Something's Coming!

Two somethings to be more accurate.

Robb here. I just thought I'd make a quick post to 1) apologize for neglecting the blog a little recently. And 2) explain why this poor blog has been so neglected.

It's because we hate it.

I'm kidding. There have been big doin's here at LFTI Headquarters. BIG doin's! I figured you might like a sneak peek at what's in store in the near future.

If you don't want a sneak peek of what's coming in the near future then look away from your computer monitor now (I'll tell you when it's safe to look again).

Check this out!





What are those?!

I don't know, but we have a LOT of them!

And, I didn't run this by Steve and Tanya (so don't tell them that I showed you this). But I thought you might also like to see something else that you have to look farward to.

This:





I really don't know what the hell THAT is. It looks like a cow examining a gingerbread house to me. But my eyesight is terrible. Seriously. I need to get Lasik. But I saw Tanya get hers done, and I tell you, watching someone peel the skin off another person's eyeball is enough to put you off the process.

Anyway, there's a sneak peek for you. Aren't you excited?!

I'll just assume that you are.

ROBB

Oh, and you can look at your computer monitor again.

Hello?

YOU CAN LOOK AT...

...Oh, forget it.

For Want of 30, the 24 was Lost

Things are going full-speed ahead over at the contest. Yes, we have three whole entries! Around here, that's like a stampede. Thanks to eric, Dave, and joe for entering so far. We know there are hundreds more of you who want to enter but are intimidated by your chances of winning. I can not re-iterate enough that the prize is really not worth stressing out about. I mean, as cool and exciting as it is to get your name in the credits for our next video, really, it's not like we'll be curing cancer in your name, or giving you a free trip on Virgin Galactic. So don't let the pressure dissuade you from entering. Go ahead! It's fun! Even if you get them all wrong, you will have gained an important cache of knowledge.

Speaking of prizes, wouldn't it be cool if we could give out a DVD of our first 6 episodes as a contest prize? Why, yes, it certainly would. Well today I will blog the saga of why we so far do not have an LFTI DVD available to buy or win.

The one item holding our DVD back is Episode 6. This is the only episode that was shot with two cameras simultaneously, both of them HDV jobbies. Scott, the director, had fantastic access to these fancy cameras, as well as cameramen and post facilities, so Episode 6 was the only episode that we've shot in high def and on multiple cameras.

Our normal set-up, in case you're wondering, is a single Panasonic AG-DVX100A camera, which we use to shoot at standard-def 24p anamorphic.

Unfortunately, for reasons pretty much unknown, one of the HDV cameras shooting Episode 6 was set to 30fps, not 24fps. That made half of the footage used in the episode look like it came from some terrible soap opera. Online, you really can't see the difference unless you have very sharp eyes, like the eyes not of a potato. However, as soon as Episode 6 is seen on a TV, it looks horrifying.

Robb started the DVD production process, but I took it over in an effort to spare him the extra work. That made me the one in charge of finding out how to turn Episode 6's 30fps shots back into 24fps. Of course, even though we shoot at 24, the video is really actually 30. The camera does some processing to get the 24 to fit onto 30, giving it that "film look." So really what I had to do was find something that would take our 30 footage, toss out some frames, then double up on other frames so it looked like the footage had been faux-24-ed in-camera.

Got it? I'd go into more detail, but you really don't want me to do that, do you?

Okay, so I needed a plug-in to Final Cut Pro that would do something like I described above. After some asking around on Apple's forums, I got the recommendation to use a Nattress plug-in, Film Effects. There were a zillion settings for the Film Effects G Film filter, so I had to test a bunch of them out to see what would give us the best 30-to-24 conversion. For each round of tests, the samples had to be output to DVD, because you can really only see the results for realsies on a bona-fide TV.

The process of testing the plug-in settings did not go uninterrupted. We shot an episode somewhere in there, and lost a cast member, and had to re-jigger the show, so work on this Episode 6 conversion had to wait.

However, I have since nailed down the best setting to use, and now all I have left to do is... take the entire episode, go through it shot-by-shot, isolate all the 30fps footage, then apply the G Film filter and render the whole thing. This is what I need to do, and though I have a good fourth of the episode separated, it will take some time to do the rest.

That, in a clam shell, is why we do not have a DVD of Life from the Inside Episodes 1–6. It's coming, but it's not here yet.

It has been incredibly frustrating, this 24/30fps thing. Why one camera was shooting one way and another was shooting the other—across multiple shoot days—is beyond me. It is all water under the Nattress, however, and with just a bit more work, our first DVD will be ready for your viewing pleasure.

Until then, how about getting your name in the credits? Sounds pretty dang swell, huh? Almost as good as curing cancer or flying in space? Then high-tail it on over and enter our contest! Fame awaits!

Type Thats, Great!

When Tanya and Robb brought me on board as producer for LFTI, they probably did not realize they were gaining a lunatic. Not just any lunatic, of course, but a font, typography, and typesetting lunatic.

I've always been fascinated by text. I spent lots of time as a small child trying to draw perfect block letters. I'd take the plastic, all-caps letters (yellow Futura medium) from both our copies of The Alphabet Game and tape them onto construction paper to make signs. I cut out matching letters and numbers from the newspaper to make my own Iran Hostage Crisis count-up sign. I hand-lettered every single one of my campaign posters for Vice President in 8th grade and President in 11th. One of the best things about the Mac when it came out was, for me, that its handling of text was much better than Print Shop on the IIe.

My love for type has never diminished. It served me well post-college, when I worked as a book designer at Birkhäuser Boston, right through to the present day, when I get to contribute to the "online conversation" regarding the fonts candidates use for their campaign materials.

Unfortunately for Robb and Tanya, it currently serves me well on Life from the Inside.

I am of the opinion that text, fonts, typography, and typesetting, while flying under the radar of the general public's awareness, are some of the single most important elements in adding a sheen of professionalism and style to any project. Most of the quality we strive for in LFTI is applied to the usual concerns: camerawork, writing, editing, music... Very few people might notice if a font is improperly stretched, or if a wayward apostrophe has made its way into an pluralized acronym, or if the hyphens in a block of text are disconcerting to the eye though they may be properly placed.

Robb does 99% of the graphic work for the show, including all the titles, credits, graphic elements, DVD menus (yes, DVD MENUS!), blahdee blahdee blah. And I have to say that 99% of everything he does, text-wise, is fantastically great. Unfortunately, now that I have wedged myself into the picture, I'm here to catch the remaining 1%. If I see some kerning I don't like, I'll say so. If the leading between two lines is too tight, I'll point it out. If there's a space between a word and an asterisk, I'll call for its death. If four fonts are being used where two will suffice, I shall champion the cause.

Sometimes, where text is involved, there's a trade-off between correctness and aesthetics. To me, correctness should win out most of the time, because there is usually an aesthetically pleasing way to correctly render an awkward block of text.

If I'm going to prattle on about this topic, I really should give an example.

Robb had designed a bit of text on an upcoming DVD menu (yes, UPCOMING DVD MENU!) to fit nicely into a rectangular space. The work "jukebox" (yes, JUKEBOX!) had to be split, so he designed it as "JUKE" on the fist line and "-BOX" on the second. Now, the text fit beautifully, four characters on both top and bottom, but I could not stand the hyphen being tied to the second half of the word. That is simply not done. It gave me a case of the frownies every time I saw it. Since I am now tweaking and redesigning that particular DVD menu, I changed the layout to "JUKE-" and "BOX." It made the text top-heavy, but it was correct. However, knowing that I was changing a very particular design choice that Robb had made, I thought I could compromise. I was willing to—GASP!—have the word split, but not hyphenated! "JUKE" and "BOX" would fit more nicely into that rectangle without a hyphen. Perhaps to some, this would have been the worst choice out of the three, splitting a single word into two sans hyphen. To me, I'd rather have the hyphen gone than have it on the bottom. And jukebox was probably two words at one time, anyway. It's not like we were splitting "grottos" into "GROT" and "TOS." Blech!

I have not finished the menu redesign, but I think we agreed to keep the hyphen on the top, probably because I whined enough about it.

So what does all this pain-in-the-assery get us? From my point of view, it gets us closer to looking great. When no detail goes unnoticed, when we can concentrate on the small things that most people simply don't understand or don't even notice, we can give everyone a better show. Then, if people do know and do pay attention, they will hopefully appreciate the care that was taken to make LFTI a top-notch piece of time-wasting entertainment!