The Final Cut Bro’

Bow to the Audience

For the love of God, can we kill interlaced?

Serious Multicam problem in FCPX 10.0.4

A tape project in Final Cut Pro X

Dannsa Episode 3, the music

Italy via Gothic Literature of the Nineteenth Century

Published on October 30, 2011 by Kenny Park in Recommendation

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Nina Burleigh has a great article in the New York Times in which she tours Italy, seeking out the locations of gothic English and American novels.

The original gothic writers were much inspired by the duality in the bel paese. Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and other masters of the romantic and horror genres set some of their most famous works in Italy.

“Italy was the Gothic writers’ favorite background,” wrote Massimiliano Demata, a professor at the University of Bari, who has made a study of the form. The country’s baroque portas, ruined castles, eerie reliquaries and catacombs were a gateway to the uncanny, possessing, as he put it, “a labyrinthine and claustrophobic architecture that was the novels’ perfect physical and psychological setting.” Today, these same books can serve as unconventional guidebooks for tourists who tire of the sun and want to explore the country’s macabre past.

link

Technorati Tags: Ann Radcliffe, catacombs, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Walpole, Italy, Naples, Napoli, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Roma, Rome

Tags: Ann Radcliffe, catacombs, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Walpole, Italy, Naples, Napoli, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Roma, Rome

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Dannsa Episode 3, the music

Published on June 27, 2011 by Kenny Park in confession, editing, Featured, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work

Dannsa hits Episode the Third with a trip to Taynuilt, near Oban. Well, relatively “near”: Taynuilt isn’t near anywhere, which is sort if the point of Ballet West. In idyllic surrounds, the ballet degree students have few distractions, other than the odd stag sticking his majestic head through the studio window to enjoy a rehearsal.

Technorati Tags: alicia keys, dannsa, music, Paul McCartney, slash, The Clash, The Killers

Tags: alicia keys, dannsa, music, Paul McCartney, slash, The Clash, The Killers

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Dannsa Episode 2, the music

Published on June 20, 2011 by Kenny Park in confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work

Following on from last week’s blog, here’s what I have to say for myself regarding the music choices in Dannsa, episode 2, which is on tonight at 10pm, BBC Alba.

This week, we concentrate on the Fusion dance group in Aberdeen, with a brief sojourn with Livingston’s b-boyz (and girl), the Heavy Smokers, kicking off with… Read more…

Technorati Tags: led zepplin, tori amos

Tags: led zepplin, tori amos

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Dannsa Episode 1, the music

Published on June 12, 2011 by Kenny Park in confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work

A new show TV started last Monday, 10pm on BBC Alba. It’s called Dannsa^[1] and you’ll all be able to get it, because BBC Alba has just become available to anyone with Freeview. That’s you^[2]. I recommend the show to you, because it’s rather good. I know this because I worked on it, along with a string of extraordinarily talented people.^[3] And frankly, we all worked damned hard. I don’t want to give too much away, but one aspect of the post-production that I feel I can discuss in some detail is the choice of music. Obviously, the dancers featured dance to something, so music choice was a primary concern.

The show follows six dance groups from all over Scotland with wildly varying ages and dance styles, from classical ballet to contemporary, an over-60s group to a breakdance crew. There’s something for everyone, and it was a joy spending time with them all, particularly when they start coming together later in the series. Episode One introduces us to them all, whereas subsequent editions focus on one group at a time. So this introduction to them all is, itself, a kind of compilation album, a mix tape, a playlist. So the music better be good.

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Gaelic for Dancing↵
If you’re in the UK, that is.↵
Everyone’s talented at mneTV.↵

Technorati Tags: alicia keys, black eyed peas, dance, dannsa, lady gaga, mneTV, music, slash, taio cruz

Tags: alicia keys, black eyed peas, dance, dannsa, lady gaga, mneTV, music, slash, taio cruz

2 Comments

Everyone’s a critic

Published on March 31, 2011 by Kenny Park in Recommendation

Here are the Amazon DVD reviews of one Mr. M. E. B. Woods “markbernard1981″ (Bristol, UK). There are three of them and they warmed my cockles.

Some choice observations (apply a sic to everything):

From Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot: “Stalone thinks he’s hard cos he plays a cop who doesn’t play by the rules. Big deal. Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson didn’t played even less by the rules better.”

From Shallow Hal: “Someone told me that Steven Siegal was in this movie as a cameo, I watched it three times and there wasn’t a single reference to him.”

From My Giant: “A lot of the times Billy Crystal has more lines than my giant which is ludacris.”

I assume that Mr. M. E. B. Woods “markbernard1981″ (Bristol, UK) is perfectly sane, lucid and just having a wee laugh, but they tickled me.

5 Comments

The Afghans are not Ewoks

Published on March 28, 2011 by Kenny Park in confession, Personal, politics, tv

Just watched the political discussion show, Empire, on Aljazeera. Jolly good. I’m quite enjoying switching to the Doha-based network whenever BBC News starts wittering about cricket and there’s nothing good on Parliament. They had, among others, Carl Bernstein of All the President’s Men fame going on about Wikileaks, cyber activism and national security.

The whole thing got me thinking, though, how much of my morality is framed in the context of Star Wars. No, really.

Technorati Tags: Al Jazeera, Empire, star wars

Tags: Al Jazeera, Empire, star wars

1 Comment

Yo!

Published on March 27, 2011 by Kenny Park in complaint, confession, DRM, idea, Personal

There’s a truism in the world of copyright and media piracy: you can’t compete with free. Thing is, though, you can.

1 Comment

Bye-bye, Shrook, as I buy Byline

Published on February 13, 2011 by Kenny Park in complaint, Personal, Recommendation

the free version of an app becomes one of the few that you use every day without fail, it’s time to shell out the £2.99 for the full version. Despite good reviews, I balked at the price initially because of its relative highness ^[1] and the fact that I knew how soul destroying an RSS app could be if it’s interface doesn’t fit you.

Byline Free's icon

Byline is an RSS reader, you see. For such a simple technology, it seems really hard to get aggregator software to work intuitively. I’ve never been too impressed with Apple’s efforts, for example. You can read RSS feeds in Mail (which seems like a strange place to put it), and Safari’s got a weird system where everything but the text can be stripped away, so you’re not distracted by the rest of the site (never really been much of a problem, frankly). No, RSS didn’t become an integral part of my life until I discovered the right software for it: Shrook. Recommended in Mark Frauenfelder’s book Rule the Web, it offered a very pleasing interface and, crucially, syncing between a desktop app and a browser, so it never asked you to read the same post twice. This came at a price, though, a monthly or yearly subscription, without which they’d both have all the feeds you’d subscribed to, but wouldn’t know which ones you’d read on the other platform. I took out a month for a couple of quid, liked it enormously, and paid for a yearly subscription.

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

the free version of an app becomes one of the few that you use every day without fail, it’s time to shell out the £2.99 for the full version. Despite good reviews, I balked at the price initially because of its relative highness {{1}} and the fact that I knew how soul destroying an RSS app could be if it’s interface doesn’t fit you.

Byline Free's icon

Byline is an RSS reader, you see. For such a simple technology, it seems really hard to get aggregator software to work intuitively. I’ve never been too impressed with Apple’s efforts, for example. You can read RSS feeds in Mail (which seems like a strange place to put it), and Safari’s got a weird system where everything but the text can be stripped away, so you’re not distracted by the rest of the site (never really been much of a problem, frankly). No, RSS didn’t become an integral part of my life until I discovered the right software for it: Shrook. Recommended in Mark Frauenfelder’s book Rule the Web, it offered a very pleasing interface and, crucially, syncing between a desktop app and a browser, so it never asked you to read the same post twice. This came at a price, though, a monthly or yearly subscription, without which they’d both have all the feeds you’d subscribed to, but wouldn’t know which ones you’d read on the other platform. I took out a month for a couple of quid, liked it enormously, and paid for a yearly subscription.

Read more�↵

Technorati Tags: byline, iPhone, rss, shrook

Tags: byline, iPhone, rss, shrook

16 Comments

Reading Along

Published on January 16, 2011 by Kenny Park in complaint, confession, DRM, idea, Personal, Recommendation

Since updating to OS X 10.6.6 and having available the new Mac App Store, I have acquired yet another book app: Amazon’s Kindle for Mac. There have been, and are, others, none of which have the killer function that I look for in an eReader. Read more…

Technorati Tags: ebooks, ereaders

Tags: ebooks, ereaders

1 Comment

End of the hols

Published on January 4, 2011 by Kenny Park in Personal

2011 and the holidays are over. Don’t know about you, but I’m set for a very busy three or four months, beyond which lies a mystery. My intention in that time is to somehow fit in some personal work around the busy real-work schedule, but keep it until about April before saying any more about it or doing anything in particular with it. The idea is to have a wee quarter-year buffer, so I’m not watching a YouTube account sit idle guiltily all year. Just for the first three or four months.

Back to work, then.

1 Comment

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Italy via Gothic Literature of the Nineteenth Century

Dannsa Episode 3, the music

Dannsa Episode 2, the music

Dannsa Episode 1, the music

Everyone’s a critic

The Afghans are not Ewoks

Yo!

Bye-bye, Shrook, as I buy Byline

Reading Along

End of the hols

The FCB is…

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