Man….the things to do at the beginning of a year.
So much time and so little to do….wait, strike that reverse it…thank you!
The Glue:
Welcome to 2010, the first release of the year is fast approaching and with self imposed deadlines in place, I’m working as effectively as I can to make sure that the 2010 season starts off on schedule. With all the goings on recently, it’s been rather hard to get a fair bit of work done for MYP, but now that I have clear time in my schedule, I’m moving forward steadily. As such, I thought I would highlight a few cool bits as my final behind the scenes piece and for the start of the 2010 season.
First, I thought I’d give you a small update on my new production space. As I mentioned previously, I’ve moved to a new residence and a major side benefit of this new residence is the fact that there are spare rooms for use as exclusive studio space, and sound stage space. While I may not be using said sound stage space at present, I do have plans for it in the near future. In the meantime, however, I’ve moved into and finished setting up my studio space, and am hard at work producing new shorts for the 2010 season. I’m a little behind at present, but I thought I’d still give you a little glimpse at the new digs and a few new materials that I’ve obtained in this transition. Do enjoy the pictures, but note that some of the production studio is still under construction.
I mentioned previously that I’d gotten some new toys during the holidays…and these new toys were currently in use for production purposes. While producing Tango Squad last year, I noted that the vocal quality I was getting out of my dubbing was quite below bar for what I wanted. At the time I used it because there was no time to properly research and obtain something else, but during the hiatus I made the time and decided to invest in an item that will likely be used not only for dubbing sessions, but also quite possibly for on-location shoots, as well as a couple of new ideas I have coming down the pipe. I selected the Zoom H4 Handy Recorder by Zoom as pictured (Luckily, this product had just had a price drop). It features 24-bit/96 kHz linear PCM recording in WAV format, and, while not only having on board audio direction mikes it has the ability to plug in XLR and 1/4″ input jacks, allowing it to function as a portable recording studio should one have the need for such things (I may eventually). Having used it now for several long dubbing sessions I can comfortably say that it is a vast improvement, and you can all look forward to improved vocal clarity in the upcoming episodes.
We continue on a tour of my new holiday toys with the item that most plagued me during production during the last year. Now you may ask yourself, what else could he say, well I would pose the question back to you, what are the two things a filmmaker must have in order for his story to be shown without distraction. Good audio (including the score and dubbing) and good video. Anything that is lower quality immediately takes your audience out of the experience. Because of this during the hiatus, I sought to improve the video quality to the best it could possibly be, and keep my budget in a reasonable range to not go broke. After reading several reviews, I decided on the Blackmagic Intensity Pro (Which had also just conveniently come down in price). The Intensity Pro fully supports NTSC, PAL and HD video via HDMI, component, composite or S-Video inputs. It also supports Adobe Premiere CS4 for capture and integration, which I currently use to edit. I’ve also read that it supports Final Cut, as well as several other video apps. 
After installation, it worked like a dream, the capture quality was MUCH better, as I began capturing at 1080i from my 360 and was able to get some really quality footage. It should be noted though, that it did cause a major hair pulling out event last night, as when I went back to mess with the footage in the time line, the audio captured wouldn’t playback through my built in video card. After several hours of research and fiddling, I was finally able to figure out that the problem lied with the edit sequence within Premiere and when switched to another HD sequence all audio worked properly, so disaster averted. All in all, I’m VERY pleased with the new toys and will be pushing them hard to get the 2010 episodes out on time.
Now that you’ve seen a glimpse of my new digs, onto the more pressing matters, like actually producing something with these new resources for 2010. I’m pleased to say that I have, what I hope, is a fun lineup for 2010. I’ve tossed an turned a few times, trying to decide the actual order of release for the two series in question, whether to release them concurrently, the new one first, etc. I’ve finally decided on a set lineup for the year, which I will effectively announce when I release the promo later in the month. I do hope you enjoy. I again must apologize for leaving everyone in a lurch during the last half of 2009. My poor planning left me with nothing and forced me to go on hiatus while I plotted my 2010 season. Hopefully, 2010 should streamline itself into 2011 and we won’t have this problem again (assuming I don’t get writers block).
Well, that’s it kiddies. This should be the last production update you receive until I’m actually ready to release something this year. That’s not to say I won’t give small tidbit updates via twitter (I still say that twitter is useful, if not used over obsessively, for getting quick news blurbs out when you don’t want to write a whole article), so if you want to stay apprised of all the current goings on, you can check the twitter feed on the front page to the right of the glue here, or if you’re really OCD, you can subscribe to my twitter account and follow all the quick ramblings from there. Anyways see all of you on the other side of the new year.
Till next time…
admin MYP 2010 Season, The Glue Machinima, MYP, Tango Squad
