i need a freakin vacation

…

This is one of the sets for teh studio’s next film, the Last Manifesto of a Convicted Rebel.

Yes, it’s a long name.

We had some debates on it, and for awhile I was almost going to change it.

Then, I said “oh well, it sounds totally amazing”.

So we’re keeping it.

Chris

technorati tags:lastmanifesto, filmmaking, comitarstudios

Jason Kottke posted this cool “Powers of Ten” vid today. It’s neat to see how a power of 10 can affect the field of view in the universe.

I did notice that the credits list Alex Funke, and IMDb lists him as the cinematographer on the film. Funke is the same guy who did the miniatures/visual effects work on Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Starship Troopers, etc.

-Chris

The most amazing show on television ends tonight.

It’s my guilty pleasure, the show I have denied enjoying for roughly four years now.

It’s over tonight.

In a horrible, disgusting reshuffling of The WB’s shows in preparation for “The CW” network (don’t get me started on the pathetic name), Everwood, the critically acclaimed drama set in Everwood, Colorado, has been cancelled.

Fortunately, the show was given the honor of a series finale. Writers on the show knew in advance that the show’s cancelling was imminent, and wrote an alternative episode that could be broadcast as a finale - and I must say it is amazing.

Beautifully shot, beautifully edited, beautifully acted… Everwood was a gem. The show is something that without doubt has influenced me in dozens of ways - everything from its choice of music to its choice of “choices”. The coloring, the locations… it was a work of art.

Unfortunately though, money stepped in. Everwood was cancelled because it cost too much money. It was never actually shot in Everwood, the town is fictional. Instead, much of it was shot in parts of Canada and Utah. The WB ignored the two Emmy nominations, Treat Williams’ SAG award nominations - all because money stepped in.

Everwood will undoubtedly live on though. The style, the exquisite beauty, and the without doubt amazing passion that this show brought to television will live on through DVDs, and certainly future mediums. Unfortunately though, the future of the show is lost. Greed stepped in.

So I conclude saying “Goodbye, Everwood”. It changed the way I looked at television, and the way I look at life.

Chris

As everyone knows, we’ve been working on putting together a DVD version of “The Bet” for some time now - longer than it takes most feature film studios to put together DVDs.

We’re held back because of a major roadblock, only 4 letters too - N T S C.

NTSC (National Television System(s) Committee) is the type of video that much of North and Latin America uses. NTSC format describes the frames per second, color standard, lines of pixels on TVs, etc.

NTSC is stupid because it is supposed to run at 30 frames per second. But it doesn’t. No, see, that would be EASY. No, NTSC countries are screwed, because when we made the conversion to color TV, our brilliant engineers realized “oops, we don’t have enough cable bandwidth to send the color info”. SOOO guess what they did - they changed the frames per second rate. Not to 29, not to 20, not to 40. To allow room for the color data to pass through, they changed our frames per second to f’ing 29.9 freakin 7. Yes, while PAL countries get 25 frames per second EXACTLY ON THE SPOT, we get screwed in the arse with 29.97.

This is annoying. You have no idea, seriously. Because guess what - when I need to deinterlace my film (which I do - on TV it looks like crap) I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!!! Cuz guess what - instead of running at a nice rate, we run at freaking 59.94 fields per second! Making deinterlacing more of the pain in the ass than it already is! Especially when I’m doomed to have to use tools like AVISynth and VirtualDub!!! Woo hoo!

And NTSC… some people call it Never Twice Same Color because its color encoding sucks! I’m not even going to bother going into detail because I optimize for web 95% of the time. Converting crap through dozens of cables makes the color look crappy - that’s the long and short of it.

OH well.

Why can’t we just use PAL? 25 fps sounds so nice right now…