thoughts

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How many computers are there in our household, I wondered today. But before you start reading, make a quick guess.
Let’s start with the obvious ones: computers with a big screen, keyboard an mouse. Let me see, I have an office machine (iMac G5), my wife has an iBook. Then there’s also a MacMini, that isn’t doing anything at the moment. And an older G4 Power PC that is used for filmcapture from 8mm. At the same location a dedicated editing computer, which has 4 processors. Read the rest of this entry »

The last two weeks have been nothing short of crazy. A documentary we had started working on in 2003 finally draws to a close. Today we showed it to our main supporter, who stated that it was an important historic film. That felt good.

GPS

Anyway, I have no problems confessing that I am a gadget freak. That is gadgets that promise to make life easier. I also have no problems admitting that I am excellent at losing my way, when driving to the unknown (hey, I even managed to get lost inside a lighthouse). Combine these two with my seeing an offer for a GPS wayfinder, an you won’t be too surpized to hear that I am now a happy owner of a Garmin c550.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at John Nack’s blog I found an exiting link to a new technology developed by four Swedes, that enables the user to simply draw images into the air. They then become 3d drawings in a computer, which again are fed into a 3D cutter. Instant furniture!
See the video.

For the past three days I have been in Germany, working on a commercial in Hamburg. Well, I thought it was one commercial, but it turned out to be three commercials. To make things interesting, one (the main) commercial was shot on 4:3, while the other two were in widescreen. This meant keeping mentally alert, as to switching tapes and format according to which show I was working for. But everything went fine, and the client seemed happy.

Then yesterday I went to Hamburg airport for my return to Oslo. Hamburg airport is (and it feels like it has been in the past couple of years) one big construction site. Or rather, a fluctuating number of construction sites. It has two terminals. If one, for the sake of argument let’s say: me, arrives at the wrong terminal, it turns out that it takes almost half an hour to walk the - theoretically short - distance to the other terminal. Some pathways are simply blocked. You have to change floor levels. Some signs are hidden. Elevators are wide enough to not fit a tripod-bag through.

After half an hour one arrives at the right terminal, only to see an amazing queue of people in front of the Lufthansa check-in. No one seems to know where things are happening, so I simply join in. There’s still a good hour before my flight leaves. Fast forward half an hour, and I am actually checking in. Talking to a very friendly Lufthansa employee, who turns out to be a fan of Norway and asks me about the employment situation. He also tags my bags with a priority tag. Thanks. Oh, and he informs me that my plane is 1 hour delayed, which means that I might catch my connecting flight in Frankfurt. Not only do I have to fly about 600 kilometers into the wrong direction, it might even take the whole day.

Since I have some spare time, I spot a little section in the airport, where they

welcome any input on our airport.

Cool, I can tell them that it might not be so smart that you need to have a 1 Euro coin in order to get a trolley. Since many people who arrive at an international airport might not have a 1 Euro coin. (Just for the record, mytrolley turned out to work with a 10 kroner coin. But then, there are even fewer people with 10kr coins.) So I grabbed a form, started reading it, took the pen that was permanently installed in the booth. And - well, the pen was empty. Not just empty of ink, there was no ballpen cartridge inside at all. I had to laugh.

An hour later, and having chatted with my fellow travellers (who also thought they could have done other things than rushing out of bed at 6 a.m. on a saturday morning, only to wait one hour), we finally boarded the plane. There we were told that the reason for the delay was a problem with the plane we originally should have taken. Well, put in perspective I must say that I prefer them delaying us, rather than using a faulty plane.

We arrived in Frankfurt at the exact time that I should have boarded my plane to Oslo. The flight attendend suggested that I should try to get to the plane as fast as I could. Which turned out to be not so fast, because the gateway out of the plane decided that it did not want to work today. So we had to wait for a bus, which then shuttled us to the other side of the airport. There I started running (remember, I am travelling with a camera that weighs about 15 kg), only to find out that the airport is about the size of Frankfurt - or so it feels. Of course, one has to change levels every now and then, and there are queues in front of the lifts. So I take the stairs. Sweating.

Heart pounding I arrive at the right gate for Oslo, and it is still open. Yes! I jump into the bus - but it turns out that they are not waiting especially for me, there must have been other delays as well. So, I wait for 15 minutes in the bus. 3 more exhausted passengers arrive, before we are being shuttled to the plane. A short while later I am in the air.

But the travel story is not yet finished. For in Oslo only one of my bags arrive at the baggage pick up. I always knew I would lose a baggage once. Naturally, it happened this time. But I had to smile: All the time in Germany it was very mild and blue skies. Norway was pouring with autumn rain. So I travelled only in a short armed shirt. And guess where my rain jacket was? Yes - somewhere in Frankfurt. Well, I got to the train counter, only to be informed that the train I had planned on taking, was full. I was supposed to wait another hour.

I didn’t.

I just boarded the full train and sat in the aisle. I really had done enough waiting for a day. It was time not only to go home, but to arrive.

It’s good to be home.

The misplaced baggage arrived today (while I was under the shower), only a day later than promised.

After having been about 2 years in art school, I was quite tired of all the arty types, arty lingo, and arty clothes (you know, everyone has to show all the time how creative and different s/he is from all the rest of the creatively different bunch.).

But today, while browsing the Jeriko One blog, I found a very inspiring website, by a british artist named Banksy. Jeriko wrote about how Bansky put 500, ahem, edited versions of the Paris Hilton CD into british stores. I loved that one, and had a look at the original website.

There I found some magnificent political art, where Bansky had visited the illegal West Bank barrier, and left his paintings there.

About 3 years ago we (which means either the company I work for, or me and my wife) set upon making a documentary. A film, which was big in ambition and – being an unknown production company – small in budget. Now, we are finally drawing to a close. After numerous re-edits, re-shoots and re-thoughts, tomorrow we’ll show a sort-of final cut to 2 financeers.

The last weeks have been quite, er, busy. For me that meant a lot of graphics work, mixing, finding music, finding sounds, finding stills, clearing rights, finding archive footage, clearing rights again, transferring everything into FCP, colour correcting, chosing colour schemes and filters, making backups, fixing hardware hic-ups, and so on. My wife did, as always, a glorious editing job.

The other day, after a day of fixing some glitches in the footage, I came home to my lovely daughters. When Eva (1 1/4 years old) showed me her tongue, and I saw some white stuff on it, my first thought was “now which filter do I use to fix that one?”. I knew I needed a brake.

Long hours over a stretched period of time and creativity just don’t mix. Even though it may be tempting to work “just one more hour” (which usually means working till afer midnight), it is better to resist and get some off-time. Ease yourself with the knowledge that your brain will keep working on the problem anyway, and the next day you’ll easily find a fix for a previous impossible problem.