Information Tech and “The Black Shakes”
Yesterday, a friend noticed my not-very-smart phone, and asked me if I was going to “go to the iPhone or Android.” I explained that I had been an early adopter of the iPhone, and had stopped using it, because I observed that it did not make my life better or easier. I noticed that the conversation was actually a little awkward. In our culture, it seems, to reject smart phone technology is perceived as insulting to those who embrace it.
I keep thinking about that conversation with my friend. When did we become so personally attached to our gadgets, not as belongings, but as icons of a cultural mindset? When did dedication to the constant flow of information become something akin to religion?
The 1995 movie, “Johnny Mnnemonic” (loosely based on a William Gibson story of the same name), depicts a dystopian future world in which an epidemic called “The Black Shakes” (or, more formally, “Nerve Attenuation Syndrome” – NAS) has swept the industrialized world. In the story, NAS is a neurological disorder caused by the constant bombardment of electromagnetic radiation from computers and gadgets.
It has occurred to me that The Black Shakes are alive and well, albeit not in the exact form they were originally conceived. Although our brains are flooded by all sorts of electromagnetic radiation, it hasn’t yet had much of a measurable physical effect on the general population. However, the psychological impact of information overload is becoming clearer every day.
I’ve noticed this in myself. Even though I consider myself a fairly skeptical user of technology (“I got rid of my iPhone; I’m so evolved!”), I am unquestionably addicted to the constant stimulation of the Information Age. Even though I’ve “unsubscribed” from the majority of my Facebook friends, I still find myself checking the site multiple times per day. I used to get my email no more than once per hour. Now, I sometimes refresh my inbox manually, even though it automatically checks for new messages every two minutes. It’s hard for me to sit down and read a magazine or a book, but I can read text online for hours.
This is not good. It’s not good for me, and if you can relate to what I’ve described, it’s not good for you.
From time to time, some hipster suggests an information diet of one kind or another. I’ve tried them, and generally liked them, but I haven’t stuck with them. There’s so much “urgent” information to pay attention to. Economic meltdowns, nuclear meltdowns, political meltdowns … The whole world is imploding, and if I relinquish my front-row seat, I might be caught snoozing. Which is ironic, because it’s actually quite difficult for me to sleep, what with stressing about the collapse of our currency, the fallout from Fukushima, the creeping tide of tyranny in America, etc., etc.
R. Buckminster Fuller famously stated, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Along the same lines, Albert Einstein observed that, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” I think the cliché about “thinking outside the box” was a crude way of summarizing these elegant concepts. It is somewhat ironic that my generation, which was taught to think outside the box, has now found itself thinking inside smaller and smaller boxes: first computers, now phones. It is no surprise that, by thinking inside such tiny boxes, we have failed to solve the problems that confront us.
Lord knows, I’ve tried it I’ve written to Congressmen and Senators, I’ve petitioned, I’ve Tweeted, I’ve Facebooked, and I have not fixed the world. In fact, I haven’t made any impact whatsoever. All my anxiety, all the dopamine shots in my brain from the constant information stimulation, and to what end? I strongly suspect that, just like the government diverts money from the productive economy and uses it to create the illusion of constructive activity, all my endless worrying and gear-spinning has diverted my energy from more productive uses of my time and brainpower.
Look at what people can do when they actually think and make things, instead of just processing information: BFI Challenge 2012 Semi-Finalists … Everything from rural entrepreneurship to cheap, renewable energy. These marvelous efforts are ignored by the mass media, but they are happening. People are working successfully to make the world a better place. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am making a mid-year resolution to consciously stop the diversion of my energy into the constant processing of information. “Bucky” Fuller was right: we need to build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. I’m starting now.
Federal Failure on Fukushima
One of the only legitimate uses of Federal power is national defense. So why is our government completely failing to defend the nation against the clear and present danger of ongoing radioactive fallout from Fukushima? The fact that the Fukushima reactors have been continuously in a state of metdown for the last 13 months, dumping radioactive material into the air and the Pacific ocean should be the #1 story on the news every day. Instead, the mass media is silent. Only one U.S. Senator has visited the site, and he was so horrified by the danger that he immediately wrote letters to the Secretary of State and numerous other decision makers, all of whom have remained silent.
In an era in which U.S. forces are deployed around the world, ostensibly to protect our people from terrorist threats, including nuclear ones, every American citizens should be demanding immediate action by our government to work with the international community to contain the disaster in Fukushima, or at the very least to prevent the floating radioactive debris field from reaching the shores of California and Oregon.
Please sign this petition to let the U.S. Government know that we demand action!
Shooting the Anti- “Deliverance”
If you’ve spent much time in Georgia or the Carolinas, you’ve probably seen the iconic, smiling pig head logo of the Piggly Wiggly grocery stores. Piggly Wiggly is easily one of the most recognizable and beloved brands in the South. Piggly Wiggly is a huge part of the community, sponsoring virtually every local event, donating gift cards to causes, and generally being a genuinely good corporate citizen. Kids (and adults) wear “I Dig the Pig” T-Shirts, bumper stickers proclaim that drivers are “Big on the Pig,” and preschoolers in this part of the country recognize the Pig logo earlier than they recognize Mickey Mouse.
It’s been a great pleasure for me, over the years, to work on a variety of Piggly Wiggly projects. Over the past few months, I worked closely – as director, DP and editor – with the team at Rawle Murdy Associates (Piggly Wiggly’s ad agency) to create a two-minute TV commercial that was the centerpieces of the largest Pig branding campaign in a decade. Ten of us spent five days driving all around South Carolina and coastal Georgia, shooting farms, schools, stores and scenics that visually represented the way that “The Pig” is woven into the fabric of these communities.
What struck me, after we had finished this project, was how this commercial (brilliantly written and conceived by Daniel Russ, whose list of TV credits is better than most entire ad agencies) spoke not only about Piggly Wiggly in particular, but about the South in general. In the minds of many people, the American South is a wasteland of redneck trailer parks, festering swamps, impoverished ghettos, and banjo-playing inbreds. What I had the opportunity to do with this project was to show the REAL South.From the very beginning, Daniel insisted on filming only real people doing real things: no actors, and no fake smiles.
What you see here is as authentic as a TV commercial can be, and people have recognized it. A recent letter to the editor of the Charleston daily paper asked, “Am I the only person who tears up each time Piggly Wiggly’s new “local since forever” commercial is shown? It not only captures the true spirit of our community, but accurately reflects The Pig’s long history of commitment to the Lowcountry.”
In an industry that is often (and with reason) criticized for promoting unsustainable consumerism, the sexualization of children, public apathy, and the general decline of Western Civilization, it is nice to be reminded that there are good companies out there, and it is even nicer to be able to do work I can be proud of, promoting not only a good company, but a good message.
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A few technical notes: 95% of this was shot on the Panasonic AF-100. A few of the scenic shots were shot on the Canon 5D Mark II. Everything was edited in Final Cut Studio (I refuse to switch to FCPX, and will be transitioning to Premiere Pro once CS6 is released), and graded with Red Giant Colorista II.
Tascam DR-100MKII vs. Zoom H4N
DSLRs have a number of advantages for video projects, but audio capability is not one of them. It is reasonably easy to feed audio from an external microphone into a DSLR, but it’s hard to control how the camera handles it, and it’s even harder to listen to what’s actually being recorded. Add to this lack of user-friendliness the fact that DSLR audio processing circuits are not likely to win any audio fidelity awards, and it’s not hard to understand why many DSLR shooters prefer to use external audio recorders whenever possible. In fact, I wrote about my own approach to “dual system sound” a few months ago.
This is all a long-winded way of introducing the fact that the Zoom H4N digital audio recorder – which has been ubiquitous in the microbudget video world for years – now has some real competition, and that it’s something that should be of real interest to DSLR shooters. The competition in question is the Tascam DR-100MKII. It’s almost exactly the same price as the H4N, and I’ve been curious to see how the two units compare.
I recently got my hands on a DR-100MKII, and here’s what I found.
Form Factor
As you can see in the photo above, the Tascam, with its black aluminum enclosure, looks a little more rugged and high-end than the H4N, which combines metal with plastic. Whether or not this advantage is more than skin-deep is a matter of opinion: I prefer metal over plastic for durability, but the H4N’s “rubberized chassis” does make it less prone to slipping out of my hand, and it doesn’t amplify handling noise the way the thin metal shell of the DR-100MKII does.
The DR-100MKII weighs a tiny bit more than the H4N (10.2 vs. 9.9 ounces), but both devices have a nice, solid heft to them.
One of the hallmark features of the H4N is that every hole has a double function. For example, the strange-looking orifices on the bottom of the device will accept either an XLR or 1/4″ plug. The DR-100MKII has ordinary XLR inputs, which means that if you’re faced with a 1/4″ sound source (for example, if you’re recording a musical performance, and the live sound guys offer you a 1/4″ feed off their board), you’ll need a 1/4″ to 1/8″ adapter in order to plug it into the DR-100MKII.
On the other hand, the DR-100MKII is not shy about providing buttons and knobs. I was immediately impressed by the side-mounted dials that allow for individual control of two different audio inputs. Zoom came out with a firmware upgrade a few months ago that allowed for individual control of its audio inputs as well, but they’re still controlled by the tiny buttons on the side of the device. In addition, the DR-100MKII offers a three-position mic gain control (on the back of the device) that acts as the coarse input level control. On the H4N, there is no such control, although the internal levels do have a very broad range. Neither device is designed for on-the-fly mixing the way a full-featured field mixer is, but – even though it takes both hands and a couple of fingernails to twist the dials – the Tascam at least lets you see what your levels are set to at a glance.
An interesting design aspect of the DR-100MKII is that it has redundant power supplies. While recording a clip, I opened the back of the device and removed the AA batteries. It kept recording, because there was some charge on the internal battery. On the H4N, removing batteries while recording a clip (or, more likely, batteries dying while recording) would have resulted in a complete loss of the entire clip in progress. While not fool-proof (obviously, both sets of batteries could fail), the Tascam’s dual power sources provide a welcome layer of protection against accidental data loss in the field.
It is worth pointing out that, unlike the DR-100MkII, which exclusively records two channels of audio, the “4″ in “H4N” refers to the device’s ability to record four channels of audio. This feature, along with the built-in tuner, metronome and track editor all have one thing in common: I’ve never used them in the two years I’ve owned the thing. Between the complex menus, the “gotchas” (it’ll only record two tracks at a time: the other two tracks have to be overdubbed), and the fact that I just don’t think to reach for the H4N when I want to tune a guitar, these functions are not of significant benefit to me.
Built-In Microphones
A key feature of the H4N is the “X/Y” orientation of the microphones. In theory, this allows you to capture a stereo sound picture of whatever you’re recording. The DR-100MKII, on the other hand, seems to have been designed around the logical assumption that most people want to point a microphone directly at the sound source. Since the two mics less than two inches apart, I would suggest forgetting about trying to record any kind of meaningful stereo effects, and just set one mic’s input level lower than the other and consider it a backup in case an unexpectedly loud sound distorts on the primary channel.
How well do these built-in mics work? They work fine. Not great, not terrible, just okay. They’re built-in mics, after all. Here are the sound files from a simple test I recorded.
Tascam built in mic test
Zoom built-in mic test
The Zoom sounds slightly better to me, but under different circumstances, I’m sure the test could easily go the other way. To be perfectly honest, I’m not going to spend a lot of time testing internal mics because, while some video shooters use the built-in microphones on audio recorders because they’re better than the internal microphones in their camera, anything that requires high-quality audio (e.g. dialogue or interviews) should be captured with an external shotgun or lavalier mic. So, to me, the primary tests of a sound recorder are how well it interfaces with my microphones, and how easy it is to use.
External Mic & Audio Processing
Both the Tascam and the Zoom record WAV files at 24-bit/96kHz, which is greater than the broadcast standard of 16-bit/48kHz, so there’s no clear advantage to either unit on the bit-crunching side. However, those files are only as good as the audio that it contains, so the audio processing circuits within the device are of greater concern to me.
First, I plugged my Audio-Technica AT897 into each recorder and did a quick test to confirm that the devices would record (and provide phantom power to my mic). I then spliced the audio back-to-back, and checked it out. Here’s the audio.Both devices sound identical to me. You can hear my voice, and the sounds of rain and traffic outside my window. I took the file into Sonic Visualizer and looked at a spectrogram view. Again, virtually identical.
Then, I unplugged the microphone and cycled the gain of both devices all the way up and down. For the Zoom H4N, the range is from .1 to 100. On the Tascam DR-100MkII, the dials simply go from 0 to 10. This is a crude but effective way to test the “self-noise” of each device – the amount if digital noise added to a signal even when – as in this case – there is no signal.
. In this comparison, the Zoom H4N is on the bottom. As you can see, both devices are very quiet (pink means noise in this diagram). At maximum gain, the H4N appears to have a bit more noise than the DR-100MKII, but without knowing exactly how much amplification each unit provides, this may not be a fair comparison. In broad strokes though, both devices obviously do a pretty good job.
Conclusion
Both the Zoom H4Nand the Tascam DR-100MKII offer high-quality digital recording capability at a reasonable price. If you’re a musician, the H4N’s compact size, rubberized, easy-to-grip case, 1/4″ jacks, and extra, menu-accessible functions might be just what you need. For video production, however, the Tascam DR-100MkII offers plenty of industry-standard inputs, highly visible gain dials, and a potentially shoot-saving redundant power supply. While it lacks some of the bells and whistles of the H4N, it seems to have all the features I need, and – more importantly – to put control of those features at my fingertips.
Another Reader’s Project
I love seeing what my readers are creating. Hot on the heels of the video I posted on Feb. 18, I received the following note, with a link to a lovely video featuring great music and beautiful scenery from a part of the world I’ve never visited: Qatar!
Dear Alex,
many months have passed, please see my first “Microbudget” Short Movie / Music Video. It has already been finished in Nov 11, forgot to send it to you.
After I studied your video tutorials and “Make Movies without Money” I also visited 1 DSLR workshop with Philip Bloom in Vienna.
And that’s the outcome – It’s called Violin Dreams in Qatar and the feedback is overwhelming so far. People seem to like it.
Something different from ‘normal’ Violin Video Clips. Thanks a lot for your “help”.
See it here (7min):
Short info:
Featuring Nina Heidenreich, Principal Second Violinist at Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra. This short movie is a modern fairy tale about a young girl passing by a Music Store, getting attracted by a violin, falling into a dream and seeing herself as a talented violinist.
Shot at several locations in and around Doha, State of Qatar, including the Cultural Village, The Pearl-Qatar, The Villagio Mall, Inland Sea and the Steinway Piano Gallery Qatar. Jules Massenet’s ‘Meditation’ from the Opera Thais serves as the main theme.
Entirely shot on a single Canon 7D, Editing, Color Grading & SoundFX done in FCPX.
Click the share button (top right) to embed it in Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Would appreciate your feedback.
Cheers
Alex Klim
A Reader’s Project
I was delighted to receive the following email this past week.
Hi Alex,
It’s been a long time, but as promised here is my senior film!
Your e-book and your blog has helped me tremendously.
David Mamet’s book i have read 3 times now, it’s ideas was crucial to the development of my film.
I am still a regular follower of your current blog crewofone.com
I cannot thank you enough for your guidance.
I hope you enjoyed my senior film and if I could trouble you further to give me any criticism good or bad that would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
William Suen
When I was in high school (in the early ’90s), my friends and I scoffed at the idea of paper-based organization. “Who wants to keep their life in a little book?” we asked. So, we all gradually started keeping our lives in our phones and/or computers instead. Is that progress? I’m not so sure. At least once a month, I see a Facebook post from a friend or colleague saying that a phone or computer crashed, and they’re rebuilding their calendar and contacts from scratch.
I know the idea of keeping your information in “the cloud” is supposed to offer optimal security, but between power outages, network failures, and the bizarrely aggressive approach the government is taking towards the internet in general, it sure doesn’t FEEL secure. More to the point, I’ve tried almost every GTD and To-Do tracking program out there, and found all of them to be either too complex, too primitive, or too time-consuming. About three years ago, I started exploring contemporary paper-based organization systems (“Moleskine GTD”), and I found the concept very appealing, but the systems I saw described seemed unnecessarily complicated. So, I developed my own.
Great Lighting For Microbudget Video
No matter what camera you’re using, any shot is only as good as its lighting. When I was in film school, I was introduced to the Lowel Tota-Light, and I hated it. It was extremely bright, extremely hot, and extremely harsh. It took me about a decade to learn how to use it, but now this little hundred-dollar wonder is my primary tool for lighting everything from interviews to commercials.
Another inexpensive, open-face light is the Smith-Victor Q60, which is a bit larger and less robust than the Tota-Light, but features built-in barndoors, which make it easy to use cine-gels and to direct the light exactly where you want it.
The key to using an open-face light like the Tota or Q60 effectively is understanding that the light it provides is a raw ingredient, not a finished product. Just as flour needs to be combined with other ingredients to make cake, raw light needs to be combined with lighting modifiers to make a tasty image.
To illustrate this point, take a look at the following video. I’ve indicated on-screen what lighting is being used for each variation of the shot.
Let’s walk through what’s shown in the video.
RIP American Freedom
Note: This is, ostensibly, my professional blog. However, when I feel very strongly about something, I’m going to speak out. This is one of those times.
I voted for President Obama, and I have defended his decisions to friends and family for three years. No more. By refusing to veto the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act, Obama will be remembered by history as the President that allowed American freedom to be extinguished.
Men’s Magazine Cover Photo
Aside from the occasional rant about economics or society, I blog primarily about video production. However, I also do – and love doing – professional photography. One of my pet peeves about photography is the industry-wide obsession with gear. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my career, it’s that you don’t need most of the stuff you think you need.
To wit, I wrote an eBook a while ago called “You Can Shoot Upscale Glamour.” In this book, I go through eight detailed setups (complete with 3D diagrams that I created in Blender 3D) using extremely minimal gear. No more than three lights for any setup, and no softboxes at all!
For those that are interested in such things, I used Photogenic lamps to shoot this, but you could use inexpensive off-camera flash units, or even work lamps.
Here is a sample chapter from my book. Enjoy!
