Quit your day job. Go on. I dare you.

Murdering Little Bastard

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

Today’s blog entry is a film. Taking the concept of blogging a bit further, I guess video blogging isn’t new, but it’s the first time I feel like a post on this blog really crosses the boundry between writing and film-making.

Below is the script, which could well be read as a blog post, but better still is watching the movie. Now that I’m using Vimeo to publish my films on the web (instead of youtube), it means the quality is not only much higher, but you can also watch the film in full screen mode. Just click the button illustrated in this picture to try it.

Vimeo Full Screen Video Button

So here’s the script:

I’ve been looking after Tia the cat for the last couple of months now. She’s only little. But she’s cute isn’t she? She doesn’t say much, Tia. She’s a quiet cat. So I was surprised to hear her calling to me. Turns out out she was really proud of herself. She’s been trying for a long time, but today she’d finally managed to murder some poor creature. She proudly showed me this sad little dead bird. Offering me first dibs should want to bite it’s head off I suppose. Then she spent a happy 10 minutes re-killing it and showing me how clever she was. How very sweet. Murdering little bastard. I’ll miss her when she goes. She’s off to a new home soon. She might be a murdering bastard. But she’s my murdering bastard. At least for now.

& here’s the film

Murdering Little Bastard from chris dorward on Vimeo.

Posted in The interweb, films, film making, web development, art | 1 Comment »

Will the sun ever shine again?

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

The weather here in Chamonix has been overcast and rainy for ever. At least it seems that way. But it must have been at least 2 weeks since I last saw the sun and with the mountains closing you in on all sides, having a roof of cloud overhead can get quite oppressive after a while. The weather forecast isn’t exactlyencouraging for the coming week either.

So I’ve been stuck in the office for a while, and started to do some ‘sperimentin with my new video camera. Specifically I’ve been learning how to do Time Lapse Photography. It’s basically a case of setting up the camera to take a still photo at regular intervals of, say, every minute. Leave the thing for an hour or two to do it’s thing and then import the photos onto your computer. I used photoshop’s batch processing feature to add colouring effects to the entire set of photos and then created a video file from the series of stills using Quicktime PrO.

Pretty basic I guess, but it’s a start and as soon as the weather changes I’m going to find a much better subject and give it another go. Here’s the results from my first try at time lapse photography.

Learning To Time Lapse from chris dorward on Vimeo.

Posted in films, weather, film making | Comments Off

The Nissan Outdoor Games Extreme Film winner

Friday, March 7th, 2008

A few weeks ago a Nissan promotional team came to town and set up some big-screen TV’s in the square where they showcased the entries to the Nissan Outdoor Games Extreme film competition. The film competition features 5 teams composed of kayakers, mountain-bikers, rock climbers paragliders, skiers and BASE jumpers. Based on an original concept, this contest combines the performance of the athletes, with the creative and artistic dimension of a film competition. The 5 teams have 5 days to film themselves freely while practicing their sports. Each team is equipped with video cameras as well as editing computers. Every evening they have to come back to their ‘bivouac’ camp, set up somewhere out in the wilderness by the organizers. On the last day, each team has to hand in a tape containing a 5 minutes film to the organizers.

Cool huh? sounds right up my street that does. Click the picture below to see the winning entry from this year. I think it’s excellent. There’s something pure about it - probably due to the lack of sponsorship I’m used to seeing in ski-porn. Anyway - I’m impressed and I’m going to consider it something to aim at.

Posted in Sport, the mountains, film making | No Comments »

Quit your day job. Go on. I dare you.

Archive for the ‘film making’ Category

Murdering Little Bastard

Will the sun ever shine again?

The Nissan Outdoor Games Extreme Film winner

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