Me? I'm relaxing after an hour of trying to convince my father-in-law that equal rights ought to extend to gays and lesbians and that Bernie Sanders is a viable alternative to well… Insanity
Still, I think he may see me as absolutely, totally, fucking insane and I think he is OK with it because there's a small part of him that wishes he still was.
So what are you doing right now?
Just got home from a concert in Brooklyn, cops shut it down and we didn't get to catch the band we were waiting for. That said, we got to chill with the band outside and talk about their music and the Europe tour they just returned from. I got to witness an indescribable environment there, where abandoned factory buildings covered sidewalk to roof in mind-blowing graffiti art turned out to be not so abandoned at all, in fact housing rows of huge, high-ceiling apartments whose owners furnished their spaces into art and concert venues. It had never occurred to me that an artistic scene could sustain itself the way I witnessed it do so in the dumps of BK. Host a show, pay the rent with it, make more art, host a show. Like-minded artists and ironic hippie contrarians alike will come out of the woodwork to support one another and keep the dynamic going. It was really inspiring to see. 
not ignoring you just no time– I will definitely get back to you with this info:)
Here's a list of the most respected venues in the area. This doesn't include the venues that are "secret," you usually have to text a phone number for the address ahead of the show; Facebook events for shows are usually how word of mouth is spread about them. Aviv Any BK band will play here eventually. Market Hotel Recently reopened for business, this place is incredible and by far my favorite. the stage is set behind a tall window overlooking the L train, and watching subway cars blur past the venue is a unique touch during a show. Trans-Pecos A great collective of artists and curators, but a venue I haven't seen yet. If you want to have no idea what to expect, this is a good bet. Shea Stadium BK Not the real Shea Stadium, but a fun venue for up-close awesomeness. I've seen some really interesting projects come through here. This is the best off the top of my head, again the real stuff is in the warehouse shows that you can really only connect with if you know someone involved or you're following a band that happens to get hosted there. Then again it's nice having an actual venue, a coat check never hurt anybody. Enjoy! The sound coming out of Brooklyn is fantastic to experience live.
Awesome, thank you! Love underground culture, I'm missing that a lot in Chiang Mai :( Bangkok is gross but so much better for music and art! Well I only know you so I'll make sure to hit you up next time i'm coming to NYC if you don't mind :)the real stuff is in the warehouse shows that you can really only connect with if you know someone involved
So glad to see the tradition of artists' warehouse shows, is still going strong!! Isn't it amazing? And think of this... some of those people get to wake up tomorrow, in their warehouse, after hosting a bunch of people - like yourself - who had their minds blown! Can you imagine the vibe embedded into those walls? (Of course, cleanup after these things is a pain in the butt...)
It's 2:21 a.m. EDT. Was on Skype with the bf who lives three time zones earlier. As always, it was kind of amazing. He sang. We asked questions. He spent the day pounding the turf in Washington State for Bernie. What will happen? This time next week he will be here visiting. Are we insane? Probably. Are we happy? Seemingly.
Editing :) Visited some beautiful waterfalls the other day! Tried installing that echo removal thing kb recommended, but somehow i can only get it as a standalone thing. We filmed an interesting interview with a vinyl shop owner back in Singapore but the aircon was running the whole time. Sound is terrible, nobody's gonna listen to that crap. I think I'll just scrap it or turn it into a blog post or something. Ain't got no space on my computer for that shit.
Which one? Because the iZotope RX 3 plugins work fine on FCPX here and have a decent dereverb module. And their denoiser is pretty usable too.
You gotta pay for RX. You don't have to pay for a time-limited version of Unveil, and Unveil kicks the tar out of RX-3 for removing reverb. It was Zynaptiq's release of Unveil that caused Izotope to add a dereverb plugin to RX4, in fact. RX5 is closer but I would again argue that unless you spring for Advanced, RX is a less-than-useful plugin (and I own about $4k worth of Izotope). You also have to know what you're doing with Izotope whereas Unveil you twiddle the knobs until it sounds good.
Aha. I'll take a look at Zynaptiq then. It's rare but sometimes a hostile set produces a stupid fix-it-in-post attitude.
The great thing about the Zynaptiq plugs is they run without anything disabled for ten minutes without you having to pay them a dime. Which, generally, is enough to get in in Audiosuite and fix it. I've got a movie. It was shot in Vieques Island by a crew whose sound mixer quit on day 2. The last film that shot on Vieques Island was the 1948 version of Lord of the Flies, which had so many problems with the frogs that they bailed for Paris and looped the whole movie. Me? Not only did I have frogs, I had an airport, traffic, generators too close on set and drunk cowboys just off to the side while actors whisper their lines menacingly. That movie is on SyFy pretty regularly because I got deep enough in RX that I had to automate 11 different parameters in real time. I know me some room reduction. FRONT LINE: SPL DeVerb. Cheap, easy, usually fixes things that are easily fixable, low overhead. NEXT: RX Dialog Denoiser. Only comes in Advanced, but is light enough you can run multiple instances inline without blowing up your CPU. NEXT: RX Connect. Now that you're able to loop into and out of Pro Tools without having to export/reimport, it's a lot easier to get surgical on RX, but that's new since RX 4. And, you still need to know what you're doing. NEXT: Unveil. Stupid-high CPU usage, but it often gets things you can't get with anything else. AND, there's no science to it what does as the knobs are labeled nonsensically. BUT you don't have to own it, unlike everything else listed above, to use it. I used Unveil to make the dialogue in Birdemic 2 in a couple of scenes "good enough to understand" but not "good enough to sound professional." Which is very different from the "bad enough that it really outlines our horrible ADR process." Opening scenes: no Unveil. "What can I do... to ever repay you" : enough Unveil to make it make sense.
Hmmm. It appears that FCP X is a big enough piece of shit that plugins don't... work. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4903979?start=0&tstart=0 This is a perpetual issue with Apple, Final Cut and audio. I remember going out to their dog'n'pony for Final Cut Studio, back when they got serious about it, and they said "and now you just pass the audio over to Soundtrack Pro..." crash FWIW, FCP X is where all of us who do this stuff professionally said "pool's closed, everybody go home" because really, it's iMovie Pro, not Final Cut. Maybe try Premiere. That was pretty much the battle we all engaged 2 years ago - Premiere or Media Composer. In Adobe's favor, it's really cheap and loops seamlessly with AfterFX. In Avid's favor, you can actually loop out to useful audio programs. To Adobe's detriment, it's almost as fisher price as FCP X. To Avid's detriment, you can buy like five seats of Premiere for the price of one shitty MC license, and then five more to add Symphony which actually allows you to do stuff, and then you still have to loop through AfterFX and it's a total pain in the ass.
Thanks man! Feels like I have my own support team for my little youtube project :P Looks like I won't be switching to Premiere while traveling but I'll definitely rethink my setup once I'm back home. I think i'll let it be with the audio for now, it's not like I even have the skilz to operate any sort of software anyway. Can't even watch tutorials because I don't know the lingo! like,what the hell is mud? The more I do this, the more I realize how steep of a learning curve I have in front of me. Any idiot can shoot some crap on their iphone and stitch it together in imovie (and i'm not far from that idiot right now pretty much). But ahead there's figuring out proper camera settings, everything about audio, color grading and I bet 1000 things I never even heard of yet. I'll just take your advice from a while ago and not half-ass it to the best of my abilities right now. Anyway, all this technical stuff is great but I also need to figure out a way to make it more interesting because that's really what counts in the end.
So here's a thought... Your perception of what you are doing is, a Daily Travel Log. My perception, on the other hand, is that I am watching Elizabeth have amazing adventures. So maybe what you do is break out of the "daily" idea - It's morning, we are doing X. It's afternoon, we are doing Y. It's evening, we are doing Z - and do something different. You could pull together an episode of hostels, an episode of people, an episode of Stunts (like the "dive" into the water at Chang Mai), an episode that is just smashcuts of you making puzzled looks on your face, etc. These could be series, and then could be shorter. "Elizabeth Travels: Amazing People #4", and then have 2 minutes of cuts talking to the "sexiest Americans", or whoever those two guys were. These episodes can be a variety of lengths, depending on the content. Anyway. That's another way to look at Elizabeth Travels. Not as a diary, but as a collage.
Good point! One of the problems with that is that things are really unpredictable so I would not be sure when i've filmed enough/forget to film stuff, it would be generally harder to organize. Also, another thing is that by trying to make it daily i'm forcing myself to complete a thing even if i'm not 100% satisfied so i can move on to the next day. Figured I'd learn faster that way. What you suggest is way harder in my situation, but maybe it's a challenge I should actually take on... I'll give it some serious though. Right now, I was thinking of switching to that type of videos when I'm back home in a more stable situation and I don't have so many exiting adventures anymore. Maybe I should try harder to give a "theme" to certain days. I like days when we're on a "mission" because it always turns out fun, even if our mission is mundane. Share more personal thoughts and impressions. Still struggling to find my voice :)My perception, on the other hand, is that I am watching Elizabeth have amazing adventures.
Yeah, it would definitely be harder to do thematic episodes while you are on the road! Definitely. However, it could be something you look at doing when you get home. You will have this enormous store of video, and you could revisit it, and produce new videos and new perspectives using the existing video. That would also allow you to tell larger stories, connect together cultural harmonies across different countries, etc. Anyway. I like your videos as they are. And I like watching your journey, both physically as a traveller, and your visible journey as a video storyteller!
I think your pathway to learning is exactly what you need to build the discipline to do what goobster suggests. As you're learning, this is a lot harder than "point a camera at myself having fun." But I think you have an eye for it and I think you're improving. Keep it up.
Thank you! It's been fun and I'm finding myself liking it a lot. Wishing for some better tools (hardware and software both) and better guidance all the time. As much as my entrepreneurial self does not want to admit it, some kind of internship at a legit production company where I can steal all their knowledge would be awesome right now :)
Truth: a "legit production company" will mostly teach you how to work with a bigger crew. There are people who could teach you a thing or two, but they're shooters or mixers on The Amazing Race, and I know those guys, and I wouldn't want to be them, and neither would you.
I suspect the typical travel videos are that long because they're looking to get whatever legitimacy they can from being rehosted on one of the shitty OTA side channels. Go short. See if anybody bitches. I'll bet they don't. "because everybody else does it" is a viable reason when you can find the underlying (logical) cause. Should you get some paltry pick-up deal, you can edit them longer.
I was just logging in here, I was going to read that Moshi post I saw on the front page but I saw this post.
Do you think you can combine avocado, egg, and LAMB (??) to make a decent breakfast sandwich? I have homemade bread I have to use before it gets stale; avocados I have to use before they go bad; lamb leftovers I have to use before they also go bad; and eggs. On a side bar, I already have leftovers scheduled to eat for tomorrow lunch (Definitely must eat tomorrow or else will go bad), and leftovers I should probably eat for tomorrow dinner (could hold for 1 more day maybe before they go bad). Egg + ago breakfast sandwich seems to be an accepted thing but everyone says "bacon." I don't have no bacon. I have lamb. Thots? (this is what i am struggling with right now. lots of home cooking = leftovers, sometimes as much as 4 meals of leftovers, that i have to make sure i eat before they go bad, plus shopping = new ingredients that i also have to eat before they go bad. plus easter leftovers.)
Anything can go on a sandwich if you believe hard enough. Toast bread, fry or poach eggs, make guac out of the avocado, put the lamb on there, melt cheese. Have any mayo or sour cream?
I'm in the middle of a commercial break right now, watching the local junior hockey team in the playoffs.
The Calgary Hitmen. I'm in sort of the same boat as you. I've been out of town for most of the last few years and always seemed to find out too late that the team passed through.
I'm trying to do it regularly, but keep slipping up. My goal is to be diligent about my daily caloric intake for a couple of months, and the only way to really accurately know what you are taking in, is to drink Soylent. Every other method of calorie counting is little more than guesswork. With Soylent I get a precise number of calories as well as a balanced set of nutrients to ensure my body is getting the right fuel to function properly. For example, I know too many people who drank water constantly, but were dehydrated. It turns out they were not getting the salts that the body needs to be able to absorb the water. With Soylent, I can just drink it and not worry if I need more greens today, or more protein, or if I need an iron supplement, or other distracting shit like that. Mix this powder 1 to 1 with water. Drink the whole thing in equal portions throughout the day. Done. It's simple, straightforward, and allows me to focus on other things, like aerobic exercise (walking, primarily) and stretching, so I can improve my health and become more limber. After a while I expect I will switch to the liquid form of Soylent (400 calories/serving) for breakfast (hardest meal for me to eat every day), do a salad for lunch, and a balanced meal for dinner. That way I get the breakfast I need, in a form I will actually eat, and not be famished and over-eat at other meals. That's the plan, anyways.
watching this video: wtf am I doing with my life i feel sick i need to go take a bath.
Perusing Hubski, Pondering whether or not to get this, and procrastinating from my online homework due in 35 hours.
Enjoy the watch. I wore a Swiss Army watch for years in that price point. It was attractive and very durable.
I am writing this message, but I figure that is a given. Otherwise, I am eating a gruel of food I cooked on the stove - quinoa eggs spinach... with some tumeric/cayenne pepper +salt/pepper (= (though I might add, it is difficult to explain what I am doing right now, as that is taking up both of my hands)... So, I feel the precise answer to this question would be that I am typing this message, with my food sitting right next to me, while I am standing.
I'm drinking a cup of tea and about to start turning my enormous walking route for this summer ( https://www.plotaroute.com/map/173401 ) into a bunch of smaller ones so that they can actually fit on my GPS device and so I can print them off. I failed to wake up in time this morning to see my two couchsurfers from last night off this morning, but they're staying again tonight so maybe it's okay?
Am about to watch S02E01 of Daredevil. I loved the first season (minus the last half an hour of it) and look forward to seeing what they did with the second one. Was torn between watching this, The Force Awakens and The Man in the High Castle, but figured it was worth it and I'm resting today anyway (and I god damn deserved it), so I might as well watch all of them. EDIT: S02E01 done with, and I'm not sure if I want to continue. The silly costume is still there, the physics have become improbable, fights - fake. The plot's still interesting, but implementation starts to smell. I got hooked on the S01E02's beautiful single shot of a fight in the coridor which has shown Matt Murdock as a capable human being but no superhero; in a human way. Now, he appears out of nowhere and disappears into the same direction. Marvel can't do second seasons - just take a look at Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where the only interesting thing was Grant Ward. EDIT#2: S02E02 done. I'm an idiot: I've been judging this way early. Fights are still fake, but now it looks much more real, much more like real people. I'm hopeful.
Nothing much really, just finished some dishes. It was a boring day today. Yesterday Mum and Dad came around to visit and I asked Mum to call me by my girl name, which went well. Really sucks to hear about your father-in-law. I don't even know how I'd be able to interact with a family member that doesn't treat me like an equal.
I am preparing to turn off my computer and go to bed. I just finished writing the first entry in a fictional journal. I can't seem to find any tv/anime/manga to scratch the emotional itch that I'm having, so I figured I would write my own. It would be a comic, but I'm no good at drawing. I'm no good at writing, either, but it's easier to pretend to be good at writing than it is to pretend to be good at writing and drawing.
I'm on IRC with quatrarius. I am sitting at my new computer with a mug of tea and my guitar.
I'm recharging after a car trip and trying and failing to have a conversation with oftenben on IRC while listening to this: Exciting times.