Inaugural spin (day 256)

The tech session with the stereoscopic rig went really well.  About 15 people came and for over two hours Marty talked about the technical aspects of the rig and took questions from the participants.  There was lots of great feedback and many said they would be interested in coming back and spending some time experimenting with the rig.  We ourselves will be spending some quality time with the rig in the coming days getting ready for the Western Economic Diversification announcement of the S3D Centre taking place at Emily Carr on May 20th.  We'll be filming the event with the rig and showing the live footage on a 3DTV LCD (Hyundai S465D).

I taped a lot of the session today but I haven't had time to upload the footage.  In the meantime here is a photo taken from an iPhone of Marty and I looking at the live stream for the first time.  The next shot is an older one of my first time seeing the rig at Kerner in late March.


Many people deserve thanks for making this session happen.  The Kerner team for getting the rig up here in time and helping organize some of the session logistics.  Marty Brenneis especially for so generously providing so much information to the assembled group.   And Rick Overington, for heroically wrangling technology and traffic to make sure everything worked in the end.
Our industry partners also deserve many thanks for their invaluable contributions and support: Panavision, Codex, Cine-Tal, Sony, Fujinon, Evertz, Silicon Imaging.

A song for this post.

Now in stereo (day 255)

Marty Brenneis from Kerner arrived at the lab today!  He's here for a 2 day visit and to help us put the stereoscopic rig together.  He's the engineer that built the rig.  It was really exciting to see the rig being come together and to see the live stream from the cameras on our new 3DTV.  Tomorrow we're having a tech session and Q&A mostly for internal technicians but also some technicians from IATSE.   May 20th is the official WED announcement of the funding for the Centre.

We'll be filming the session tomorrow so I'll post some pics and perhaps some videos.   I'll also put together a list of the rig components.

A song for this post.

Wanna see a demo? (day 216)

I only travelled with my iPhone this time.  It was a quick trip and I didn't want to carry one more bag.  I fancied I would write a short blog post with the iPhone.  For several reasons including tired eyes, intermittent wireless, and an oncoming cold, I decided against it in the end.  I think if I'd had a netbook it would have happened.  Reason enough to get one?  Probably not.   But if I continue with these short trips, perhaps.  I'll have to try out the iPad keyboard to see if it would even be a contestant.

The visit to Kerner went really well.  It was not at all what I expected.  It's a place designed to build things and blow things up.  It has a shop feel combined with some great creative (destructive?) energy.  There are lots of warehouse type spaces and remnants of models and sets built in the past.  I think I expected something more polished or cleaner.  I've seen so many CG effects that I hadn't thought through the mechanics of real demolitions.  The double meaning of the word demo was a great source of puns. 
Kerner was split from Industrial Light and Magic a few years ago.  They drifted for a while but are now being steered by a team of highly competent people.  The talent that makes Kerner so successful is still there.   In fact, I've rarely met such talented people.  It's great to meet individuals that are doing what they love.  One of them has been with Kerner for 30 years!  I don't know anyone else in that category.

I saw the S3D rig they've built for Emily Carr and it is very impressive.  I can barely wait to give it a spin in Vancouver.  We're just waiting for all the pieces to be integrated in their lab and we'll be showing it off publicly on May 13th for Industry Evening in the Intersections Digital Studios at Emily Carr.

A song for this post.

Gaming the deadlines (day 214)

This is the season of deadlines.  This and mid-September.   But this one is worse.  March 31st is an arbitrary date where a bunch of us have agreed to close our books before opening them up again.  And that means things get very inflexible for a while.  There are also thesis deadlines and grant deadlines.   Systems of organization have been setup and now we must abide by them.  But as Brian Massumi describes in his book "Parables for the Virtual", games are only interesting because there exists some that dance around the rules, not breaking them but inhabiting the fringes and giving themselves and their teams a slight but good enough advantage.  If there were no rules there would be no fringes and no clear winners.  I'm finding this out.

I'm heading out to San Rafael tomorrow morning to visit Kerner.  I'm totally excited to see a large scale production studio.  And I hope to learn something new about stereo rigs.

While I'm away the magical deadline will pass and I will breathe easier on April fool's.

A song for this post.