Tried out a dulcimer at the renfest. I remember being better at it than I really was… =) In my defense, i’d never played one before.
So I was working on this video which required me to rock out awesome-style in Rockband… I put my camera on it’s little tripod thing on my piano, which i guess was shaking ’cause I was rocking out too awesomely. Then it plummeted to the floor… so you can see the aftermath.
I do want to point out 3 things though:
1) My stick twirling is awesome
2) I was obviously going to wreck that song
3) I’m an idiot.
Back in the summer I wrote a few instrumental pieces / snippets and this was one of them. I had originally envisioned it being a throwback RPG fight song, except with real / rock instruments. I ended up opting for that synth trumpet sound for the lead because it sounded retro like from back in the old Final Fantasy games.
Listening to it on its own was fine and dandy, but I decided I should try to sync it to some RPG fight video to see if it holds up. I think it’s a little weird without the sound effects though… if anyone has some RPG fight scenes with only sound FX and no music, I’ll try this again. It kinda works with this FF VII fight scene. I had to edit down the fight scene so it matched the length of the song, but technically the song could be looped as many times as needed… or I could write a C section to it.
Then when Jabarie heard the song he said it sounded more like the intro to an anime, so I decided to try that out too. I wanted to do my favorite anime, Mai Hime, but the intro was too cutesy and not action-y enough for the music. So I went with this Code Geass intro. It syncs up surprisingly well. I had to cut out some parts of it to make it fit the length of the song, and I letterboxed it to cut out the translation of the original theme music, ’cause it was a little distracting.
Part of me still wants to hear this song with the lead synth trumpet line as a lead guitar solo. Anyway, leave a comment, let me know what you think!
So I realized that I’m actually never home / have free time while it’s still light outside. So while I had a couple of hours this president’s day, Harry and I trouped out to the backyard so I could play around w/ my Jag lens adapter a little more.
I do have this little spot on the screen I have to clean up… but that’s irrelevant to the rest of this post.
I’m getting better at aiming and shooting with the adapter in place, although it’s still tough! Even harder is holding the camera still, especially while throwing harry’s ball. I would pick up the ball, stick it between my legs, focus on harry, then throw the ball and quickly try to follow the focus as he ran across the yard.
You’ll notice some vignetting on certain shots, and then some hotspots on some other shots. I played around a bit with different lens apertures. The camera compensated for light loss with the aperture, so I locked the camera exposure.
I also realized how difficult it was to try to keep things in focus in bright daylight because I could hardly see the LCD screen. That was kinda too bad.
But all in all, I had fun, daylight looks pretty good through these lenses, and I think Harry had a good time too.
Music: Earth & Venus - Andy Davis.
So I was looking through my hard disk trying to find the original Wave files for the Holiday Hipsters songs so I could upload them to iTunes, and then I found all this footage we took way back in Feb of 2007.
I was going through the clips and thought there were several amusing clips, so I was like: “I’ll just clip these together and upload them to youtube!” But then it was too long, so I started editing it down. And then spent way too much time on it. But hey, it was fun. It actually kinda accurately reflects how we write a hipsters song. I sit at the computer working while Martin makes annoying sounds. Haha.
Good times.
Harry is my dog. Samus is the Coghlan’s cat. I spent the day at their place hanging out, and didn’t want to leave Harry home alone so they graciously let me bring him with me. He was so excited to explore their apartment, that even though he saw Samus at the beginning, I guess he forgot about him or something. Anyway, he was just running around having a grand ol’ time. So, of course, I start filming. Sarah decides to torture him. Then we start doing stuff and leave Harry to his own business. The whole time, Samus is perched up on this little overhang thing watching Harry run around the downstairs area like an idiot. We’re hanging out upstairs and all of a sudden I hear Harry start to growl and whimper, and I’m like: “What’s going on?” I look over the side, and see him just sitting there staring at Samus. So I guess finally, after like an hour, he spotted Samus. Then they just stared at each other for forever. I got my camera and filmed a bit, and condensed it down to the video you see here. The end of the video sums their relationship really well. Samus yawns, Harry’s tail is wagging a mile a minute. BFF fo’ real.
I filmed it with my Jag35, no lighting at all (just what was coming through the windows). 35mm lens, f/2.0. I apologize for the shaky camera, still getting used to this filming upside-down thing.
Music - “Gold Spinners” by Ronald Jenkees.