The last few days have been a bit crazy as I tackled some Murphy Law technical issues in order to have Caos finished today. After a failed first render (my bad actually, in all haste I accidentally unsynced the sound in a couple of scenes), yesterday I had two computers rendering and compressing the film simultaneously. It seems such redundancy kept Murphy at bay, as both finished without any trouble. I just watched a compressed MPEG, and it’s allright. And that is just as well, as the avant-premiere is scheduled for… today. So if you’re in the Porto or whereabouts, you’re invited to drop by Teatro Nacional S. João at 6.30pm. See you there.
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The last few days have been a bit crazy as I tackled some Murphy Law technical issues in order to have Caos finished today. After a failed first render (my bad actually, in all haste I accidentally unsynced the sound in a couple of scenes), yesterday I had two computers rendering and compressing the film simultaneously. It seems such redundancy kept Murphy at bay, as both finished without any trouble. I just watched a compressed MPEG, and it’s allright. And that is just as well, as the avant-premiere is scheduled for… today.

So if you’re in the Porto or whereabouts, you’re invited to drop by Teatro Nacional S. João at 6.30pm. See you there.

  • 3,830 Plays
  • Yumeji's ThemeShigeru Umebayashi

Yumeji’s Theme by Shigeru Umebayashi, from Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, was one of my classic film soundtrack obsessions (perhaps along with Michael Nyman’s score for The Draughtsman’s Contract). In simpler film school times, when I didn’t care for copyright, I even used it in (unfortunately illegal, academic-only versions of) my own movies. (hat tip to Ckck)

Recently I made the decision to dedicate a few of my older videos to the Public Domain. This meant getting formal permissions from the people who contributed to the making of those videos and a small amount of reediting to replace those bits that weren’t PD-kosher (i.e. stuff I used that had Creative Commons licenses).

Life is Change is the first of my videos to go full-blown Public Domain (through the CC0 Universal Dedication). Even though many web services encourage their use (and some don’t even allow you to check a Public Domain option) I am not at all interested in the common Creative Commons licenses, as I feel these encourage a ‘free-ish culture’ with strings attached. I believe your stuff should be either free or not free. Public Domain or Your Domain.

So enjoy Life is Change: Remix, redistribute, do whatever you want. I have made some downloads available at Archive.org. They’re yours.

Having the vending machine throw a momentary ‘obstacle’ is something that makes the story more interesting? The Significance of Plot Without Conflict, by Still Eating Oranges, elaborates on the relevance of Kishōtenketsu, the conflictless Japanese four-act narrative structure, and on how teaching the Western conventional three-act structure as The Sole Narrative Structure shapes people’s worldview. Back when I was still studying film, no question irked me as much as “where is the conflict?”, as if there was no other choice. And I never really got the hang of having conflicts shape my films.
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Having the vending machine throw a momentary ‘obstacle’ is something that makes the story more interesting? The Significance of Plot Without Conflict, by Still Eating Oranges, elaborates on the relevance of Kishōtenketsu, the conflictless Japanese four-act narrative structure, and on how teaching the Western conventional three-act structure as The Sole Narrative Structure shapes people’s worldview.

Back when I was still studying film, no question irked me as much as “where is the conflict?”, as if there was no other choice. And I never really got the hang of having conflicts shape my films.

Science news this week are all about the almost certain discovery of the Higgs Boson. From what I gather that’s big news, even if my understanding of particle physics is also in an infinitesimal scale, so I go with the explanation that the finding of the Higgs particle closes and vindicates the Standard Model of particle physics in pretty much the same way the discoveries of elements such as Gallium, Ytterbium or the noble gases in the late 19th century vindicated the atomic model and Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table.

However, I find myself in utter lack of awe at such discoveries. I think it’s sad all cutting-edge science nowadays seems to deal with the negative Powers of Ten, the infinitesimal, starting at nano and working its way down. It feels as if Mankind is retreating, into Earth, into tinier and tinier spaces. That’s not to say the study of the infinitesimal isn’t interesting and without awesomeness - just look up stuff on quantum levitation or Bose-Einstein condensates - but we also need to look at the stars - at the positive powers - for inspiration.

Hence The Voyagers by Penny Lane. Go watch it in silence. Let’s not retreat into tiny holes in the ground.