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ireadyabooks · 6 years ago

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New Year, New Books!

Happy 2019, book nerds! Now that we’ve cleaned up the confetti from New Year’s Eve, it’s time to get serious about some resolutions: reading as many books as we possibly can in 2019!

If your TBR pile needs some love, we’ve got you covered. Here are some of our faves coming your way in early 2019!

The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali

Available January 29th

Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali has always been fascinated by the universe around her and the laws of physics that keep everything in order. But her life at home isn't so absolute. Unable to come out to her conservative Muslim parents, she keeps that part of her identity hidden. And that means keeping her girlfriend, Ariana, a secret from them too. Luckily, only a few more months stand between her carefully monitored life at home and a fresh start at Caltech in the fall. But when Rukhsana's mom catches her and Ariana together, her future begins to collapse around her. Devastated and confused, Rukhsana's parents whisk her off to stay with their extended family in Bangladesh where, along with the loving arms of her grandmother and cousins, she is met with a world of arranged marriages, religious tradition, and intolerance. Fortunately, Rukhsana finds allies along the way and, through reading her grandmother's old diary, finds the courage to take control of her future and fight for her love.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Spin

Available January 29th

Even in murder, the music lives on. When rising star Paris Secord (aka DJ ParSec) is found dead on her turntables, it sends the local music scene reeling. No one is feeling that grief more than her shunned pre-fame best friend, Kya, and ParSec's chief groupie, Fuse -- two sworn enemies who happened to be the ones who discovered her body. The police have few leads, and when the trail quickly turns cold, the authorities don't seem to be pushing too hard to investigate further. But nobody counted on Paris's deeply loyal fans, ParSec Nation, or the outrage that would drive Fuse and Kya to work together. As ParSec Nation takes to social media and the streets in their crusade for justice, Fuse and Kya start digging into Paris's past, stumbling across a deadly secret. With new info comes new motives. New suspects. And a fandom that will stop at nothing in their obsessive quest for answers, not even murder...

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

The Deceiver’s Heart

Available February 26th

In this sequel to the instant New York Times bestseller The Traitor's Game, Kestra Dallisor has finally gained possession of the Olden Blade. With the dagger in her control, she attempts to destroy the tyrannical Lord Endrick. But when Kestra fails, the king strips her of her memory, and leaves her weak and uncertain, bound to obey him. Heartbroken, Simon is desperate to return Kestra to the rebel she was, but refuses to use magic to heal her. With untrusting Coracks and Halderians threatening to capture and kill her, and war looming on the horizon, Kestra and Simon will have to learn to trust each other again if they have any hope of surviving. But can a heart once broken ever be healed?

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

The Music of What Happens

Available February 26th

Max: Chill. Sports. Video games. Gay and not a big deal, not to him, not to his mom, not to his buddies. And a secret: An encounter with an older kid that makes it hard to breathe, one that he doesn't want to think about, ever. Jordan: The opposite of chill. Poetry. His "wives" and the Chandler Mall. Never been kissed and searching for Mr. Right, who probably won't like him anyway. And a secret: A spiraling out of control mother, and the knowledge that he's the only one who can keep the family from falling apart. Throw in a rickety, 1980s-era food truck called Coq Au Vinny. Add in prickly pears, cloud eggs, and a murky idea of what's considered locally sourced and organic. Place it all in Mesa, Arizona, in June, where the temp regularly hits 114. And top it off with a touch of undeniable chemistry between utter opposites. Over the course of one summer, two boys will have to face their biggest fears and decide what they're willing to risk -- to get the thing they want the most.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Pretend She’s Here

Available February 26th

Emily Lonergan's best friend died last year. And Emily hasn't stopped grieving. Lizzie Porter was lively, loud, and fun -- Emily's better half. Emily can't accept that she's gone. When Lizzie's parents and her sister come back to town to visit, Emily's heartened to see them. The Porters understand her pain. They miss Lizzie desperately, too. Desperately enough to do something crazy. Something unthinkable. Suddenly, Emily's life is hurtling toward a very dark place -- and she's not sure she'll ever be able to return to what she once knew was real.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Last of Her Name

Available February 26th

Sixteen years ago, rebellion swept the galaxy known as the Belt of Jewels. Every member of the Leonov royal family was murdered--down to their youngest child, Princess Anya--making way for the Union government to seize power. But Stacia doesn't think much about politics. She spends her days half-wild, rambling her father's vineyard with her friends, Clio and Pol. That all changes when a Union ship appears burning through the sky, bearing the leader of the Union, the Direktor Eminent himself, who declares that Stacia's sleepy village is a den of empire loyalists. Even more shocking, the Direktor claims that Princess Anya Leonova is alive--and Stacia is the lost princess As their home explodes into chaos, Pol smuggles Stacia to a hidden escape ship, leaving Clio in the hands of the Union. With everything she knows threading away into the stars, Stacia sets her heart on a single mission: She will find and rescue Clio, even with the whole galaxy on her trail.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

That’s Not What I Heard

Available February 26th

What did you hear? Kimberly Landis-Lilley and Teddy Lin are over. Yes, the Kim and Teddy broke up. At least that's what Phil Spooner thinks he overheard and then told Jess Howard, Kim's best friend. Something about Teddy not liking Kim's Instas? Or was it that Teddy is moving to Italy and didn't want to do long distance? Or that Kim slid into someone else's DMs? Jess told her boyfriend, Elvis, that he needs to be on Kim's side. Especially if he wants to keep her as his girlfriend. But Elvis is also Teddy's best friend. Now, Kim's run out of school for the day. Jess is furious. Elvis is confused. And half the lunch period won't talk to Teddy. Even the teachers have taken sides. William Henry Harrison High will never be the same again!

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Tell Me Everything

Available February 26th

Your secret's safe...until it's not. Ivy's always preferred to lay low, unlike her best friend Harold, who has taken up a hundred activities as sophomore year begins. But Ivy has her own distraction: the new anonymous art-sharing app, VEIL. Being on the sidelines has made Ivy a skilled observer, and soon she discovers that some of the anonymous posters are actually her classmates. While she's still too scared to put her own creations on the app, Ivy realizes that she can contribute in an even better way -- by making gifts for the artists she's discovered. The acts of kindness give her such a rush that, when Ivy suspects Harold is keeping a secret, she decides to go all in. Forget gifts -- Harold needs a major party. But when her good intentions thrust her into the spotlight, Ivy's carefully curated world is thrown into chaos. Now she has to find the courage to stand out... or risk losing everything and everyone she loves most.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Mike

Available February 26th

Mike is the imaginary friend and projection of a repressed wish that won’t go away until Floyd confronts both his greatest fear and greatest desire: to succeed. MEET FLOYD. He's a tennis star. Possibly good enough to win Wimbledon one day. MEET MIKE. He's... different. Apart from anything else, Floyd seems to be the only one who can see him. But Mike must have appeared for a reason. And finding out why is perhaps the most important thing Floyd will ever do...

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Sorry Not Sorry

Available February 26th

Janelle and Alyssa used to be friends. Best friends. They knew each other's deepest secrets and went through the hardest times together. But that was then. Now? Their status is somewhere between frenemies and full-on rivals. Janelle is all about making a difference in her community, while Alyssa reigns over the shallowest girls in school. Until the day Alyssa collapses and is rushed to the hospital. Suddenly, everyone knows about her declining health and race against time. And, in a stunning twist of fate, the only person who might be able to save Alyssa's life -- is Janelle. But will the girls' bitter past get in the way of their futures?

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Brawler

Available March 26th

Eddie MacIntyre--Mac to a handful of friends--is Pennsylvania's most promising wrestler. His future is bright with scholarship offers and the dream of helping his struggling mom. But then comes a fateful match at the state championship, when his famous rage consumes him and he assaults a referee. In an instant, Mac loses all he and his mom have worked to build since his abusive father was locked up years ago. Facing arrest, Mac runs away to another town, where he is taken in by a shady promoter who has followed his career. He recruits Mac into Brawlers, an illegal underground fighting ring run by a gangland boss. This is a bloodsport that has no rules . . . but offers plenty of reward. Mac teams up with Khajee, a girl with the fighting skills he'll need to learn to survive . . . and her own dark past tying her to the head of the ring. Together the two must figure out their place in a world that hasn't been kind to them . . . and forge a future that could be.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Quarantine: A Love Story

Available March 26th

Oliver wants a girlfriend, and there's a girl back home who might be interested in him. The problem is, he has to spend his spring break on a volunteer trip in the Dominican Republic. Flora, on the other hand, isn't really looking for a boyfriend. She just wants to end a miserable spring break visiting her dad and her new stepmom in the D.R. The solution to both their problems? Get back home to New York ASAP. Sadly, they won't be getting there anytime soon. Their hopes are dashed when Flora's impulsiveness lands them in quarantine -- just the two of them. Now, the two teens must come together in order to survive life in a bubble for 30 days. In that time, love will bloom. But is it the real thing, or just a placebo effect?

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

I Don’t Want To Be Crazy

Available March 26th

This is a true story of growing up, breaking down, and coming to grips with a psychological disorder. When Samantha Schutz first left home for college, she was excited by the possibilities -- freedom from parents, freedom from a boyfriend who was reckless with her affections, freedom from the person she was supposed to be. At first, she reveled in the independence . . . but as pressures increased, she began to suffer anxiety attacks that would leave her mentally shaken and physically incapacitated. Thus began a hard road of discovery and coping, powerfully rendered in this poetry memoir.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Dear Ally, How Do You Write a Book?

Available March 26th

Have you always wanted to write a book, but don't know where to start? Or maybe you're really great at writing the first few chapters . . . but you never quite make it to the end? Or do you finally have a finished manuscript, but you're not sure what to do next? Fear not -- if you have writing-related questions, this book has answers! Whether you're writing for fun or to build a career, bestselling author Ally Carter is ready to help you make your work shine. With honesty, encouragement, and humor, Ally's ready here to answer the questions that writers struggle with the most. Filled with practical tips and helpful advice, Dear Ally is a treasure for aspiring writers at any stage of their careers. It offers a behind-the-scenes look at how books get made, from idea to publication, and gives you insight into the writing processes of some of the biggest and most talented YA authors writing today.

Amazon

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IndieBound

#I read YA #booklr #book love #young adult lit #diverse reads #books #bookworm #bookish #book nerd #new books #reading

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finsterhund · 4 years ago

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Exhaustion and updates

Hoping it's just an issue on twitch's end or the ISP but my test stream had the occasional drop of frames and freezing for half a second. No issues to me but it was present in the VOD.

Really hoping that's not a thing that is going to occur commonly.

Might want to see about getting better upload speed.

But yeah. Expect an update on my computer soon. I've been very busy and very sore and tired from doing errands, setting up my computer (it's a heavy boy) and tons of stuff. Laundry tomorrow and I'm still sore from all the lifting and running around so I'll be out of it for a while still.

I'll be posting photos and stuff. I'm very proud.

I was and still am so anxious about my computer being okay. I'm paranoid about that sorta stuff. There were some hiccups and troubleshooting and I'm sad I didn't get the no CD patch of Heart of Darkness working on it, but it is happy and healthy now.

Spot from my friend arrived too. The black fur on the back is damaged somehow which means not as soft and also shedding. Upsets me a lot but maybe that's a reason to get this Spot a service dog vest.

Also not big enough to be the proposed "giant Spot" but large enough to take on trips and stuff. Good for hugs. So good for hugs. Second favourite Spot after the OG Cuddle Clone Spot.

My computer is a handsome machine. So many lights and fans. Graphics card has lights and fans, heatsink has lights and fan, etc.

Also my friend finally gave me his old monitor officially for real this time. Because I bought it off him. So I actually have space on my desk.

I also fixed my chair. It's still loud and squeaky and broken but at least the back stays up again.

Expect some crisp HoD footage soon. Planning a high resolution death scene video. It's a long time coming.

Also planning to use the absolute beast of a computer to get back into Minecraft and start playing Among Us with friends. I can't tell health wise if I'll be able to finally get into 3D modeling but perhaps. Especially if I can get a new chair or start physiotherapy.

I discovered a way that twitter is broken. If you report tweets for abuse towards you/targeted harassment and twitter decides that the tweets were abuse and against the rules but doesn't think that justifies terminating the entire account, the person who made those tweets is told specifically which ones they were and has their account locked until they manually delete them.

In case you're wondering, yes, that does absolutely inspire them to immediately go right back to targeting the person who got them a slap on the wrist.

Like, if twitter just temporarily banned them and deleted the tweets without explaining which ones they were that would be fine, but not temp banning them and just locking their accounts until they delete the offending tweets literally does nothing except open up the person harassed to more harassment.

Nobody who gets away with harassment and keeps their account is gonna say "uh oh, twitter shook its finger at me I better leave this guy alone."

No wonder the site is so toxic. Not even Tumblr moderation was this horrendous.

Back to positives, I'm hoping once I'm no longer physically and mentally exhausted to start drawing some more again. Maybe with my chair fixed it'll be easier.

A Paper Beast unfolded edition stream is on the horizon, as are HoD speedrunning practice streams. That'll be a good way to iron out whatever weird freezing thing happens.

Now that I no longer am putting away money for my computer I hope to get back to commissioning art. I've sorta lost the drive for it due to my physical and emotional health.

I'm hoping to be more active with friends in the coming months, even though seasonal depression has already started to punch me in the gut.

They already have christmas stuff out. Walmart didn't even have halloween stuff this year they just went straight to christmas. All I can think about when reminded of the holiday is how it's the reason my last dog is dead. I have absolutely no reason to get into any sort of festivities this year and I am dreading how the corporate world is going to smother me with it in a way that is unavoidable.

Don't think I'm even going to celebrate the Winter Solstice this year. It just feels wrong.

Friends are already talking about doing their shopping and getting gifts and I'm walking past the isles in the stores and it just hurts. Just wish this year could just be fall and then spring. No winter.

I know this year is tough for everyone so I don't want to ruin whatever comfort my friends may be getting from the holiday, but it's a painful reminder to me and I was already avoidant of christmas on account of celebrating the Solstice instead. Before I could celebrate christmas with friends who did and had my own fun surrounding it but now all I can think about is how the last light of my life died of a preventable respiratory infection because the emergency vet office was closed. I'm the one who should have died of respiratory issues. That's what I'm predisposed to. Not her. It's one of the most horrific ways to die and I'd only ever wish it on my worst enemies. How many times have I scraped by from viral pneumonia and everything else and when my Zippy gets kennel cough for no fucking reason they just fucking kill her without telling me.

The thing is, the Spot photos are from Christmas so I wish I could just associate it with Spot instead but no.

I meant for this post to be positive primarily but in writing this out I think I've pinpointed why the seasonal depression is so hard on me right now.

My friend and I are going to be watching horror movies in costume on Halloween eating candy so I'm looking forward to that.

A green apple scented Spot is also coming from Lilsprout (same person who made Penumbra) so that's something good to look forward to as well.

I may try weighting and scenting my new Spot who I'm planning to get a service dog vest for. Also if anyone knows how to fix heat damaged fake fur fabric please let me know.

I just wish I could ignore christmas. It's such an alienating and depressing holiday if your loved ones are dead and you feel alone and hopeless.

I've started taking melatonin and it is really helping me sleep. Apparently it causes very lucid dreams. The first night I took it I had a lucid dream that was like I was awake but not. Briefly the new Spot lying beside me shifted into being Zippy (her specifically, not Spot) and I felt such a profound comfort as if she had visited me. I feel that's what Red Spot originally felt like when I was little, thinking this imaginary dog was Spot visiting me.

Was sad when I finally woke up though. Tried to do the thing where I stayed in the dream but my back pain got too bad and I had to get up.

Once I've done the laundry tomorrow and had some time to rest I'm sure I'll be more active online again. I hope. Will is streaming the Seventh Brother on the 30th so a bunch of friends are finally going to see the movie that the tired and weak crying puppy is from.

I don't really have any tasks out of my house to do right now except maybe some more groceries in a couple weeks. Of course my desire to go to thrift stores is ever present. I help buy gas so I should get to go lmao.

Think I'll listen to upbeat music now and then take my medicine. Hopefully less serious updates in the future soon.

For now my test stream is still available in VOD form on my twitch http://www.twitch.tv/finsterhund and I'm planning to upload it to YouTube later.

Take care of yourselves, and if you see stuffed dogs I'm your travels that look like Spot... I am interested. 👀

#text post #negative #long post #update

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livingwithashipname-blog · 8 years ago

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Ermanda’s Inner Sanctum: Scorpion Season 3A

This is a general review post on the first half of Scorpion season 3 with my introspective critiques. To follow my in-depth episode reviews, drabbles, and thought pieces for Scorpion (and other shows), follow the tag “ermanda’s inner sanctum” for more. This post is long so read at your own risk! 😜😂😂😂😂😂

I think this portion of the season resolved season 2 cliffhangers well. The elements were addressed in a step-down manner that showed adequate research of these topics and didn’t introduce anything too unrealistic in their resolutions. There were other elements that didn’t deliver because of the quantity over quality conundrum. I appreciate the exploration of new relationships this season within the cyclone and all the new foreshadowing bits I have witnessed so far. I am intrigued to see where these stories are going. Here are some specific things I would like to address.

Series Goals vs. Time Slot

Various interviews from the showrunners and actors, as well as elements of the show itself, suggest that Scorpion is a family show and will continue to meet this goal over time. A 10 pm time slot means that there is room to push portions of the show to appeal to more adult audiences. The showrunners have decided to do this in the type of major storylines introduced and how they are portrayed on screen. Episode 3.03 It Isn’t The Fall That Kills You is a good example of a grittier portrayal of the Waige dynamic and Happy’s cadmium poisoning that mimicked pregnancy in symptomatology and testing is another example of dealing with the concept of loss that doesn’t involve miscarriage. However, disillusionment within the fandom exists when the personal storylines don’t fit fandom expectations for a show in a particular time slot. When the show (in the eyes of fans) fails to deliver on the personal end, it is easy to default to the mission. If the same happens there, the entire episode feels inadequate. I am indifferent If Scorpion stays in its 10 pm slot or returns to 9 pm. I am more concerned about which day it is scheduled. Mondays are perfect right now. Tuesdays are too competitive with other networks (gotta save those slots for the network’s heavy hitters - NCIS series), Wednesdays are already devoted to Survivor and Criminal Minds, and Thursdays are devoted to sitcoms. Scorpion is not a show that fits CBS’s aims for Friday programming and it is not close to an end for the network to push it to Sundays “to live out its last days.” There are still a large number of shows that have to go and be replaced by new shows. If the show returns to 9 pm, there are certain ways they have to “censor” the dialogue to fulfill network demands to audiences accessible at that time. Thus, there will always be this struggle between fulfilling the family goal and pushing the envelope with a 10 pm time slot. The show has succeeded in some ways, but it can definitely do more with the opportunities the 10 pm time slot provides. I don’t anticipate any sex scenes beyond the scope of that seen in episode 1.14 Charades for this show, but if that happens in the future I will be pleasantly enthused.

Comparison to Numb3rs

In a lot of ways, Scorpion feels just like Numb3rs, which is another crime drama that premiered on CBS for 6 seasons. It’s one of my all-time favorites and currently lives on in syndication on ION television in the US almost 7 years after the series finale. If you’re not familiar with this series, all 6 seasons are available on Amazon Instant Video with a Prime account and Hulu. Here’s a synopsis of the series:

FBI agent Don Eppes recruits his younger brother, Charlie, a mathematical genius and college professor, to help solve some of Don's toughest cases. Although others at the bureau are skeptical of Charlie's involvement, he finds support in a colleague at the university where he teaches.

The show showcased a romantic relationship between Charlie, the math genius, and a fellow colleague who was as equally smart; the nerdy, awkward friend who managed to woo the strong heroine; the difficulties of raising a family where one child is a genius and the other is a normal; the sibling rivalry that exists between brothers because of this dynamic; and much more. Maybe this is why I flocked to Scorpion so quickly. And now that Scorpion is up for syndication, it all seems like deja vu. So I am curious to see if Scorpion will be handled like Numb3rs in the future since both shows are with CBS.

Areas for Improvement

Suspense/Mystery

I think the show needs to do a better job at CONSISTENTLY creating suspense with each mission’s operational casualties. For example, I think that the apparent danger of the tornado scene in 2.21 Twist and Shout wouldn’t have fallen flat if it had obscured Walter and Paige for a moment and we only heard their voices while they were holding onto each other for dear life. That would have given the situation more of a semblance of realism and make us wonder about their safety even though we know that they would survive. Also, don’t get me started on the wire work in that episode. Where was the body control?! 😂 For this season, episode 3.10 This Is The Pits comes to mind when Walter got stuck in the tar. One episode I quickly recall where this is done well is in 2.13 White Out.

Continuity of Injury & Emotional Fallout

These characters manage to find themselves in dangerous situations mission after mission and heal quickly or they encounter a major emotional event that is resolved in that episode or picked up again 10 episodes later. Granted, this is expected of procedurals where each episode is set up to tell a new story each week that keeps the casual, periodic viewer engaged and cognizant of the show’s overall goals without the need for 5-6 episodes to fill in the blanks. Also, the actors talk about this superhero aspect that has been infused into the show. So this suggests that this is intentional. However, there have been moments such as Walter’s hand injury and Toby’s post-kidnapping injuries (physical & emotional) that should have been seen for more than 1 episode. Thus, it would be nice to see the dramatic elements of this show extended in small, subtle ways outside their brief multi-episode arcs that are not foreshadowing elements for later developments and are done in ways that are not easily missed when presented within an episode. Yet, I will argue that certain things are not as easy to portray on-screen and it is an understandable reality that I am willing to accept in some ways.

A New Cyclone Hangout

I would like to see a financial investment in new hangouts that are also used to explore the emotional complexities of the cyclone as is done with the garage rooftop. These could be anywhere from someone’s living quarters to an unexplored area of the garage. I use Criminal Minds as a point of reference - another big budget show with a central hub that also explores more locales throughout each season. Yet, I also consider that these new locales may not be chosen as often as the fans would like to see because investment is an expensive venture that is not fiscally possible given approved plans for the season and what can be accomplished by production within a given time frame. For example, the backdrop of city scene on the rooftop is CGI, but it takes time and money (paying editors to make it work with actors who are moving in and out of shots) to do it well.

Better Application of Plausible Scientific Scenarios & Explanation of These Events

I think this point is self-explanatory, but I will refer to a recent scene. Scott Porter was directed to deliver this lengthy piece of dialogue for his character in 3.10 This Is The Pits and then perform the task afterwards. This order negatively affected the purpose of the dialogue and the efficiency of the action. It would have been more realistic for his character to perform the task while reiterating an understanding for the science so it didn’t seem like he dictating a term paper. I hope that makes sense! LOL!

Dropped Storylines

There have been several storylines within this series on a whole that have been introduced and never mentioned again. But the ones that are problematic are those that contributed to a story arc within a season. The best example of this would be Sly’s journey to acquire naming rights for the pediatric ward in the hospital Megan spent her last days. Sly was working on raising enough money to do that. And it was insinuated that the turnover time was not long. So... 👀 Is there a plan to work this into his political campaign in the future? Let’s hope so!

Number of Plots Covered in One Episode

This is another self-explanatory point. It’s another quality over quantity argument with a show that already gives so much given time constraints.

BE REALISTIC!!! 😉

There will always be things that we like and do not like with all of our favorite shows. Does this mean that you should lower the bar of expectation? No. However, it is so important to put your expectations in check. Pay attention to clues within each episode and think about the music choices, the shot selection, and the dialogue to fully understand what is being communicated in that moment and beyond. In other words, you have to put down your shipper goggles for a minute and use foreshadowing ones. Hahahaha... but fo real tho! Recognize production patterns because they are usually good predictors of what to expect from season to season. I even addressed one in this post. There are many within this show, but the most prominent is that for the ships. I’m gonna let you figure that one out! 😉 If you want to talk about it more, drop an inquiry in the inner sanctum (aka. my ask box) or hit me up in the chat!

A short note on ratings & syndication: Syndication is the evil twin of continuity. CBS loves its syndication deals. A show will get renewed if it is up for syndication. Ratings for 8 & 9 pm shows are always better than those at 10 pm. The important factor to consider is average consistency. Even if ratings decline in the US, the network will choose to move forward with episode orders if a show has a good international following (e.g. Elementary). So if you have international followers who are also fans, ask them to indulge the content in the way it’s available within their country.

Constant complaints about things that can be fixed are just seen as noise if they are not accompanied with realistic ideas. They only put up more walls between creators and fans in an era where communication between these two groups is closer than ever. The reality is that all these comments come with a turnover time of AT LEAST 2 months in which 3-4 episodes have already been written and shot. If it fits with what’s already established, there’s a chance it might be considered. But if it doesn’t, expect that idea to get tabled for the latter portion of a season or the next. It is more advantageous to share your headcanons, set ideas, etc., as it would be done in the writing room and be specific when you do. If you honestly think no one is watching/reading because your desires have not been met, you are living in the clouds. That’s how you set yourself to get baited by clever PR moves. Patience is a virtue. If a season’s developments still do not suit your fancy, stop with the emotional masochism and either figure out a new way to indulge the content if you still want to stay close to it or drop off entirely. At the end of the day, EXERCISE YOUR CREATIVE FRUSTRATIONS IN FANFICTION if all else fails! That’s where everything goes down and I love it!

Kudos to wardrobe because the looks this season are really great! Kudos to production and art departments for the amazing cave set of 3.06 Bat Poop Crazy and the cabin set for 3.11 Wreck The Halls. Kudos to location scouts and the camera crew for capturing scenic beauty in 3.08 Sly and the Family Stone! Kudos to the showrunners and writers for exploiting the strengths of their cast!

THAT’S ALL PEEPS! TOODLES & HAPPY SCORPION MONDAYS!!! 😘

#ermanda's inner sanctum #cbs scorpion #scorpion season 3 #scorpion cbs #team scorpion #review post #numb3rs #long post

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lechevaliermalfet · 6 years ago

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Behind the Gun: A Look at Quake

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It's summer, and in summer I get nostalgic for two things, game-wise: old Playstation games, and Quake.

Back when Quake was still new-ish, we had a Pentium PC (a Compaq Presario Penium 150, to be exact). This was just good enough to run Quake without breaking a sweat... as long as we ran it at 320x240 resolution). A popular online argument at the time was whether Quake or Duke Nukem 3D was the superior game. Considering this article is about Quake, I think we can all safely assume what side of that debate I would have fallen on.

As far as first-person shooters went, I'd played a lot of Wolfenstein 3D on my parents' previous computer (a Packard Bell 386 that originally came with 2 different floppy drives and no sound card, and had the CD-ROM drive and Soundblaster added in a couple years later). And I'd sort of played the classic Doom, albeit only the shareware version, and that running like a slide-show unless we shrank the screen to postage-stamp resolution. But Quake was the first first-person shooter that really hooked me, just got under my skin and grabbed me and kept drawing me back to it again and again. I dreamed about playing it, I think.

For a while there, it was a habit during the summer to play it for hours on end. I'd retreat to my parents' basement (yeah, yeah...) to avoid the summer heat, and clock in time on Quake.

It's the first game I install on a new PC these days: Download from Steam, apply source port patches, and go. There's a lot you can do with it nowadays to make it run at ridiculous resolutions with ludicrously detailed textures on everything, but for my money, I prefer not to do more than apply the anisotropic filter and make the water transparent. It makes it clear exactly what the game is, which is to say a ferocious and fast-paced shooter from a bygone era.

As much as gaming publications of the day painted Quake as the wave of the future, that's because at the time, it looked that way. Hindsight suggests that Quake was less the vanguard of the new school of FPS design and more the beginning of the end of the old school. But the publications of the day were mostly speaking in the strictly technical sense, anyway. Unlike every other FPS then on the market, Quake was the first to be rendered completely in 3D, from the environments to the enemies to the objects in the game world.

From a design persepctive, the one thing this really changed about the usual FPS set-up was an increased element of verticality. Given that most FPSes prior to Quake essentially faked 3D by way of programming sorcery, level design options such as having one room or area atop another, or having platform jumping, were off the table. Aside from these additions, though? From the arsenal of seven or eight weapons available at all times, to the firing of weapons straight out of the ammo reserves (with no magazines or reloading), to the very game-y level design, everything in Quake was familiar to fans of older games.

Which, just to be clear, is the furthest thing in the world from a problem. It takes a measure of getting used to after coming off a Halo bender, but it's old-school design at its finest.

Speaking of old-school design: There's an interesting difference, which you pick up on pretty quickly, between how Quake handles combat compared to other games.

Most enemies in FPS titles these days tend to have behaviors and tactics particular to their type and situation. Sometimes, as in the case of a game like F.E.A.R., the enemy intelligence is capable of surprisingly clever tactics.

Quake isn't one of those cases. Enemies in Quake all basically have the same behavior programmed into them, which is to move toward the player in the straightest line possible, and attack once in range. Which was par for the course with games of this vintage, really. What was smart about the enemies was the way they were arrayed against you, with numbers, placement, combinations, and a level of aggression that kept players on their toes. It means combat frequently occurs against groups of enemies, and occasionally hits a white-knuckled, breathing-heavy level of intensity that gives you a powerful rush when you come out alive on the other side.

There is overall a very game-like feeling to Quake that's hard to shake. This may require some explanation.

More modern video games tend to occur in environments that feature at least a certain degree of realism (for a given value of "realistic"). Say, for instance, your game takes place in a zombie-infested mansion, a la Resident Evil. Modern game design (and Resident Evil is modern in this much, at least) suggests that the architecture should be at least a reasonable approximation of a mansion. The number, size, and layout of rooms and floors should fit a realistic floor plan. Helps with the verisimilitude. An older game, from a time when this was difficult to impossible due to various technical limitations, would have the idea of "zombie-infested mansion" as less a guide to the layout and architecture of the level and more strictly a matter of its visual theme.

Between its inexplicable death-trap levels – whole castles built enirely with only one observable purpose, that being to kill anyone who enters – and its generously placed stashes of ammo and power-ups floating and spinning in midair all video game-y, it's difficult to say that the game is even remotely realistic in either its presentation or its environments.

And yet...

Those environments, thematically speaking, make the game.

Doom (just to contrast for a moment) sold itself by leaning hard into its over-the-top imagery of capital-H Hell. You had fire and brimstone and demons of all descriptions with weapons cybernetically grafted to their limbs; you had pentagrams and skulls and inverted crosses and hearts on altars; you had legions of possessed soldiers; you had skeletons with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers; you had giant floating horned skulls who spat fire at you, and were themselves on fire. And then all of it was amped up to a kind of comic-book excess that ultimately made it kind of hard to take seriously. Not that this stopped it form freaking out the squares, mind you, but said out-freaking only wound up selling more copies of the game. That was Doom: the distillation of a heavy metal album cover. They went for that aesthetic, and they nailed it.

Quake tossed that aside and instead looked toward the sci-fi/horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. Like Doom, Quake is fast, fierce, and in your face. But its imagery, its whole aesthetic, is night-and-day from its predecessor. Quake was cold, dispassionate, quiet, unsettling, turgid with implied menace. Where Doom had Soundblaster-quality riffs on hard rock and metal songs for its soundtrack to keep you pumped, Quake gave you Nine Inch Nails. The soundtrack never quite settled into being anything recognizable as music, per se. It's perhaps better described as an ambient soundscape meant to layer a sense of dread and unease over everything. It succeeded at this task, because it turns out that Trent Reznor is the guy you turn to for that.

Aesthetically, this is the difference. Hell makes sense on a certain level, to the extent that any such mythological places and constructs do. Hell cares, after its fashion. It is a place of punishment, filled with beings who declare themselves your enemies, and who set themselves against you. Hell (we are typically informed) is very intimately concerned with your thoughts and deeds; the horror and suffering it inflicts is always personal.

H.P. Lovecraft's mythos suggests a possibility more horrifying: That beings may indeed exist who move the cosmos, but that they do not care. Not only do Lovecraft's monsters not care, they don't notice us in order to care. On the off-chance that they do, it is to casually wipe us out because we are in the way. Lovecraft's thesis, explored in much of his fiction, is that this was the true horror of existence, and that to understand exactly how little we mattered, was to be driven stark, raving mad. His eldritch monsters were mainly symbols designed to express this idea, incomprehensible in order to express the utter incomprehensibility of the universe. The main safeguard of sanity, Lovecraft contended, was human ignorance.

This is the environment in which Quake takes place. And, sure, maybe I'm overselling it a bit. It is, at its core, a game about shooting extradimensional chainsaw-wielding, grenade-throwing ogres with nailguns repeatedly in the face until they die. But these are the trappings that it uses in the service of that goal, and in that sense, they succeed.

In service to this aesthetic, the game features a dark, moody color palette that serves two purposes, I think. One, of course, is to set the mood. The other is to subtly obscure the sharp edges of the game's world.

As the first real fully 3D first-person shooter, Quake's 3D is really rudimentary. As impressive as it was for its day, it hasn't necessarily aged very well. But I suspect that the level designers at Id Software knew this going in, and they did what they could to future-proof it.

The darkness of the game's lighting and its color palette hide some of the sharp edges. For the rest, the game actually leans into is blockiness. The hulking piles of stone which comprise the castles and keeps, dungeons and mazes, the rough-cut caverns in which the game occurs loom and oppress with their size and solidity, their rough and heavy blockiness. The unnatural rigidity of the art design is actually bolstered by the simple polygonal shapes that the engine is capable of producing. It would probably have difficulty creating more naturalistic environments without visibly falling short, as was to some extent demonstrated in Hexen II, made in the same engine by Raven Software. But Id's heavy, menacing, oppressive architecture is a natural fit for the engine's capabilities.

The story, meanwhile, is almost nonexistent, partly as a result of Quake's trouble development.

The game was originally supposed to be an RPG of some variety, with the player being an axe-wielding barbarian (hence the presence of the axe as the player's melee weapon). Somewhere along the way, this changed. I've never heard an explanation as to why. Maybe Id just felt more at home making an FPS. The story I've heard most often about Quake's development is that they didn't really have a story for a long stretch of time, after they'd scrapped the idea of it being an RPG. They just kept creating assets and building levels, because they had to do something. This is part of why the level progression is so arbitrary with little narrative or thematic flow.

Eventually, it occurred to someone that they were getting close to the finish, and no one had really put together a story yet. And while Id Software had never been big on stories in their games, they realized that they had to have something to explain what the player was supposed to be doing, and why. So they wrote a story that was basically Doom all over again. Humankind is experimenting with teleportation technology (only the tech is referred to as Slipgates this time), which draws the attention of an enemy or enemies (extradimensional horrors this time instead of demons from Hell), and said enemy (code-named Quake, hence the title) sends its minions to attack. From there, the player goes on a rampage, tearing a bloody swath through the enemy's forces on the way to capture four runes which, together, will grant access to the enemy's lair. Each rune is hidden in a different dimension, and each dimension is its own episode of the game.

This is a plot that you could fit on one side of a napkin, and when you were done, you'd still have most of the napkin left.

It doesn't matter. Quake is awesome.

Playing is as easy as breathing. Winning is considerably more difficult, of course. But the act of maneuvering through the game's challenges is perhaps the easiest it has ever been in an FPS. For whatever reason, Id decided to remove every extraneous element. You no longer have to press buttons or throw levers; they activate automatically when you collide with them. Doors open on their own as you approach. Your interaction with the game world and everything in it is stripped down to the absolute essentials.

Run. Jump. Shoot. Destroy.

Quake is in a relatively unique category of games for me. I can pursue it as comfort food, but at the same time, it has real substance to it. Thin as its story is, its atmosphere is thick enough to cut. As simple as its gameplay mechanics are, its levels and enemy encounters are designed to test the player's skill. As much as it pays mere lip service to the work and ideas of H.P. Lovecraft, it nails the aesthetic of crushing, oppressive insignificance.

#games #gaming #video games #video gaming #first person shooter #id software #quake #game review #old-school games

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lorrainecparker · 7 years ago

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ART OF THE CUT with Billy Fox, ACE on “Only the Brave”

Billy Fox, ACE, last spoke to Art of the Cut after he cut Straight Outta Compton. Fox’s other feature film work includes Hustle and Flow, Low Riders, Footloose and Black Snake Moan. His TV work is also notable, including the critically acclaimed and Emmy-nominated work on Band of Brothers and Emmy-winning editing on Law and Order.

(This interview was transcribed with SpeedScriber. The entire interview was transcribed within 15 minutes of completing the Skype call. Thanks to Martin Baker at Digital Heaven)

HULLFISH: I went to go see the movie last night. It really flies by for a movie that’s two fifteen in length.

FOX: Goes by very quickly. The scenes are all kind of shortish which creates a kind of momentum.

HULLFISH: Do you remember how many scenes it is?

FOX: I wanna say it’s 150.

HULLFISH: You’ve done a bunch of movies with strong music in them — pop, rock, rap — and this movie is not a music movie, but there are some nice strong musical montages to rock tracks.

FOX: I find the shots that I basically want to use and I string them together without music, but at a certain point I attach the music to it and start tweaking based on the music. And adjusting the editing of the music, depending on how recognizable the song is. When I was doing my editor’s cut I was playing with a lot of temp music, and at some point Joe (director, Joe Kosinsky) and I felt, “Let’s lose ALL of the music.” We want to make sure the scenes are playing without music. And if they play well without music, then ideally, they’ll get better with music. We came to the realization, particularly at the end, that so much of it played better dry. It plays more emotionally when it’s dry. Music can sometimes be a support system. You feel more comfortable with music sometimes, and the fact that you would normally have music at this given point and you don’t makes you even more uncomfortable.

HULLFISH: Can you think of a specific scene that you played dry?

FOX: We did an experiment with the producers where we ran the whole movie dry. Obviously the scene in the bar had music because it’s part of the scene. It played really well and it allowed you to focus on the movie itself. It was very interesting.

HULLFISH: If you add music, the music sometimes gives things away.

The Granite Mountain Hoteshots overlook a fire in Columbia Pictures’ ONLY THE BRAVE.

FOX: That’s a big deal for me. Certainly the choice of music track is important, but even more important is where the music STARTS. I have a constant struggle dealing with composers who want the music to start too early. Basically, I feel that the scene needs to establish that it NEEDS music. Sometimes a composer will give you that extra music at the top, and the composer’s intent isn’t necessarily for it to start where he starts it, but so that you can bring it in early if you feel like you need it. But when you’re on the dub stage, sometimes mixers will bring up the music as soon as it’s available.

HULLFISH: In an early firefighting scene, you leave the action for a while to show two druggies doing drugs on a couch. What was the thought process of that choice to bring that scene in at that time?… one of the druggies ends up being a central character in the movie — Miles Teller’s character, Donut.

FOX: It’s interesting because that was a scene that moved around a little bit. There were versions of the cut where the fire came to its conclusion before we went to the drug scene. But in testing, people felt that the movie got better when Miles Teller was on the screen and we felt that was a logical place to open up that fire. We didn’t move a lot of scenes around.

HULLFISH: That happens a lot with movies where the audience, or just you as an editor, realize that you need to get to a certain person or event earlier in the film. It’s not a question of shortening the whole film, but tightening between specific story beats.

FOX: In Straight Outta Compton, that whole concert sequence, which is about 40 minutes long… before that, there were other concerts, varying venues and little vignettes. Even the writers knew that where they were placed in the script was not really where they would probably end up. Those moved around continually. But in Only the Brave, not so much… a little bit of movement.

HULLFISH: I’ve had conversations — pro and con — about pre-lapping dialogue. You definitely did it several times in this movie.

FOX: Pre-lapping inside of a scene or between scenes?

Helicopter Hueys arrive to pick up crew at Chiricahua Mtn.

HULLFISH: Both, but I really mean between scenes — hearing someone speak from the next scene before you cut to the picture of that scene.

FOX: I like it. I think you have to be careful. What you have to be careful of is killing the moment of the outgoing scene. You have to give it enough breath. But if used well and the timing is right and if not overdone, it pulls you in. I know that there are editors that don’t like it. I think it would be easy to not do it, I just think it connects things up. In the old days, before digital projection and digital editing, it used to make it really complicated for reel changes but now it doesn’t really matter.

Screenshot from Adobe Premiere Pro of the “Only the Brave” timeline. (right-click on the image to open it at full resolution in another browser window.)

HULLFISH: Another show that’s using Premiere is Mindhunter. Do you want to talk about how Premiere worked for you?

FOX: I’m always watching out for better systems. In between projects, I’m always looking for what can make my next show better. And sometimes it’s as simple as just the speakers or the video monitors or my control surface. I’m always tweaking stuff. Of course, the NLE is something I’m always looking at. I’m always looking at systems that are better. I have pictures of me using a LaserEdit, CMX6000, LightWorks, Final Cut, Avid and Adobe Premiere The list keeps going. I’m always moving along.

I was keeping my eye on Premiere, like I was keeping my eye on Final Cut. For years and years I was watching and it wasn’t quite ready. And eventually it got to a point where I had to take a serious look at it. Adobe and I finally had a nice long chat and I said, “I think you have a very interesting system, but I don’t know why I want to use it. I have to be able to sell the decision to other people. I have to sell it to the head of post-production. I have to sell it to the director.” We talked for two hours and we never even turned on a system. Van Bedient of Adobe demonstrated a number of features that he thought were very cool. So then I talked to Joe about it and he was very into it.

Crew 7 in the burnt forest including Brendan McDonough (Miles Teller), Jesse Steed (James Badge Dale),Chris MacKenzie (Taylor Kitsch),Grant McKee (Sam Quinn),Andrew Ashcraft (Alex Russell), Clayton Whitted (Scott Haze), Garret Zuppiger (Brandon Bunch), Travis Carter (Scott Foxx), Anthony Rose (Jake Picking), Robert Caldwell (Dylan Kenin), Travis Turbyfill (Geoff Stults) in Columbia Pictures’ ONLY THE BRAVE.

Then I had a long chat with a team of about six people from Adobe: the product manager and marketing and myself. And I said, “I’m thinking of using your system. But I’m not interested in you just handing me a piece of software. I need your support. I need your support on a daily basis. I need bodies available to us.” And they gave us all of that. And I also said, “I have to have shared projects.” I had dealt with Final Cut without shared projects for many years and I know how to do it and you can do it and it’s fine. It’s just frustrating. It’s kind of a pain. I came up with this philosophy that I don’t buy a car without reverse. And as far as I’m concerned your editing system has to have shared projects. They said, “Well, funny you should mentioned that. We are developing shared projects.” They said we wouldn’t have it for the editors cut, which is fine, because I’m pretty independent at that point, but they said they would have shared projects for me by the director’s cut. It came right down to it and they delivered. The first version we had for the first couple of days had a couple of things we didn’t like and they fixed it immediately and it worked great.

If you compare it to the shared projects in Avid, it’s not as robust as Avid’s but that was version 1. Now at version 3, it is pretty great. It’s pretty amazing. Like any editing system, there are things you want to scream at, but largely it was fantastic. We had a great time with it. My assistant had never worked on Adobe Premiere before. He adapted very quickly and he loved it. For me it was straight-forwardish because it’s cousins to Final Cut. Once I got the philosophy locked in then I thought it was fantastic.

HULLFISH: What are you missing on Avid that you loved in Premiere?

FOX: A lot of different stuff. But probably the biggest one is that Avid is the world of constant stopping. Everything you do in Avid, you’re constantly stopping. In Final Cut – and Premiere’s even better – you’re in a world of constant rolling. You’re trimming while your cut is going. You have this momentum, and certainly you save time just because of that. I figure the time it saves me is roughly 40 minutes a day. More important than the time is the momentum. I’m adjusting this, I’m trimming this, and it just keeps on playing. So that’s probably the biggest. I’d have to think about it. There are things I really like about Avid. I think its trimming functions are very powerful. Premiere’s are actually very good, so it’s debatable which is really better. Avid is a really solid, powerful, beloved tool.

HULLFISH: I’d be interested in your take on Resolve, because it’s also very similar to Final Cut.

FOX: I know, because, as I said, I keep my eye on systems. I’ve been very impressed with it. Paul Saccone showed it to me and boy does he do a great demo. I wanna continue to learn. I’ve played with it just a little, but I know very little about it other than the demo. It seems great. I love some of the stuff. I spend so much time in audio,so Fairlight would be great. So I want to see how Fairlight interfaces. One of Resolve’s strongest things, of course, is its color correction. I love color correction and I very much like to do it. I love that process.

But on an editorial level and a sound level and even a visual effects level, I never have time for color correction. And what really intrigues me about Resolve is its collaboration and having multiple people in the same sequence at the same time. That would really be great for me to be cutting in my room, then an assistant’s in another room doing color correction and another is working on audio. That’s really powerful. Competition is good.

“Supe” Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) and Amanda Marsh (Jennifer Connelly)

HULLFISH: Amen. Jennifer Connely’s character gets into a huge fight with Josh Brolin’s character at the horse stables of their house and the whole scene is played in a wide silhouette. It’s the kind of thing a lot of people would play — because of the intense emotion — on close ups. I loved it. Tell me about that decision.

FOX: I don’t think there’s any coverage on that and there are only two takes. Both takes are really good, but the one that’s in there? The lightning in that shot is real! I was in Santa Fe, where they shot, for about a week, and the lightning was just beautiful.

HULLFISH: There’s a follow shot of a truck that has some amazing lightning in the movie too.

FOX: Oh yeah. Most of that is real. A couple are VFX. Our visual effects editor was with us, John Carr, who was on After Effects, and he was working with ILM. So he would send plates and he would do temp versions. It was a great working relationship. Having After Effects and having ILM and being able to do Dynamic Linking, which was particularly powerful, and not have to comp the files or do anything crazy.

HULLFISH: Let’s talk a little about all those fire VFX. It looked like the plate provided you with a good sense of the shot and then the fire was layered on top.

FOX: The very end with the big, big fire where the fire was getting closer and closer and coming at them? There was a lot of natural fire there. Surprisingly a lot. But there was tremendously more in the VFX. In the scene in Yarnell where Donut is stranded behind the dozer, there were a medium number of real fires going on around him. But the interesting thing is that you can’t just take a bush and add fire to it, because part of what fire is all about is the wind. The wind just goes racing through the valleys. You can’t add fire to a natural stationary bush, because the bush should be absolutely going nuts. So they had to replace all of the bushes. All of those are CG bushes. So we’d have to decide for each shot how fast the wind was going. So first they’d have to get the movement of the bush to match the wind speed, then they’d add fire on top of that.

HULLFISH: So on something like a drone or helicopter shot of a landscape that has no fire in it, does it at least help that you have the movement and the geography of the drone plate? And all you had to do was imagine where the fire would be?

FOX: A lot of times I thought there would be fire out on the horizon or further away from camera, and I didn’t know that we’d actually be traveling WITH the fire.

I wanna backtrack a bit. When I finished the editor’s cut and Joe and I started working, I threw something out as a suggestion. The bulk of the visual effects were in that final reel, so I suggested that we start with the last reel of the movie. Let’s cut the big fire. What that does is it gives ILM a start. Get’s them started maybe a month or two early. More importantly, that’s the peak of the movie. Let’s get that done. It kind of takes the pressure off. And it worked out great. It didn’t change a lot from that original first cut that Joe and I did.

HULLFISH: That’s fascinating that you cut the last reel first. Did that inform the editing of the previous — what? six reels? seven?

FOX: Seven. Yes. It definitely informed the earlier reels. It’s also really nice to know that you don’t have this giant monster waiting for you. I like to do that actually. Get the big thing out of the way. Also, you’re starting to learn the techniques of the movie and what the language is. Every show I do, there’s a language. There’s also getting to know a character better.

Working on this, I used the same template that I used when I worked on Band of Brothers. Which is, in this case, the war and the battle, or in this case the fire, are ultimately boring. But what’s more important is the characters and the connection and the camaraderie between the individuals. On Band of Brothers, there were scenes that I had to go back and re-edit, because I now know that character better. I now understand what makes them tick.

HULLFISH: So that’s really interesting for this movie because since you’ve edited reel seven already and — for example — the character of Donut is a totally different person in reel seven than in reel one, and knowing him like you do in reel seven would give you a different perspective on that character… The subtext becomes different.

Josh Brolin and Director Joseph Kosinski on the set of Columbia Pictures’ ONLY THE BRAVE.

FOX: Yeah. Correct. I’ve always wanted to sit with a director and go over the script and talk it through. “Let’s look at this scene. What’s the importance of it. What’s really happening.” I have my own interpretation, but they’ve been living with it for so long. So I’m coming in a week or two or three before they start shooting. They’ve been living with it for a year. They know the characters. I don’t. So I’m always playing catch up.

HULLFISH: Another complicated scene to cut must have been the bar scene with all of those people and the band and the stuff going on… the music.

FOX: Like any music scene where you’ve got a song going on. You got the song going on and if you make a trim, what do you do with the music? You want the music to end at a certain place, or you want to make a transition to where you’ve got Jeff Bridges back on camera when he’s performing. So sometimes you want to cut something, but you can’t because then you won’t be able to come back at the right time. It was a very difficult scene to cut. I almost spent more time on that scene than anything. It was hard.

HULLFISH: There’s a lot of people in the scene. There’s the geography of the bar and there’s the music going on the whole time.

FOX: You’re flying around the room. You’re telling different stories. You know there’s that scene in there with Taylor Kitsch’s character ‘Mac’ and the two girls? I thought, “I wonder if this scenes gonna last?” So we discussed it at a certain point, but there’s not a lot of girls in this movie, so we were like, “No, no, no. We’ve got to keep that.” Amanda’s character: Eric’s wife was such an important character and so pivotal to the movie’s success.

HULLFISH: You were talking about matching back the mix sound to the iso tracks. That’s kind of a pain in Avid.

FOX: My assistant sets it up in a way that’s the same way that I do it on Avid. You matchframe. Your source comes back to the mix and it pops out to six tracks. It’s definitely not as elegant as how FCP-X does it.

This is the first show that I’ve done in 5.1. Adobe has a little work to do on their 5.1. I think Avid is a little more advanced. FCP-X is a little more advanced as well. At the present time, in Premiere, I run 24 tracks.

I spend a lot of time with my sound. I would say 49 percent of my time. And dealing with music and dealing with SFX. My process is that I start out by dealing with pure dialogue and picture, nothing but dialogue and picture. At a certain point — almost to clear my head a little bit — I go into sound effects world. I just build a bed. Something simple. It lets me look at the scene, but I’m actually working on something else. I come back into dialogue and I go into trimming and at a certain point I go back to sound effects and start getting more specific. More hard effects. I’m continually playing this constant game of going from editing picture and editing story to sound and music and they’re getting better and better and they’re going back and forth

HULLFISH: And the sound and picture are informing each other.

FOX: They are definitely informing each other. Both sound and picture is completely checkerboarded, so that I can easily slice underneath. My dialogue is always tight, tight, tightly cleaned. So you can play dialogue only and it sounds great. I base the mix on the dialogue. I have my dialogue living about minus ten db, and then I mix music and effects to meet that. I love using a control surface for audio. I use this Avid mixer on Avid and on Final Cut and on Premiere, and it’s the best. It just makes all the difference in the world. And I use a Tangent Devices Ripple for color correction with Premiere. I don’t have a lot of time for color correction, but the way that the Ripple works with Premiere, with 20 seconds of work, I’m done and I move on. It’s just very elegant.

HULLFISH: And having grades that match from shot to shot makes the edits appear to be cleaner, right?

FOX: Yeah. It was nice, because I didn’t have to carry a color correction stem, which I hate. And when it came time to do the DI, Joe had spent so much time dealing with the color correction that he knew what he wanted. The colorist, Mike Soa, a great colorist,. Joe said, “Here. Take the output of Premiere, and this is what I want. We’ll make it better, but for the most part, this is the look. These are the tones. All those decisions were made.

HULLFISH: I’m assuming you weren’t cutting with camera original media.

FOX: We transcoded to ProRes. For dailies, we used NextLab from FotoKem, They took all of our raw files and made editorial files and made our output files and our distribution files. NextLab is a really great box. If you haven’t gotten a demo on it, you should really check it out. Worked fabulous.

It’s how we always worked, but I’ve always been frustrated by it because ultimately when you start getting effects back from ILM, they’ve been handed the LOG plates, the uncorrected plates, When you get in the visual effect, it doesn’t have the same color correction as the footage. Joe has corrected our dailies, so that look doesn’t exist anywhere. So you’re chasing a color correction and it’s a very time consuming pain in the butt.

So on our next project, the editing system will have the LOG files only. No color correction. We will add the LUT and the CDL (color decision list) not in the timeline, but through metadata, so when you’re color correcting, your color correcting through the LUT and through the CDL. So when you get the VFX in from ILM, you just put it in the timeline with the same LUT. We were receiving 20 or 30 shots every couple of days, so that was a lot of work to have to do manually.

HULLFISH: There’s a scene in the movie during the bar scene where Donut goes out to talk on the street and in the middle of that conversation, you cut back inside the bar for a moment — kind of through a window. (We are conducting the interview on Skype and I can see Billy makes a face.) What was that face for?

Director Joseph Kosinski on the set of Columbia Pictures’ ONLY THE BRAVE.

FOX: I always had a problem with that. I know it’s done all the time in other movies. But what do you do with the music? What do you do with the sound? I’m too close to it. For me, it just doesn’t feel real.

HULLFISH: So the purpose of the shots back into the bar was to see that there’s parallel action inside the bar with Jennifer Connelly that we need to understand when we come back later?

FOX: Yes. It was setting up that when Miles and Josh come back into the bar, Jennifer would be dancing with Steinbreck. It also helps you see that she’s worrying about her husband. It also helps to set up the scene in the car right after. It just keeps her alive. I completely get the need for it. For me it bumps a little.

HULLFISH: I’m not trying to point out a bump, but as a fellow editor, it was a place where I just thought that there must have been a discussion between you and the director or whether that was scripted. And if it was scripted, sometimes you have some latitude to decide exactly where in the scene it goes — though it has to be in a pretty linear story order.

FOX: That was scripted. Originally there were actually two shots back to the bar and we simplified it a bit.

HULLFISH: I don’t want to do any spoilers, so I won’t mention the reason or situation, but there’s some really powerful cross cutting when Donut is listening to his crew over the radio, that must’ve been very difficult and complicated: When to cut to him. When to cut back to the crew.

FOX: For example, when he hears the news of the crew going into the tents, he drops his head and I had that drop of the head in another place. There was some discussion of where exactly to put it. Hearing it through his eyes. The strange thing is that we have the real audio recordings from that real event. You can go on the internet and actually hear that radio call yourself. You can hear the dispatch guy saying, “We’ve got a plane coming around…it’s looking for you…” We built that whole thing based on the real deal.

At the BBQ at the Hotshots’ HQ, “Supe” Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin)

HULLFISH: You also have to deal with making the decision of the sound through the radio and the sound live from the people on the other side of the radio.

FOX: At a certain point, we couldn’t cut back any more. So from a certain point it all had to be on Donut. I looked at a lot of different coverage of Miles and it was most powerful to stay on him and not do a lot of cuts. Especially the last bit. I think the whole thing is 30 or 40 seconds and there might be one cut. From the original cut it changed a little, but it didn’t change a lot.

HULLFISH: Anything specifically that you want to talk about from a technical standpoint?

FOX: There were a couple of things. We used OpenDrive. Have you ever used that?

HULLFISH: No.

FOX: OpenDrive is an SSD RAID solution. My understanding is that it was developed through David Fincher’s company. I cut a lot of films right here in my house, so we put the OpenDrive in the guest room. It’s in a rack. All these solid state drives. 24 terabytes and it’s loud and it needs a lot of air-conditioning, so we had to bring in a special air-conditioner. It’s really fast. I’m not sure that in our particular case that we needed that kind of speed. We were just pushing around 2K files. Adobe just finished a movie called Six Below and they were editing in 6K Raw.

HULLFISH: That’s Vashi Nedomansky, right?

FOX: Yeah. He taught me Premiere right here. He came in on three separate Saturdays and we had a great time. It was fun. OpenDrive was really a cool device. You should look into it. It was a good solution. And NextLab was particularly great. They built special edit rooms for us over at Margarita Mix in Santa Monica. We edited here at my house while they were shooting, then we moved to Margarita mix for the director’s cut and on. Very nice facility five minutes from my house.

Brendan McDonough (Miles Teller) in Columbia Pictures’ ONLY THE BRAVE.

HULLFISH: Talk to me a little about your relationship with the director. You talked a little how you wanted to be able to sit down and discuss scene objectives but that never really happened.

FOX: I didn’t know Joe. My agent got me the interview. Oblivion is one of my wife’s and my favorite movies. We watch it all the time. We love the film. So I had an interview with Joe, and we hit it off. Joe is a very very mellow and incredibly bright guy. He likes that we don’t talk a lot about it because he wants me to just interpret it however I want to interpret it. I looked at the material in a different way. I came at it from a different angle. He likes to have a fresh eye on it. Fresh Perspective.

When you have an interview with somebody, discussing the film is only part of it. You may like that person and that person may like you, but you really don’t know their sensibilities until you start working together. In Joe’s case, we locked in pretty good. We’d both see something on the screen and I could see his head turn. And I’d just say, “Yeah. See it. Got it.” We wouldn’t even have to write down a note. Life would be good if I just kept working with Joe. Sometimes directors can be complicated. Mostly I’ve worked with really nice, bright, mellow guys.

HULLFISH: What was your method of collaborating during the director’s cut?

FOX: We didn’t look at individual scenes. We pretty much would go over a reel. We would look at a large chunk of the film. I would take notes and then he would just take off. His office was next door and he’d just go there and do other stuff. Sometimes while I worked, he would go re-examine dailies. And he would come in with a list of takes he wanted to try. Sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t. Mostly it would. But I would work on my own for a while, then call him and say, “Ready for you. Come on back.” That was kind of the groove.

HULLFISH: Tell me your approach to a scene.

FOX: For me it’s important to have a point of view. I can’t cut a scene without having an understanding of what the scene is about. What’s the key objective? – even though it may be my interpreted key objective. What do we want to communicate or what do we want to say here? I can’t just cut something even if I have the script in front of me and there’s the dialogue. It has to be grounded in something.

As much as I absolutely love editing, the one thing I don’t love is building a first cut. For me I don’t spend too much time killing myself trying to find the right take. I look at a couple takes and if I can find one with no real mistakes and it’s good, I just do it, because at this point all I’m trying to do is build a scene with a beginning, a middle and an end. It’s there. It’s the whole body.

At that moment, whenever I edit that last chunk in, everything changes. I start molding. And I start working with the footage and I start listening to the dialogue and working with the energies. Where people are looking. Everything has to be very carefully motivated.

Once it’s feeling better’ish, I go back into dailies again. I start re-looking at raw footage and they take on a whole new color. I start seeing real subtleties. Little performances. Little things that I didn’t really see before. Now I see them because I’m now into the dynamics of the scene.

There was a day where I would spend a tremendous amount of time doing what I call a performance cut. I would string out every single line from every take and every setup. I don’t do that anymore. Very time consuming to do it. And I just feel that this process works better. I just mold it into the refined takes.

What I also do is I create a thing called my Golden Moments cut, which is not really performance-based. It’s a templated sequence I have which has leader. Everything is based on leader. Everything works with leader for me because it’s all timing and it’s all musical. And the leader sets up the rhythm. So everything I do, every little sequence or reel has its leader at the top because it sets me up, but I’ll do a Golden Moments where I have these little two second slates that say, one two three four, scattered onto the sequence. Then I go back and I start looking at the dailies. And I look for great moments. I see a great little thing and I see that it’s supposed to be at the end so I’ll move it all the way down to number 9. Or this is for the beginning so I’ll move it to number one. I find all these little little teeny tiny things that I would love to get into this cut. Maybe there’s 20 things in there or 30 things.

Now I try and see what I can put into the cut. And the thing I find fascinating is that these are all GREAT moments, but when I try to fit them into the cut, I’ll find that it’s stronger just to be on the person. And of the 30 really good moments that I’ve put in my Golden Moments, I’m lucky if I put in five. I couldn’t find a home for them. “Oh my God! That’s such an amazing shot!” Great. Let’s find a home for it.” And then the director sees why it’s not in. Sometimes you can see it in another editor’s work where they forced in all of the great little moments. I think the key thing that makes a really good editor is not what you edit in, but it’s what you leave out.

HULLFISH: I would worry about showing that Golden Selects reel to the director because they probably want to see all those shots in.

FOX: Oh, and they do. And I let them try. “Come on. Let’s do it together. Let’s try this one. Let’s try to put it in.” And they see, “Oh, right. You’d have to cut away from this shot and it’s so much stronger to just stay on that person.” So it’s a process. It’s a process of fine tuning. I work on it. I go off and do some sound. I can feel it’s getting closer and it’s getting closer. And the thing that’s the greatest is that you take one edit, one little thing and you trim it by one frame and the whole scene just goes (BOOM). It’s no longer a series of shots, it’s a window of reality. I keep drilling on it until I get to that place.

HULLFISH: That takes some faith in your skills that you can just knock out an initial cut that may not be great, but to understand that it’s a process and that eventually you will get it there. But not to be so discouraged by the first pass… to have patience and to understand that the first cut is only part of the process. Sometimes if you let an assistant cut a scene, they kind of freak out about those early decisions. But you have to realize that that first cut is only one small step in a larger process.

FOX: Exactly. It’s part of the magic When you do your job well, it’s the invisible art. It just looks natural. It looks like nothing.

HULLFISH: So many people think that that invisibility happens the first time you put a scene together.

FOX: Wouldn’t that be nice. I am incredibly neurotic in that — even down to cutting a oner — I start to think, “This is the scene I won’t be able to figure out.” But even at the rough cut stage when I see that it’s not pretty at all, there’s something in there, where I say to myself, “This scene will work. I know I can get it there. This will be great.”

HULLFISH: I saw a quote from the fantastic Carol Littleton saying the same thing. That she’s never sure that she’s going to be able to get some scene done… but of course she does. Thank you so much for your time and I really appreciate your generosity and wisdom. Have a great time with your project.

FOX: Thank you. Bye bye.

To read more interviews in the Art of the Cut series, check out THIS LINK and follow me on Twitter @stevehullfish

The first 50 interviews in the series provided the material for the book, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV Editors.” This is a unique book that breaks down interviews with many of the world’s best editors and organizes it into a virtual roundtable discussion centering on the topics editors care about. It is a powerful tool for experienced and aspiring editors alike. Cinemontage and CinemaEditor magazine both gave it rave reviews. No other book provides the breadth of opinion and experience. Combined, the editors featured in the book have edited for over 1,000 years on many of the most iconic, critically acclaimed and biggest box office hits in the history of cinema.

The post ART OF THE CUT with Billy Fox, ACE on “Only the Brave” appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

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davidegbert · 7 years ago

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Samsung Galaxy S8 Review: To infinity and beyond?

For the last two weeks I’ve been approached by at least 10 people for the same two questions that always came together. The first was: Oh, Is that the new Galaxy? And the second: Well, but does it explode? This proves how much of a footprint Samsung owns in the smartphone market, where people associate the name Galaxy more to a phone than to the Milky Way, and where one mistake has only made the brand even more viral.

Marketing is a powerful thing. 2017 has served to show that even negative publicity is still publicity. It’s still a brand making headlines, and only helping it generate awareness in the consumer space. If you thought the mistakes made with the Galaxy Note 7 were going to cripple Samsung, think again. The Samsung Galaxy S8 has been met with record-breaking results; something Samsung hadn’t been able to achieve since the Galaxy S IV.

Marketing can go both ways though. The reason why Samsung took so long to re-gain the popularity it had with the Galaxy S IV is mainly because consumers realized that good marketing doesn’t necessarily mean you’re buying a great product. People soon realized that most of what made that phone special were just a ton of gimmicks you would never really use, and a cumbersome experience can do a brand worse than bad publicity.

Cue in the Galaxy S8. This is probably the biggest departure Samsung has ever made from the typical Galaxy we knew. Is it just another marketing stunt, or are you really paying more for a better product? Read our full Galaxy S8 review to learn more.

Hardware

For details on the larger variant, make sure you tune in to Juan’s separate coverage of the Galaxy S8+. This Galaxy S8 review is focused on my time using the regular S8. I actually received both units at the same time, but decided to review the smaller variant for a few important reasons.

The first is ergonomics. Sure, the Galaxy S8+ is actually smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus I was using before it, but some of Samsung’s design choices make it more cumbersome to use, even for my larger-than-average hands. Also, because products like the LG G6 did a great job in getting me to sip on that taller-display-on-a-small-phone Kool-Aid. I find the idea of a larger display over a smaller chassis to be genius. Sure it’s relatively the same surface area as other regular-sized phones if you do the math on surface area, but a narrower body is easier to hold and operate with one hand.

The second reason is because with the exception of a smaller battery, you’re pretty much getting the same phone. Samsung doesn’t force you to buy a larger phone in order to get its best features, something which other competitors should follow.

Focusing on build, Samsung made some interesting changes. The metal trim is now protected by a glossy coating that remains intact even after three drops onto tile. The buttons continue to be just as clicky, and color options like the Orchid Gray model that I chose can handle fingerprints and smudges very well. And even if many aren’t fans of the curves all around, they contribute in providing that surreal feeling of holding a large phone that feels small in the hand.

Those curves also contribute in creating what Samsung calls its Infinity Display. This is probably one of the best displays of the year given its blend of rounded corners, curved edges, and Super AMOLED technology. Samsung also added its mDNIe technology to this display, making it capable of playing back HDR video. At 5.8-inches diagonal, it nearly kills the bezel at a whopping 83% screen to body ratio, and with palm rejection being addressed fully in this new model. The screen is capable of Quad HD+ resolution, but is versatile enough to scale to 1080p+ or 720p+ to help with power efficiency. This is proof that the display spec race is over. I’ve tested this phone at 1080p+ for all my review period, and you know what? It’s all you need.

Buried inside we’ve got some of the best specifications in the market thanks to a either a Snapdragon 835 or Exynos 8895, in addition to 4 gigs of RAM, and base storage of 64GB that’s expandable. You also continue to enjoy the benefits of IP68 water and dust resistance, fast and wireless charging, a 3000 mAh battery, and new toys like Bluetooth 5.0 for those that want to stream music to two pairs of headphones at a time.

Software

To blend with the elegance of the hardware, we have Samsung Experience UX 8.1. Those of you who fell in love with the software that came on the Galaxy Note 7 will be delighted here. The company continues its trend of minimalism in absolutely every detail, and as much as I’m not a fan of Android skins, this one falls under my short list of exceptions.

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This user interface is capable of a ton of unique tricks that aren’t enabled out of the box, as Samsung continues to tune-down its approach to software. I’d suggest you watch my 24 hours video for more details on the full list of what this UI can do in a unique way.

My final thoughts are that I’m really liking Samsung’s attention to detail in the basics. The company’s Always On display is now more robust with notification icons and a quick way to react with them.

If you need a quick short cut to anything, it’s just a swipe away from the edge, and I’m shocked over how much I use this now. I’m also a big fan of the hidden home button, and little things like being able to swap the order of the navigation buttons. One of my favorites continues to be Secure Folder to help me protect information, in addition to having a second copy of apps in case you have multiple accounts.

Concerns for a taller display were also considered. I continuously rely in touching the home button three times for enhanced one handed use, though you can also choose to activate this from sliding from the bottom. And as for scaling, I’m surprised at how fast third party apps are adapting, with important services like YouTube already enhanced for it, even if the content won’t always do so for obvious reasons. One thing I notice is that the UI is smart enough to detect when content is built for it and automatically adjusts, whereas competitors like the G6 still don’t.

Camera

And as for the Camera, let’s just say that by now we all know that a Galaxy is a Galaxy. Juan’s real camera review is one of the most extensive he’s ever done, and for great reasons. This continues to be one of the cameras to beat, even if most of the enhancements are in image processing compared to last year’s model.

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Double click that power button and enjoy some of the best photos a smartphone can take with amazing color saturation and detail. Just like last year my advice remains to just take the shot.

Even when you see a grainy view finder at night, let the camera show its prowess when you see that final shot. Video is also one of this phone’s high points thanks to great stabilization from the primary sensor…

The selfie shooter got a bump in megapixels, which I’m sure is great for fans of it,.. But I’m honestly annoyed at the crop that Samsung has adopted for video. The field of view has become just as bad as with the iPhone, and I’m hoping they fix that.

Performance

Other features like performance can be delightful for the most part given the power of this 10nm processor. Games are surely benefited by this, with no lag or stutter to be seen, no matter what title I play. The only thing is that I can’t really call this phone the fastest performer out there. Once you load up the launcher with your stuff, and you start using it as a normal power user would, you’ll notice that the UI is quite the RAM hog. The result is mixed performance, with minor stutters when moving around certain menu items.

Bixby is seriously one of those features I wish Samsung would’ve waited to launch. Pressing the button sometimes does nothing, and even so it takes forever to launch. It also slows down the launcher, so take my advice: Pinch within the home screen, swipe to Hello Bixby and switch it off from the launcher, and just call on it from the button if you ever desire to. Bixby vision is a neat trick, but I sometimes find it quicker to simply search for a product than to have to wait for Bixby to react. This is sadly a half-baked mess that reminds me of the old Samsung full of gimmicks.

I’d say this phone could really use Android 7.1 ASAP, and not just for UI improvements, but also for power efficiency. A 3000 mAh battery is small for a display this large, with cases where I rarely reach a full day of moderate use, and where the 7.1 enhancements could really come in handy.

Cool are things like the insane amount of ways you can unlock this phone, with the Iris Scanner topping my list of favorites given its speed, and the fact that it even works through sunglasses. If the sun is too bright, you have the oddly placed fingerprint scanner to assist. Over time I’ve become used to its placement, but I do recommend using a case in order for the hump to assist you in finding it. This is another of the reasons I moved away from the Galaxy S8+ as you actually need to adjust the way you hold the phone to reach it.

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A major and welcomed improvement comes at the hand of audio for the most part. Yes, you will still hate the placement of the speakers, but I fully agree with Juan’s Real Audio review in that this phone made dramatic improvements to headphone audio, and I even notice a louder kick when using it for phone calls.

Pricing and availability

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is not what I’d call an affordable phone, but this is the first time I’ll ever say you’re actually getting more for your money. At its initial price of $729, you get a great phone that starts at 64GB of storage, and a good pair of headphones tuned by AKG. The headphones alone are $600, and most competing devices start at just 32GB of storage.

Conclusion

To conclude our Galaxy S8 review: there is a lot of good to be said about the “New Galaxy,” as everyone calls it. Those of you that were left nostalgic by the beauty of the Note 7 will be happy to see even more beauty shown off here. There is a lot of genius being placed on this design… So much so that I highly suggest that you go to a store and hold one to fully understand what I mean.

The only challenge continues to be the same we’ve always dealt with Samsung. Beautiful software should not be an excuse for stutters, or the slow speed at which Galaxy phones get updated to newer versions of Android. I’m not calling these deal breakers, but really just problems that are getting old for a phone this expensive.

Would I recommend the Galaxy S8? Sure! My minor list of complaints can be fixed with an update. This design and form factor are definitely the future for smartphones. A future which you can already access today.

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jkwdesigns · 8 years ago

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Scroll down to the end of this post to download the Goonies party printables: Hey You Guys banner, cupcake toppers, water bottle labels, and movie quote signs.

Despite trying/wanting/praying to get my life organized and start off 2017 with grace and efficiency, I stumbled into February in a state of panic because Valentine’s Day parties and treats and crafts for 3 kids AND all 3 kids’ birthdays within a 5 day period on the middle of February. 😫 Somehow, I managed to pull it all off without DYING or killing anyone, although once all the madness was over, I did spend an entire day on the couch watching mindless television (AKA Law and Order marathon).

So with 2 boys turning 8 and a little girl turning 5, trying to think of a theme that would appease all 3 kids was my first challenge. The boys are all about Legos and Star Wars and the Avengers, while my daughter is obsessed with My Little Pony and (unfortunately) Shopkins. However, they miraculously agreed on a Goonies themed party because GOOOOONIES!!! That, and my daughter adores Cyndi Lauper (because who doesn’t), and she loves the Good Enough music video at the end of the movie. ;-)

As with all birthday parties, invitations are key! They get (kids and parents) excited for the party, and they set the stage for what’s to come. A couple years ago with the boys’ 6th birthday party, the lightsaber invitations were such a huge hit with the kids. Several of the kids brought their lightsaber invitations to the party with them.

I would have loved to create a rolled up treasure map for the invitation, but that would have been difficult to send out in the mail. Luckily, the design of the treasure map used in the movie is actually meant to be folded, so here’s what I put together:

These fit perfectly in a 5×7 invitation envelope, so it was ideal for mailing. I would have loved to add some music notes to the top of the back of the map, but with irregular shape of the map, I thought it would be too much work to figure out the placement for double sided printing. My handy dandy Silhouette Cameo cut the invitations to shape so I didn’t have to sit and hand-cut each of them like I did back in the day with the lightsaber invitations.

With the invitations sent out, I had several weeks to plan the party, but in the meantime, I also had to make 3 Valentine’s mailboxes, 78 classroom Valentine’s cards/goodies, plus the usual 592 loads of laundry/week and the CONSTANT EATING!!! (It really does feel like meal prep is an endless cycle in this house!)

So pretty much the week before Valentine’s Day and birthday party, I had a panic attack and had to crank out all the decorations, the party favors, and the treats. We kept food and party activity simple by calling it a “movie night” party and popping in the blu-ray to (hopefully) appease the children, and serving up hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner. Luckily, my brother-in-law is our resident grill master, and he had no problems with manning the grill during the party.

As a side note, I rewatched Goonies a few weeks ago to get some inspiration for the party, and I was worried that there was too much cursing and general inappropriateness for 5 and 8 year olds, but my husband told me I was overthinking (as per usual). He insisted that pretty much every parent had seen the movie as a kid, and if they didn’t think the movie was appropriate, they wouldn’t let their kid come anyway, so I didn’t need to worry. And (as per usual), he was right. No one said a thing, and parents were so engrossed in the movie themselves that I think they may have forgotten that they had even brought their kids to the party! By the end of the evening as the movie ended, the parents and my boys were pretty much the only people still staring at the TV. Most of the other kids had run off to play, which was fine–as long as everyone had a good time!

Here’s how the party worked out:

I just happened to have a few decorative skulls laying around from an unfinished craft project, so those worked perfectly for decor. I cut an eyepatch out of black felt for One-Eyed Willie and threw on a kid’s pirate costume hat. For other table decor items, I used some copper Moscow Mule mugs that I already had and some silver wine goblets that I picked up at Salvation Army for $2. I also purchased some beads from Oriental Trading Company, but I should have just gone to Dollar Tree because I found better beads for way cheaper ($1). Lesson learned. I also happened to have a copper pot (Chester Copperpot, get it? Get it? Hahaha!) that I put on the table as well.

Also, with this party, I decided to save some money by not ordering a cake. I was spoiled when we lived in Korea because there were some amazingly talented bakers/cake decorators/military spouses who baked out of their homes and offered beautiful artistic creations for very affordable prices. As I discovered, the same in not the case anymore! A single-layer half sheet cake with some plastic pirate decorations was going to run me at least $45, and quite honestly, I don’t think I would have been happy after the amazing cakes the kids had in Korea. My solution was to bake a billion cupcakes! It worked out for us because each of the kids wanted different flavors, and as a parent, I actually prefer cupcakes because they’re small. Cupcakes are exceedingly easy to bake and decorate, especially if you use cupcake toppers, so that worked out well for me. I baked all the cupcakes the night before the party, then whipped up the icing and decorated them just before the party started.

I recently discovered a recipe for a whipped cream cheese icing, and being a lover of cream cheese icing in general, I had to try it out. It is simply DIVINE. It whipped up beautifully, and despite being a bit concerned that the icing wouldn’t hold its shape if it sat at room temperature for too long, the heavy whipping cream did its job.

Since we didn’t have a cake, I purchased 3 small cake stands from Target so each of the kids could have their own little stand of cupcakes. When it cake time to sing them happy birthday, the kids each had their own stand with the appropriate number of candles to blow out. Also, as party favors, I made each of the kids a One-Eyed Willie t-shirt that they received when they arrived. Most of the party-goers were excited about their pirate shirts. There were a couple of hold-outs, but it was pretty cute to see all the kids running around with the same shirt on.

In addition to the cupcakes, I made Rocky Road treats (just marshmallows dipped in melted chocolate, then dipped in crushed walnuts), and I had some Baby Ruth bars, Hershey’s Gold Nuggets, and chocolate gold coins to round out the treat table.

I had also intended to make pirate ships with food boats filled with popcorn for the movie night portion of the party, but I had some logistical issues with getting the sails to stand upright in the food boat. The night before the party, I figured it would take far more time than I had to make each individual boat, so sadly I had to let go of that one.

And that just about wraps up the decorative elements of the party! Oh wait… I also decorated myself! ;-) HEY YOU GUYS!!!

Various printables are available here to download and print for free for your PERSONAL USE ONLY. Click on the thumbnail to open the high resolution image. Right-click the high-res image to download.

PRINTING TIPS:

Use 110lb card stock for signs, banners, cupcake toppers, and thank you cards.

For the water bottle labels, regular printer paper or everyday quality photo paper will work. However, it’s best to not pre-chill your water bottles or the condensation from the bottles being set at room temperature will ruin the ink and paper.

For the water cup stickers, use sticker paper.

Set your printer to “Letter Borderless” and Best Quality. Images should print at 100% scale.

For best results, use a 2 inch circle punch for the Rocky Road toppers and the Goonies Never Say Die toppers. Use a 2.5 inch circle punch for the It’s Wet Ain’t It stickers. A paper trimmer is recommended for the straight edges of the banner, the quote signs, and the thank you card.

Disclosure: This post contains links to products on amazon.com. These are products that I purchased and used for my own projects with no compensation. However, if you click on the link and purchase the product, I will receive a small fee from Amazon.com. * * * * * * * * * jkwdesigns.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. * * * * * * * * *

Free Printables: Goonies Themed Birthday Party Scroll down to the end of this post to download the Goonies party printables: Hey You Guys banner, cupcake toppers, water bottle labels, and movie quote signs.

#birthday party #free printables #goonies #goonies birthday party #goonies party #hey you guys #kids birthday #party decorations

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thebestsellingreviews · 8 years ago

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Huawei Honor 6 Plus with Featured Review

New Post has been published on http://thebestsellingreviews.com/huawei-honor-6-plus-featured-review/

Huawei Honor 6 Plus with Featured Review

Huawei’s successful Honor series received a handful of additions to its repertoire last year including the Honor 6 and Honor 6 Plus. In the same month Huawei also launched the Honor 6 Plus, which features a nearly identical build and spec sheet as the Honor 6, just in a larger body.

Specs

The Huawei Honor 6 Plus doesn’t set the bar for any kind of bleeding edge specs, but it’s no slouch either. Performance wise the Honor 6 Plus contends with most high-end phones that came out in 2014, with only later entries like the Galaxy Note 4 and Nexus 6 pulling ahead. Powered by Huawei’s own Kirin 925 Octo-core processor, which is a slight bump up from the Kirin 920 in the Honor 6, as well as a new high-end standard 3GB and a larger 5.5-inch screen over the Honor 6, this phone is near the cream of the crop.

5.5-inch 1080p IPS LCD

HiSilicon Kirin 925 Octo-Core CPU (1.8GHz Cortex-A15 Quad-core, 1.3GHZ Cortex-A7 Quad-core)

Mali-T628 MP6 GPU

3 GB of RAM

16/32GB internal storage, microSD card support

3600 mAh Li-Po battery

Android 4.4.2, Emotion UI 3.0 Skin

Dual 8MP rear-facing cameras, Dual-LED flash

8MP front-facing camera

Dual-SIM support

150.5mm tall, 75.7mm wide, 7.5mm thin

165g

The Honor 6 Plus supports a wide range of spectrum that works throughout the world, but only up to 3G HSPA in most countries that aren’t China. If your country’s LTE bands are on the list and your carrier uses the technology, the Honor 6 Plus supports LTE Cat-6 Carrier Aggregation.

2G: GSM 900/1800/1900MHz

3G: HSPA 850/900/1900/2100MHz

4G: LTE 1800/2100/2600MHz (Band 1, 3, 7, 38, 39, 40, 41)

Display

The display on the Honor 6 was already one of the better 1080p LCD displays I’ve ever seen, but the one packed in the Honor 6 Plus is even better. Ghosting is almost non-existent and isn’t noticeable in anything I tried, which is a marked improvement over the other LCD’s out there I’ve seen with good black levels. The only issue here are the viewing angles, where light bleed from the sides of the device become obvious as you tilt the screen, but are completely unnoticeable when viewing straight on.

Hardware and Build

The build quality of the Honor 6 Plus feels largely the same as the Honor 6 before it, however this time around Huawei actually used metal for the sides of the device instead of the faux brushed-metal looking plastic. This results in a higher quality feeling device, especially when it’s cooler and you can feel the cold metal against the sides of your hands. The back is the same shiny plastic glass material and the same pattern underneath as the Honor 6 has, which gives it a bit of an elegant appearance. Huawei kept the unique 3-sided trim around the device where both sides and the top of the phone feature a metal trim, but the bottom is a smooth rounded plastic.

Looking at the right side of the device you’ll find both volume rocker closest to the top of the device, the power button just under that, and both SIM card trays below the power button. What’s really cool that Huawei did here was make two different sized SIM tray slots, so one fits a micro SIM and one fits a nano SIM. On the top side of the device you’ll find an RF blaster for remote control of TV’s and other RF-controlled devices, with a noise-canceling mic to the left and a 3.5mm headset jack to the right. The bottom side of the phone has a microUSB port nestled right in the middle of the device with another noise-cancelling mic to its left.

Moving onto the face of the device you’ll find no physical buttons at all, as the screen takes up the vast majority of the face. Above the screen you’ll find the earpiece with the proximity and light sensors above it, and the 8mp front-facing camera to the left of the earpiece. The back of the phone you’ll see the speaker on the bottom left, which features the same vertical dotted pattern as on the Honor 6. The top left of the device holds something special, as the dual-LED flash sits alongside a dual-8MP camera setup.

Performance and Memory

Just as you would expect from a high-end Android device the Huawei Honor 6 Plus breezes through apps without issue. Huawei’s EmotionUI is a sleek and powerful Android skin that’s got plenty of features and a low overhead, ensuring that your phone won’t choke on any performance-intensive task such as gaming, HD video or multitasking. Benchmarks like AnTuTu show it at the top of its game, competing with the likes of the Xiaomi Mi4, OnePlus One and Meizu MX4 Pro without using the same chipset. Gaming performance is phenomenal and handled everything I threw at it with ease. The 1080p display delivers sharp, crisp visuals and the framerate never let me down even in demanding moments on visually intensive games.

Multitasking was just as much a joy to use as the rest of the phone. Huawei uses a Recents button to make multitasking quick and easy, so bringing up the list of recently used and currently running apps is just a single software button press away. Instead of the standard virtually scrolling list of apps with thumbnails Huawei uses a paginated interface that shows 4 large thumbnails of open apps on the screen, arranged in each of the four corners of the device. Swiping left or right moves between pages, while swiping down locks and app in memory and swiping up closes the app. This is a fantastic layout that’s different from stock Android but doesn’t change things in a negative way as Xiaomi’s MIUI does with its awful small row of icons. Switching between apps was an instant affair, only taking any length of time because of the transition animations between windows. I never saw any redraw or other symptom of poor RAM management the way I’ve seen on some other Android skins. This means you won’t have to wait for the page to reload in the browser every time you reopen the app, as it stays in memory like it’s supposed to instead of being cleared out all the time.

Battery Life

Battery life was nothing short of spectacular in my testing. With a 3,600mAh battery the Honor 6 Plus features a larger battery than the vast majority of phablets out there, and with a screen resolution of 1080p you’re absolutely guaranteed to get better battery life than with the available line of Quad-HD screen phones out there. There was nothing I could do in normal use to kill the battery on the phone, from streaming music all day, watching YouTube videos, keeping the brightness on max and using the phone for chatting on Hangouts all day. This thing just wouldn’t die, and that’s a great thing. I’d wager you could easily get a day and a half out of the battery in any normal scenario, and Huawei also provides an ultra power saving mode to keep your battery lasting for days and days. In this ultra power saving mode only calls, messages and access to contacts will be available, meaning Huawei’s integrated communications app is the only app able to be running. This makes your smartphone not so smart, but it ensures that you won’t be stranded in situations where you absolutely cannot have your phone’s battery die.

Software

EmotionUI 3.0 is a bold new step for Huawei, and one in the right direction in nearly every facet of the OS. It takes Android 4.4 KitKat’s appearance and turns it almost all white, with thin-lined teal icons gracing the notification bar and other areas of the OS. There’s definitely some iOS 7/8 influence here but it looks much more like Huawei’s own creation rather than just a clone or a good impression of what Apple is trying to do with its OS. The biggest defining software difference between the Honor 6 and Honor 6 Plus is the inclusion of screen-off gestures. Huawei now lets you double tap to wake the device as many phones since the LG G2’s debuted the feature. Within the options menu under gesture controls you’ll find the screen-off gestures setting, which enables you to launch any app by drawing the letter c, e, m or w on the screen even while the phone is locked and the screen is off. This is a level of convenience that’s easily overlooked but one that’s not easily let go once you start using it.

Sound

As can be expected from a single-back facing speaker, the sound output from the physical speaker on the Honor 6 Plus leaves a lot to be desired. Volume was lower than I would have liked in every application, from music to using the loudspeaker on the phone app. I found it impossible to use the loudspeaker when in a moving car, especially on the highway, where the volume was just too low to hear the person on the other end of the line. There’s no audible distortion from the speaker when the volume is all the way up but that’s not really saying anything given the overall low volume present from the speaker.

Audio output from the 3.5mm headset jack

Camera

One of the most unique features on the Huawei Honor 6 Plus is the camera, as the back of the phone has not one but two 8 megapixel cameras. This is a similar setup to what HTC did with the One M8 in the Spring of 2014, except instead of having one fairly low resolution Ultrapixel camera and a super low resolution Duo camera, Huawei features two full-quality 8MP shooters nestled right next to eachother. HTC branded its sensor the Ultrapixel camera because the physical pixels were 2 microns in size, which is nearly double the 1.1 micron pixel size of most sensors in smartphones nowadays. Huawei sort of follows this by creating a 1.98 micron “effective” pixel size, meaning both cameras are somewhere in the range of 1 micron pixels, but combining the image of both produces one that’s roughly the equivalent of the quality you would see out of a sensor with 1.98 micron pixels.

If all of this tech talk bores you, just remember this: the bigger the pixels the more light is allowed to enter the sensor, meaning low light photos will look better than on phones with smaller pixel sizes. Combining both images results in a 13 megapixel image in the end rather than an 8mp or a 16mp one. This gives you the best of both worlds, with an effective resolution higher than a single 8mp sensor but without the noise that a smaller 16mp sensor would bring. Overall I found the pictures taken with the Honor 6 Plus to be superior to most 13 megapixel shooters out there, with less noise, better color accuracy and almost no need to use those nasty denoise filters we’ve become so used to that make pictures muddy and unusable at large sizes.

Huawei also features a couple of interesting depth tricks that use the secondary camera to isolate objects and allow you to not only apply filters to the foreground or background of an image, but also to refocus after taking the picture. Using what’s called “Wide aperature” mode on the camera takes an 8mp shot with only a second or two of processing time in between. Because of this processing time wide aperature mode isn’t going to be good in every situation, especially one with lots of movement, but it gives you the freedom of more post-processing options than you would normally have with a picture taken from auto mode. After taking the shot you can select where the focus should be in the picture and adjust the virtual aperature of the lens, meaning the objects not immediately in focus will either become more or less blurred as you increase or decrease the aperature. You can also apply filters here such as making the subject in focus colorful while tinting the rest of the shot in black & white, or applying a pencil sketch filter to the unfocused part of the shot.

HDR photos are extremely quick to take, and while it obviously doesn’t use an instant on-sensor HDR method it does produce a full 13mp resolution image. There’s a bit more noise going on here than I would like to see in this mode, which unfortunately means the denoise filter goes into overdrive in lower light situations. This makes low light HDR very difficult to use as the images get muddy and details fade away. In strong lighting situations though the HDR produced some phenomenal results, taking near-instant shots with excellent color accuracy, great shadow balance and overall natural looking lighting without haloing or other common HDR imaging artifacts.

Low light shots are generally fantastic so long as you’re not in areas that are too dark. For these areas you need to switch from auto mode to Super Night mode, which uses both cameras to hold the shutter open longer and grab more light, then stitches the photos together in an attempt to make a less blurry photo. I found that letting it automatically choose these settings was usually a bad idea, as it held the shutter open a little too long and always resulted in a blurry photo. In this mode there are quick options for changing ISO and shutter speed right on screen, so dropping that shutter speed to something more manageable like 1/2 or 1 second fixed my problem and produced absolutely stellar low light photos. Just don’t move when taking these or try to capture anything moving as it’ll come out blurry. Check out the gallery below for a smattering of different shots.

Conclusion

Network support in the US remains a low point for the Honor 6 Plus, but unlike the Honor 6 I was at least able to get 3G HSPA connectivity out of the device. Beware if you’re planning on using this phone on T-Mobile’s network or one of its MVNO’s though, as it didn’t play well and I received not only a number of dropped calls but no MMS support whatsoever. If your carrier supports the bands here you’re going to get one of the finest wireless network experiences possible though, especially if LTE Category 6 Carrier Aggregation is supported in your region. At around sub $400 this high-end phablet is perfect competition against what’s already in the market, but I’m not entirely sure about what’s to come. The Spring 2015 lineup of phones is looking to be more killer than ever, and if the pricing is right on these new phones Huawei’s latest might not look quite as good as it does right at this moment.

#Honor 6 #Honor 6 Plus #Huawei #Huawei Honor 6 Plus

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lorrainecparker · 7 years ago

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Conventional Wisdom vs. Delivery Reality

We were fortunate to get in on the desktop editing and motion graphics revolutions at the very beginning. One of the ways we kept our ahead above water in those turbulent earlier years was by making sure we studied technical delivery issues, as both video and film’s requirements were so different than the way computers normally handled and displayed images.

You would think that by now, life would be easier: non-square-pixel D1 and DV video have all but gone away; delivery for theatrical release is almost an entirely digital rather than chemical process these days; heck, the computer itself is even one of the major delivery platforms.

Despite this, you could make the argument that it’s actually harder to know how to deliver content these days: Instead of one video standard per country or dense little handbook on how to handle film, now you have a lot more gray areas to navigate when deciding what you ultimately need to render to – be it your own content, or when helping guide a client through the modern media landscape. Here are a few of the issues we’ve found ourselves grappling with over the last few years:

Big Screen, or Small?

A lot of viewers see your content on a low-resolution mobile device. It’s easy to look at the statistics that say only a third of teen viewers (supposedly the most tech-savvy and mobile-friendly) are watching movies and television shows on their mobile devices. But that ignores the other media outlets they probably consumer more often: YouTube, Facebook, and more.

YouTube freely states that over half of their views come on mobile devices; well over 50% of Facebook users (and over 80% of their ad revenue) are mobile-centric. Just as another data point, Chris runs a video-heavy music-centric educational website, and over 70% of his visits are from screen resolutions smaller than a 1920×1080 HD video frame.

In short: While the headlines might be saying you need to create more 4k content, in reality delivering, say, 1280×720 might be more in line with the devices many or most of your consumers will be using.

Also, you really should consider making titles, lower thirds, and infographics larger and more legible that you might otherwise have thought. Just keep asking yourself: Would I be able to read this on my cell phone? If not, your client’s story or message won’t be getting properly conveyed to a large swath of their potential consumers. (Fun fact: Chris shoots 4k video but delivers 720p for his own content; he uses the extra pixels to allow him to re-frame shots to zoom in whenever possible, so the viewer can see more of what’s important – especially at lower resolutions.)

High Frame Rate, or Lower?

A lot of headlines were made and arguments started when Peter Jackson made the decision to shoot The Hobbit at 48 fps. Today some are experimenting with shooting theatrical material at 60 fps (progressive, not interlaced). Yet in the meantime, we shoot most of our material at 23.976 fps these days (and we used to advocate shooting at 30 fps progressive).

There are certainly technical reasons for using a higher frame rate: lower rates like 24 fps can strobe badly with fast motion and pans; higher frame rates like 48 fps are said by Peter Jackson and others to greatly reduce eye strain potentially caused by the 3D viewing experience. (Fun fact: Peter Jackson decided it was necessary to soften his second 48 fps feature to make it more filmic.)

And, there are certainly psychological reasons behind which frame rate you choose: We’ve seen demonstrations of the old theory that the brain treats content projected at ~48 fps and over (that includes interlaced “30” or “29.97” fps video, which in fact is projecting at 60 or 59.94 fps) as being more “real,” and content under that rate as being more “dreamlike.”

But the real reason why we’ve personally dropped down to a lower frame rate comes down to delivery: Much of the content we generate these days will be compressed and delivered streaming over the internet or a cell network. As hinted above, our material tends to have a lot of detail that we want the viewer to be able to read, so we want to use as much of the available bandwidth as possible on each frame to reduce the negative side effects of compression. (An alternative strategy would be keeping the data per frame the same, and using the lower frame rate to reduce the amount of bandwidth required to deliver your content, meaning streaming video fills the local buffer faster, data charges go down, etc.)

Full Frame, or Inset?

We’ve talked a lot in the past about preserving safe areas, shooting “protected” so important content doesn’t get cut off by the bezel of the screen, etc. The general assumption is that the move to LCD and LED TVs – where the image size does not change with the age of the set – was the first step toward not having to worry about safe areas any more, and the move to desktop and mobile consumption where the image is fully inside the bezel – maybe even with text around it – was the second blow that finally killed the safe area beast. Alas, not true.

For one, modern flatscreen TVs still “overscan” the image by default so that some of it is cut off by the monitor’s bezel – you have to go into their settings and try to find a usually hidden parameter to not overscan the image, and show you the entire frame. How many consumers do you think have done that? Yes, it’s true that the area cut off is much smaller than the old 5/10% recommendation for safe areas, but a couple percent of the image is still lost.

Second, an increasing amount of content created originally for the computer and mobile screen is also appearing on ordinary television sets. For example, YouTube has a Roku channel. YouTube has taken some steps to avoid unintended cropping in this scenario, yet there are still occasions where part of their user interface get cropped off by the bezel.

Although YouTube videos themselves are displayed without cropping on our Roku-enabled TV, some parts of the custom YouTube interface – such as the duration stamps for the thumbnails along the bottom of the screen – still get partially chopped off.

Similarly, online training juggernaut Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning also has a Roku channel, and is also shown in such settings as inflight video – both of which often includes TV-like safe area cropping. Our Roku-enabled smart TV seemed to take this into account, but on an older high-def TV with a standalone Roku box attached, any content that assumed a full-frame viewing experience – such as computer software training, with the typical layout of menu bar along the top, and software toolbars an edge such as the left – has issues with cropping when played back in a broadcast setting.

With normal TV cropping of a computer screen capture, the user can’t see which menu item was clicked to cause this menu to appear.

So as tempting as it may be to use the entire image frame – particularly if your delivery target is the desktop rather than the TV – know that you cannot completely control how and where your content will be viewed, so it might be better to play it…safe.

Start At The End

Do we have you in despair yet? There’s no need to give up hope; you just continue to need to be diligent. Our advice has always been: Before you start a project, ask how it’s going to end – find out what you ultimately need to deliver. Then base your workflow toward achieving that goal. You also have a chance to be a hero by thinking about the potential customer ahead of time, and suggesting to your client some potential alternatives to make sure their story or message gets across in the best possible light.

The post Conventional Wisdom vs. Delivery Reality appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

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