Posted by Doug
Wed, 19 Jul 2006 13:12:44 GMT
Josh and I just got back from the Apple Summer Camp: Movie Workshop. It was pretty fun, but fast moving. We were assigned a project to create a 30 second commercial for anything in the Apple store. Earlier that morning the “camp counselors” had shot some raw footage for the Nike+iPod shoes. Right after telling us our assignment, they went through importing and editing their video to produce a commercial. They added music and a voice over and some transitions. They then turned us loose to shoot our own video.
Josh decided to shoot a video for Star Wars Battlefront. We had 10 minutes to shoot the video and 30 minutes to edit and produce the commercial. We ended up with a pretty good little video (2MB Quicktime).
I took my Panasonic PV-GS180 DV camcorder and my Macbook Pro. It’s a good thing too because they didn’t have enough cameras for everyone to use. Their plan was to use the built in iSights on the various Macs. Also, my Macbook Pro was pretty snappy for edits and such.
All in all we had fun. I’m going to try and get Josh to do another video today at home while it’s still fresh in his mind. We’re both looking forward to tomorrow’s iWeb Workshop.
UPDATED: We had about 30 minutes to kill before the camp started. Josh and I created this three page comic using Comic Life called
Camping Chaos (3MB PDF)—zero prior experience. I actually think Josh had more fun with this than making the movie!
Posted in Movies, Family, Software, Mac OS X | Tags Apple, camping, comiclife, creativity, Josh, Kids, MacbookPro, video | 2 comments
Posted by Doug
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 13:34:05 GMT
120 themes submitted for the Typo Theme Contest. That’s a lot of themes! Congratulations to all who participated. Like Rails Day, just participating is an accomplishment. I appreciate everyone who’s worked to pull this event off; particularly the sponsors.
Posted in CSS, Typo, Community | Tags creativity, CSS, typo | no comments
Posted by Doug
Wed, 09 Nov 2005 15:27:48 GMT
My buddy, Britton Fraley pointed me to Radiant Vista today. What a wonderful website! Most photo sites are either crap for design or over-the-top flash. This one has a wonderful layout and design. That’s just what encouraged me to look around. It’s the content that has me so excited.
I feel like the site could use a little more “about me” stuff. I didn’t really know what to expect as I was wandering around. Most of the site is Quicktime videos. The Daily Critiques are videos of the site contributors reviewing a photo. I like hearing their voice describe their impressions and critique. I like seeing their mouse pointer move about the image highlighting what they are talking about. I like seeing the improvements to the photos as they make simple adjustments to improve the image.
There is also a nice 16 minute video tutorial called, A Primer on Composition. Again, the mix of voice, images, and pointer is used for excellent effect.
But I’m saving the best part to last. There’s a PDF aticle on The Myth of Talent that pushed me to ecto to write this note. It’s an excellent affirmation of everything I had hoped about art.
...the truth about talent is this—talent is a set of skills you
develop over time through desire.
I’m an aspiring photographer. By no means am I good. I’m pleased to say my work has improved over the last year though. When people see me they don’t say “artist”. My past is not littered with examples of great works of art. By all rights I should just admit I’m not a talented photographer and stick to what I am good at: programming. But this article gives me hope.
He talks about why we buy into the myth that talent is a “natural ability of a superior quality”. I agree with the author, Craig M. Tanner, the biggest reason is fear.
Being labeled talented only means we have survived being untalented.
So for some period of time we have to be untalented. It’s the fear of doing badly that keeps us from “surviving being untalented”. I’ve talked about this fear meme before. When I was taking photography classes at the University of Cincinnati Communiversity, my instructor said that fear is the opposite of creativity. That was a powerful thought. This article on talent’s talk about fear is further reenforcement.
Even if you don’t think of yourself as an “artist” or want to be a photographer, I highly recommend this article.
Posted in Internet, Photography | Tags creativity, critique, fear, talent, tutorial | 3 comments
