It’s Like High School All Over

Watched the Grammy’s last night. Seeing everyone trying to one-up the other in the “witty and clever tweet” department reminded me of this piece posted to the Times on Saturday.

It feels as if we’re all trying to be a cheeky guest on a late-night show, a reality show contestant or a toddler with a tiara on Twitter — delivering the performance of a lifetime, via a hot, rapid-fire string of commentary, GIFs or responses that help us stand out from the crowd. We’re sold on the idea that if we’re good enough, it could be our ticket to success, landing us a fleeting spot in a round-up on BuzzFeed or The Huffington Post, or at best, a writing gig. But more often than not, it translates to standing on a collective soapbox, elbowing each other for room, in the hopes of being credited with delivering the cleverest one-liner or reaction. Much of that ensues in hilarity. Perhaps an equal amount ensues in exhaustion.

NYTimes: Valley of the Blahs: How Justin Bieber’s Troubles Exposed Twitter’s Achilles’ Heel

Giving Credit

A short post.

Can you think of any creative mediums, besides photography, where giving credit to the creator is either completely forgotten, viewed as pointless, or seen as odd to most people?

“It’s just a photo.” You never hear that about anything else.

Film Restoration

Screengrab from Blu-Ray restoration of "How The West Was Won" (smilebox version)
Screengrab from Blu-Ray restoration of “How The West Was Won” (smilebox version)

Ah restorations and remasters. I love ’em! (As evidenced by my continual project of digitizing and retouching my Dad’s photographic collection.)

Film remasters, audio remasters, photographic restorations, everything. It’s breathing new life into something old and making it look and sound the best it can, either by taking the original film stock, audio tape, or photograph, and giving it a high-resolution digital transfer that captures every detail.

(When it comes to film, the ironic thing is that once they’ve finished the digital restoration, a copy of that restoration goes right back onto new fine-grain film stock, and a digital copy goes into a server storage farm. This is due to the fact that long-term digital storage is shaky and formats change frequently.)

I’ve always wanted to get into the field, but there’s a lot to learn. A lot of time and work goes into restorations and remasters (film in particular).

To show just what goes into film restoring, I wandered around YouTube and found some videos that I believe detail the process fairly well.

(There are a number of them!) [Warning: Flash player ahead!]

Continue reading

30 Minutes of Music: Episode 15

image
30 Minutes of Music – Episode 15
January 4, 2014
256kbps
*Sounds best with over-the-ear headphones*

*NEW* — A VERSION FOR EARBUDS!

Download the MP3 (Right-click, ‘save link as’)

Subscribe with iTunes! (Or other RSS reader)

Track List [PDF] [Spotify]

0:00 – David Bowie – Five Years* (The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars)
5:31 – Bobby Darin – Not For Me** (B-Side for 18 Yellow Roses)
7:47 – The Beach Boys – Surf’s Up: 1st Movement (The Smile Sessions)
8:36 – The Beach Boys – Surf’s Up (The Smile Sessions)
12:41 – Talking Heads – Take Me To The River (More Songs About Buildings And Food)
18:02 – Rhye – Open (Woman)
21:35 – Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass – This Guy’s In Love With You*** (The Beat Of The Brass)
25:27 – Harry Nilsson – Early In The Morning (Nilsson Schmilsson)
28:39 – The Moody Blues (with the London Festival Orchestra) – Evening: The Sun Set: Twilight Time (Edit of) – (Days Of Future Passed)

*from the 2012 remaster.
**produced by Jack Nitzsche.
***written by Burt Bacharach

Download other episodes here!

Posts navigation

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Scroll to top