The Sony HVR-A1 was a bad choice...

Last year the Southern Institution of Technology, my most favourite of institutions, purchased a whole batch of Sony A1 cameras to replace the hardy Sony PDX10's. The main reasoning behind this purchase is that Sony no longer made the PDX10, and the A1's were positioned as a replacement. Also, S.I.T doesn't seem to get any non Sony movie cameras for some weird reason. Maybe they have an exclusive deal with Sony, but its unlikely. Anyway back to the subject at hand.

My first impressions of the camera were, "Wow, looks like a little kids cam". Indeed, this appears to be the standard first impression of the camera, whether you are caught in public using it, or attempting to look professional filming for the local schools, which is no easy task with this camera. Its ungodly small, kind of too small to be functional. In order to reduce the size, Sony decided to take almost all the manual controls off the camera, and add them instead to the software accessed by the touch screen LCD. So not only do you get to scroll through neverending menus just to increase or decrease your microphone volume, you get the added benefit of putting your greasy fingerprints all over the LCD display. Nice.

Some other improvements, or lack of them, is the inferior picture quality compared to the PDX-10. The Sony A1 uses a newer CMOS chip, but the sensor size is so extremely small that it actually makes for worse quality, compared with the PDX10's 3 CCD design. Combine this with the smaller lens size, so less light can reach the tiny sensor. Good work Sony, nice replacement.

The other major qualm I have with this camera is the sensitivity of the camera to different environments and tapes. The camera will simply fail to function if there is even the slightest bit of moisture inside the deck, or if the tapes are cold, or basically if the weather or temperature of your location is no less than pristine. This problem also comes up when you are attempting to capture your footage, with the camera producing strange error codes that aren't in the manual, all the while telling you to please eject the tape.

It seems Sony did a really good job on this camera, I commend them. In all seriousness, I hope to never have to lay my hands on one of these pathetic cameras again.

Education: Polytech vs University

After leaving school, students are usually presented with a few choices. They can decide to continue their education, whether this be with a Polytechnic or University, or choose not to further their education and find a job with their current qualifications. What they may not realize, however, is the huge differences between Polytech's and Universities, even though it may appear that you can achieve the same qualifications at either institution.

Polytech's seem to revolve a lot more around hands on experience, combined with a close bond with the industry which would appear to make it easier to get a job after achieving the required qualifications. They are usually very skills based, and used to only offer Cerficates and Diplomas, forcing students to go to a University to achieve any higher education. Times have changed though, and now you can get a Bachelors Degree in many different fields.

Universities on the other hand are more theoretically based, and students attend lectures on a broad range of topics that usually apply somewhat to the area they hope to get a job in. Universities most often try to give students a rounded, broad set of knowledge instead of a highly focused one.

As to which is better? Different strokes for different folks. Some people are a lot more hands on, and enjoy the physical experience Polytechs usually offer. Some do better with theory and abstract ideas. But a lot of people seem to choose the wrong one, as I have noticed with classmates in my course at a Polytech. Seemingly around 75% (may be a high estimate) of students doing Digital Media realize sooner or later that they don't really want to get into this industry after all. This includes both students studying towards the Animation and Film strands, which is really surprising to me. Seeing how easy it is to change ones mind about your field of interest, a lot of people may be far better off attending a University, selecting a range of papers that would suit their needs, and getting a varied set of knowledge that you could apply to a lot of different jobs.

As long as Facilities make it clear whether their services would best suit the individuals pursuing them, rather than going for numbers and money. As always, it comes down to the individual, and as long as they are well informed about both education choices they should be able to make a good decision. Unless of course this choice is distorted because of price factors and misleading information, as is the case with Southern Institute of Technolgy... but I'll leave that for another post, preferably after I've recieved my Diploma from them.

Production Vacuum in Christchurch?

Christchurch, the garden city, also known as one of the main software powerhouse cities of New Zealand, sadly seems to have a bad reputation for being a good place to make films. I'm not talking about student films, but rather professional productions and studios etc etc. Of course I'm entirely basing this off hearsay, but have had detailed conversations with a few people that know the Christchurch production crowd quite well. And while currently it may not have the best of reputations, this has nothing to do with anything actually physically wrong with the town, just perceptions and lack of major studios or facilities.

Of course, Christchurch isn't entirely empty. There are a lot of people that do small production work, which includes things like filming weddings and small events. Rivetting stuff. Also there is Jason Gunn's production house, Whitebait TV which seems to be making quite an impact but deals almost entirely with childrens entertainment.

The main problem at the moment is probably the talent drain factor, which is causing talented people either to move overseas or to more active production cities, namely Wellington and Auckland. This is effecting both talented crew and actual in-front-of-the-camera talent, and in my eyes is creating a bit of a vacuum.

Christchurch seems to have the infrastructure and natural advantages that would lend themselves well to filmmaking - the city is relatively flat, but does have a lot of hills bordering the city. The weather is generally quite mild and doesn't get anywhere near as much wind as Wellington. There is a lot of scenery variety, and large areas to shoot. It seems as though Christchurch would make a very good production powerhouse, if only there was the interest and facilities.

Which presents the possibility, the opportunity, of starting a production house in Christchurch which I would like to do sometime in the near future. Of course a lot of help would be required, and I wouldn't expect it to be an overnight success. But at least its something to think about.

Vector Magic

I came across a web based application called Vector Magic a couple of weeks ago, and have found myself coming back to the tool more and more as of late. It seems to be a project of the Stanford University, and is hosted on their site. Basically the application offers the ability to vectorize raster images, or trace them.

This comes in handy for a few different situations - maybe you have a logo that you would like to resize without the quality loss experienced with raster based resizing. Maybe you want the vector look as an effect for an image, or maybe you want to try and vectorize some photographs just for fun, or to see what they look like. You may have tried vectorizing images through Macromedia Flash before, but Vector Magic offers greater control over the process.

Basically you upload a picture, and it will attempt to guess the pictures contents - whether its a photograph or a logo, and whether it has antialiasing at all. Also you can let it know how many colors are in the picture, and the relative quality of the image. These things all go towards a better vectorized result. After the application has done its thing, you can do minor touchups of the image or try processing it using different settings. When you are happy with the result, you can save the image as either vector based (SVG, EPS etc formats) or back as a raster (PNG, JPG etc). Quite a handy tool.

I recently used the program to Vectorize the mountain range in my logo, as for fun I decided to try and do up a 4K resolution version of it. Took a lot more time than I expected, let me tell you. Try giving Vector Magic a spin.

Final Logo

Well here's the final version I did up of the logo, I changed the colors around a bit, added a crescent moon and also made the mountain range a bit bigger, since the smaller version always seemed to look lopsided to me. I've made up a web banner version of it too, just added more stars and cloud wisps to make it scale across a wider space. Now I just have to finish off the website I've been working on...




I did my Research Exam on Friday as well, after a rushed attempt at studying through the notes the night before. It wasn't as hard as the notes suggested it might have been however, so I should have done alright on it. Which leaves me almost finished for the year which is a relief.

Evolution of a Logo

Finally had the chance to have a bit of a play around on Photoshop today, I've been trying to make a logo for myself for quite some time but always seem to run into problems. I managed to come up with a good attempt in the end, and although it isn't perfect at least I'm a lot happier with it than my previous attempts. I thought I'd put the three images up so you can see the evolution of the logo so far. I just have to ensure it doesn't look too similar to the Paramount logo, or they'll sue my ass.

The Horrors of Research

For the last week or so I have been caught in the clutches of something terrible, something that would no doubt bring insanity to the strongest willed individual. Unless, of course, you enjoy research. For me, its not so much the research itself, as we don't actually have to actualize the research yet, its just the process of writing a huge Research Proposal and preparing a presentation for it.

It seems almost ridiculous to put so much work into a proposal. It feels like having to write a novel about the novel you are planning to write, without actually writing anything that will be in the planned novel later. After a week of heavy thinking, I'm into the day before both are due without much done. I've changed my topic about four or five times now, for lack of previous research that I can add into my literature review. As it stands at the moment, I'm going for at least a C or a D, seeing as I already scored an A- for the essay and shouldn't do too poorly on the upcoming exam. So basically I just have to hand something in, as long as its not too bad. Like as long as its not a blank piece of paper... I was thinking of posting some of it up on my blog but I won't put anyone through having to read it.

I just can't wait until its over. My feelings of angst and general unhappiness seem to have extended outwards, and I find myself in the garb of an emo. Sad days...