CINEMA QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director." - Alfred Hitchcock