January 2nd, 2010

A few years back I decided to try my hand at putting together a video for a song I made with my friend Aaron Nielsen. At the time I was working on Windows PC and so I put together the video using Windows Movie Maker.

It didn’t take long to learn the ropes and after 2 or 3 days of working obsessively on the project, I exported the movie and uploaded it to YouTube. For a first attempt I was very pleased with the results. Actually, this wasn’t exactly my first time working with video. Back in high-school I went on a field trip to York where I used a VHS Camcorder to capture footage of the trip, which we watched as a group on return to school. There was no editing involved – so the emphasis was on capturing the footage, but still, it was a nice introduction and gave me a taste for working with video.

A few years later, while in College/University I helped a friend record and edit footage from a trip to Europe. It was sometime between 1992 and 1993, and by that time camcorders were already smaller than they were 4 years earlier in high-school – now using compact Hi-8 tapes in favour of the much larger VHS format. As for editing the footage, it was all done using tape-to-tape with a console like the one below for controlling the source and destination reels.

It was quite some before I had the chance to film/edit again – my Mom bought me a Sony Handycam which I used on several occasions, although nothing ever made it to “production” since I had no way to edit the footage at the time. My Intel 486 computer could just about handle email and Instant Messaging, not much more.

Back (or forward) to 2007 and I was at it again, this time using Windows Movie Maker and a large selection of video clips I had been recording for the past year or so since I got a Sony Cybershot (again from my Mom) which output in digital MPEG format. How things have changed!

Shortly after I produced the echotel – Not Easy video Microsoft launched Windows Vista and with it, a new version of Movie Maker. I made a few more movies, some of which are on YouTube, some of which are in the vaults along with those old Hi- tapes and so much other material I’ve yet to revisit.

As far as the rest of it goes, well I’m starting off the new year with a new blog-category: Adventures in Videoland. This post, appropriately titled the same, is the first of what I hope will be an interesting and engaging record of what I discover and learn as I go from Windows to Mac, Movie Maker to iMovie, to Final Cut Express and perhaps beyond. At this point I’ve been using iMovie HD for a little while and have quite a few things to say about the switch from iMovie HD to iMovie 08 and why I’m currently looking for a trial version of Final Cut Express as a move forward.

For now I’ll leave it at that because I have to go back to clearing space on my storage drive and trying to find that trial version of FCE. Apple appears to be either hiding it or there just isn’t one, which might be a sneaky way of getting me to simply put out the cash to buy it. “Go on! You know you want to!”

To round off this post, I’m including 2 videos I made recently in iMovie HD.

• Adventures in Videoland , Captain's Log , Miscellaneous , Music Videos , echotel
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December 1st, 2009

Just updated the header with a new background image and changed the color/style of the font in CSS. Here’s before (top) and after (bottom):

• echotel
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November 30th, 2009

Sometime in 2006 my friend Aaron Nielsen and I started recording some music in the basement of the house I owned at the time. Aaron had brought his drum kit and a couple of synths/keyboards over and we set up a makeshift studio. We’d acquired a Fostex VF80ex without an instruction manual, but we quickly figured out how to record tracks onto it and were soon experimenting with a sound that fused analog synth, bass, guitar, drums and vocals into an electronic “new-wave” pop/rock sound reminiscent of the late 1970s. We called it echotel.

It wasn’t long before we successfully recorded and mixed down our first demo – Not Easy. We didn’t have a proper set of studio monitors, or enough cables either, so we mixed it using the headphone-out to my home stereo speakers. The sound quality definitely wouldn’t have won an award for production value, but we were pretty chuffed with the result.

By the end of 2006 we had recorded quite a number of pieces, many of which remain works in progress. I selected 3 songs – Not Easy, Like to Know and I Don’t Wanna Know – and burned them onto a CD which was duplicated and given to a few friends. Feedback was positive.

Over the next three years we continued to record material and put out another demo CD – Satellite 07, which contained two of the 3 songs from the first CD plus another two – Satellite and Games. After some time we discussed releasing the 4-song EP Games with a scrabble board on the cover spelling out the name of the songs. This idea remains, well, an idea, as we never got past the Satellite 07 cover with the purple and green dudes on it.

Today Aaron is in Texas and I’m in Toronto so we don’t get to hang out too often. The basement studio is gone too, but I’m still recording tracks at home using a MacBook Pro and Garageband. We haven’t played any shows yet, but it will happen at some point. Until then I’ll keep working through the material, the goal being to release an album/DVD by summer 2010.

Until then, stay tuned!

• Captain's Log , Music
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November 29th, 2009

I left the security of my full time job for the unknown and returned to being an independent contractor. I’m back on the freelance train, not knowing when the next one arrives or departs. Funny how that seems to work better for me.

Among other things I’m still working in the field of Information Architecture (IA) and User Experience Design (UX) and now that I have a little more time to decide what to do with I’ll be updating this site more often with examples of current work as well as some links to cool finds around the interwebs. I’m also going to be adding a lot more diverse content, from music videos I’m creating to papers I’m writing, songs I’m recording, sketchbooks I’m scribbling in, thoughts I’m getting lost in, things that I’m finding inspiration in, and vice-versa, so stay tuned.

Talking of tuning in, check out my other project echotel – some kind of post-modern electronic new-wave group. A couple of friends and myself have been working on this material for about 3 or 4 years now. Currently working on developing the website and uploading some of our music/video tracks, to be eventually included in an album/DVD release. Here’s a sneak peak.

• Captain's Log , Music Videos
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July 17th, 2009

I just created a new blog category – Music Videos. It has nothing to do with User Experience Design, well at least not directly. But anyway this is brilliant. Watch at 0:47 when the camera pans off and follows the girl. I’ve played it back at least 20 times just setting up the scene in my head. I imagine the rest of them hanging around for a few seconds, running around in circles maybe, keeping the trafic stopped before she comes out of the cornfield and joins them. What a great idea and well executed.

• Music Videos
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