Archive for the ‘Projects’ Category

How the NSA Inspired Me to Organize My Film Book Library

Saturday, July 27th, 2013

This week I was listening to a story on public radio about the history of technology and how this all lead to the ability of the NSA to do what it does now, scan our emails and phone calls.

Some interesting early technologies that lead up to this were: the telegraph (1874), by Thomas A. Edison and, of all things, the Dewey
decimal system.   Melvil Dewey developed this system, the first hexadecimal system, to code books for cataloging.  With this number you could almost know everything that was in the book.  This was in the mid 1870’s.  In 1889, the U.S. Census bureau adopted Herman Hollerith’s punch card system to tabulate the U.S. population within weeks.  Also, by the turn of the century, American cities were wired to an innovative telegraph system for police and fire alarms.  These key factors required a lot of human interaction to work but they laid the groundwork for the technology that exists today.

The one thing that stuck with me was how amazing it was that all that information on a book could be detailed within its call number.

Coincidently, I made a film book purchase this day.  The ad read something like, “10 feet of editing and film books for $40”.  There were 89 books in all.  This brought my personal collection to over 300 film books.  I was eager to let a couple of film friends I met for dinner know about all the books I now had.  Earlier in our conversation, I had also mentioned to them about my curiosity about the Dewey decimal system and how I was now going to study it more.  One of them said, “So are you going to organize your film library with the Dewey decimal system?” and that was it!  Of course I was!

I’m still learning about it but figured a good place to start would be to just look up the call numbers of the books I have and go from there.  I currently have been able to find about 150 books’ call numbers.  They fall mainly into two major divisions 778.5 and 791.  According to the Dewey Decimal Classification:  Class 700 is fine arts and recreation.  770 is photography and photographs.  778 is specific fields and special kinds of photography; cinematography and video production; related activities.  791 is public performances.

Further classification has 778.5 as cinematography, video production, related activities. 778.59 is video production.  791.4 is motion pictures, radio, television, although I seem to have books from 791, 791.01, 791.02, 791.03, 791.1, 791.37, 791.45, 791.76, 791.9 and 791.92.

While I realize my nerdiness is showing, I’m really quite enjoying this project.  I think it’ll help me to actually read more, a goal of mine.

Going POSTal Show

Thursday, June 27th, 2013

So, after NAB, a few of us got together and decided to go forward with an idea of producing a podcast.  Adam Bedford, with a history of morning radio in Australia, heads the show and it is pretty much his baby.

The theme of the show is Post, Production and Pop Culture.

The current team is:

Adam Bedford

Ben Barden

Monica Daniels

Liam Johnson

and myself.

 

Check it out here: http://www.goingpostalshow.com/episodes.html or on iTunes!

NAB Show 2013 – That Post Show – Video Interviews

Friday, April 19th, 2013

For NAB 2013, I decided to help produce some content with the folks at Scruffy.tv.

These videos are a first for That Post Show, the number one post production podcast on iTunes, Videos.  The That Post Show podcast has been all audio since its inception.  April 2013 marks the introduction of videos into the podcast stream.

You can see and hear all of the audio and video podcasts here:

http://tinyurl.com/TPW2012 AKA http://www.scruffy.tv/thatpostshow <- A little hard to navigate but basically follow the “>>’s” or scroll down and see a list near the bottom right.

or

http://tinyurl.com/TPS2012 AKA https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/that-post-show/id293692362 <- The iTunes page.

We’re releasing them at a steady pace and so far there are eleven (11) videos up. (Listed in latest at top order):

  • Michael Kammes at NAB 2013 <- From Keycode Media
  • Paul Babb at NAB 2013 <- From Maxon, makers of Cinema 4D
  • Dan May at NAB 2013 <- From Blackmagic Design
  • Dave Newman at NAB 2013 <- From GoPro
  • Sam Bogoch at NAB 2013 <- From Axle (a media management tool)
  • Robbie Fleming at NAB 2013 <- From Editshare (Lightworks)
  • Alexis Van Hurkman at NAB 2013 <- Filmmaker, Colorist, Trainer
  • Patrick Inhofer at NAB 2013 <- From Tao of Color and Mixing Light
  • Ted Schilowitz at NAB 2013 <- From RED
  • Steve Forde at NAB 2013 <- From Adobe
  • Jeff Chow at NAB 2013 <- From Ctrl+Console
  • It was a massive undertaking and we worked our butts off (and still are) but it was quite rewarding.

     

    NAB is always a special time for me, a time to spend what little precious face to face time I can with friends and colleagues from around the world.

    As I grow in the profession and come to know more and more people in it, it’s even that more special to me.

    Please take the time to discover That Post Show and meet the Scruffy.tv crew through their individual Twitter feeds, etc.  These are great souls doing great work.