10 Most Innovative Concert Visuals ‘08

Chris Meyer | 01/06- 06:23 PM

I have few regrets in life, but one is that I’m yet to have the opportunity to design visuals for live concerts (helping on a couple of videos for the Las Vegas Fremont Street Experience is as close as I’ve come so far). U2’s Zoo TV concert video
remains a transformative experience for me; while Ultravox’s gray set plus colored lighting was one of biggest influences on me on how to colorize motion graphics in 3D.

If you’re also into seeing motion graphics on the big stage (not just the big screen), then I suggest you take a trip over to Accent Feeds’ 10 Most Innovative Concert Visuals of ‘08, including the likes of Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, Massive Attack, Madonna, Tool, Nine Inch Nails, and the best act you’ve never heard of: Etienne de Crecy. All come with videos, although they are of varying quality, ranging from hand-held audience shakeycam for Daft Punk to the professionally multicam edit for de Crecy (have patience; it gets more amazing the longer you go). Even if you have no interest in concert videos, there’s some great ideas in there for creating motion graphics in virtual environments.

Props to Rich Young’s AE Portal News, which turned me onto this. BTW, he also has a good round-up on tilt-shift photography, which has become rather hot recently.

moby gratis- film music

Adam Wilt | 10/25- 04:04 PM

LA-based FCP & Avid editor and bungee jumper Shane Ross posted this tidbit on his Little Frog in High Def blog: moby has released nearly 80 tracks for free use in non-profit / noncommercial films and videos, and he’ll license them for use in for-profit works, too.

If you’re a moby fan (as I am), it’s worth signing up just to listen. The clips average about two minutes running time, and range from quiet and contemplative piano pieces to lounge to spaghetti-western themes with a mobyesque twist to driving electronica (and probably more; I’ve been sitting here the last fifteen minutes listening, and I’ve only auditioned ten tracks or so). Some tracks have variants, like differing length cuts, or versions without drums. It’s all genuine moby; and if moby’s good enough for the likes of Miami Vice, Memento, Minority Report, three of the Bourne films (so far), Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and The Sopranoes, he’s good enough for you (but then, I may be biased, grin)!

Thanks for the music, moby! Thanks for the heads-up, Shane!

Time Stretching Music

steve martin | 10/16- 09:37 AM

Have you ever needed your music to fit a specific duration? In this practical tutorial Steve Martin will show you how to use Soundtrack Pro’s Time Stretch command to make your music obey.

Surround Patching

steve martin | 10/14- 10:18 AM

Soundtrack Pro 2 does surround mixing.  Final Cut Pro will gladly handle your 5.1 mix, but you need to know a few things about making your sequence output 6 discreet channels. In this tutorial, Steve Martin will show you the importance of the Match Audio Outputs command. 

TED Talk: The Truly Soft Side of Software

Chris Meyer | 09/19- 08:59 AM

The annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference is a place where Big Thinkers gather annually to inspire and be inspired. I’ve been going through their online archive of talks for my own amusement and education, and sharing with you ones I found to be particularly interesting.

Back in June, I highlighted Jakob Trollback’s talk on Rethinking the Music Video. This time around, I want to highlight a “music video” that’s considerably in the more abstract domain. In this presentation, Golan Levin discusses the custom performance software he writes which allows him to improvise music with accompanying visuals. We’re strictly in the experimental realm here (the soundtrack is 60s-era avant-garde electronic music - listen with your speakers on to annoy your cubemates), but sometimes, great inspiration comes from the very fringes of an art. Note: The visuals are initially very simplistic (the piece is titled “Scribble"), but become much more complex about 4:40 into the video.

Aside from Levin’s TED Talk, I strongly recommend you check out the Flong Interactive Art site (pictured above) which contains a number of interesting audiovisual works by Levin and his friends - there’s lots of cool interactive visual pieces on there.

Adobe CS4 Just Around the Corner

Richard Harrington | 09/14- 09:57 PM

Want to find out everything new in Adobe Creative Suite 4? Trust me… there’s some really cool things coming. Adobe has an invitation out to view their Web broadcast on September 23rd. But you do need to go to the sign-up page at www.adobe.com/go/somethingbrilliant.

By the way… I am going to be releasing something very special on the 23rd as well as a “thank you” to all my viewers. Be sure to stick around and keep an eye out. 

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