42 - AL 12 - Uhhhhhhh!

There isn’t all that much annoying me at the moment, but I’ll take a stab at something.

First of all, Dan, I’m not sure I actually understand what you’re annoyed about. Are you annoyed that people haven’t been filming in Ready-To-HD formats for longer, or that people are still making DVDs instead of just making blu-rays? Actually, don’t answer, I don’t really care either way.

What am I annoyed at?...

Well, I still haven’t replaced my glitch microwave, and I think it has started mocking me. The last time I went to heat up some lunch, I swear it said ‘Ha Ha Ha,’ on the screen, as if mocking me for being to poor to get a new microwave; one that doesn’t take about five minutes to process two-minute-noodles.

What else?...

I still compulsively sing every single song I know the lyrics to, which is unfortunate when actual signers are around, and they start mocking me for being flat on every note I sing, and that my voice goes all weird whenever I get to higher notes.

You know what else? Music in horror movies.

I have a standing agreement with a film school a few blocks from my recording studios that students are free to request my help composing some music for their films, but only if I have time. I like doing this for a few reasons, not least of all because composing music for film students is easy, because whatever I compose, they are happy and grateful and don’t ask me to change it. But it’s also great practice, student films aren’t the best made productions in the world, so they really need some emotive music that fits the look of the film to make it work. But what I’m annoyed at is when they try and make horror movies. Horror movies need to be all dark and shady and moody, and perfectly framed and with horrible scripts. Student films generally have none of these, and don’t really look like horror movies. So my instinct is compose music that isn’t really horror, more like creepy-mystery music. But of course they want horror film music. Horror film music is minimalist, ambient, and screechy, and this is always the case, always. This, unfortunately, doesn’t quite fit with the film they’ve made, and so ends up sounding melodramatic and out-of-place. That annoys me, because it happens at least four of five times a year, and usually those are the ones that end up asking for my help.

And lastly, Paint Rollers. Yeah, you heard me… Read me.

We busied ourselves on Saturday repainting our break room, because the color of mucus green isn’t really helping everyone’s anime/ation addictions. We instead decided to paint it sky blue, as if to remind us that there are no windows in there, or anywhere else in the building for that matter. And people wonder why sound people are so pale, and gangly looking. Well I was put on roller duty at one point, and I swear, that roller was the worst designed piece of painting equipment ever devised by the hands of man. The paint brush thing kept slipping off, resulting in weird streaks on the wall. The handle was loose and kept tilting in different direction, making it impossible for me paint in a straight line, and ended up with some parts of the wall coated in paint, and other parts with barely an undercoat. And finally, it sucked at spreading paint out evenly. The paint brush part itself was just hugely terrible at holding paint; and then letting it go. It was so infuriating that I ended up yelling loudly at Taylor, the cute singer who I occasionally work with. Not angrily, just in conversation. It must have seemed downright strange, and it is now assured to me that next time we work together will be awkward.

There’s my annoyances. Read from you next week.

Andrew Lyons.

41 - DL 14 - Neehhhhh!

So you’re wondering what I’m annoyed about? As it happens, you already know. The current blu-ray model.

In the industry, one of two things would have happened. Option 1) You filmed your production on film, either 35mm or 16mm. 35mm film, depending on the ASA (Basically a number that represents the amount of light the film needs to get a clear picture) you can get a 4k scan of the film, and it would look fine.  Now, to quantify, 4k means a 4096*2160 sized scan (Not the 3820*2160 that 4K tvs seem to have going, that is below standard 4k.) That is a fantastic sized image, and you have lots of room to get fine details and brighten colors, and overall have more options to make it look exactly like you want. On 16mm film, you can get a 2k scan, approximately half the resolution, but all other factors apply. And what both of these have in common, is that you can get a high quality 1080p blu-ray quality version out of it.

Option 2) And this option only applies in the last decade or so, you filmed digitally. Recently, as in, since 2008, all digital cameras can shoot blu-ray quality. Whether it looks blu-ray quality is another matter, but basically, the resolution is there. And earlier than that, since 2002 at least, every digital cinema camera has been able to shoot blu-ray quality, and in recent years the capacity of both consumer and professional cameras in terms of resolution and bit depth and quality, and color reproduction, and light level maintaining, and fine detail picking-uping has increased ten-fold.

Option 3) The much less preferred, much less sensible (in fact, downright insane) option, is shooting your production on something else. This doesn’t happen much anymore, with affordable, high quality cinema cameras widely available, but it has annoyed me for some time. Shooting on formats like betacam (an SD format, either NTSC 480/30, or PAL 576/25) or videotape (same detail, but worse resolution) or 8mm film. You might think that this would have been phased out by the mid 50s when single strip color film became widely available, but as recently as 2010 this wasn’t the case.

So in rare option 3 cases, no, you cannot make a blu-ray out of the production. Luckily, the vast majority of movies were shot on one of the first two options, so they can be transferred to blu-ray. A fair number of tv shows were also shot on option 1, but they are much less reliable. Since 2008, nearly all movies and tv shows can easily handle a blu-ray release, that is a fact.

And here’s where my annoyances come in. As I have explained, getting a blu-ray resolution version of any production is not difficult, unless option 3 applies. So pretty much every movie ever, and a good deal of tv shows before 2008, and every show after then can be released on blu-ray. But they aren’t. I understand that releasing something in HD costs a lot of money, and takes a lot of time and facilities and processing power, and patience waiting for things to render, but still. Blu-ray allows you to get the crispest, sharpest and most accurately colored and most losslessly sound mixed version of your production possible, why would you not embrace this opportunity? No matter what production, someone is putting a lot of effort into it, give them the opportunity to fully realise their creative vision.

Filmmakers are getting this opportunity, but when it comes to tv shows… That’s a different story. Plenty of shows that were shot on 35mm film have not been transferred onto blu-ray, even from just a higher quality scan and upping the colors and contrast to make it look more modern. It’s pretty annoying, considering the minimal time and effort it would take to get even a basic blu-ray.

Really the problem is the mindset. Blu-rays are such a new thing, and producing them a new concept for most studios and places in the world. Putting things in blu-ray format isn’t the number one priority, not everyone has an HDTV and a blu-ray player and a surround sound system, but basically everyone has a SD – capable TV and a dvd player. So which would you make? Of course, the DVDs would be the way to go. It is short sighted, because within a decade, the new standard definition will be high-definition, and all the time they spent today getting their DVDs out will be for nothing.

Sadly, until that day come, I still can’t watch ‘Arrested Development’ (Filmed in at least 720p which I think is good enough for a blu-ray) or ‘Scrubs’ (Filmed on 16mm, and then an Arri Alexia, both perfectly capable of getting blu-ray quality picture out of.)

Favorite song of the moment:

            ‘Hell Prominence’ from ‘Super Mario Galaxy.’ Yeah I know, I’ve done this soundtrack already, but we were on ‘Okami’ forever, so I’m going to keep listening to this until I get bored. An awesome song, with a rousing beat, awesome orchestra swells and just an on overall epic sound. The longest song on the soundtrack, which again shows that I like things that last.

            On a side note, I love Coldplay, and my favorite song of theirs is ‘A Rush of Blood To The Head’ from their second album, which is, to date, their longest song. So there’s that point.

Andrew, time for what is annoying you right now.

Daniel Lyons.

40 - RAL 13 - Gahhhh!

I’m sorry brothers, but I really don’t have anything to write about this week.

Dan, you complained a few weeks about being sorely lacking in inspiration, and so didn’t have much to write about. Well you still managed to write a whole blog, though off the top of my head, I can’t remember what the subject was. I am not as skilled as filling empty space with nothing. I would make a poor politician in that regard.

So instead, we are going to have a slight annoyance week. Considering that our theme.

My annoyance for this week:

The prices of DVDs.

This might seem more in your department Dan, but I am less picky than you in the sense that I still buy DVDs, as opposed to you, who shells out ridiculous amounts of money to buy blu-rays.

What bothers me about DVD pricing is that there seems to be no correlation at all between content, and how much is charged for it. Take for example ‘Arrested Development.’ It is a show with a constantly running storyline, an abundance of running gags, and just an overall great-to-be-marathonned feel to it. As such, each season came in one DVD package, priced at the reasonable $28. Now you might say, “But wait a minute, don’t the seasons dramatically decrease in episode count, so should technically be cheaper?” To which I would respond, “Well, yes. But Fox wants to sell as many as possible to people who don’t know this fact. So putting all three at a reasonable price makes. What’s more, people who have seen it would be willing to pay that much anyway.” So this makes sense. The content matches how it is sold.

But here’s where things get difficult. I was poking around my favorite mixed media retailer the other day, and I happened upon the recently mentioned ‘Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated.’ I remember reading on Wikipedia that it also had a continuous storytelling format, and would bring all sorts of childhood nostalgia to the forefront of viewing. Well Wikipedia didn’t say the second part, but I know that it would. I know that both seasons have 26 episodes, so I assumed it would be the same case as ‘Arrested Development.’ The whole seasons would be bundled together, and put at a reasonable price so that anyone who knows Scooby Doo would be happy to buy it. Well this was far, far from the truth of the matter.

I picked a DVD off the shelf, and saw that it was ‘Season 1: Volume 4.’ “Hmmmm,” I thought, “That makes absolutely no sense at all. Why would you break up a tv show that has a continuous story into volumes. Not only that, but from my rough calculations, into 6 volumes. Are they are least quite cheap making it easy to be convinced to buy them?”

No, no they weren’t. There were 6 volumes, per season, and each cost $10. That means, for a single season of a TV show, that has a continuous story, that is trying to get sold to the largest possible audience, it costs $60!!!! A live action, prime time comedy-drama costs $28, and you get the whole season, and this private channel, minimally viewed, wide audience appealing show costs $60 and you don’t even get it all at once. In fact, at the store, they only had one volume of it in stock.

Now I’m guessing that parents would just by a volume or two, and the kids wouldn’t notice that the story just doesn’t get resolved. To marketing and promotions teams, this might make sense, but marketing and promotions teams are among the oblivious and short sighted people on the planet, determined to make $10-20 per person right now, instead of $60+ in the long run. But this is bad marketing in every possible way. First, it’s assuming that only parents shopping for their young children would by these DVDs, when I promise you that the market for Scooby Doo is everyone who has ever been a child since the shows premiere in 1969. Second, it’s assuming that this massive audience is entirely oblivious people who won’t realise that they are only watching a small fragment of a much larger whole. And thirdly, it’s really fricking cheap. When I slip down to the DVD store to pick up a show that I really want to watch, I don’t want to have to pay $60 to only get half of it, and to probably not even get that half because they only have one-sixth of it. So instead of selling the whole thing, in one package (well two, one for each season), at a good price, so attracting the maximum possible sales, and so generating the maximum possible revenue, they would rather sell it in 12 different parts, leading to massive overpricedness, huge inconvenience, and ridiculous narrowing of the target audience.

And it is not limited just to Scooby Doo. They do this to a ton of shows, and strangely enough, it often seems to be the shows that have continuous stories. And it also often seems to be not-primetime animations. It’s cheap, it’s frustrating, and that is my annoyance for the week.

Favorite Song Of The Moment:

            ‘Atlas’ by Coldplay. I am quite ‘The Hunger Games’ fan, and this actually came out a couple weeks ago. What I’m not is a big Coldplay fan, but I love this song. It’s emotional, and catchy, and so ‘Hunger Games.’ I haven’t stopped listening to it for a couple days now, so that’s my favorite song of the moment.

Looking forward to reading about your annoyance for the week.

R. A. Lyons.

39 - AL 11 - The Fear Of Frightening

You’d like to hear a story that made me nervous huh?

Well, it was a dark and stormy night… Come to think of it, why put dark in that sentence? I mean it’s night, isn’t the fact that it’s dark inherent to the situation?

Anyway, it was a cloudy and stormy night… That doesn’t work either. You can’t really have a storm unless there are clouds.

Ummm… It was a stormy, stormy night… That’s more like it. But come to think of it, it wasn’t actually storming. It was just kinda windy and thunder occasionally rolled through.

It was a windy, thunderous night… Leaves blew along the roads, and long shadows crept behind people, cast from the streetlights. People milled about, on their way to nightclubs to drink their bitter drinks, and dance to their deafening music. The cars were slow, coping with the lack of signs present in the city, and being sure not hit the partiers who spilled out of their clubs early.

I was sitting in my mixing studio, utterly bereft of patience or attention after a long days work. I leaned back in my chair and listened for signs of life in the studio. There were none. Not a word of speech, or the tap of a step, just silence, heavy in the air.

I checked my watch, the house was in the nine o’clock range, so I decided my work for that day was done. And all I was doing was some mix refining anyway. So I shut off the equipment, gathered my possessions, and locked the door, as headed to my home.

But then I did hear a noise. A noise most familiar, the noise of noise that occurs when speakers are up, but no music comes out. I turned and looked back, but all the studios were locked. It was a Friday, and everyone was already out. I walked back to the studio I had recently left, and looked through the glass door, unsure of what to expect. Perhaps a person sitting, that somehow I had missed, or some kind of specter, determined to give me the chills.

But look in I did, and here’s what I saw. Inside there was nothing. Nothing at all.

But I did see, at the end of the panel, a dial had been turned up, and a light at the end was glowing red. It was at this point that I became unsure. Unsure of what I was seeing, or what I had missed.

So I swiped my ID card, and the scanner beeped true, and in I went, back into that room. I kept my eyes peeled, for sight or sound, of anything at all, that may posit a scrumb (something that will endanger me.)

The truth, as it happens, was far less dramatic. In my haste to leave, and my unaware state, I had knocked a piece of gear from its place. It had fallen and landed at the top of the slider that controlled the speaker output volume. And so as I left, the weight built up, and pushed the slider down to its edge. And then the gear had fallen from the console, and now lay on the ground. The dial was up, the noise came free, and the piece of gear was no where to be seen.

So I turned off the dial, and looked around, sure that I would be attacked and downed.

But quickly I calmed myself, and was back on my way. Away from the control panel that haunts me still to this day.

Tada, my experience last Monday night that I found a little unnerving.

I’ll read from you next week.

Andrew Lyons.

38 - DL 13 - The Nerves Of Nervousness

You want to hear about an experience I had recently that scared me? Well… here it is.

8am:

I woke up, brushed my teeth, spent a moment staring at myself in the mirror and wondering how my hair manages to so aptly defy the laws of physics with mad professor efficiency.

9am:

Got in my car, which runs on hope more than petrol or functioning engine parts, and started driving to an open day. You may think open days are just a school thing, but universities and businesses and everything have them to. As it happens, I finish my degree at the end of the year, and still have big giant pieces of work to do that are stressing me out (OH MY GOD, SO MUCH WORK, WHY DO I KEEP SITTING AND PLAYING ‘OKAMI’!?!?!) and I need to figure out what I’m doing next year. Work, or more studies, or take a year off, who knows? The possibilities are endless, and they are all freaking me out.

10am:

Parked, got out, ran into a really hot friend from my UNI course who I thought was in the countryside, then wandered around, admiring all the tv and film studio offices that were around, and then arrived at the University. It’s not really so much of a university as a training building for going into the industry with your specialisation.

10am-1pm:

Talked to people, tried to talk myself up (which I suck at) tried to network a little bit, ran into some other people who were hoping to go there, went to some talks and sessions, looked at films that had been made in the past (a couple were great.) I wanted to stay longer, but I had to go.

1pm:

At this point, my phone had been off charge since 8 that morning, so for the last 5 hours, and usually it would be fine, but I was using it as a GPS which tends to drain the battery.

2pm:

After getting a little loss, arguing with my GPS/phone about which of us was worse about finding directions, and almost crashing into another crew member, I finally arrived at our filming destination. We were filming in a suburb I had been in once before, and that was with several people who knew the area fairly well, so driving it alone meant I was putting a lot of faith into my GPS. But finally, I arrived.

2pm-1am:

Filming. I love it. I love the people, I love the place, I love the activities, I love the end product, and I love the comradery. Everyone is so friendly and diligent and eager to do a great job, it really is awesome. Plus, several cute girls there not from my course, that’s always nice.

1am-2am:

And now comes the scary part. While I would have plenty to say about me and my unstable relationship with similar aged peoples of the opposite gender, that’s not what this is about. We packed up, put the gear away, and everyone got in their cars and drove off. I put my phone on, put on the GPS, got it to specify a route, and off I went. And then it happened, a notice came up that read ‘4% Battery. Please connect to a charger immediately.’ Soon enough, I was racing along the abandoned streets of a suburb I didn’t know, in the middle of the night, and hoping to get to a highway I recognized before my GPS died. Such was not the case. It died, and I was lost. I had no map book, no internet, no phone to call anyone or direct me. I was in the middle of nowhere, and without any clue how to get away.

And now the one page limit on these blogs comes into effect, so:

To Be Continued

Daniel Lyons.