Various TOTEM posts 2001 - 2003

[Rob Lohman]

Auch... that gotta hurt

[Joe Gioielli]

I am considering moving to Miami. There is a college there (Miami-Dade college)that has a film/video school. Does anyone know anything about this school?

Also, what is the independant movie scene in Miami.

I currently live in North of Tampa, but Tampa is just a "bar town". I need a change of scene.

[Stephen Schleicher]

Maybe you might enjoy Orlando more. Full Sail is there, and if you can afford it, it is a very good program. It has been many years since I've been in that region, but I seem to remember alot of indie work going on there. Someone else might say otherwise though.

[Mark Newhouse]

Creativity Regained

From the article:

"Robert Redford happens to be a movie star, but he's the star who founded an enterprise that changed an industry. Along the way, this very successful entrepreneur developed theories of innovation and creativity that will inspire you and improve your business, too."

An interesting read into the mind that created the Sundance Film Festival - why he created it, how it all got started, and how he keeps the creativity up by reinventing himself.

Thought you might like it...

[John Locke]

Nice article, Mark. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[Adrian Douglas]

Anyone familar with FormMail from Matt's Script Archive? I'm trying to get it working for a site I'm building but I keep getting "No/Bad Recipient" errors. I've tried everything I can think of but can't get it to work. No other error and had it working once but with no 'sendmail path'.

[Andres Lucero]

Probably you left out a hidden field in the HTML form. Matt's were some of the first scripts I ever played around with on the net, now I write all my own in PHP because it's easier than Perl. :)

[Adrian Douglas]

Thanks Andres I'll check it out.

[Imran Zaidi]

AMD has made quite a stride back into the limelight. While Intel's top chips have been dominating for several months now, this is significant news suggesting the long-expected turnaround.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=3495415

[Keith Loh]

I have been reviewing the films I've seen so far at the VIFF on my website. So far I've seen "815", "Goodbye Dragon Inn", "Bus 174", "Evil", "A Tale of Two Sisters", "Plan Colombia: Cashing in on the Drug War Failure", "Mutt Boy" and "The Last Life in the Universe"

http://www.keithloh.com/main.html

[Imran Zaidi]

I will preface this link posting with a very important statement...

The purpose of providing this link to the 'OS Shootout' is NOT to cause arguments, irritation, or flame warfare. The purpose is simply to see an educational and somewhat clinical survey of what different OSes bring to the table, good or bad. This article is for those of you who really would like to see a reasonable comparison between Mac OSX, Windows XP and a strain of Linux, providing specific information and fair and reasonable comparisons that attempt to compare apples to apples (no pun intended).

If you find yourself getting worked up, please take a deep breath and return to the site at a later time. There are much more important things in life to get angry about. :)

To quote a line in this article, "As always, the best platform is the one that most effectively meets your needs."

Please enjoy responsibly.

http://thetechnozone.com/smartbuyers...otout-2003.htm

[Aaron Koolen]

Hi guys. I'm after some specific gear and can't find any dealers locally and the site sponsors don't stock it so my next closest choice would be Australia. Can any of the Aussies here chip in with a reputable dealer I can order online from?

Cheers
Aaron

[Frank Granovski]

http://www.cameraaction.com.au

[Alex Taylor]

I thought I'd share my experiences over the last few days to serve as a lesson in properly backing up your footage/tapes and remembering where they are.


It all started at the end of August when I moved out of my parents' house and into a townhouse in Vancouver for my first year of University. I packed all my DV tapes in a shoebox and taped it shut. I didn't think to check that I had every tape, because I keep them all in once place generally. Anyway, I unpacked said tapes at my townhouse and they were sitting on my shelf.

Last week I got an e-mail from a film festival in Montreal saying my film was accepted and could I please send a projection copy on DVD by the end of next week. No problem, I thought - I don't have a DVD burner but my friend does. I'll mosey on over there with my DV tape and my camera, burn a DVD and rush it to Montreal.

First problem: my camera was sent in for repair in August and my parents picked it up in Victoria, then sent it to me here. Problem is, they didn't send any batteries! I had to send the camera completely 'naked' of course so all my gear was in a separate bag in my room. No problem, I thought, I'll find another camera and use that.

Well, I found another camera. Problem is, I can't find my master tape!! I tore apart my room looking for this tiny miniDV tape that had the master copy of No Solicitors on it. My parents searched my old room and the rest of the house. No dice. At this point, my only copies of the film were on my website and on a preview-quality VHS tape. Wonderful!

I had deleted the source files from my harddrive to make room for another project several months ago. But I thought I'd try some file recovery software and see if I can get the files back and just make another master tape from my hard drive. Well, luckily, all the source files were recoverable.

Unfortunately, my Premiere timeline was corrupted, and my audio files (including the music which I had purchased from a royalty-free place) was corrupted beyond belief. I sent an e-mail off to the place I had bought the music from, asking if I could get another copy of it.

Right now I had two options: digitze the VHS tape, put it on the DVD and accept that it won't look great. Or, re-edit the film and export another master copy of it. I decided to go with the latter.

I grabbed the Quicktime off my website and put it in the timeline. What comes next will remind you of a negative cutter; I went through, shot by shot, and matched up the original footage with the web copy. How tedious!

Once I had my roughcut I had to go through again and add back the foley plus the music.. but I managed to completely rebuild it, frame for frame. I can't believe how lucky I was to be able to recover those files. I'm about to go and make another master tape, and glue it to my forehead so I never lose it again!

So, let this be a lesson! You can NEVER have too many backups ;)

[Dean Sensui]

Good luck on the festival and glad you were able to recover from the near-catastrophe.

Here's other helpful suggestions:

Make more than one master, and store them in seperate locations just in case something bad happens to the place where they're stored.

Tape is cheap, compared to time. And digital video doesn't suffer from generational loss the way analog video used to.

Besides making two masters, I always save the program's timeline which can be re-digitized. And I'll make a copy of other associated files that go with that particular program (After effects rendered files, post-production audio files, etc). All this gets saved to DVD's as computer files. I used to put 'em on CD-R's until I got a DVD burner.

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions