a smurfs weblog

andreas here, its 550am, I've been putting in clips with imtoo ripper.

Its really important for everyone to stay in touch, and even if that means nearly writing about nothing, because chances are its not nothing if you're in the massive exchange...

so I'm going to weblog at least 3-5 times a week, hopefully more like seven, and hopefully so will you!

write about the mission you set fourth today, and what you're facing.

over here at the paul sweet, we need L brackets to mount the projector on the wall so we can cover the whole room for the fourth, we need to get the mirrors to finish the reflection. we've been getting clips and I organized my dvds in a pile to start systematically clipping. I got my zoom hv4 xlr audio recorder and I'm still working on getting a new laptop with the insurance from my broken screen. my cellphone is broken but its getting replaced, I thought it was going to be a chocolate but it turns out cingular is owned by att and for some reason my insurance decided I get an iphone, so thats pretty rad but until these wild dreams come true, I'm pretty much stranded...

I've been talking to the paulsweet household about a crazy idea I've had about video cameras. as it stands I can get a really good set of 4 colour cameras with motion sensors, led lights and night vision, as well as a ethernet hub with a hardrive that can record 3 weeks on all four cameras simultaniously. at first I was like whatever, but I got to see the cameras and the footage and realized its true potential. I know its crazy, but I'm seriously into considering a paul sweet show, at least for our own enjoyment. four cameras get the best angles of downstairs and maybe even the parking lot, and have access to footage 24/7. stream it in new york or tokyo, or download in hires parts when people do rad shit like sidways bike or play drums or have awesome spontanious conversations. I dont know, its been on my mind, and so I figured I'd more than just mention it, put it in to writing so to speak...

more importantly, we've been getting those clips for the show. I dont want to be overshooting the bare minumum, I want to be just barely pulling off maximum *(miracles)

we have way enough shit for the fourth right now, but thats not good enough. first most important thing is to move off of youtube flash shit, we have to go at least h264 640x480, at least.

another, we need to have variety. this fourth will be awesome, there wont be any house music, pretty much not a single clip I had from the woods show will be useable, no jem, no rainbow brite, no ducktales japan... planet earth and atmosphere stuff seems to be the scene.

coming soon we'll be doing something in big sur, and then the psychedelic ho-down. both shows mean to me the chance to do somethign different. black and white silent films like metropolis, I dunno. I'd like to see what we can do to blow people away, and I want to be flexible about it...

to get the best quality, I think chances are you'll find no better beginning than a dvd. there aren't many free and easy ways to get clips, imtoodvd ripper is pretty much the one I found that works. I thought I'd review the program for all mac users here, so millz, check it this is importanté:

basically you view the vid and pick where to rip through the timecode, and without a license you can rip up to 5 minutes, but if you torrent serial seeker for mac with the most recent serial box (july 2007) you can open any program there is including final cut and shit like imtoo dvd ripper.

now that barely matters, because 5 minutes is enoguh for most clips for our shows purposes, but as far as video editing and filmmaking, there is a snapshot feature at the bottom right, so angles that are perfect and you want to not only rab a clip but also an angle to try to recreate later, etc...

its very useful, I know its what i've needed for at least the last two years, and so I'm going to start compiling not only clips, but angles to improve my cinematography and help develop into some sort of production planner vastly more effecient than traditional storyboards...

okay its now 6:13, I'm going to wrap this up..

everyone should at least post their own profile until we get the skillset questionare bulliton compiled. -we should work together on that. it needs to exist so that people are asked the specific qand descriptive questions about their skillsets that they would forget to ask themselves. someone might say.

chances are a lot of this could have been posted as my own personal weblog, but I cant imagine finding the time to write a personal blog, let alone imagine people reading it. (I'll be suprised if anyone bothers reading this one) but its really important. the more we communicate the more shit can actually happen. and we can get productive.

so please, post shit about your day, tell me about shit you're working on, we really need to get on it.

andreas out.
...end of line...

POST YOUR PROFILES! POST YOUR SKILLSETS!

I don't know if there was something wrong, but check my profile and see what I did. I dont know if thats what we're trying to do, but it looks like so far I'm the first person to fill out any sort of skillset page. on the massive exchange near skillsets it lists myself evan millz and bears somethin, but theres nothing on those pages!

try to list some of your about me, and interests, etc...

R2 and I (hopefully with contribution from the rest of you) will come up with a skillset application to fill out, and everyone can post it as a blog... on their own page as a single post and as a reply to the skillset application post on the massive exchange.

weblogs are clean and I'm really glad we got onto the google boat.


but yea, my user profile lists my aim contact, my email, my industry and occupation, some of my resources... I think its important for everyone to get something like that up. and you can upgrade it as you realise your own talents and connections.

4th nearly ready, but not quite

4th nearly ready, but not quite!

we need more videos! send us videos in some readable quality, (I like h264) we're trying to switch off of youtube for our sources because of the great quality.

send us clips, we like 5minutes and under but its technically not a big deal...

more earth and cosmos, more giant special effect shots. whatever you'd like to see projected, well be covering the entire room with two projectors and mirrors, so the more and crazier the better.

torrent or rapidshare or even use google to send them, but anyone with files should get them across the internet to us at the paul sweet house...

if you have dvds and need to rip them use the program imtoodvd ripper
this should work, at least the demo is full as long as you clip only 5 minutes at a time (perfect)
http://software.ivertech.com/ImTOODVDRipperforMAC_software33109.htm

thanks a lot!
andreas

projection fodder

check it: 50 clips of robots for your projection pleasure.

that is all.

NYC shit

Whatup brethren,

Check out some footage from the Styles P music video we've been working on. It should go without saying that this is all super top secret until the video comes out, so don't be leakin this shit to youtube or my ass is in a sling. Check it. When it does come out, tho, everything that went into the video (footage and technology, but presumably not the song) will become public domain.

The footage was all taken with Evan's digital camera, on the first night of shooting in this fucked up spooky-ass comdemned art-loft. You can see Laser Tag goin on in the backround, and some shots of the fearsome GHETTO MATRIX, our 24 camera pseudo-3d rig. I don't have any good renders from the ghetto matrix, except for Dan the Man's myspace picture (he's the director of the video), which is a double exposure with blunt-smoking and a blowtorch. Oh and the other picture in the link is one of the writers from the video posing in front of his tag on the Brooklyn bridge.

We conferencing on wedneday?

GHOSTRIDE YOUR BIKE

Sickass hybrid between breakdancing and BMX...saw this randomly today in Union Square right after Critical Mass rolled out of that space. I wasn't the only taking video - check out the guy in the orange shirt with the stedicam doing a little dance around him.




All the rest here.

quick note

had to change the name of the group to not have an "><" in the title. that was fucking us up in terms of doing a proper RSS feed that can be read by Google reader and other such feed services.

if you haven't checked it out yet, you all should seriously check out iGoogle (www.google.com/ig). Had a cup of coffee last night and basically sat up all night coming up with new ways to make it suit my lifestyle. so far so good. I have a couple tabs that i've made already which have various Massive-exchange stuff in them. If anybody wants to check em out I can email them to you.

word

logo idea!

Hey mx peeps. Here's some shit I whipped up the last few days. Watchyall
think? Freshy Freshington? Or Baron VonGrundelsniff?

There's a lot of directions (pun?) I could take this is, but it's already possibly too busy, so I could get down with some feedback. I'd also be happy to post the Illystr8t0r file for anyone who wants to remix it, but we don't have any file storage yet, do we? Can I upload files to pbwiki?

The ornamentation came from BriarPress.org, in the "Cuts and Caps" section. Basically it's a good sized collection of meticulously vectorized letterpress imagery, and most of it is free (that which does cost $ is very reasonable, or so I hear, and is only for the really complex stuff. Worth it).

skillset pages

So after fiddling with the layout of the blogger page for a while it still looks like our skill set and mission statement stuff should be up on a personal page on our PBwiki. Blogger has a 1200 character limit on what you can say about yourself in the "About Me" section. this will not suffice for the kind of information we need to communicate to each other.

http://massive-exchange.pbwiki.com/
Password: bigupsc2c

I just set this PBWiki account that is private at the moment. This can be a place where we post stuff like processes that we know how to do that we'd like to share with the group (how to make legit samples/loops from vinyl, how to weld a tall bike without dying, how to upload files to our FTP). This would also be a great place make an entry about each member of the exchange, on which of course we can post our skillsets and our mission statements about what we want to bring to the table.

I haven't made my own yet, because it's ungodly late right now but if anyone is feeling ambitious to put a wiki entry up it sounds like the things everyone's looking to get out of the personal info is:
-Mission statement/who I am/what's my deal/about me blurb
-Skills that your masterful and passionate about
-skills that your decent and proficient at
-things you would like to learn or are interested in eventually pursuing
also,
-maybe some of the key contacts that you could call upon that could be helpful to the exchange

rock n rule

r2

Project: TRIP OUT THE SWEET! aug 4th

Current project in the works is the show/party/experience at the Paul Sweet on August 4th.

Wubakia (adam's band) wants to play for a decent amount of time, I've talked to a couple in the Byron Space Circus and they are going to talk about it at their band practice tonight. I think theres going to be one more band that wants to play for like and hour. If eveything comes together it should be a full night of spacey music.

Adam sounds like he's got everything under control in terms of the sound equipment, mics, PA, etc etc.

OUR TASK: is basically to come up with ways to make the Paul Sweet as trippy as possible.

-It has been requested that the library be used as a "chill room" that needs the usual stuff of pillows tapestries, blacklights or other colored lights, wierd taxidermied elk, and things of the like.

-I think the VJ crew should work super hard at providing the ambience for the Big Room. I talked to Chanda today and got approval to use her projector in addition to our own one. Wubakia also says that they have a camera and want to film the party. This camera also has a firewire port that we can run into ArKaos potentially. The band also wants us to sample some footage of 'Shaft' and the show 'C.O.P.S.', I'm all about it.

-One thing that I would really like to get done on the visuals side of things is get as much footage as we can of slow moving stars and cosmos. Not many shots with overbearing planets in the shot but mostly stuff that we can project off of mirrors and try and cover the walls with. Maybe shots of landscapes and trees, I'm not sure, just anything that could potentially make people feel like "Whoa... I'm in a different place all of a sudden" as opposed to "whoa, I'm watching a screen right now"

-Artwork: this area's really open to contribution but I was thinking anything from Garden sculptures to wierd artwork in the hallways to fabric and tapestries hanging from as many walls as we can cover.

any ideas?

also, adam mentioned something that some of my other housemates brought up which is like an arts and crafts area or just art happening there, live, at the event. Clay? hot glue... im not sure . Erika said she would want to do body painting and stuff. It could all be fun, i just don't have too many ideas about that right now.

=========================
==NEEDED MATERIALS LIST==
=========================

-good, mentally grounded, enthusiastic people to attend a fun fucking show
-creative artwork or even just wierd-ass things to put around the house
-crew of VJ folks to gather visual samples and build ArKaos sets for
the event. this crew also needs to get together and strategize how to
project everything in the big room.
-any and all tapestries and large fluffy pieces of fabric. (oh ..
fucking parachutes work good for this ... anyone have any parachutes?)
-**Colored Lights** ain't gonna be no trippiness without those.
-Anything else anyone wants to bring to the table ... it's a very open
event in terms of ambience right now.

ROCK THE CASBAH

-r2