Me-meme

Me needing a haircut

Via blizzard.

  1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
  2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
  3. Post that picture with NO editing.
  4. Post these instructions with your picture.

I thought briefly about aiming my cell phone camera at myself, and then realized that this is exactly what cheese is for.

This meme has resulted in a boost to the local economy — I need a hair cut.

Lastly, yes, that’s Totoro in the background with a sox batting helmet.

Music Video Grading


Recently I did some color correction for the dudes who did the stop motion fight video “Tony vs. Paul” you may have seen on youtube. They were doing a music video for the Gabe Dixon Band and needed someone to pull the excessive warmth out of the images. I brought over my trusty tablet and helped them find a good look for the video.

I’m happy with how it turned out. I was able to rediscover the colors that had been used to light the band, including a really nice blue rimlight. I took that same blue and pushed it into the shadows which really cooled the whole thing down. I also used a secondary correction ((secondary correction: A color correction that is only applied to part of the image. In this case, only parts of the image with a certain type of red were affected)) to boost the color of the red shirts which animate on-screen.

Unfortunately, the black levels are still too inconsistent, and the color grading introduced some ugly dithering and banding in the shadows ((the video was shot on the Red Camera, so this banding really shouldn’t have happened — I’m not sure where it came from)). Next time I’ll watch the blacks more closely and make sure they’re smoother.

You can watch the whole video (click through to Vimeo to see it larger) and I have some after-and-before stills below. Roll over the images to see how they looked coming out of Final Cut.






Palin

This is for the record, so that in case it comes true I can say “I nailed it”:

I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if, at some point this week, Sarah Palin’s ethical troubles suddenly blow so wide open that McCain is forced to withdraw her name from candidacy and select someone else. This would be an example of the Miers Maneuver.

Withdrawing Palin’s name might seem politically infeasible since it would show that McCain is grossly incompetent at the most basic of presidential tasks, but then again it already looks that way. He could easily claim, “see, I learn from my mistakes.” Or he could just throw her under the Straight Talk Express and claim she had assured him that there was nothing to the allegations, etc etc.

Update: Ok, so I didn’t nail it. Enjoy your nominee, dudes