One of the good things about making mistakes is that if you screw up large enough, you’ll probably never make that same mistake again. For example, one time when I was going to film a concert, I failed to contact the sound engineer beforehand to check what type of equipment I would need to record the sound from the mixer. This, in combination with the fact that pretty much all my backup solutions failed as well, resulted in me having to record the sound from the PA as it sounded in the room with only a SM58 (frankly, it wouldn’t have mattered which microphone I had). Obviously, that didn’t work out very well. In fact, the end result sounded like utter crap. However, for the next concert, I came prepared and even did a sound check beforehand. I’ll never record crappy sound again.

The latest in the row of these productive mistakes I did a couple of days ago when I got the bright idea to put together a sort of show reel of all the videos I’ve created so far. What never really struck me, or at least didn’t alarm me, was that the material I’ve got had different frame rates. Some of it is in 23.976 frames per second, some of it in 24, and some of it in 25. You wanna know what happens when you mix these indiscriminately in Premiere Pro? Total mayhem ensues, that’s what happens! Random frames enter your footage, without warning individual frames gets scaled up, and if you’re lucky enough to avoid these quirks for some scenes, you can pretty much count on it stuttering its way forward, making it look like your subjects have some kind of glitchy spasm thingy going on. In short, you don’t want this unless your movie will be shown at some post modernistic film festival where you can explain it away as avant-garde art.

So, what’s the solution? Well, it’s pretty easy actually. Before starting to edit your piece, decide on the frame rate you want to work in, then, in the project tile, right click on the video clip that doesn’t match your desired frame rate and choose Modify > Interpret Footage. In the pop-up window that appears, you’ll be able to choose a new frame rate for the clip. Just bear in mind that this will slow down or speed up your clip depending on if you’re decreasing or increasing the frame rate. Also, the sound is affected as well, so that masculine voice that you recorded might end up sounding a little bit more feminine.

In addition, when making these changes, if you’ve already edited some footage, this will get screwed up. This is because all the cut points and key frames are encoded according to their time stamp, not according to the number of frames. This, in turn, means that you’ll have to go through all your edits and adjust them. If your clips are relatively short, this is less of a problem. If you, on the other hand, are working with really long clips, you’ll be unhappy to know that your cut points and keyframes will have moved away several minutes from where they’re supposed to be. This is what I realised had happened to my piece, and that’s why I’ll never make this mistake again.

A while ago, I wrote about how I’d like to see a form of advanced pop music, where the sound would stay the same but where the musical structure itself would go out on an excursion into the land of odd time signatures and complex song structures. Now, it should be said that there are a lot of groups out there reversing this plead by taking pop songs and write them in the style of sound and style of progressive rock/some kind of fusion jazz.

For example, we have Eyal Amir who occasionally makes these kind of covers, as well as Project RnL (which Eyal Amir is a member of). We also have Dirty Loops who, among other things, have made a completely insane cover of Britney Spears “Circus”. Check out the original below if you haven’t heard it, and then get ready for some funky shit.

I like this trend. I hope it continues.

The Safe Room is quite an interesting short film. In my mind, it definitely has its faults, but it’s still well worth to watch.

[M]inimalism is about becoming a high connoisseur of life. Being willing to burn away the chaff in order to enjoy the wheat of life, like a sommelier who discards a thousand cheap imitations in favor of a single bottle of fine wine, or like the biblical merchant who sells all his belongings to purchase a pearl of surpassing beauty.

This post, over at becomingminimalist, is really spot on. If you wonder why you should become a minimalist, go read this post and then we can talk.

After my recent encounters with logo animation creation (say that three times fast), I started looking around the web for inspiration for future projects. I’ve had an interest in this type of animation for a long time, but it’s not until now that I’ve really had a reason to start investigate it further. When doing this, I’ve noticed that I’m  more drawn towards more minimalistic 2D pieces, preferably with somewhat of a retro feel to them, rather than to more complicated 3D ditto.

For example, I find this logo animation for CypherAudio, made by Nicolas Girard, absolutely stunning. You can really tell how much work he’s been putting into the small details.

Another favorite is Polytron’s recently released trailer for FEZ 2, a piece that definitely flirts with several old video graphic paradigms at the same time.

And those of you who watched Apple’s keynote from this years WWDC probably recognise this absolutely fabulous intro that they opened the show with.

While watching other people’s creation, I try to put my own mind into magical sponge mode, soaking up the real interesting parts and hopefully letting the rest go.

I got inspired by making an intro animation yesterday, so I couldn’t help doing another one. This time, the sound is much more beefed up.

Yesterday, I created this short intro animation that will be used in future Människa plus videos.

I’m a member of the Swedish transhumanistic organisation Människa Plus, which recently had a meeting at Kulturhuset in Stockholm. For this meeting, I created a short movie about the event,where I realised that an escalator can be an excellent poor man’s camera dolly; just check out the establishing shots in the start of this movie.

I did apply some stabilisation to these shots with Adobe Premiere’s Warp Stabiliser tool, and I placed the camera strap around my neck and pushed outwards while filming, and all in all, I think it looks really smooth and professional. However, this tip is of course only applicable when you have an escalator close to the object you want to film. For all those other shots, you still have to bring your own equipment.

Adam Haglund is a photographer based in Malmö, Sweden. I recently read an interview with him in Phokusera, a sort of advertising journal from Scandinavian Photo. Anyhow, what really caught my eye and gave me a fuzzy feeling inside in this interview was a quote beneath the heading “Adam’s advice”, and the quote is about something that I’ve been on about many times before on this blog. Well, I never pass up on an opportunity to shove this sentiment down my readers throats so here goes once again:

Less talk, more action! If one has a project idea, the best thing to do is to just to get started with it even if the idea isn’t fully developed yet. Otherwise, there’s a risk that one gets stuck and never get things of the ground at all. The effect of starting and just doing things in an early phase is that one thereby unravels and learns a lot of things on the way, experiences one never would have got just sitting down and thinking. Even if the project ultimately fails, one still has received new insights.

Yes.

I’ll paraphrase a quote that I don’t even know the origin of now, but despite its extreme simpleness, I find it really thoughtful, so here goes:

The best way to get someone to lie is to punish them for telling the truth.

I don’t really think I need to elaborate on this, but it’s an important reminder to be conscious about what incentive structure we set up for both ourselves and other people.