medialysis

My first novel, Major Inversions, is now available from Amazon and CreateSpace, in both paperback and Kindle editions. Please help support your independent authors and buy one.
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Your roommate says you should date more, that all those spandex nights on stage paying tribute to hair metal and banging faceless groupies only amplify your Jekyll/Hyde syndrome. That this quicksand town of floozies, fiends, and filmmakers will survive without your commercial jingles. And your narcotics. That you should turn in your daytime security-guard badge and settle down.

He's got the perfect girl, a cinnamon-scented innocent who will bring that elusive substance to your life despite the familial forces that conspire against your union.

Always lurking in the periphery, the roommate remains buried in his Master's thesis, the parasitic puppeteer behind your reinvention, the search for your birth parents, and your all-too-brief film scoring career. A supporting cast of lecherous directors, deluded bandmates, federal agents, and nostalgic exes enable and obstruct your path to closure and ironic revenge as you wash the blood from your hands to complete the story yourself.
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Because it's the kind of thing we discuss here at Medialysis, full-disclosure: yes, this is self-published. No, it's not through a "vanity press." Of course that doesn't make it any less vain or narcissistic to think one's work is worthy of readership. It's indeed true that I first ran this book through the publishing machinery for two years in the hopes of securing an agent and/or reputable publishing house to distribute and market it. Every writer wants that external validation that comes with a publisher saying he's "good enough" to join their stable. I've never lacked for that confidence, nor been rebuked on merit, it was just never the right fit or the right time.

We all know the economy's in the shitter. The publishing biz is far from immune, especially with the increasing focus on tentpole/franchises and celebrity nonfiction. I have nothing against publishers – I appreciate their role as stoic gatekeepers of quality control (and I'll be jumping through their traditional hoops once again when my next book, Flashover, births) – but they must embrace new media to remain relevant, and find a way to turn profit in today's market by featuring more voices each earning a smaller audience share.

Believe me, I get it: as a video professional, I'm often annoyed with YouTube culture's amateur influence on broadcasting, just as I don't care for much electronic music. But content is king. A great song is a great song, whether it was tracked at Abbey Road or my bathroom. So goes it with storytelling. For the purposes of this twisted little metafictional tale I'm labeling a "revisionist character study," it was more important to me that the book be available to the public while the story's still relevant than it was to feel the warm embrace of industry love.

So think of me as the unsigned band hawking discs out of his trunk. Maybe I'll sign with a major label someday, but for now you get the raw¹, snarling², punk³ energy of those early years. And you'll always be able to say with nostalgia that you knew me back when. So tell a friend, please, and happy reading.

¹ eh, it's actually pretty polished, I think
² let's say cynical and irreverent instead
³ more like hair-metal

Cinema is a language with its own conventions. The audience must be familiar with certain patterns, even unconsciously, for the transfer of visuals to register properly. Establishing a scene with a wide shot to get our bearings, not crossing the 180-degree axis, keeping the flow of action moving in a single screen direction – folks become disoriented when these conventions are broken. However, a number of story-specific shots have become part of our shared language as well, and, effective as they may be, I could happily go the rest of my life without ever seeing any of the following tired compositions on screen again.

• the toilet-cam point of view as an interrogated face is dunked into it

• establishing a crime scene by tracking the unspooling of yellow police tape

• cutting to the defendant flinching as the judge's gavel cracks. See also: flinching mourners at a 21-gun salute

• bolting upright into camera after coming out of a nightmare

• a train approaching and passing over the camera for no apparent reason

• the final-second resignation on a bad-guy's face just before a bomb blows him to pieces

• closing a dead compatriot's eyes with a hand

• the awkward elevator ride with cheesy muzak as a moment of comic relief during an action sequence

• full-screen "access granted" computer terminal graphics

• the (unrealistic) black matte for binoculars point of view. See also: in softcore, the voyeur watching through their video camera will somehow see a scene assembled from coverage of wide, medium, and close shots.

• pan to the fireplace and defocus as the stars make love on the bed. Ironically, this can be called "going soft."

• macro-focusing to the barrel of a gun pointed at camera

• sliding someone down the length of a bar in a fight, taking out all manners of glassware in their path

• refrigerator point of view as someone rummages through it. See also: medicine cabinets. Guess I just hate POV shots in general unless they represent a person.

• a room whose light level remains nearly the same once the lights are turned out. Now it's just blue.

When I dropped my Medialysis anonymity a while back, I mentioned I'd use it sparingly as a vehicle for self-promotion, and this post fulfills that obligation. Of course, anything you ever wanted to know is at my official site GDotCom. But while I've got you here. . .

• Fellow scribe Craig Wallwork was kind enough to add me to his collection of interviews with emerging writers. We discussed my work, rockstar fantasies, the publishing biz, and brain tumors. Be sure to check out his own excellent short stories while you're there.

• If you'd like to read a couple of sample chapters from my in-progress novel Flashover (aiming for completion end of next year), you'll find them here. And don't be shy; tell me what you think.

• Find my bite-sized movie reviews at gFilms.

• If you've got the stones for some themed haiku throwdowns, I invite you to visit The Velvet Burn and spar with the masters.

• And finally, if you wanna talk media (music-making, videography, creative writing, etc.), I'm still taking questions right here.

Thanks for your kind attention. Now back to regularly-scheduled programming.

I just downloaded a file/mp3 on a friend's computer. it's in iTunes and I can burn it. thing is, it's a live recording and only one file and too long to fit on a single disc. is there a way to break it up into individual tracks and not have pauses between them when playing?

Unless you've already got professional software, I usually recommend something called Audacity. It's free, cross-platform, and open-source, so people have developed the shit out of it over the years. It'll open and manipulate MP3s. There's going to be some quality loss because the process of re-saving new MP3 files will introduce another level of compression. So, after you've sliced them in Audacity, I might recommend saving the new ones as stereo, 16-bit 44.1kHz AIFF files (that's the audio CD standard) instead of MP3s, to help preserve quality. They'll take up about 10x the storage space on your computer, but you can delete them after you burn the new CDs.

If you use iTunes for your disc burning also, it might add these AIFFs to your iTunes library by default when you drag them into the playlist, so you'll want to delete them afterward. I think there's a preference to turn this off as well if you like. There will be silent gaps between the songs on CD, because you'd otherwise need professional authoring software to get rid of these and conform to Red Book Audio CD standard.

[. . .] real-D. the new 3-D technology. MY BLOODY VALENTINE and the others. how the hell is that supposed to work on DVD? will it be the same, the same depth and all?

The whole point is trying to lure people back to theaters. However, looking toward the future, you would need a specialized television to experience this in its intended way. RealD uses a really high frame rate (more than your TV can handle), alternating frames for each eye that get filtered by different polarizers in the glasses, but it's so fast your brain sees it as continuous. This would flicker horribly on a regular TV. But since it's still just a single image running through a proprietary adapter on the projector, in theory future TVs might be able to use optics or software that either performs this or creates the traditional stereoscopic split, which is a different technology. SMPTE's working on some kind of home standard as we speak. Here's an article. For now, it's crappy red and blue glasses.

Time for a new gig. Like everybody else. Been thinking about going freelance (shooter mostly, maybe cutter). Never needed to make a demo reel before. Any ideas on what to include?

Only your best work. Quality is far more important than length; it's not a career retrospective. If there's a type of project you're not interested in taking on anymore, remove those examples no matter how good they look, because invariably those will be the calls you'll get. If your work includes celebrities or familiar campaigns, feature them up front, even at the expense of better material. Name recognition raises eyebrows and implies professionalism. And as you know, some unique POVs or exotic locales can supercede image quality as well. While too many people focus on proving they're a jack-of-all-trades (at the expense of impact), if you're looking for a full-time gig, highlighting your diversity can be an asset.

Be clear about the role you performed in a shot or sequence. Don't let us assume you were the DP if you pulled focus. Don't feature CGI if you're a Steadicam op. I once received a reel full of dazzling ESPN graphics, only to learn the applicant was a producer who made the phone calls that got the work done. Why she even had a reel I'll never understand. Depending on the jobs you're going after, you might create multiple cuts to narrow the viewer's focus, especially if you're a freelancer: editing, sound design, cinematography, viz fx, etc. Or even by market if you're that guy: commercial, retail, corporate, docco, etc. But only if you've got the goods; don't stretch yourself too thin.

Oh, and don't steal your music. Drop a little money on some royalty-free cuts or find a friend who could use the exposure. Setting the right tone without distraction is important.

As for how to get them seen, you're on your own. YouTube will probably degrade the image too much. There are some dedicated hosting services (that'll place yours right alongside your competitors, for better or worse), but I'm not really in the loop on those at the moment.

A former professor sent me an email recently about a movie shoot, and mentioned that they would be using a "Red Camera." What is this new camera, and what are your thoughts on it? Is it a good product, is it expensive, and/or worth the cost?

RED. The short answer is that it's a brand name for a completely modular digital camera system that combines still-camera resolution with the fast frame rates of film. You buy a "brain" plus any other components you want, all of which are compatible: power, storage, monitoring, I/O jacks, lenses, etc. No tapes; it records on your choice of a RAID, flash drive, or CF cards. The idea is that when your needs change, you only have to buy a new brain. These rely on a line of sensors they call Mysterium. This determines what size image it can resolve, which starts at 3K (3000 pixels wide), and the largest sensor available next year will do 28K.

For some perspective, a 2K image is around HD quality, and is what most 35mm feature films are scanned at for color correction (a "digital intermediate" or "DI" you may hear it called) and/or home video. Effects shots are often scanned at 4K to preserve fine details. IMAX is around 9K. Doing the math, you'll see that a 28K image is over 100 times the size of a frame of HD. Today's high-end SLR still cameras max out around 20 megapixels. RED offers the equivalent of 261 megapixels. In other words, pants-shittingly ginormous.

At the moment, few media outlets can benefit from these sizes, but consider the sharpness you achieve when scaling such images down. Last year I received a ton of RED footage from an agency to edit into one of my projects, and was initially only mildly impressed, until I understood that the 720x405 clips had been scaled to around 1/30 the size of their originals! The image was noiseless and very transparent.

Speed is also important, and the larger the frame, the fewer of them per second it can resolve. The 28K model will be capable of just 30 fps, but many of the smaller resolutions can do up to 250 fps, for very sharp slo-mo. Or just 1 fps if you want to undercrank. Another major selling point is that most of them are directly compatible with cine lenses or 35mm still lenses, for that sexy shallow depth-of-field you can't get on video without a clumsy adapter system (like I use).

The biggest advantage to using something like RED is it eliminates several steps in a typical workflow. There's no scanning, no digitizing or capture; it's immediately available. The same footage shot on set can be used for the poster in the lobby. Stills or motion with one-stop shopping. Plus, the cameras are small. Whether it's RED or a competitor, such technology is certainly the future of both cinema and commercial imaging. When you consider what they do, the brains are a great value, but the components and accesories are ungodly expensive. Still, for pro filmmakers, an easy call.

Jim Jannard, RED's founder, sold Oakley (his sunglasses company) to pursue this, and he often posts on the DVX User forums personally. Though their RED One camera has been available for some time, they're a startup, and their reputation has at times been one of potential vaporware since they haven't released any of their big guns yet, and many of the product shots are renderings at this point.

Official site

Someone recently gave me a book on the history of album covers. I've always been fascinated by this artform (and saddened by its relative demise in the CD/MP3 era), so I thought we'd take a look at some of the more conversation-worthy covers of the last several decades. Not best, nor most offensive, but more a celebration of WTF?


Utopia - Swing to the Right

A good-ole-fashioned Saturday night album burning will secure your kids' pre-marital chastity and eventual campaign for public office with later repression-fueled disgrace. Of course it's also an infinity mirror, so as they stare into the Nietzschean abyss, the abyss can stare also into them. How very meta(l). Of Todd Rundgren. . .














Johnny Winter - Guitar Slinger

Because nothing screams "blues purist" like a synthetic carbon-fiber headless guitar. And maybe I'm nit-picking (get it?), but it's difficult to truly sling a guitar with no strap. Granted, that would obscure some of Winter's alabaster dermis, another clue that we're in for some of the deepest soul to spring forth from the Delta.













Burbank's Finest 100% All Meat

Yes, that's the LP itself, encased to look like a package of bologna. Just one slice. Some of these jokes write themselves.



















Scorpions - Animal Magnetism

These guys are the finest purveyors of sexist album artwork, and despite the existence of Virgin Killer, which I dare not post, and another one with a chick getting felt up in the back of a limo, this is their most demeaning. Notice how they pose the dog the same as the woman, ever a symbol of obedience. Smell the glove, honey. I'm surprised she's not wearing an apron, and offering the beer to him.












Freddy King Goes Surfin'

Um, yeah . . . this is blues. A little more danceable and uptempo than most, but the only thing that hints at "surf" is the crowd noise they dubbed in upon its reissue to get white kids to buy it.
















J. Frank Wilson - Last Kiss

Some great songs and all, but . . . she's dead, Frank. You're about to put the sensual in non-consensual there. And setting up that camera on a timer so you can relive the moment over and over is the stuff that evidence lockers are made of.















Al Kooper - Act Like Nothing's Wrong

I don't understand; what's wrong? Oh! You mean the Swedish lycanthrope and the dude with the obligatory Hendrix perm? Pfft. They're so modest. He's got great tits, though. And I'd never say this to her face, but she could use a little manscaping around certain unmentionable spots. Like her balls.
























Le Roux - So Fired Up

This band named after cajun gravy offers a cover rich with depth and symbolism: an exploration of mankind's morality, whether he chooses the narrow virtuous path of white clouds or the easy fall into red ones. Plus the irony of a "fire escape" that actually leads you into the implied flames! And its stunning photorealism is sure to be studied in graphic design courses for decades to come.












The Marathons - Peanut Butter

No, those aren't the Tuskegee Airmen. These gents actually have much more in common with Booker T. than this tribute to George Washington Carver would imply. And don't dare ask about the secret protein-rich ingredient in that glorious hair product, or you'll be getting a marathon beat-down, McFly.














Dennis Coffey - Finger Lickin Good

But after you finish with the legs and thighs, all that's left is a greasy bucket for bones.


















Humble Pie - Thunderbox

I was really hoping the guys serving up these slices would deliver a controversial cover this time. But instead all we got was a picture of a woman (?) urinating and a title that sounds like a reference to her back door. Oh, wait, I get it . . . keyhole!













Bernadette Peters - Bernadette

I'm concerned that this image may be placing too much emphasis on her vocal ability. But sometimes you have to just play to your strengths as an artist. I mean, it's 1980; it's not like anyone's ever gonna have to watch her sing.















Nino Tempo & April Stevens - Deep Purple

Maybe it's just me, but their sound has mellowed a lot ever since Ritchie Blackmore started– ah, crap. Now I get it. They . . . flipped the album name with the . . . yeah. And here I'd thought it was one of those ironic covers. With an even-more-ironic title.














Grand Funk Railroad - Born to Die

"No, no, guys, it's not symbolic of your career or anything like that." (pause) "Yes, Mark, we'll need you to put a shirt on for this one." (pause) "Of course I appreciate your input, but cremation doesn't really have that visual flair we're looking for." (pause) "Oh, here he goes with his whole 'why do I have to be Mr. Pink?' routine again. . ."












Lynyrd Skynyrd - Street Survivors

Sure, you could make fun of their lax dress code, or complain about the compositing job where the lighting on the band doesn't match that of the inferno around them. But I'm gonna go with the fact that two of these guys died in a plane crash three days after this album was released.














The Playmates - At Play With. . .

Check the look on the driver's face. Guess he's not really a bottom. Or maybe they're just a duo and he's their unwitting chaffeur. Mr. Daisy Chain in the middle couldn't appear happier.















The Four Lovers

I don't care if you are Frankie effing Valli, that name's gonna send the wrong message, Jersey boys. That noun needs an object. The Four Lovers of Whiplash, perhaps.















Judas Priest - Point of Entry

Okay, we've got an album title with sexually-ambiguous overtones – check. A band name evoking a paradox of religious/sinful duality – check. So, now, the only thing that could possibly project a more metallic image for us is . . . a sweet photo of a sunset with continuous sheet-feed printer paper extending as far as the eye can see! Yeah, we know our audience.












Millie Jackson - Back to the Shit

Obviously a maverick of wordplay, Miss Jackson flips the script on the average, reasonable music-lover's interpretation of "the shit" as meaning "the good shit," or "that shit we listened to back in the day." No, she means both the noun and verb forms, which includes actual feces, and the act of obviously-passionate defecation that produces it. (She claims sole producer credit on this release.)












All of the above is commentary/satire, and thus fair use. Image copyright belongs to their respective holders.

[EDITED 12/31/08 to include several worthy new films that forced retractions.]

Toss your dog in your purse and text your publicist on the way to the dress fitting . . . it's time to raise the sails for my third annual windbaggery about the year in cinema – at least the approximately 120 new films that I saw – hyperbolic, symbolic, and gastronomic. I've spread the acclaim out over as many worthy films as possible.

Exceptions aside, 2008 was dominated by mediocre offerings, notably lacking in strong female roles. Fair warning as usual: I haven't yet seen some of the late-year entries that often dominate awards season, including: Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler, and Doubt.

And now, live except on the west coast, this year's winners and runners up. . .


FUNNIEST DUDE
Danny McBride, The Foot Fist Way
Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder

FUNNIEST FEMME
Elizabeth Banks, Zak and Miri Make a Porno
Catherine Keener, Hamlet 2

FILM THAT MADE ME SNARF SODA OUT MY NOSE
Hamlet 2
Sex and Death 101

FILM NOT TO WATCH IN THE DARK
[REC]
The Orphanage

FILM THAT OPENED MY MIND
Towelhead
Man on Wire

DRAMA KING
Jamie Bell, Mister Foe
Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino

DRAMA QUEEN
Catinca Untaru, The Fall
Laura Linney, The Savages

BADDEST-ASS BADASS
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Ralph Fiennes, In Bruges

SURPRISE PERFORMANCE
Stephen Dorff, Felon
Ryan Reynolds, Definitely, Maybe

SEXIEST STARLET
Marisa Tomei, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Jess Weixler, Teeth

ADRENALINE WITHOUT CHEESE
The Dark Knight
Quantum of Solace

MOST EFFED-UP TWIST
Synecdoche, New York
Stuck

SNAPPIEST DIALOGUE
Gran Torino
Choke

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST
Tropic Thunder
Be Kind Rewind

BEST MUSIC
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Slumdog Millionaire

COOLEST VISUAL STYLE
The Fall
Slumdog Millionaire

WANTED TO HATE, BUT DIDN'T
Smart People
[REC]

UNDER-THE-RADAR SURPRISE
Let the Right One In
In Bruges

BEST TV SHOW ON DISC
Battlestar Galactica
Spaced

ILLEST DISC EXTRAS
Blade Runner: Final Cut
WALL•E

BEST IMPORT
Let the Right One In
The Orphanage

WORTHY FILMS THAT DON'T FIT ELSEWHERE
Iron Man
Starting Out in the Evening

WORST WAY TO SPEND $9.25
Revolver
Speed Racer

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT
Burn After Reading
The X-Files: I Want to Believe

BEST FUCKIN' FILM
WALL•E
The Dark Knight

I'm in. Took the plunge and snatched up a Samsung BD-2550. It's a lot more expensive than most Blu-Ray players (same as a PS3), but it has a top-line processor, built-in storage, decodes the audio (I have an older Dolby Digital receiver), supports all those soon-to-be-killer BD Live features, and best of all, streams Netflix and Pandora.

As a Mac user, I've been unvited to the "Watch Instantly" Netflix party in the past. Now everything saved to my Instant Queue on their site is available on screen to choose from. True that this doesn't include many new releases, and most is in standard-def for now (my RoadRunner plan isn't fast enough to stream HD anyway), but there's still a ton of titles available. To my eyes, the quality appears to be near-DVD, which surprised me. Pandora's the same, with all of your stations in a list view, plus thumbs up/down ratings.

The quality of Blu-Ray playback I find to be slightly better than HD cable, plus the obvious benefit that it doesn't fall apart at transitions like fades or when there's a lot of fast-moving detail that causes image artifacts with cable's real-time encoding. The menu system functions on a separate layer, so it can overlay the movie without stopping it. And upscaling on regular DVDs looks fantastic as well.

I expect BD Live features to really take off soon. Director Christopher Nolan is hosting a Dark Knight event the week after its release that will be one of the technology's first major showcases. In theory it could create a worldwide community of available content, including the ability to sync up third-party commentaries, in-movie chats, e-commerce links, etc. I'm gonna MST3K some films, for sure. And heaven help me if I bust out the webcam.