At the start of every month I take a look at the most popular posts of the previous month. 99.9% of posts are filmmaking related. August 2010 was an amazing month – I topped over 1000 views on two separate occasions because of my Demolition video. Numbers aside, it was an awesome experience and a cool video; check it out below and let me know what you think. Otherwise there is a leaning towards HDSLR posts as I prepare to sell my Panasonic so I can buy a Canon 550D and a new computer. (it will be a sad day when I sell my camera – it has served very well) So here we go …
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I posted a video on YouTube and Vimeo a few days ago:

Vimeo : http://www.vimeo.com/14333667 with almost 5000 views on vimeo

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpGqGNxtkSY with just over 150 views.

The same video. First Vimeo on the Sunday and then YouTube almost two days after that. Here are a few Observations:

Facebook is the Video Play King

According to the embed statistics of vimeo, people you load the video will most likely play the video: (more…)

What can I say? I really do not know. Maybe you should just tell me what you think.
Go for it …

Every month I highlight the top 10 posts of SynapticLight. The month of July was an interesting Month, what with the Soccer World Cup ending off with a Fantastic Final between the Netherlands and Spain. I was supporting Spain, yayyy. Then the month ended with Apple throwing out a whole bunch of new stuff; from the external touch pad to the 12 core Mac Pro. I was both impressed and disappointed Apple’s new Mac Pros, hmmm. Anyway, here are the top 10 posts of July, feel free to check them out, share your thoughts here or on the separate posts – the biggest win on this blog will always be your comment.
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I found this really interesting Google Labs thing called Squared. What is the first thing I did? Enter the term Filmmaking, “Yeah man” (as Baloo would say it). What was returned was a neat table of popular film makers and some interesting information. The generated table has columns that are cleverly relevant to the context of film makers – although I must say that I was expecting something more related to filmmaking as a process than filmmaking people.
Besides the information immediately obvious, google also supplies other options to choose from – probably the next most relevant sources – in the form of a drop list. Also you can add your own columns that I think google uses as a search term related to the squared term (in this case: filmmaking).
Of course I tried synapticlight, which did not return anything until I added my own keywords, click here for the result. And Visual Effects, which resulted in a list of filters. Alas nothing for “post production”.

Here is a screenshot of the Google Squared Filmaking result: (more…)

I think that this is very cool. In a way it is a perfect movie to feature here on this blog because I am into filmmaking and social networking – this is a Film about Social Networking. Will it be a good film? I leave that judgment to when I watch it. But for now here are the details, followed by the theatrical trailers after the jump.

The Social Network is a story about the founders of the social-networking website, Facebook.

Director: David Fincher
Writers: Ben Mezrich (novel), Aaron Sorkin (screenplay)

You can see the full cast on IMDB, but there does not seem to anyone notable other that Justin Timberlake – he acts in film? (well, didn’t he start off on a TV show? The Mickey Mouse Club House?)

I see that the screenplay was adapted from a novel by Ben Mezrich, hmm – maybe I’ll read that.
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SynapticLight and me as the primary author (you can be a contributing one if you like – hint hint) have other channels where connections are made. They may be social networks outside of this blog, but they are places where discussions and sharing on filmmaking related topics can happen as well.
The goal is not to put together numbers and counts to inflate my reputation, the goal is to connect, engage and make friends. In connecting and ultimately making friends, we can learn from each other and others can learn from us as they read.

So I encourage you to check them out, to help share and discuss, and to join/friend.

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Never before has there been such great distribution of independent and low budget content. People of every level of expertise, talent and budget are able to promote and distribute their content almost at will. There are both positive and negative aspects to this, you can see it as the Win and the Reversal. I thought I might talk about this in a way that would lead to what I hope to achieve in in this blog – that of using social media and networking to make connections, relationships and build trust with filmmakers that are on any level. That way we can learn together and perhaps even work together.

Equipment

We know that Computers, Software and Cameras are becoming cheaper; well it seems like a slippery slope with Software and even new Cameras making more demands on other hardware. Be that as it may, anyone can make a film now. It does not really require a RED Epic, an 8 core Mac Pro with Media Composer 5, NukeX and Cinema4D – that’s just what you end up dreaming about. Do a search on Google and you’ll find hundreds of suggestions on cheap cameras, editing software and computers. If you are reading this then you are probably somewhere between that and whatever you dream about. (more…)

Another month has gone by and it has been interesting, what with the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup held in South Africa, coming off the back of a 31 Days to Building a Better Blog group project and the second month of my daughter’s life. Needless to say there were some posts on the World Cup and there has been a lot of juggling. Unfortunately there was a drop in traffic by 17% – maybe people were just more interesting in the soccer matches
anyway, here are the top 10 posts of June 2010 : (more…)

Arm your vuvuzelas indeed, for WordPress 3.0 is now available for download (or upgrade within your dashboard).
I think that I might wait for the end of the 2010 Soccer FIFA World Cup before doing something about it.
But first – a good Strategy for a major platform upgrade:

First Offline Local:

• Mainly because I need to make sure that the Theme that I use does not have hicups.
• Secondly for all the plugins I have – to make sure that things run smoothly.

In both cases I need to see if there are any required updates

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