Monday’s Update

Monday’s Update

Sorry for the poor sound quality of this video. At the last minute, I decided that it might be interesting to get out of the studio and film my update in some other location. In most cases, this means your local Tim’s Horton. Without a Lavalier microphone, the background noise becomes a problem, and I must admit to being a bit shy about talking loudly in a public area. I hope to resolve this problem in the near future by either purchasing a Lavalier microphone or using my Zoom 4Hn field recorder. It is all an evolutionary process.

1.) HD film-making = huge files = no memory space on my laptop

I didn’t appreciate how quickly memory space on my laptop would disappear. My solution was to get a 500 GB portable external hard –drive. Now I am back into film-making. My goal is to document my art, and also examine Hamilton’s heritage. The challenge is to make it interesting and short. I have seen some great stuff like films by Matt Jelly http://vimeo.com/37194879. The goal of this film was to try and save the Hamilton Board of Education building that was located downtown. We need more film-making on Hamilton, and its heritage. We live in a visual culture and web based films is the future.

In the meantime, I still face a steep learning curve. I am dealing with challenges like: maintaining focus on the object as the camera position changes; hot spots and adjusting the aperture; creating a consistent look in terms of tone etc.

2.) Cell phone videos

I have recently seen some amazing films made with cell phones. In particular, the works by the Film Artist on Vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/77095509 – Slo

http://vimeo.com/thefilmartist/iglimpses  – Glimpses from my iPhone to the sounds of Bollywood bites

http://vimeo.com/83505519 – A short Journey – ‘Budapest’

This has inspired me to try my hand at this film-making format. Especially in conditions that require movement and quick response to events. In the future, I hope to get a Go Pro Hero3 camera to capture more of these dynamic conditions.

3.) Blue House Sketch

I am almost finished the Blue House Sketch. This is part of a series of house portrait sketches from the Hamilton area. Hamilton has some beautiful homes that are full of character.

4.) Daily Photographs

Inspired by Chris Healey’s (@muskoxen) photos of Bartonville, I have started to take daily photographs of Hamilton buildings or landscapes and post them to twitter via #HamOnt. This project is my attempt to document the nearly 8,000 historical buildings in Hamilton. Each Friday, I will post one photo to my blog and provide some historical background to the subject.