what I refer to as a “winter slump” was actually for of a 2008 slump.  2008 for me was a year of not making significant progress.  Fortunately, I can take comfort in the fact that this entire country is pretty much in that (sinking) boat.

I haven’t had a serious job in over 4 months and while that should mean that I have nothing but free time to work on my art, what it actually amounts to is that I am too worried about how I am going to pay my bills to put and serious thought into my art and that the act of worrying is so much more physically draining than the act of making art.  As the weather slugs its way back into spring, all I can do is slug along with it.  Even though there are still only glimmers of work opportunities on the distant horizon, I’ve managed to start getting a little momentum on my projects and I can start to see a moment in the not too distant future where I will be producing at full steam again - and hopefully that will lead to some paying gigs as well.  On top of that the Obama stimulus plan was passed and I can hope that it will reach me in some practical way.

Shadow World is once again breaking into the light.  It’s been a slow and rocky start for SW: year2.  I’m rusty and it’s been hard for me to get interviews that I’m excited about.  On top of that, I’ve been making some stupid technical mistakes - mainly stuff that only I might notice but I do want year 2 to exceed in greatness over year 1 in order for me to feel like it is worth it to continue the project.

As of right now, I have the first two episodes finished.  They are what I consider an Ok start.  Neither are too exciting for me but I think the excitement comes more as the project grows and moments start taking on new meanings for me.  I’ll consider them good efforts as I make my way back into the game.

I will also have a show of my sculpture work in a studio in South Philly next month and I am trying to get a bunch of last minute stuff finished for that.

You should start seeing new episodes of Shadow World very soon. I’m calling it Shadow World: Year 2. I finished the first episode yesterday aptly entitled “Better Than the First Part”. I’ll be posting that shortly but I want to get a bunch more shot and think about the direction that I want to take the project in this year before I go public with it.
One change you will be able to see right off the bat is that I am now shooting in HD. It took me a little while to find a camera that looked as good as I wanted it to but still kept a very low profile and would not intimidate the people I talk to. I had a Sanyo Xacti1010 for a few weeks but compared to the footage that I shot under the El with the Canon HG10 that I have been using in my professional work, I found the Sanyo too contrasty and the colors where over saturated. I also found the stabilization to be kind of weak. I use a tripod on every shot and still the footage looked shaky.
I did really like those HG10 shots so I looked at the Canon HF100 and eventually bought that. It’s smaller than the HG10 but I think the picture is even better. The colors and contrast are somewhat phenomenal considering that this is a $5xx camera. I love the shots I have so far and since the controls are pretty much the same as the HG10, I am already used to the interface.

There are a few problems that I have with the camera though and I don’t know yet whether these are problems that are consistent with all HD cameras in it’s class. One is that when I am zoomed in most or all of the way, the video tends to wobble a bit. It’s a slow sort of wobbling and it looks like it’s from the camera trying to stabilize even though it’s not moving. It’s slight and i am able to stabilize it pretty easily in Motion or After Effects but I would prefer not to.
Also focusing is tricky. The only way that i am able to quickly focus is to zoom in and auto-focus, switch to manual focus and zoom out. It’s a pretty common technique and I don’t mind it so much but all of that is done with the joystick and that has to be set to Focus. If it is set to Exposure or Mic I have to scroll to Focus and end up losing precious seconds of time with the subjects. A separate focus button would just be nice if I can’t have a usable focus wheel.
The HF100 does have great things that should be on every camera and is not, like a microphone input jack. It also has audio bars and adjustable mic volume, an improvement over the HG10. Unfortunately Canon switched to a mini shoe on this model and the HF10. That’s lame. It forced me to purchase a $30 converter. Plus it shoots in 30p. I like that.
I am very happy with the setup. Of course there is still the headache of Final Cut Pro not being able to edit MTS files (MPEG Transfer Stream) that AVCHD cameras use to compress the footage. FCP has to convert to either Apple Intermediate Codec or Prores422. I’ve been dealing with this in my workflow for a year and a half now so I’m kind of used to it although it was stressful when i wanted to get the footage off of the HDD or SD card before I had time to convert it. FCP will not recognize the MTS files if they are not in the camera’s directory. Headache. If you have come across this post looking for the answer to this problem, here it is - Toast 10 with HD plugins.
Toast 10 has a convert function. A whole tab devoted to converting! It recognizes MTS files without the need for the BMDV directory. You will not be able to set in and out points but it is fast and it does work well. It does give you a thumbnail of the video so you can see that it is the right one. As of yet OSX does not make thumbnails for MTS files.
The fact that Toast 10 can convert MTS files seems to be somewhat of a secret because it took a while to find this information and when I did there where numerous posts about making the BMDV directory into a mounted drive that can be read by FCP or imovie. You don’t have to do that. Just drag in the MTS files and adjust the settings. I use Apple Intermediate Codec, 1920×1080.