Gracepoint After Five

As exciting and wonderful as the Christmas season can be, we also know how long and boring it can get. Rather than sitting at home and doing nothing, here’s a book list from yours truly that will keep you busy. I’ve trimmed it down to one essential book for each category. If you’re just dying for more recommendations, just let me know. (more…)

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Much has been said about inspirations lately, but one thing I do want to mention: inspirations alone do not produce great work. Thomas Edison¹ was onto something when he said that “none of [his] inventions came by accident.” It takes work and effort. A lot of it.

Ira Glass, a reporter who’s now famous for hosting This American Life on National Public Radio, has something similar to say with regards to the art of storytelling². Ira is now renowned for his ability to take a story and make it very interesting — he’s able to put a spin on it that causes you to think about a subject in which you’ve never thought about before. In short, he’s a Jedi Master.

As a master of the craft, he has a lot of advice to give. “Do a lot of work. Put a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline.” “I took longer to know how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met.” From the way he talks and the passion that just exudes out of his pores — you know he’s sincere. The thing that really drew me to this short video is around the 3 minute mark, when he plays a tape from his eighth year at work. He pauses the tape from time to time to address to the audience — to us — how horrible he was. Now, to a novice in radio story-telling like moi, it sounded fine. However, pay close attention to his facial expression as he listens to his younger self with much anguish and pain, almost as if someone was clawing at the blackboard.

I admit that it’s far easier to criticize one’s past than it is for the present, but I’ll bet that he was just as harsh back then to himself as he is now. He must have; there’s no other way for improvement if one (1) doesn’t self-analyze and self-criticize and (2) make much effort to improve. As Ira stated in the beginning of this video, many new artists — whether they are designers, film makers, illustrators, etc — recognize that their work is not as good as their “taste”³. Unfortunately, so many people become defeated and quit. And here, I just want to echo what Ira said:

It’s going to take a while. It’s natural to take a while… you just have to fight your way through it.

Previously, I talked about my efforts in making a particularly difficult component (water on people) look good. In this post, I’m going to speed through the other areas of the poster.

The base elements

As usual, much time was spent in looking for good stock photography. Perusing Flickr, it wasn’t long before I spotted the USC football player. Once I saw it — even in the thumbnails — I knew that was it. Beautiful lighting with a dark background. Menacing. In short: amazing. Finding a similar photo for the Cal Bears was another story. In the end, I settled for the one above. Even though the time of day didn’t match, the most important thing is making sure that the light source is similar. If you look at the two photographs above, you’ll notice that the light seems to be coming from “behind the camera” and to the left.

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Update: Part 2 of the design process is now up.

This upcoming Saturday, Kairos Christian Fellowship will be having a getaway in the sierras. Unfortunately, that coincides with the big Cal vs. USC home game. As a way to draw students to choose the sierra trip over the game, we designed a poster for this event.

USC vs Cal - Kairos Sierra Lodge Getaway Poster (final)

More about the design process after the jump:

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Ok, I confess, I keep all my passwords in a single text file, and I keep it stored online.

How am I supposed to remember my username and password to the Oracle iExpense thingy at work?  Or the Member ID for my health insurance?  I gotta keep them online so that info is available whether I’m at work or at home.

Maybe I’ll be the next cyber-theft victim like the poor folks at Twitter who had their corporate documents compromised since they stored it all online using Google for Domains.  Tsk tsk.

Well, the way I’ve been able to pull if off and sleep peacefully at night is using a combination of some awesome Mac tools (I’m sure there’s a similar PC equivalent):

• Dropbox: Online storage volume, backend is actually Amazon’s S3 service
• TrueCrypt: Open-source on-the-fly volume encryption — allows to you quickly mount and unmount secure volumes.

Dropbox is a great tool available for Windows and OS X that allows you to keep a virtual disk online, available everywhere.  I know there are many other similar services and I’ve tried my share.  However, I’m a big believer in Dropbox because it never crashes and never misses a sync.  You can be moving files around in it, copying a large file in there, and then for kicks, yank the internet connection.  Next time you log in, it syncs flawlessly.  Beauteous!

Inside Dropbox, I store an encrypted file container created by TrueCrypt.  I can mount that file container like a USB drive, and I can in turn store sensitive files in there.

I know there are password websites out there but I just don’t trust some third party to store my passwords.  ”Store all your passwords in a single place!”  Something about that value proposition gives me the creeps!  Well, those sites are dime a dozen, and all startupy.  Not my idea of real security.  Ultimately, I want to be the only one who has the keys to the safe.  There’s a similar technique which uses Disk Utility to create a password protected AES-encrypted .DMG file, but that requires you to remember to never click “Save Password” when decrypting it and the disk image itself is read-only so it’s a pain to make changes to its contents.

Creating your Encrypted File Container

After you install Dropbox, create a folder called Secure which will have a file called Secure Files (in case it isn’t any clearer):

Secure Files is actually an encrypted file container created by TrueCrypt.  That’s basically fancy lingo for a .DMG disk image volume that has strong encryption (I’m using Serpent-Twofish-AES … three ciphers in cascade).  You can easily create one using TrueCypt by clicking on Create Volume:

Save your encrypted file container in your Dropbox’s Secure folder or save it to your desktop and copy to Dropbox later.  For the Encryption algorithm, it’s up to you.  I chose the Serpent-Twofish-AES since it’s basically impossible to break.  Next, set a volume size of 50MB (more if you need to store lots of stuff in there).  Create a volume password (a very long one preferably and one you don’t use elsewhere) and a filesystem type (I’m using FAT for highest compatibility) and format the volume.

Now, drag your encrypted file container from Dropbox to TrueCrypt and mount it.  Volia!  Super-secure disk image to go.  You can drag important documents and password files directly into the mounted volume (shows up like a USB disk in Finder):

When you unmount the volume (either through TrueCrypt or Finder), it is automatically re-encrypted.  Even if your Dropbox account is somehow compromised, your secure volume files remain encrypted and protected.

I also keep a copy of the TrueCrypt application inside the Secure Files folder in case I’m on a Mac that doesn’t have it.

Now you can keep your password file guilt-free!

Good artists copy, great artists steal, as the saying goes. It’s not news to anyone that we, as artists — nay, as human beings — are constantly being inspired by something. I’ve already written two posts on videos that were inspired from elsewhere (check out 1 and 2), and why they worked. Unfortunately, it is more often the case that the derivatives are worse — sometimes far worse — than the original. In this post, we’ll look at two different music videos covering the exact same thing: a song dedicated to John Williams (and, I suppose, to Star Wars).

Good Idea: Corey Vidal version

First, let’s set the record straight. Moosebutter (below) is the group that wrote and sang the song, even in the version above. Corey himself claims that he is merely lip-synching. However, his video came first — the concept and execution are originally his. It should be rather apparent why so many people loved this video instantly. What really sets him apart from the crowd is made evident by the other version:

Bad Idea: Moosebutter version

Before we go into the specifics — the technical nitty-gritties — as to why this is inferior to Corey’s, let’s begin with the larger picture. Fundamentally, Corey’s video is neat because he’s in each of the four subscreens, “playing out” the various parts. In this version, the band members are in each screen, and even though they’re singing the song live, it is already far less impressive. In addition, there’s one part in the video when it is (accidentally) revealed that they are standing next to each other. This fact further diminishes this video, because much of what makes Corey’s version so attractive is the amount of work he had to put in it. At the very least, he had to record himself four times. Not so for this video.

A screenshot is worth a thousand words

I originally wanted to capture multiple screenshots of the Moosebutter video, detailing when and where something went wrong. I will save myself the trouble (and save you from the pain) by just limiting myself to this one. Not only do you see a mysterious elbow enter frame (circled), but so much more could be said just from this frame alone.

First, nobody here is fully in frame, except the Top-Right Guy. In other words, their edges are cut off — this is most apparent with Top-Left Guy. If you’re going to stand next to each other, at least give one another enough room so you can utilize the full frame.

Second, lighting is flat for everybody, save for Bottom-Right Guy. I know this isn’t supposed to be a professional video, but even Corey’s lighting was much better, mostly because it was consistent. What Moosebutter saved in time (doing everything at once), they sacrificed for visual quality.

Speaking of visual quality, did you notice their edges are blurry? This is more apparent in the beginning of the video when they’re standing behind the white wall. That was my initial reaction when I first watched this clip — why does it seem like a Gaussian blur was applied to each of them?

Well, this screenshot gives the answer: they’re standing in front of a greenscreen in order for them to pull off this special effect. I would then ask this question: why have this effect? It doesn’t add anything to the video, other than that it’s a special effect. This flies against my philosophy in filmmaking: Don’t do special effects for the sake of having special effects. Rather than wowing the audience, it has the opposite effect: it ruins the video a bit. Corey’s video is amazing because the audience realizes that he’s doing everything in-camera; everything is done during production. This video, on the other hand, lost some credibility because it raises questions as to how much was done in post-production. When this “star field” comes up, immediately another layer of credibility is lost – they could’ve done anything and everything in post. Now, having done some film myself, I know that this is not true (post-production cannot accomplish everything). Yet, this is the emotional feeling that I get once this special effect came up. Bottom line: this effect did more harm than good.

Truth can be harsh

Inevitably, someone out there will wonder why I’m dogging on Moosebutter so harshly. I would like to respond to that with three points. First, though I admit that this is rather harsh, I hope it doesn’t come across as mean-spirited. In fact, I have more things to say about the video, but I’ll leave with just the four aforementioned points. Second, even though Corey is an amateur, his video comes across as somewhat professional because of the lack of mistakes. The inverse proves to be true with the Moosebutter video. Oftentimes, the difference between a professional video and an amateur one is not the big things; it’s the little things here and there that separate the two.

Finally, I put my videos under the same level of scrutiny. In fact, when I ask for feedback, I expect nothing less than people being dead-honest with me. Those are the most difficult comments to bear — yet those are also the best. Here are two critiques I’ve provided for my crew on one of my latest videos: one for the cameraman and stage helpers, and the other for the actors. (Post about the video itself soon to come.)