DeadShed Showreel 2011...

I've been meaning to do this for a little while now, but I finally got around to it - a new showreel for the year 2011 (the last one I did was in 2009). Check it out on my YouTube Channel.

DeadShed 2009 Show-Reel now online!

Click the link below to see it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6lUqqnVcaw

I actually had this completed about a month ago, but it ended up being a bit of a fuss getting it uploaded onto YouTube - it was a case of video quality, as well as getting it properly into the 16x9 (although mine is actually in 1.85:1 - hence the tiny slivers of black above and below the video image) - it's not a case of me not knowing how, Sony Vegas makes it simple - it was just getting the ideal file type, quality and size to go along with the true widescreen setting.

I had a couple (or three, I think) failed uploads - well, failed in my eyes anyway, because the quality just looked awful - either too low and therefore blocky, or the black was all washed out and looking grey, or the widescreen setting wasn't translating.

Those were mostly all on smaller files - so I ended up rendering it out as a widescreen MPEG-2, which also got rid of two glitches I was experiencing with the lower quality versions, on top of the other aforementioned problems.

So indeed, an MPEG-2 at almost 170mb in size - so for the first time, you can actually watch one of my videos, not only in true widescreen so it fills the YouTube window, but also "High Quality" ... mind you, for the sake of trimming the size by 20 or 30 megabytes, I lowered the resolution to 640x480 instead of the usual 720x576 or whatever - these sizes, in Vegas, getting trimmed vertically - like a butcher might slice off a bit of fat, Vegas just slices off the black bars and only puts out the actual moving picture part.

I know, a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo, but thought I'd explain - so anyway, enjoy the updated show-reel, which now features a bunch of new footage from some recent projects ... in fact, this show-reel covers stuff that I've done from 2003 through 2008, so there's five years worth of stuff all crammed into four and a half minutes ... have some of that then. Enjoy.

Show-Reel 2008 has landed!

So I finally got off my arse to make a new show-reel, which actually takes quite a while when sifting through 4 years worth of filmmaking and then having to pick which ones to include - and then having to pick the right clips, then processing them, then editing the whole thing...damn.

Anyway, it's done and it's online:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KlcoRg7Uy1w

I'm a big fan of M83, I certainly look forward to the new album, and must check out this sort of ambient album or however you'd describe it, Digital Shades Volume 1 I think it's called. Anyway - it's great stuff, says I.

And finally, huzah, my Transformers DVD arrived from the bloody brilliant Total Film (for a letter I had published in the ... er ... December 2007 issue I think, the one that went on sale at the end of November anyway). Still waiting on 3:10 To Yuma from them, but really the wait is down to the individual distributors of the film - but anyway, I was chuffed to see it was the 2-Disc edition, whereas I was only expecting the 1-Disc - bonus round time today, eh?

And the assassination of Jesse James continues...

Well, it's been a little while since I saw The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and it's still sticking with me. The mournful score is still floating around my head at night when it's all quiet, the jaw-dropping cinematography still painted on the inside of my eyelids ... well, not literally because that'd be silly, but you know what I mean.

Point is - what a great piece of filmmaking! :)

Otherwise, I'm currently chipping away at a brand new show-reel, it's taking a while as you've gotta pick a song (from a list of 4,000 in my case) that matches the vibe of most of the footage at the very least...then you've got to pick which films you're made that you want to include clips from...then you have to actually edit the clips you want out of the files, or even capture the clips all over again...then you have to process all the footage, cropping it all to 1.85:1 and playing around with Magic Bullet where appropriate or suitable for experimentation...then you've got to render all that stuff...then it's gotta be transferred into some other editing software (where I do all the basic editing actions nice and swiftly) and then you've gotta edit the damn thing!

Well, I'm currently about a minute into the show-reel edit ... but before that, I had to fiddle with the chosen music track because the MP3 wasn't recognised properly, so I had to go and Cool Edit that sum'bitch into a file that worked fully.

*sigh*

Bloody nora ... still, to get the inspiration flowing, I'm re-watching Long Way Round after having recently finished reading the book, what a bloody good show it is too!