Rural Colors – Installation at EASE Gallery June 12th- July 3rd

Matt’s Rural Colors: Blue Mountains, PA opens at EASE Gallery in their projection room.

Swift Art

Opening this Friday is a new exhibition at the Ease Gallery, 30 W. Woodruff Ave, Columbus, OH. The exhibition features two new shows; Selections: Sunday Life Drawing with OAL , and Rural Colors – Blue Mountain Pennsylvania. The opening reception in on Friday June 12th from 7-9pm.

Rural Colors – Blue Mountain Pennsylvania, will be the first environmental installation of the City Lights/Rural Colors Video Landscape Series I have been working on for over 2 years. The piece will be installed in a narrow room so that patrons of the exhibition can walk into the room and be surrounded on 3 sides by the imagery and sounds of the moving image landscape painting. All thought both City Lights and Rural Color pieces have been exhibited in black box theater style shows, City Lights – Oglebay Park has been exhibited as a  photon bomb, and City Lights Columbus is currently being…

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Conference Video Services

Nicolettecinemagraphics often works with companies in Columbus, Ohio to provide audio/visual services. Over the next few days we will be spending time at the Ohio Attorneys for Justice working for Armstrong & Oakley providing presentation video coverage.

The OAJ conference is a large conference providing attorneys in every type of law practical advice on new trends in office management to new issues within specific case law.

As far as Nicolettecinemagraphics is concerned, we are recording presentations at the conference for local court reporter firm Armstrong & Oakley. We occasionally work with them not only for events but also for video depositions. These types of gigs are fairly easy as far as video setup, but we always have a great time because we learn so much from the lawyers and the cases we are documenting.

via Conference Video Services.

Slow Ascent at Sahar International Short Film Festival

Last night our film Slow Ascent showed at the Sahar International Short Film Festival. Although we were unable to be at the festival we are honored to have been selected. For more information on Slow Ascent follow the blog at https://slowascentfilm.wordpress.com/blog/

via Slow Ascent at Sahar International Short Film Festival.

The Current State of DVD and Blu-ray Authoring

Encore may no longer be part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, but that doesn’t mean that it is completely obsolete.  I still get calls for authoring DVDs and Blu-Rays; they are necessary for festival submissions and display loops.  People still have their DVD players and they feel comfortable with the format.  Even I can’t resist the control with menus and chapters.  Some other codecs and formats will now allow embedding that control, but until we have a standardized format some people will still want their DVD or Blu-Ray.

While Blu-Ray has not become as popular as DVD, it is still a format that some people want for their memories.  Although, it has been out for a few years there are still some kinks that are slowly being worked out.  The discs seem to not be as reliable before burning – I’ve bought spindles that were over 50% coasters.  Sometimes Encore will not export to Blu-ray, when this happens I build an ISO and use CDBurner XP to bypass the issues with Encore.  Overcoming the growing pains of a newer media is always tricky and one has to learn tips and tricks to make their software work with their drive and their discs.

As for what I would call intangible formats or digital files, yes they will replace discs, but they are not there yet.  The videographer would have to learn the format that the customer needs.  My phone needs a different size and format than my TV or photo frame and while my computer will handle anything, I can’t guarantee that my client will have the software to play the footage.  Does the client want their video online or downloaded to their portable device?  There are many possibilities to navigate at this time.  Recently, I added a Western Digital Live device to my entertainment center.  This box will handle multiple formats, including ISOs.  That’s right, I can author a fully functioning DVD and export an ISO that my box can read.  It functions like the disc, without the hassle of the disc.

While the physical disc may be on its way out, a packaged digital file that functions like a DVD is going to be the future.  The future may not be ISO files, but the only way to replace the disc is to create something similar.

Reasons I Kept My ePhoto Light Kit

Recently, here at Nicolettecinemagraphics in Columbus, Ohio, I purchased the ePhoto 3800W Lighting Kit through Amazon. Amazon’s grey market goods are often sketchy and are lucky to function even at half of their intended capacity. But you get what you pay for, and often you should save your money and buy a better product.

Unboxing the ePhoto kit rendered me more than disappointed. The bag is cloth and has no bottom support, not even a cardboard attempt at support. The stands are shoddy and are lucky to hold the weight of the lights – tighten them once and you’ll never get them loose again. The boom is an instructionless joke of a puzzle. Once you actually balance out the light the boom bows from the weight. The soft boxes are impossible to attach and the sides do, indeed, touch the lights for that extra fire hazard fun. The base of the sockets are hard to position and utilize nothing but plastic parts.

All this… Yes all of this at once and I was infuriated, of course I was. I had just laid down… Oh, wait, it was only $130. But I’m enraged, this is sheer garbage – I’m sending it back, right? So I started to cobble together something similar, but nothing had a base that could control each individual bulb. None of the sockets looked any better in quality. Then there’s the bulbs, that’s over $100 worth of CFL power. So I kept it for the value of the bulbs and decided that the kit was only worth it for the bulbs. I can buy umbrellas or reflectors and c-stands instead of the soft boxes. I have different stands. I can get another boom. For now the lights work and I have a kit for basic video shoots – sort of.

Manfrotto 701HD Quick Fix

A few years back we bought a Manfrotto 701HD tripod head. It has been a decent purchase, well, once I realized how the handle was supposed to be positioned. After that I found no issues, the glide of the fluid head is nice. I know it does have some shortcomings, like it is meant for smaller cameras. I don’t really mind that. I like small cameras, I’ve gravitated to DSLRs as of late. The design seems common enough that the parts should be readily available, even in Columbus. In fact a friend had borrowed my tripod and lost the quick release plate. She was able to find a replacement at local camera shop Midwest Photo Exchange at a reasonable price. The first major downfall appeared when I lost the knob that allowed you to adjust the arm position. Of course it was stuck down for transport. I called Midwest, they said they would try to figure out the part number – nothing. I went to Manfrotto’s website and that particular parts list would not load. I could find the arm, the quick release and a few other random parts. Nothing seemed like it would be the right part. I called their repair number, they don’t handle parts – they are just an outsourced company. They recommend the parts department. I called – no answer. Again – no answer. Three time and I just gave up. Time was getting short – I needed a functioning tripod, fast. Enter Lowe’s bins o randomness. I still had the stud that held the arm in place, I just needed a way to adjust it. I found a screw that matched the inner threads of the stud. I added a wing nut and some washers. The result may not be pretty but it works again. This time there are no plastic parts to break off and loose.

Our Switch to HD

For many of us small videographers the switch to HD was like a death sentence.  I drug my feet for as long as possible.  Why; because the economy had just tanked and we all had to pinch to stay afloat.  I noticed a huge drop in the competition in Columbus, Ohio.  People couldn’t financially make the leap; I probably would have been among them, but for one of us attaining full-time employment.  Think about it, people had just settled from the switch from analog (VHS and Beta) to digital equipment.    If you have three cameras that equals three cameras that you have to replace.  That was my problem, I had realized that two cameras were good, three better, and four awesome.  I wasn’t working with the most high end equipment, so I decided to stay in a similar range for my first HD camera.  I loved the 3 chip cameras and I thought that was the way to go for the future.  It was not.  It was my first and last JVC because it was ridiculously complicated.  To capture the footage in HD you had to use proprietary software that could then compress it to be usable in an editor.  If you used Premiere (or any NLE of choice) the footage was not HD.  This was fine when I was using it with other standard definition footage, but when I wanted the clarity of HD it just didn’t deliver.  Not long into the life of the camera it stopped taking a charge and is now a paper weight. 

The other caveat with the switch to HD was a shift from tape to hard drive and card formats.  At first there were a few cameras with HDDV tapes, but that didn’t seem to last in anything but the professional market.  The librarian/archivist in me cried a little with the loss of a permanent storage medium.  Tape was nice and linear and recorded on the spot.  Sure, there were instances in which you could lose a whole tape; please don’t play with magnets around tapes, but things were recorded as they happened.  This is not the case with HD formats – files are written in chunks or blocks of data; one bad chunk could ruin the whole set of data. In fact we had an early nightmarish lesson in how the HD cameras handle data. We had decided to take afore mentioned JVC as a backup camera on a documentary shoot, with a borrowed Panasonic AG-HMC150 as the main shooter.  The HMC150 had a beautiful image and seemed great until I had to turn off the camera and change the battery.  I turned the camera back on and the card was unreadable – hours of footage, gone.   We’re down to one card and not sure why.  Hours later, we’re shooting the most important part of the documentary and the battery is running low.  Stop. Plug in. Restart. No card.  The problem was that the camera needed to write a lead out before it turned off, but it didn’t have a fail-safe if the battery died.  If the camera was stopped while writing that lead out then it rendered the card useless and you lost everything on it.  This meant that we had a documentary with no footage from the main camera, no cards to record more on, nothing. It was an interesting learning experience, one that I test for when I’ve purchased a new camera.  I’d rather replace an empty card that errored than to not have the footage I set out to shoot.

I finally decided to take a more serious leap into HD video, despite my experience with the HMC150.  All the cool kids were hoping the DSLR train – beautiful image, interchangeable lenses, more control than a camcorder; what more could you want?  The downfall is a time limit – depending on the camera it can range from 10-30 minutes.  And lenses, oh the cost of lenses, yet like Pokemon you need them all.  I had Nikon lenses and Nikon had just released the d5100 with the flip out screen and the impressive (at the time) 20 minute time limit.  The time limit made events all but impossible and after about a year I was able to pick up a second.  Still, staggering the stop/start times seemed daunting from across the room.  I missed having a wide shot capturing the whole event.  I recently added the Panasonic G5 to our arsenal.  The G5 has no limit on the duration of a shot (when using AVCHD) and, with adaptors, will use my Nikon lenses if I really need it to.  My only concern was mixing brands, which was previously a no-no, because they used to be hard to match color and contrast.  DSLRs seem to match better than old camcorders did and as long as my white balance is set to match the difference is unnoticeable. 

I am certainly happy to be able to offer a three camera HD camera set-up – and just in time for 3D or 4k to take us all on a new ridiculous path.

Home Work

Working from home
You wake up in your footie pj’s and you don’t have to exchange them for the good ol’ business casual. You can shuffle across the hardwood floors in your hot pink argyle socks, who cares that you’ve paired them with mint colored shorts? Don’t lie you even have Risky Business moments when your spouse is at work. Every day you save the planet by sparing the world from yet another commuter. Yep, these are the joys of working from home. You are a motivated self-starter; you have to be to get everything done to be able to pay the bills.
Yet, there are always pit falls, you leave the house less than your peers. If you want an extra job outside of the house you’re always questioned about your ability to integrate back into society; as if staying in your house means that you have checked out of civilization and signed up for the hermit club. Ok, ok so you socialize and you know it, your income relies on it. But the rest of the world doesn’t believe it. There’s another problem; you live where you work and you work where you live, you have to either learn to turn off the job or you’ll find yourself working 24 hours a day. You know what it takes to balance life and work.
I’ve been working at home for 4 years now, all that time in a small 700 sq ft house. There are comforts here, there are draw backs here, and some days I flee the space. My Netflix, Pandora, Spotify, and Openlibrary keep me company when social interactions are lacking. I can work on the floor, I can work in the hall, and when I’m sick – I can work from bed. My fridge is full-sized and holds a variety of choices for my lunch. My coffee pot is my friend, and when it stops being faithful I can end its contract. Most of all, my dog has constant company (because it is all about him), although I think he ignores me from 9-5. I’ve read about shared spaces, but I need solid internet and a customizable desk/chair setup. I need a powerful desktop because a laptop doesn’t always work for video. I’d be adding an extra expenditure for the space in addition to the commute and thus I’d contribute to the planet’s destruction. Now this isn’t to say that I’d avoid the commute if an office job found me. I mean, the stability of the 9-5 or comfortable warmth of lovely, lovely argyle socks… what’s a girl supposed to do?

Summertime, Funtime

Summertime, Funtime.

I know, I know we’ve been awol from our weekly blogging for a while now. I’m sorry, but it is summer and with summer comes all kinds of fun. Our fun began with volunteering to document ComFest. While I, personally, did not get to spend as much time at ComFest, Matt did spend three days running from stage to stage. In addition to the whole day at documenting, our CMIAR screenings have been added to the shelter house shows. This adds community exposure to some of the artists that have exhibited over the past year.

After ComFest we begin shifting our gears toward the Columbus International Film Festival. For the past three years we ‘ve been chairing the judging of the student division. And so now it begins – watching hours of films and rating them for the festival. This proves to be hours of fun, getting together with the jurors and spending hours enjoying snacks, discussion, and films.
During all these extra curriculur activities we have to keep up on our work for clients as well as our personal art work. While we’ve been a little lax in the latter this year, we did submit to the Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Film division. We both were awarded the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) Awards for our avant garde work. Matt, for his piece City Lights and me for my multi-screen version of my City Walks, which included New Orleans, Cedar Rapids, Columbus, and Allentown.
A busy summer of exciting things – and it’s only half over. Maybe we’ll be able to throw in a few City Walks and some other new work, find some more cool experiences, and maybe catch a summertime drive-in or two.

GoPro and its Additions Pt 1

GoPro and its Additions Pt 1.

I’ve had my GoPro since November and I’ve struggled with what to write. I mean it is a GoPro – what is there left to write. Within the first day of owning it I submerged it and chased my fish around his tank. That worked, as I expected. I attached it to my scooter with an Electra handlebar mount (I only purchased the tripod adapter). At some point Matt even put it on his head and recorded his hacky sacking. It is a GoPro – that’s what it does, and these are things you do with it. I did struggle with trying to use it for my walking pieces. The open back did allow me to thread my leg/arm strap through it sideways. But that is sideways and I don’t want to have vertical video syndrome. I wanted full, uncropped resolution. Which is what I’d have to resort to if I did settle for that atrocity. Then I found the headstrap (thus the a fore mentioned hacky sack video). Oh, the headstrap! Maybe a few tweaks and… GoPro read my mind, as they seem to do, and made the strap 100% detachable – probably for the sake of head sweat and not for attaching it to my arm. The empty plate allows me to feed my strap into the slots and position my camera horizontally to my subject o movement. Magic! I have an instant leg/arm cam. We will see how well it actually works once I start walking again.