Winnetka Story is a feature-length documentary about the history of Winnetka and the North Shore area, outside of Chicago. Once again I worked with the wonderful John Newcombe, with whom we authored the DVD for Rancho La Cañada: Then and Now a few years ago. Hearken Creative did all of the DVD authoring and DVD menu design, as well as managing the production for the packaging.

Servant Partners launched several new videos prior to the Urbana missions convention that Hearken Creative produced. Most of the interview footage was interviewed and shot by Loren A. Roberts, with video from around the world provided to us by Servant Partners in various formats. HCS brought it all together and turned it into several promotional videos, for use both online as well as looping on plasmas in the organization’s booth at the 20,000-person convention. In addition, HCS authored the DVD, designed DVD menus, and duplicated copies of the DVD for all staff members. Below is one of the four videos produced:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And finally, Dave Schultze of Schultzeworks created a video promoting a computer design that he calls the “Philco PC,” an homage to the Philco Predicta television set from the 1950’s. I was able to work with Dave, consulting on camera movement, editing, and pacing for the video (Dave occupies my old office space, and we have become good friends over the past few years). We were stunned at the response after releasing the video: Vimeo shows that it has close to 100k views of the video, the design has been featured on EnGadget and the NY Times, and Dave has received calls from news outlets and potential clients. This was a great collaboration for us, and HCS looks forward to consulting in the future for other friends and clients! See the video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are many changes coming to Hearken Creative in the new year, but the one thing that will not change is our passion and dedication to making our clients look awesome, bringing creative and powerful solutions to the world of advertising design and corporate video.

First, posting images to iStockphoto has been going well. Now, I just need to start making more money from them. Here are a few recent uploads:

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So is the economy up or down? I don’t think anyone can decide. Even Wall Street was bipolar this past week — way up one day and way down the next. We are considering ways to drastically cut expenses for the company, like moving to a smaller office and using fewer computers, or even temporarily closing the post-production side of the business (entertainment industry has been hit hard). But, on the other hand, I added more job numbers to my jobs list this week than I have in recent memory, and completed several large projects as well. So I’m feeling cautiously hopeful, at least in the short term.

While we’re talking about the business, I found an elegant little program called TimeTagger for tracking my time spent on projects throughout the workday. It’s going to help me track profitability much better than I have been able to previously.

And, in the “covet” department, I’m really wanting a Canon 7D. Great photography and HD filmmaking at multiple frame rates, with lots of upsides. Expensive, but possibly worth it. We’re not ready financially to make a big purchase like this, but if the right project comes along, this is the one that I would purchase right now. If you want to buy it for me, the link is here…thanks!

And then I found this awesome company called CPC in the UK (courtesy of the Blue Room stage discussion board), and they have cheapie replacement microphones, both the lav kind and the headworn kind. But I am not sure if they can ship cheaply to the U.S.; so, I am looking for a U.S. company that can supply these mics, or something comparable. I’m even willing to solder my own connectors onto them, to save even more money.

The reason that this came up is that I was doing sound design for the Pasadena Summer Musical Theater production for a few weeks earlier this summer. The body mics got a real workout, going on and off multiple children each day for rehearsals and performances. Several mics didn’t make it through the two week run, and the culprit was always the juncture where the cable meets the connector. So I was thinking that it might be good to make my own, or find a new microphone/cable combination that will be able to withstand the rigors of stage performances.

I have an e-mail out to CPC in the U.K., but I am willing to entertain any options — either here or overseas — that can help me replace or build newer and better mics for the Sennheiser or Shure systems.

So why wait? Well, I’m confused about where HD is going to go.

On the one side, we have these cool new DSLR cameras (like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II shown here, or the equally cool Nikon D300) that shoot stills and video. Why is this cool? Because DSLRs have large lenses and large imaging sensors, meaning you can go for shallow depth-of-field looks and lower light, and get absolutely stunning results. (Check out this incredible action footage shot by Robert Bösch to promote the D300.) It also means you can shoot stills and video with the same equipment. But the downsides, for me, all have to do with integration of professional features like timecode and audio capabilities. I would rather not have to send all my audio through a tiny 1/8″ stereo microphone jack (although that’s what I do on the Canon GL2), and there isn’t any timecode available. Many of these DSLR/video cameras also limit the framerate (often 30fps) and resolution (sometimes only 720p and not 1080p) that can be captured. But the price-to-performance ratio is hard to resist if you can find suitable workarounds for these setbacks.

On the other side, the lower-end professional film camera market is so close to breaking wide open, that I am compelled to wait before spending any money. Red Camera’s Scarlet, when it comes out, is going to run circles around current camera options. And right now, there are several sub-$1000 cameras that could shoot entire feature films. We’re looking at the Sony PMW-EX3 for shooting our next film. (See this great video review, and click over to his camera tests as well.) And we still have Panasonic’s AG-HVX200A, which was one of the first HD cameras that could shoot at multiple frame rates (and related to my current DVX100A — which is a bonus in terms of learning curve on a new camera). And JVC’s GY-HM700 is another strong contender, which shoots directly into a native Final Cut Pro format (woohoo! no more wasted time logging and capturing!)(see this review) that will street for around $7000. (Here’s another interesting comparison about the merits of both the EX3 and the GY-HM700.)

So, when and what to buy? Not yet, because I have no projects that require the new equipment just yet. And, when that next project comes around, we’ll take a look at what the requirements are, and how each of these solutions might fill those requirements.

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And we are saying goodbye to the film stock.

Honestly, this brings up a larger issue that I have discussed previously on the blog. Storage. Archiving. Longevity. I am pulling up a video project that I haven’t touched for a few months today, and the hard drive is screaming at me. It took a few tries to even get it to spin up. So I am spending this afternoon dumping the entire drive onto another, newer drive so that I can go back to working on the project.

I am fastidious about backups and archives (borne of experience). All material that is on a hard drive in my office is redundant. As soon as a project is finished, it is backed up to DVD or another hard drive. But I have no expectation that those hard drives are going to last longer than 5 years. So I guess I was not surprised to be losing another hard drive.

But here I am, pulling 50 year old Kodachrome photos out of a closet and scanning them and they look like they were taken yesterday.

Once I get all of those slides scanned, I was planning on throwing the slides away; I have the scans — why would I need the original slides? But I’m not sure anymore: I’m learning that, if you have a hard copy, that might be better than having a digital copy! Even for all the miniDV work that I have done, I have carefully labelled and stored each tape in fireproof boxes. Those are my “hard copy” from those projects. Once I switch to solid state (P2, hard drive, etc.) what is my primary “hard copy” of the original media?

Additionally, the beauty of that Kodachrome film can not be overstated. It is simply gorgeous. I wonder whether a still camera like the Canon EOS 1D Mark III or a video camera like the new RED cameras will ever show us the depth and clarity of that film. I’m sure they will achieve it, but will anyone be able to pull that data off in another 50 years to admire it like we admire Kodachrome today?

I have a great deal of emotions concerning the newest Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. They are not conflicting emotions, and yet they are not unified either: I simply, like many of the characters in this movie, have a big jumble of emotions.

(I now realize that this won’t, technically, be a review of the movie. Instead I’m going for the “Hunter-S.-Thompson-stream-of-consciousness-style” jumble of thoughts. Without the drugs.)

The fact that this movie is number 6 in a fantastic series (of books and movies) means that practically no one comes to this movie cold: to wit, it’s best if you are well-immersed in the movies, because you will see many nods to the previous flicks here. Fenrir Greyback’s “WANTED” poster looks exactly like Sirius Black’s did in Azkaban. Seamus, once again, has an accident that blows up — comically — in his face. Ron still likes to eat…a lot.

New details are brought in almost seamlessly: Mr. Weasley collects broken “muggle” things — especially electronics — in the workshop where he has a conversation with Harry. The new characters, such as Professor Slughorn and Lavender Brown, fit beautifully into the already spectacular cast.

But everything is changing at Hogwarts. From the very beginning we are confronted by the changes. Dumbledore arrives to take Harry on an errand, but his hand has been badly damaged by dark magic. Hormones are raging everywhere; this aspect of middle school/high school has been addressed as early as the 3rd — and possibly strongest — installment, …Prisoner of Azkaban. But now the stakes are higher: hormones aren’t just things to be embarrassed about, but things that can hurt people. Witness, for example, the pain of both Hermione and Lavender as they see love ripped out of their hands: it’s devastating. Similarly, the stakes are much higher for the fate of the world. The Millennium Bridge is ripped apart by death eaters, the Weasley’s house is destroyed (both elements that didn’t appear in the novel, but are surrogates for the countless smaller stories of heightening danger told in the book), and, finally, lives are lost. Most importantly, that of Hogwart’s headmaster, Dumbledore.

And here is where I have the biggest problem, with both the movie and the book: Dumbledore’s death, and the relationship that Harry and Dumbledore have (or don’t have), is not explored or defined in either the book or the movie. And since Rowling chose to leave much of the exploration of the Harry/Dumbledore relationship until the final book, the screenwriter makes a few missteps at the end of the movie (in an otherwise beautiful, humorous and tight script). The high point of the movie should have been a powerful, emotional climax, with both revelations and action taking place concurrently. Instead, we are trapped into a distilled version of events, that eliminates all tension from the final 10 minutes of the movie. Harry explores the Dumbledore that he didn’t know throughout the seventh and final book, and I fear they have taken much of the impact of that out of the final two films by changing the relationship between Harry and Dumbledore at Dumbledore’s death: Dumbledore does not hide and freeze Harry under the invisibility cloak as in the books, so Harry then feels guilty for not coming to Dumbledore’s aid. Guilt does not come into play in the books: it’s more a sense of betrayal by Dumbledore for allowing this death to happen to him, while immobilizing Harry from being able to do anything about it.

Things I didn’t like:

• Harry and Ginny kissing in the Room of Requirement. Why? In the book, Harry grows/matures into loving Ginny, and then finally acts on that love. In the movie, Ginny acts and Harry is simply left with his hormones. Also, why skip the breakup scene between Harry and Ginny at the end of the book? It sets up the tension at the Weasley residence at the beginning of the next movie better. (Or are they going to elminiate the Bill/Fleur wedding entirely? It’s a possibility…)
• The lack of Neville Longbottom. He totally disappeared from this movie. Oh well.
• I still don’t think they got Quidditch right. My understanding was that it was more like soccer, but in the air. It sure didn’t look like that to me here.
• I expected more fighting, more aurors, and more mayhem at the end. I already said this, but I’ll say it again: the end of book 6 is like a tsunami has broken on Hogwarts. We got none of that sense from this movie.
• As much as I like Jim Broadbent (he made Moulin Rouge one of my favorite movies of all time), I believe the filmmakers attempted to make him a more likeable character than in the book. Broadbent’s acting, again, was superb, but the character lacked the complexity that Rowling gave him.

Things I liked:

• An image system that presented itself in the first thirty seconds of the movie: hands. Watch how many hands tell stories throughout the movie: Dumbledore’s hand protecting Harry, Dumbledore’s withered hand signifying the toll of evil, Snape’s and Narcissa’s hands used to bind the unbreakable vow, Harry and Hermione holding hands in friendship when they are both distraught over love issues, etc. etc.
• The discussion of girls between Ron and Harry. Hilarious.
• Cinematography. Bruno Delbonnel, from Amélie and A Very Long Engagement and Across the Universe, paints with light. It’s called chiaroscuro, and it turns the whole movie screen into a painter’s canvas. I had a similar experience watching The Passion of the Christ, where Caleb Deschanel (who also did the equally beautiful Spiderwick Chronicles) turned each scene — each camera setup — into a painting. I also noted that color kept receding as the movie wore on, until the final scenes were almost devoid of any saturated color other than black (or was it my imagination?).
• Were those brooms on Cormac and Ron phallic or what? Cormac has this massive broom between his legs…hilarious.
• The younger Riddles. Well-played, creepy, and absolutely terrifying.
• My son loved the visuals for the pensieve this time.
• I thought Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) did a wonderful job, with one of the best roles written for this movie.
• The three leads. It cannot be understated how powerful a casting decision was made by Chris Columbus to bring in Dan Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. They have surpassed all expectations throughout this series. As much as I hated Columbus’ direction of the first two movies, I will always respect him for putting those three in the driver’s seat of this series.

Overall, I still think I’m going to like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban the best of the series so far, simply because the story and motivations are clearer (my judgement might be a bit biased: I just finished watching, again, the phenomenal Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron (who directed Azkaban). This movie suffered from the same things as the book: the lack of a narrative story structure with a clear climax, and a good deal of the narrative that is told through flashbacks. Regardless, it’s always hard to adapt such a long and complex book, and I do believe that they got many of the major themes from the book correctly translated to screen. My favorite books are still 1 and 7: the first, for introducing us to such a complex, magical world; and the seventh, for breaking every mold that was set up in the previous six, and still utilizing every storyline that was begun in the previous novels to race towards a crazy-cool finale. That said, I still need to see this movie again, and figure out specific places that the storytelling was ultimately successful or ultimately pulled me out of the story. Really excellent…good summer fare.

I’ll watch it again in a few weeks. Until then, stay cool, everyone.

Wow, it’s hard to get a hold on where the economy is, for entertainment companies both big and small. The L.A. Times has a story on how the toy industry is looking to large blockbuster films like Transformers to drive more and more toy sales, especially in the off-peak summer months. A story about the success of the movie industry? But a day earlier, the Times looked at how smaller production and support companies were being squeezed by runaway production — filming moving to cheaper locations out-of-state — and how it’s going to be hard for the SoCal economy to absorb the loss of work.

And is NBC-Universal for sale or not? Who knows. They have been having a hard time, both on television (Knight Rider) and at the moviess (Land of the Lost). But what happens to the big affects even us small companies.

But look at total box office figures for the last few years. We’re on track this year to at least keep up with last year, if not surpass it. People are still spending money on entertainment.

With all of the bad things that are going on in the economy, it’s good to look at a few bright spots. When an economic shakeout happens, the competition in the market becomes fiercer, allowing strong companies to strengthen their position and weaker ones to be weeded out. Interestingly, it’s not always those that stay out of bankruptcy protection that are the safest. And sometimes, especially in the entertainment industry, it becomes hard to capitalize on a successful business — like British films.

A few quick links:

• My new friend Petrea from Pasadena Daily Photo did a series of pieces on our building in Old Town Pasadena last week. Interesting stuff, if you are into the history of old neighborhoods and buildings. Here are the three posts: 1, 2, 3, & 4.
• Homage or plagiarism? Lots of designers are up in arms about this website for a Republican candidate for governor, including Print’s Daily Heller blog. Is it plagiarism? I don’t know. But the similarities to Obama’s well-designed site for his candidacy are striking…
• Copyblogger has a great little article about my favorite ad guy, Lloyd Ogilvie. Even though he wrote Ogilvie on Advertising decades ago, it still rings true for me as a marketer and graphic designer.

Happy Monday to you, wherever you are!

Top 5 Social Networking and Blog Sites Ranked (April  2009, U.S. Home and Work)
Site	Total  Video Streams (000)	Time Spent Viewing (Minutes x 000)
Myspace.com	120,793	384,030
Facebook	41,537	113,502
Stickam	19,617	54,522
FunniestStuff.net	10,206	34,456
Funny or Die	6,503	17,725
Source: Nielsen VideoCensus, June 2009

So we all thought that Facebook was taking over the world. It turns out that more people are watching video on Myspace, and for a longer period of time (a ratio of 3 to 1!).

What does this mean for us? Not much. I won’t post personal video to either Facebook or MySpace, because I’m scared about the ownership issues involved. Promotional video (movie trailers, band promos) should go up on all of the sites to ensure maximum saturation. And I can’t help but cringe at the quality of video on both MySpace and Facebook; it is for that very reason that I have posted my company’s promotional work on Vimeo instead of any of the top social networking or video sites.

It does have relevance, though, to remind us that the “hot trends” that get reported on often only have a kernel of truth, and the true picture is much more nuanced or complex. While Facebook is having a banner year, MySpace is not losing as much ground as the mainstream media would have you believe; and MySpace actually is “stickier” (people stay on the site longer), something that advertisers are very aware of.

Honestly, unlike millions of you others I won’t be seeing Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen this weekend. But I enjoyed the technical achievements of the first movie, even if I didn’t care for the editing or storytelling. Pro Sound News has spent the whole last week detailing different aspects of the sound work on the new movie, with interviews from major players:

• Part One: Mixing and Sound Editing: “This new movie features twice the action, and many, many more robots than the series opener, he continued. “In normal movies, there are two, three, even four set pieces. Eight years ago, one or two of those set pieces would have made this a big sound movie. We have several in each reel. It’s challenging.”
• Part Two: Dialog Editing and Effects Processing: There was relatively little ADR in ROTF. “Michael doesn’t like using ADR; the majority of ADR will be for extra lines and line changes,” said Hopkins, adding, “I’ve got probably 30 or 40 ADR cues because of bad background noise.”
• Part Three: Music/Effects/Dialog Mixing: “The music is really driving and the effects track is very detailed. Because you have this animation and special effects that you need to sell, sound is so powerful for doing that. It brings a sense of reality to it all and engages the audience into the whole story. Michael sees that; he sees how powerful it can be and how it can bring these animated things to life, and give them a sense of weight and power and character.”
• Part Four: Connecting Sound to Picture: With so much mayhem onscreen, it was important for Van der Ryn and Aadahl to constantly strive for clarity and make some critical choices early on in the process regarding what remained in the mix. “If we were to not make choices until [the mix stage], it would be a wall of noise…Everything you hear connects to something on the screen, and if there’s anything that is muddying things up or washing things out, we do that in the editorial process.”
• Part Five: Getting Effects to Sound Good: “When you have multiple sounds happening in a sequence, we really broaden the scope of frequencies so that things aren’t living in the same range. That separation is necessary for clarity, as well as panning things and rhythmically having things syncopate so that they aren’t stepping on each other. Even if you offset ever so slightly, it creates separation.”

That’s it for today; I’m crazy-busy finishing off a few projects right now.