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St. Patrick's Church, San Francisco, 2012. Nikon D7000.

Nikon D7000: Closer Look, and a Peek at the D800

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Doug Luberts

Time’s flown pretty fast since last March, when I wrote this post about first impressions of my new Nikon D7000. Seems like I really owe my readers an update on the camera, and my experiences with it since then.

I love the D7000. It creates amazing images, and finally gives me the level of camera that I need to create images that are as compelling, and reach the same kind of quality, that could be achieved with Nikon film bodies during the analog shooting days.

Not going to get into a big tech analysis on the camera features…Think I covered that in the previous post, linked above, and there’s also a lot of online coverage and fact sheets available.

The D7000 is a strong shooter, build-to-last, and with a control set that will be comfortable to all Nikon shooters as soon as they pick the camera up.

For stills, in conjunction with Adobe Lightroom, it’s a superstar.

St. Patrick's Church, San Francisco, 2012. Nikon D7000. Processed in Adobe Lightroom.

For Digital Cinema applications, the D7000 is a major leap forward for Nikon. The D90 was flawed, to the point of almost being useless for video, by a slow sensor and resulting digital artifacts.

Nikon still has a way to go, and I think they actually got there with the newly-announced D800, which is a superb cinema camera with updated features and ergonomics not found in the D7000.

I’m including the Nikon “Joy Ride” video, shot with the D800, to give you an idea of what this new camera is capable of, and you can keep up to date on the D800, and all other Nikon news at NikonRumors.com, which is my go-to news source for all things Nikon.

While I’m still shooting all of my web video with the D7000, and the video is gorgeous, the biggest issues with the camera revolve around the need to set exposure outside of live view mode, and then go back into live view to capture your video…It’s a pain in the butt. Nothing more than an annoyance that doesn’t affect the quality of the work, but the shooting experience suffers for it.

Changes made to camera settings while in live view aren’t reflected in exposure, and live view does not give you exposure information in the LCD.

Also, lack of a headphone jack on the camera was a huge mistake…One that I resolved by using a Juiced Link DSLR Pre-amp Adapter for $144, which you should just figure in as part of the cost of the camera if you’re going to be shooting video…It’s worth it, and an absolute necessity if you are doing single-system sound.

The audio quality out of the D7000 is not bad, and good enough for single-subject interviews, but you’ll likely want to go dual system for anything more elaborate than an interview setup. In that case the Zoom H4n is still the best, and most versatile option for web shooters.

This Juiced Link DSLR mic pre-amp includes the headphone jack that Nikon left off the camera, and is a must for video shooters.

Another great thing about the D7000 is that it works with all of the Nikon AF-S/AF-D line of lenses, which you can pick up on eBay for a song. The older lenses are a bit slower focusing than their newer counterparts, and don’t have the VR (vibration-reduction) features, but they do have an aperture ring, great glass, and create awesome images. One big advantage that you don’t find with the red-ring lenses so highly coveted by Canon shooters.

On the whole, the D7000 is an amazing camera, and the best ‘pro-sumer’ (emphasis on the pro) camera Nikon makes before you get into the D800 realm … Something I hope to do within the next year.

Ciji and Adrian, February 2012. Nikon D300. The older D300 produces great results, but its auto-focus system and sensor are no match for the D7000.

Welcome to Skippy’s Basement, our new show!

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Doug Luberts

Skippy is an ardent fanboy, comic book scholar, and contemporary sage.

He lives in the basement of his parents home in Brooklyn, New York.

He is 43 years old.

Skippy, along with his co-host, and best friend, Ralphie ‘The Wrench’ Robaccio, will be hosting a show live, on tape, from his basement, bringing Geektastic Nebula Viewers all the latest from the world of Fandom and Entertainment.

‘Skippy’s Basement’ will start airing later this month, on the Geektastic Nebula YouTube Channel.

Felicia’s Vaginal Fantasy Bookclub: A Google+ Video Hangout

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Doug Luberts

You read the title right…and no, I haven’t sold out and gone into the smut-peddling business (yet), nor have I turned to writing a sordid exposé about Felicia Day to earn coin.

No, my friends, this is a bit of a review of Felicia’s latest new media experiment, and, once again, she’s on to something great here …

The concept: use the fairly-new technology of Google+ video hangouts as a forum to assemble a group of notable women writers and new-media personalities for a monthly book club discussing ‘Vaginal Fantasy’ genre lit…For those not familiar, I think this also falls under the heading of ‘Bodice Ripper’ romance novels, the kind of stuff involving cover photos of shirtless, long haired, overly-adrenal males having their way with stacked beauties (I may have passed one in a book store, or grocery checkout, once.)

Multi-cam format allows a switch-feed to the main screen, while viewers get thumbnails of all participants below.

Felicia’s been a devourer of the genre as far back as I can remember, once tweeting about going on a ‘Highland Hunk’ buying spree (Bodice rippers involving dudes with six packs in kilts [usually 'worn true', I'd imagine, although trying hard not to...]) at the 3rd Street Promenade after quaffing an adult beverage with dinner (Felicia doesn’t drink much, and I’m told by sources, who shall go nameless, except his initials are ‘Sandeep Parikh‘, hilarity often ensues on such occasions…Sandeep is what you call an ‘enabler’.)

So the book club is another project where the subject matter is an affinity for Felicia, who mentioned, a couple of weeks back, that she decided to do the book club last-minute, as a fun project with some friends.

Well, this ‘fun project’ is not only that, but it’s an exciting format, with a lot of potential for growth, and an excellent use of an enabling technology, the G+ video hangout. The hangouts put the kind of live, multi-camera, switch feed capabilities into the hands of content creators that big-media broadcasters have had for years, and that new media creators, like Leo Laporte, have spent small fortunes to implement on their own.

Yeah, there have been options for this from U-stream, and Blip-TV, for a while, but this seems easier, and with the overall integration between Google+ and YouTube, this is going to be a killer app … But before I geek out too much on the convergence-media aspects of the tech, let’s talk about the show, because that is why we watch.

Joining Felicia are Veronica Belmont, from Tekzilla and TWiT TV, and the Sword and Laser podcast, Bonnie Burton, Sr. Editor for StarWars.com (and a colleague of mine in a galaxy far, far away), and Kiala Kazeebee, blogger, writer for The Nerdist and Nerdpuddle, and prolific Twitterer about pie and alcohol (usually both, and at the same time.)

It’s these ladies that make the show something other than a garden-variety video podcast, and turn it into a truly compelling, and fun to watch show, in that their personalities are diverse, complementary, and taken together have an amazing interactive chemistry.

'VaginalFantasy' was a trending topic, World-wide, on Twitter during the premiere broadcast. (photo by Kiala Kazebee)

Slight disclaimer…I’ve known this crew for years, except for Veronica, whom I’ve not met, and not a small part of the reason I tuned in was to see my friends doing their thing, as well as see what Bonnie and Kiala would bring in a video format, as they’ve both been known primarilly as writers to date (although Bonnie has a collection of old ‘Ask Bonnie‘ videos from her days at the now defunct webwaste.com, that are pretty damn funny, and worth the watch.)

Everyone brings something slighting different to the round-table…Felicia and Veronica are pretty much known quantities in terms of their presentation style, but having the freedom to cut loose, and the license for off-color humor offered by the subject matter (I mean…When your show name starts with ‘Vaginal Fantasy’ what ISN’T on the table?), both present new sides of themselves.

Kiala is a natural as far as the broadcasting side of things goes…She was coordinating all of the questions and monitoring comments from G+ and Twitter, while keeping the momentum going with the conversation and color commentary … She’s a lot like a Robin Quivers-type (Robin Quimvers?) to Felicia’s host role (No, I’m not going to compare Felicia Day to Howard Stern, first off she’s nothing like Stern, and secondly, she’d likely kick my butt… )

Bonnie brings a really great oddball dynamic to the group…She’s kind of like that crazy Aunt many of us have … You know, the one that’s a lot younger than your Mom, so she’s one of us, but is kind of whacky, yet world-wise, and is usually the family member that gets a little drunk (okay, a lot drunk) at family gatherings and tells the inappropriate jokes that make Mom turn photographically-unreproducible colors, while laying the rest of the crowd out laughing.

Plus, she was badly lit, un-prepared because she hadn’t read the book, and started going off-topic and doing bits with a taxidermied chipmunk (Bonnie is big into Anthropomorphic Taxidermy, IRL…) that was totally off the hook.

It was frikkin’ brilliant, and I hope they will add Bonnie’s being somewhat out-of-step as a running gag with the show, which would just add more comedy value.

Now, as I guy, you’d probably expect me to write something like, “Yeah, I watched it to see my friends, and to see how they used the new tech, but although the ‘Vaginal Fantasy Hangout’ is sure to be a hit with, and a great show for, women, it’s not something that a guy would watch.”

Yeah, I could write that, but it would pretty much be a load…

Hey! Dudes! I’m talking you with the Penises…This is a show with a bunch of hot chicks talking dirty about smutty topics…You are going to LOVE this show. Tell the wife you’re watching it to get in touch with women’s sensibilities, so you can understand her better, and watch for the quim jokes.

In the words of Alexander Lavelle “Xander” Harris, “Yes, men like sports. Men watch the action movie. They eat of the beef and enjoy to look at the bosoms”…Men will also like watching women talking funny about sexy books. Dudes will love this show.

Kiala drew this logo for the Book Club...Sorry, too WWF, not enough Labia Majora (photo by Kiala Kazebee)

It IS also a great show for women…There is something outstanding about the idea of a book-club show that focuses on a feminine-interest genre that is the opposite of high-brow, offers lots of opportunities for jokes and diversions, and has a wonderfully compelling cast of smart ladies who are both knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter.

The common thread that seems to run through whatever Felicia Day does, and I’ve often heard her say this in interviews, is to follow your passions…Once again, she’s done that with the book club, and that has lead her to something awesome and will, I believe, be another out-of-the-park hit with the fans.

As of yesterday, scheduling for The Vaginal Fantasy Book Club (and they’ve got their own tumblr blog set up already, and I’m almost mortified, yet intrigued, about what the visual design may look like if Kiala has anything to say about it based on her logo sketch …) was still a bit up-in-the-air, so follow Felicia, Veronica, Bonnie, and Kiala, on Twitter, to keep up with the latest.

Felicia will also be launching her new YouTube Premium Channel, Geek & Sundry, in March, so check them out on the Web and YouTube and expect more great content from the creator of ‘The Guild.’

11th Annual FCPUG San Francisco Supermeet – Highlights

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Doug Luberts

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you could tell by all the non-stop spamming last Friday, that I was at the annual conclave of editors and content creators known as the FCPUG Supermeet, at the Mission Bay Conference Center.

The day-long event began with a series of workshops offered by different vendors, followed by a vendor showcase before the main event: A 3+ hour-long stage event featuring content creators and vendors highlighting innovation, creativity, and the latest developments in content creation technology.

Here’s a sampling of some of the highlights of the day’s events …

The calm before the swarm ... Awaiting the arrival of the FCPUG crowd.

Fotoshop by Adobé

Commercial director Jesse Rosten‘s hilarious parody of beauty product informercials, Fotoshop by Adobé, has been making the rounds since it went viral a few weeks ago.

Jesse was on hand to screen the video, and talk about the genesis of the project.

Canon USA

Canon USA was doing ‘Future of EOS Cinematography’ workshops during the morning, focusing mainly on the new C300 Cine Camera … The pitch is that while the 5D has gained a lot of interest/acceptance from filmmakers and videographers, it was primarily designed for AP/Reuters-type news photogs, and the video function was an afterthought (nice afterthinking!) The C300 is designed from the ground-up for filmmaking.

The camera offers impressive ergos, and a lot of features packaged into the base product (control surfaces, LCD display, motorized handle, etc.) which comes in at a suggested retail of $13K.

It’s available with either an EF or PL mount, enabling use of either standard 35mm lenses, or the really high-end Canon glass, and Canon is coming out with a set of new EF Cine Prime Lenses ranging from 24-85mm (priced at $6800/ea.) and Cine Zooms, offering more precise focus calibration and controls for the professional DP.

The camera records mpeg-2 @50Mbps to an MXF file format, with Canon Log as an option. The claimed dynamic range shooting C-Log is 12 stops!

It’s also close to drag-and-drop for editing, via FCP 7s log and transfer feature. (Mileage for Avid editors may vary … )

It shoots a wide variety of frame rates/sizes, and offers variable shutter angles.

Canon provided lots of hands-on time with the new C300 Cine Camera

The C300 uses a 3480 by 2160 CMOS sensor (8.3m pixel) that shoots at 4:4:4 and downsamples to a 4:2:2, 1920×1080 image… The big difference in approach with this camera is that there is no de-Bayering going on. The sensor gives a high-speed readout that virtually eliminates most of the artifacts typical of CMOS-based cameras.

Oh, and did I mention that it uses widely-available, low-cost, Compact Flash media?

For the stage show, Alex Buono, the Director of Photography for ‘Saturday Night Live”s Film Unit gave a chat about working with various cameras, with an emphasis on the Canon HDSLRs and the new C300. Alex, is no stranger to the FCPUG Supermeets, and is always a great presenter, showed some shorts and other material from SNL shot with the new Cine Camera…It looked amazing.

This camera is a RED-killer, at least for broadcast work where quick turnaround is needed, and will give the Arri Alexa a run for its money. The Sony F65? Maybe not so much, but the C300 is going to be the first choice of a lot of shooters.

Alex Buono, Director of Photography for 'Saturday Night Live''s Film Unit

Jimmy Fallon’s crew will be shooting with the C300 for remote shoots, while they are on location in Indy this week for the Superbowl. That material will air W-F.

Also, Canon mentioned that the new Canon 1DX SLR will have recording in AVC-Intra as an option, and will clock in at about $6K list.

Light Iron

Light Iron is a company specializing in on-set data acquisition and digital imaging technology…They’ve taken on-set Data I/O and Management to the next level.

CEO Michael Cioni gave a presentation on ‘The Future of D-Cinema Workflows’ which was informed, if not brilliant, and he made what I thought was one of the most profound statements I’ve heard about production in a long time: “Workflows are not commanded, they reveal themselves to you…” (If this guy isn’t crushed by forces loyal to the Status Quo in the Industry, he could be a game-changer.)

Light Iron has developed an entire platform for on-set acquisition, starting from a central workstation/data repository, called the Outpost Mobile System, along with a set of enabling hardware and software technologies, including an iPad-based tool that enables anyone on-set with a need to see what is being shot in real time.

They’ve also developed some pretty smart data transport hardware, including a “firewire”-type drive array that is built into a box built to take abuse, with a D-SCSI-based interface for speed, and built in power supply (if you can find an OSHA-type power cable, you never need to hunt for power transformers with these drives.)

These guys are schooling everyone on how to do data acquisition, and do it right!

Scribbeo from Digital Film Tree

Ramy Katrib from Digital Film Tree presented their new ‘Scribbeo’ iPad app, a collaborative filmmaking app that allows mark-up and annotation of movie files using a distrubuted server.

Digital Film Tree made a big name for themselves when they helped Walter Murch transition over to Final Cut Pro for ‘Cold Mountain’, and are a leading provider of turn-key post solutions for cutting rooms.

Ramy Katrib from Digital Film Tree Demos their new Scribbeo App for collaborative filmmaking.

Scribbeo is a new iPad app that enables users to share movie files distributed by a (FREE) server. The app lets users collaborate, mark-up and annotate movie files, and share the results…The app is brand new and will be in the in the App store any day now…I think the target price is something like $2.99.

It might just be worth a look.

Adobe CS and Premiere

Adobe hosted a DSLR Editing Workshop with Adobe Sr. Content and Community Lead, Kevin Monahan, during the morning sessions … Primarily focusing on feature sets, with an eye towards tempting current Final Cut 7 Editors towards adding CS5.5, and Premiere, into their work flow.

Adobe Premiere Pro Product Manager Al Mooney was also on hand for the sessions, and wasn’t shy about answering questions about current issues with Premiere, and what they are working with their developers to add, or improve, in future releases.

This is a very refreshing change from dealing with the tight-lipped security at Apple, where editors never knew what to expect in terms of performance enhancements, or future feature sets…Adobe’s transparency is going to be a major asset in winning content creators over to their products.

Adobe continues to make big inroads into the professional market for Premiere, especially in the Broadcast field. They’re upping their game with the tool, and announced a lot of new features that will be available in CS6, which will be formally announced at NAB in April.

Adobe Product Manager, Al Mooney

The big news for this event came in the form of a preview of Adobe Prelude, a log-and-transfer, pre-screen and tag, tool for ingesting footage. This has been something missing from the CS5 Suite, and reminds me a lot of Autodesk Backdraft, but with a much more intuitive user interface than the editing tools in the Smoke family.

Sneak Peak at the Adobe Prelude CS6 User Interface

Phillip Hodgetts, and the New Now

I never know just quite how to classify Phillip Hodgetts, or maybe that he is just so versatile that his involvement in content creation and post production just defies categorization…He writes, he develops software, he is a post production guru, author, and podcaster.

Phillip was on hand to discuss topics from his latest book, ‘The New Now: How to grow your production, or post production, business in a changed, and changing World.’ (available from Amazon), a book with a title so complete, and all-encompassing, that it eliminates the need for further elaboration.

Hodgetts related his business experiences in his native Australia, with a set of strategies design to help one stay competitive, including giving yourself an unfair advantage, and making sure that you own part of whatever product you are creating … He’s a guy with a lot of battle-tested knowledge, and his book should be a compelling read.

Dropping the F-Bomb

Show Producers Daniel Bérubé and Michael Horton, who run the event in conjunction with Claudia Crask and SFCutters, stepped up during the show to “Drop the F-Bomb”, a reference to a graphic on this year’s audience badge with a bomb going off behind the ‘F’ in ‘FCPUG’.

After many years, and no doubt much consideration, Mike and Dan announced that the organization was changing its name, and rebranding itself as the ‘Creative Pro User Group’ or ‘CPUG’, to better reflect the times, and focus of the group.

Michael Horton and Dan Bérubé announce the name change to 'CPUG', the 'Creative Pro User Group'

I had lunch with Mike Horton earlier in the afternoon, and, while not discussing the re-branding as such, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the changing nature of the content creation space, along with a shift in interests away from product-specific focus, to one that was product agnostic, and directed towards all content creators, and not just editors.

This is a change that a lot of us in the FCPUG community (I started attending LAFCPUG meetings when I was living in Los Angeles back in 2002), have been suggesting for years, and I believe it will open up this loosely-knit network of content creation affinity groups to a larger prospective audience.

The World-Famous Raffle

Guys, unless you’ve been to one of these things, there’s just no way of explaining it…Mike Horton’s personal comedy-stylings for running a raffle are worth the price of admission by itself.

The next big event for the CPUG Network, will be the Las Vegas Supermeet at NAB in April.

CliffsNotes – A unique interactive experience.

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Doug Luberts

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows
Doth, with their death, bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

-Shakespeare, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Prologue

I love Shakespeare. I’ve loved Shakespeare ever since that time in the 10th Grade when Mr. Mauri Pelkonenen, of the Bay Ridge Pelkonenens, explained to our Shakespeare-as-literature class that when Iago says to Brabantio:

“I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter
and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.”

What the conniving little SOB was telling Brabantio was that his fomerly pure-as-the-driven-snow daughter was getting shagged rotten by a black dude!

Holy crap! (Hey, I said I was in the 10th grade…Throw me a friggin’ bone here, people.)

That would have been scandalous enough for white, working-class, Bay Ridge Brooklyn in 1974, but in the 1600′s England? Shakespeare was like the Jaqueline Susann of his day!

Now, later on, I kind of got a perception of the Bard as being more like the Neil Simon or Norman Lear of Elizabethan England…He was about packing butts in the seats, and putting on a helluva’ show. This wasn’t high-brow stuff, this was just good, down-to-earth storytelling, and it was right there for anybody who could get far enough through the language to understand it.

Sadly, few did … William Shakespeare, or Christopher Marlowe, or whoever he really was, remains an enigma to to most.

In high school, few of my peers embraced Willie-the-Shakes with the same enthusiasm that I did…Most got by in the class by reading the old standard Cliff Notes. They weren’t proud of it, but, you know, you do what you have to do…Although I always thought those folks who went the Cliff Notes route really kind of deprived themselves of the full flavor of the Shakespearean experience.

Well, Cliff Notes has sort of reinvented themselves in a new form for a new generation of scholars having a tough time with the material…CliffsNotes Movies.

If the viewer clicks on a character in the movie, biographical information on the character appears in the lower screen, providing a deeper-dive context.

CliffsNotes Movies are offered through the Cambio platform, and uses technology from Clikthrough to create an interactive user experience where the view can click on the movie screen to bring up more in-depth information on story themes, characters, locations, or take a quiz on what they’ve learned.

As interactive story-telling goes, it’s pretty neat stuff, all very well packaged into an excellent web site design.

The real question is, in terms of Shakespeare, does it really give you the full flavor of the Bard’s work? In a word, no.

The animated films are really well done…They are light, funny, and written with a sense of style and with that young readers will be drawn in by. Cliff himself, a sort of kid-lit superhero, is engaging and walks you through the play from start to end. The reader will learn the story, and the characters, but much of the richness and depth of understanding of Shakespeare’s skill and wit can only come from doing the real homework and reading the original material…Just like old-school Cliff Notes, these movies are one-step removed from the actual experience. There are no short cuts to Shakespeare.

But the real story here isn’t about the Shakespearean experience…It’s about this marvelous approach to storytelling, and the potential of this technology to reach audiences in a new and entertaining way, where at least a portion of the content is user-driven, and on demand. Possible applications range from classroom curriculum to marketing and sales training, with suggestions that even greater interactivity could be built into these types of applications as the technology matures.

Why I Do What I Do … No, this isn’t about Existentialism.

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Doug Luberts

This past Friday, Dec. 30th, I received an email from the IAWTV (International Academy of Web Television), the Academy was asking members to do a 30-second promo spot for the 2012 (Inaugural) IAWTV Awards. The awards are going to be held at CES, in Vegas, on January 12th, and the videos will be promoted by one of the Award’s sponsors, DBG, a content production and distribution company.

The idea is to tell the story of “Why I do what I do” with regard to Web Television.

It was a welcome opportunity, as the IAWTV, which has been around for a few years, but really just starting down the path of accomplishing its mission of promotion, education, and advocacy of the Web Television Industry, is an organization whose purpose, along with its leadership, I believe in, and am only too happy to help.

I had just finished shooting a commercial parody in house, and hadn’t struck the set yet … Rare is the day you have a hot set in your living room, and a hot project falls out of the sky to give you something unexpected to do with it!

I decided to talk about why I got into web video, with ‘The Guild’, initially, and now on my own, and use the idea of the small web video producer shooting solo at home as a metaphor for what is great about the potential of this medium, where anyone with a camera, and a vision, can become a content creator…Okay, it’s a little more complex than that if you want to shoot something more than ‘cat on a treadmill’ videos, but that’s where it starts.

The shoot took about an hour, and I spent the better part of today doing Post on it. I’m wildly happy with the results.

Alright, so it does look like I’ve got a yellow-giant sun burning a hole in the top of my noggin, but I lit the set for a character with hair, not my native chrome-dome. Other than that I’m still a happy camper.

Hope you guys enjoy.

Meanwhile, if you get a chance to watch the IAWTV Awards on January 12th, 9pm Easter/6pm Pacific, on the IAWTV YouTube channel, you’ll get a chance to see what the best of Web Television has to offer. If you’re not familiar with some of the high-end work that is going on these days, I promise you it will be an eye-opener.

Holiday Videos: Six Degrees of ‘The Guild’

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Doug Luberts

Some pretty amazing, and talented, folks have worked on Felicia Day‘s hit web series, ‘The Guild‘, over the years. Most of whom have gone on to create a significant body of work outside of the show.

Here’s a collection of holiday videos created by, and featuring, current and former cast and crew of ‘The Guild’, with a brief introduction to each video by myself.

Also, Felicia just released a Guild, ‘Zaboo’ one-shot comic, co-written with Sandeep Parikh, it’s available on Amazon, and at better comic book shops everywhere.

Season 5 of ‘The Guild’ is also now available on iTunes.

Curated YouTube Playlists: A great idea that needs a little work

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Doug Luberts

I was out to dinner with my of my web video production friends, last week, and after the usual important discussions about vital topics of the day, such as Dr. Who, Star Wars, and the irony of Kim Jong Il’s death being announced by CNN while we were in the middle of eating Korean Barbecue (dying is easy, finding good Korean Barbecue in Oakland is … Also pretty easy), we started talking YouTube and content creation, and the topic of curated YouTube playlists came up.

You create a curated playlist by building a playlist of videos, and then adding your own video introductions. It allows you to become the host of a show on any area of topicality on YouTube, and feature other folks’ work in your show without directly, or inappropriately, making using of their Intellectual Property.

Sounds good? But wait, there’s more!

From a monetization standpoint, it’s a win-win-win situation … If your videos are enabled for monetization, via Google AdSense or a YouTube Partnership, you make money. If the content you are featuring is monetized the creators of those videos make money and, if everything is monetized, then YouTube’s algorithm has incentive for promoting your playlist videos because YouTube/Google makes money. Like I said…Win-win-win.

But there’s a but … (isn’t there always?)

Playlists are still a bit funkified, and need some work from the YouTube engineering folks, especially with regard to how their embedding API works with 3rd-Party applications like Twitter and Facebook, as well as, to a lesser extent, getting the kinks worked out of how playlists function on the YouTube site.

As an example, I created a playlist called ‘The Six Degrees of ‘The Guild’ Holiday Videos“, it’s a list of videos created by folks who have been part of the cast and crew of Felicia Day’s hit web series, ‘The Guild‘. The topic itself could easily be another blog post, but sufficed to say that there’s an incredible amount of talented folks who have worked on the show over the years, and they’ve created a body of work outside of ‘The Guild‘ that’s nothing short of amazing…I just cherry-picked six of the best of them, including a Christmas video from ‘The Guild’, and added my ‘Hooray for Santa Claus‘ music video. To that I added seven brief introduction videos for the curation aspect.

If the user starts the playlist from the YouTube Playlist Window, or clicks on the list from a YouTube channel’s playlist views window, the user experience is great, and each video in the list auto-plays in succession in on YouTube Video Pages. Occasionally a ‘plugin missing’ error might occur in the browser (I’ve seen this in Google Chrome) that requires the user to refresh the page, but it’s generally smooth sailing, with the playlist working as-advertised.

The problems with the YouTube API start happening when you try to link your videos in external sites (noticeably, I have not seen this to be a problem in Google+ for some reason. )

On Twitter or Facebook, linking the list from with a ‘play all’ link will run the first video, switch to the second, but not autoplay it. This is a problem for most content creators, as it’s those secondary apps that we’re going to rely on go get traffic to our videos. YouTube has got to work on this…and I have no doubts they will, as this is their bread-and-butter, and they are encouraging use of these playlists in their YouTube Content Creator Playbook as a way to promote and share content. I just mention it as, right now, it’s a gotcha’ that content creators need to be aware of.

For right now, the best way to link your playlist content is just to provide a link to the playlist window, and the user can hit ‘play all from there.

Also, YouTube needs to provide some housekeeping options on their new Channel Pages for videos that are part of curated playlists…There needs to be a way of not having them all on your channel’s ‘videos’ page, as they can confuse users who click on them randomly when they are not auto-running from a playlist. Which brings me to another point.

While the playlist functionality is great, when everything is auto-running correctly, video publishers need to make sure to add annotation links in all the intros in their curated playlists that point to the next video in the link with the playall tags embedded in them…For the first video in the list, this will ensure that the a viewer coming into the video randomly will be able to get into the autoplay list mode, and for the other videos, it will guarantee that the viewer has an option to ‘kick start’ the rest of the videos in the list if the playlist becomes disable or they don’t auto-jump to the next video in the sequence.

If that sounds a bit kludgy, it’s because it is…This is a relatively new form of viewing experience for YouTube viewers and creators. One that has a lot of potential but, just like folks who drove early cars, like the Model A, you have to be willing to get under the hood to make this work for now. Hopefully this will not be the case for very long…Google’s got some of the best engineers in the business, and if anyone can make this happen, they can!

Hooray for Santa Claus: The Video!

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Doug Luberts

Earlier in the week, I blogged about the movie Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, a venerable and, in my opinion, overly-maligned Christmas film that’s gotten a rep for being one of the worst holiday movies of all time.

Later on, I was putting together a Christmas Video Playlist for Spike the Wonder Chihuahua, and wanted to put the theme song from the movie, “Hooray for Santa Claus”, from Al Hirt’s single 45 (45rpm, a single-song vinyl record, for you kids out there … It’s what they did in the ’60s, before iPods and such.) The song is a classic. It’s got a surf-rock feel, and Al Hirt just wails on the trumpet parts…It’s my favorite Christmas song of all time.

I was kind of bummed when the only video version I could find on YouTube was set to a Powerpuff Girls video ripped from Cartoon Network…Heresy. So I did what any good video editor/content producer would do: I cut my own version of a music video for posterity.

Well, sort of.

Since I decided that ‘doing it right’ meant cutting a music video to footage from the original movie, I watched it again and … well, things got a bit out of hand. The result is a video mashup that I call ‘Hooray for Santy Claus Conquering the Martians in Under 4 Minutes‘.

Still with me? Good.

It involves a bit of a pre-amble, wherein we meet Kimar, Martian Planetary Leader, and “Chochem”, an 800 year-old Martian mystic who lives in a rocky swamp, dresses in a sack, and looks way to much like something that was George Lucas’ inspiration for Yoda to be a mere coincidence. I mean, sure, it could be a coincidence, just like the establishing shot of the Martian spaceship flying to Earth that doesn’t look anything like the opening shot from ‘Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope’, much.

Remember, “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” came out in ’62, so who knows?

Anyway, this was a fun project, and now there is something on YouTube that honor’s both the movie, and the great Al Hirt. My work is finished here.

Merry Christmas, all!

Record cover for the 45 single version of 'Hooray for Santa Claus'

VD is for Everybody: 2011 Political Mashup PSA

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Doug Luberts

I love old PSAs and sex education films from the ’30′s through the ’70s. Most of what you see is so outdated, and was so outrageous to begin with, that they are hilariously funny and/or parody themselves without any further help. There’s a ton of this stuff out there on archive.org, and a good portion of it is either public domain or under creative commons license. Expect to see a lot of mashups from me using this type of stuff as source material in days to come.

Anyway, with all the action surrounding Herman Cain, and his alleged dalliances and denials regarding same, as well as all of the other politicians and would-be leaders of our country who have been caught with their pants down over the years, I started thinking about the absolutely outrageous Ad Council PSA from the ’70s, a music video called “VD is for Everybody.” The result is the attached mashup.

Now, keep in mind that sexual dalliances are non-partisan, so I’ve tried to provide an equal number of offenders from both of our major political parties…The message here is not partisan, the message is that there are a lot of scheming, lying, hypocritical politicians out there, and that’s about it. The sad fact that these guys maintain a pretense of moral superiority while being anything but morally superior, and demand far higher standards from we, the governed, than they hold themselves to in their own lives is the true comedy (or tragedy) here.

Also, the intro is by the late, great, SoCal Newsman, George Putnum, from another film called “Pervsion for Profit”, a McCarthy-era piece of scare propaganda that connected the pornography industry with the “Red Menace”. It’s been cut down, re-mixed, and parodied all over YouTube, and is worth watching just to recall the madness of the McCarthy Era, and get a read on just how close we are to being manipulated by similar propaganda tactics today.

There were a couple of fun aspects to the actual editing of this piece, including using Magic Bullet Misfire to make all the recent footage fit in with the scratched, faded, and flickering look of the original film. I used about 3-4 different plugins for each of the clips, and the results are pretty powerful, given the simplicity of using the tools. Check out Red Giant Software’s page if you’re looking for cool plugins for editing effects.

For those who aren’t big on politics, the folks in the video are:

President William Jefferson Clinton
Former Presidential Candidate Herman Cain
Former Representative Anthony Wiener
Former Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer
Former Nevada Senator John Ensign
Former Senator, and Vice Presidential/Presidential Candidate,John Edwards

Feel free to look up their specific dalliances, if you’re not familiar, they are all pretty shameful.

Anyway, enjoy!

Updated: Spike The Wonder Chihuahua, and #OccupyDogHouse!

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Doug Luberts

Spike the Wonder Chihuahua has some issues, and he’s taking them to the street in my latest video.

UPDATE:

Spikes been a busy little critter…Besides the usual cat-chasing, bone-chewing, and political commentary, Spike has taken a leap into the world of social networking. He even has his own blog (and I have to admit, watching him try to type with those little paws is a frakkin’ riot.)

You can now follow Spike The Wonder Chihuahua:

On his Tumblr blog, RagingChihuahua.com
On Twitter, @RagingChihuahua
On you can friend him on Facebook: facebook.com/RagingChihuahua (Spike likes friends, after all, he is Man’s Best Friend.)

Over time, Spike will continue to spread the word about the #OccupyDogHouse and #OccupyPets movement, as well as share his back story, from his days in a Puppy Mill in Shreveport, LA., to his present home with a Hipster couple in Berkeley, the source of his anger and shame.

Please join it, it’s going to be a fun ride …

HOW IT STARTED:

I’ve been getting email from Pond 5, a really great stock footage and audio company, ever since I won a gift certificate at a FCPUG Supermeet a couple of years ago. Every so often they offer a free piece of royalty-free stock video that I usually scarf up for my library … Cheap is good, and free is, well, gooder.

I received an email from them today offering the freebie of the week…Video of a chihuahua in a pink tutu.

WTF?

I jumped on it right away, not knowing what to do with it, but on the assumption that free, professionally-shot, HD-video, of a completely indifferent chihuahua wearing a pink chiffon tutu just doesn’t fall into your lap every day.

Next thing you know, I’m thinking about all of the silly ways people anthropomorphise their pets into a vision of what is missing from their lives while the TV news carrying a story about Occupy Oakland and, well, two hours later, you’ve got what you see here…A mad-as-hell chihuahua who has joined the Occupy movement.

The music is another, almost-freebie, deal from RoyaltyFreeMusicLibrary.com, another stock service whose mailing list I’d urge any web content creator to be on. They often sent out deals, like the one for “Easy Bird”, the music in this video, where you can get a number of versions of a royalty-free piece of music for $5.99, which is a huge bargain.

I don’t expect this video to win any awards, but it was a fun project to spend an evening on (or more, since I’ll be tweaking it a bit, and adding some additional graphics), and the production costs were next to nothing.

For a web content creator on a budget, Free, or ultra-low cost, elements, along with your own creativity, can allow you to create videos with a high standard of production values.

‘Nuff Said

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Doug Luberts

Occupy Oakland.

iPhone-tography: Putting the fun back into creating images

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Doug Luberts

Shooting pictures has been a way of life for me almost as long as I’ve been old enough to hold a camera. Well, for the most part. There have been stretches … Long stretches, where the need and desire to create images was short-circuited by whatever else was going on in life. Times when, after reaching a fairly high set of technical and aesthetic standards for my work, the planning and infrastructure (film, cameras, processing, darkroom) became too much of a burden to fit into the go-go, rush-rush, of life at the time.

Even now, with the transition to high-quality DSLRs and Adobe Lightroom-based workflow, hauling all of that Nikon gear around is just too much for most daily situations, but the iPhone is opening up a new set of opportunities for creating images in a fast, fun, and creatively fulfilling way.

Abandoned Building, Port Costa, CA. Processed with Camera+ and TiltShift Generator.

The iPhone has become my go-to camera for almost all daily situations and, with the help of a few apps, given me a creative outlet that offers quick image acquisition, fast processing, and almost instant access to an audience via social media apps such as flickr, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter.

On a recent day trip out to The Warehouse Café, a local legend of a biker bar in Port Costa, CA., I shot exclusively with the iPhone, using Lisa Bettany’s Camera+ app, and TiltShift Generator from Art and Mobile, to process the results.

Wheels, Port Costa, CA.

Camera+ offers a complete workflow for the iPhone, including everything from image stabilization to compositing FX (My favorite is the fake HDR effect, seen in many of these Port Costa photos.) Camera+ also integrates directly with a variety of social networking sites, including Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.

My usual workflow, after processing the image within Camera+, is to upload the photo to my Flickr account and share it with other sites from there … This way all of my social networking sites link back to my main Flickr portfolio. Camera+ allows you to add image tags, captions, descriptions, and select a destination set in your Flickr gallery…The metadata tools are pretty powerful.

Fallen Angel, Port Costa, CA. Processed with Camera+ and TiltShift Generator.

TiltShift Generator is another useful app that simulates a parallax-correction, or Tilt-Shift lens (e.g., a PC-Nikkor, or a Lensbaby), and allows you to control color saturation, contrast, blur, and vignetting. It’s best feature is the Tilt-Shift effect, and really the only reason I would jump out of Camera+ to do additional processing.

The one downside of this workflow is that TiltShift Generator loses all of your location, and other, metadata during the round trip, which is not good if you like to geo-tag your photos in Flickr.

Abandoned Outhouse, Port Costa, CA. This shot uses multiple, cumulative, passes through Camera+ to build up the effects.

Quite often I’ll save out several different images out of Camera+ and re-import them, adding additional effects along the way. The results can be very surrealistic, and take on a painterly quality. Part of the fun for me is twisting the original, photorealistic images into stark, and often dramatic, forms. Some might call it abusing the images, but there is something I find gratifying about the results.

It’s not about necessarily the quality of the images, in normal technical, and aesthetic terms, but using the iPhone to create a form of expression that is both immediate and visually compelling.

Lost Souls Tavern Booth, The Warehouse, Port Costa, CA.

As a photographer who can’t always haul a lot of gear around, the iPhone allows you to both travel light and remain creative, and keep yourself in the game.

Casting Photo Extras: Want to be in a new comedy short?

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Doug Luberts

Have you ever wanted to be part of a web video? Would you like to have an opportunity to see your photo used as part of a comedy sketch that could potentially be seen by thousands of people?

If so, read on!

I’m working on a new short with a few friends, and am trying some crowd-sourcing for extras casting for photos…with a little help from the good people of the Interwebz.

The video is going to be a parody of an online dating service currently-running ads on National television. One part of it shows their web site, including a Classmates.com-like photo gallery with headshots of very nice-looking, clean-cut types, who all look like they grew up next door to Richie Cunningham. This gives the lonely user a chance to ~~cyberstalk~~ examine the profile of his/her potential dream girl or guy, and check out their bio and other vital stats.

Without going into too many details and ruining the surprise, this parody is going to turn this commercial upside down, and offer a dating site for an “alternative lifestyle” crowd. Very alternative.

We are not just looking for pictures of happy, shiny, cleancut people with great tans and pearly white teeth. We’re looking for the average guy/girl next door. People you know in real life-types.

We’re also looking for goths, punkers, rockers, zombies, vampires, witches, warlocks, bikers, tattoo-and-piercing fans, and every other type of person your Mom warned you about not sleeping with in college, but you did anyway because you were young, foolish, and will always have that somewhat tragic Hieronymus Bosch-inspired tattoo to prove it (and not to be judgemental but, damn!)

In other words, it take all kinds, and that’s what we’re looking for…all kinds of people.

If you just want to get out your favorite cosplay outfit, or come up with one for the occasion, that’s all good, too! The more outrageous, the better! Scenes including (artificial) blood and (totally fake) gore, even betterer. (Bestest?)

Also, couples shots of you and your SO, ISO, POSSQL (or whomever you are hanging out with the time), are also highly encouraged.

We will also be doing a couple of live-action shots that will be shot locally (Oakland, CA), and will be casting for a few couples. So if you’re in the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area, and would like to be considered for live action work, please let us know.

If you would like to participate, please send your photo, in digital form to: extras_photo@dougluberts.com All photos should be submitted by December 15th, 2011 for consideration.

Thanks!

The deets:

1) Photos should be a minimum of 2 Megapixels in size … The bigger the better

2) Photos should jpeg or camera raw format

3) If you like, give me a little “biography” of your character … Get as creative with the details as you like!

4) We will not use your real name, or anything that identifies who you are in real life, or where you come from.

5) If you’re photos are selected for use in the parody video and web site, we will let you in on the whole concept, and ask if you’d like to submit a self-made webcam video of you in your “character”, telling the World why you are the right guy/gal for them!

6) People who’s images are selected will get credited on a special web site, and a copy of the final video.

Have fun, be as goofy, or spooky, as you like … Remember, this is comedy.

Thanks, in advance, for all of your submissions. This video will be a blast!

The Legal stuff (The fine print):

1) All submissions will become the non-exclusive property of Doug Luberts dba Turbomandala Entertainment/dougluberts.com. This means, it’s still yours, to do what ever you want with, but we have the right to keep it in the video, or the web site, permanently (no backsies.)

2) Submitter, as well as any persons depicted in photographic submissions, must be 18 years old, or older, at the time the photograph was taken.

3) There is no compensation involved, other than a free copy of the video. You are giving me your photos for free, for the recognition you will receive from being a part of this video and/or website, or, to put it more succinctly: Doug Luberts dba Turbomandala Entertainment/dougluberts.com shall own, non-exclusively, all now known or hereafter existing rights to the submissions of every kind and nature, in perpetuity, and Doug Luberts/dougluberts.com shall be entitled to unrestricted use of the submissions for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without compensation, credit or any other rights to the provider of the submissions.

4) Any controversy or claim arising out of our receipt of submitted material will be settled by arbitration in Oakland, California, before a single arbitrator appointed by the American Arbitration Association. The prevailing party in any such arbitration has the right to recover its reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs from the other party.

Greenscreen photo by Vancouver Film School on Flickr. Licensed under Creative Commons.
Headshots courtesy of Chris.

Dragon Age: Redemption! Trailer!

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Doug Luberts

Felicia Day linked the trailer for her new webisodic on her blog today, along with details about the production, and release schedule.

The trailer is total kick-ass, so stop reading and go watch!

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