Hovering in late night carnival shadows offers many flavours of revelation. In Melbourne recently : the actual construction into being of a Ferris Wheel, later propelling peeps into the sky. In Sydney currently : an underbelly of provocative performers brought to the surface with Autonomous Improvisation v.1 : a video exhibition by Wade Marynowsky @ Artspace (19 April – 19 May 2007).
From left to right : Jim Denley, Robbie Avenaim, Trash Vaudeville, Singing Sadie, Toy Death.
“Le Spanky”
Anyone who has seen Wade (aka Spanky, aka AC/3P, aka The Geek from Swampy Creek ( etc etc ) and most recently a founder of the Demux live audiovisual DVD label) perform with his *wearable-sample-triggering-kangaroo-suit* will understand his long connections with all shades of colourful and crazy. This history is woven together nicely with Autonomous Improvisation v., where Wade has video-recorded a range of performances in a studio environment, then arranged 3 channels of audio-visual projection to orchestrate video sequences – which are triggered by a prepared pianola linked to the network of computers playing the clips in an ever-changing composition. Messy sentence, well exceuted concept. And word on the wire is that the show = rad, which is to be expected with people like Matthew Stegh, Toydeath, Lucas Abela, Singing Sadie, Robbie Avenaim, The_Geek_From_Swampy_Creek, Adrian Bertram, REV. KRISS HADES, Kristina Harrison, Jim Denley, Dallas Dellaforce, Shannon O’ Neil, Peter Blamey & many, many more involved. More info : www.demux.org
Video Software Updates
Another batch of video production software overhauled recently, with both Apple & Adobe announcing new releases. Final Cut Pro Studio 2 brings a host of changes to the Final Cut Pro editing software : a new ‘open format’ timeline which allows footage of different formats and frame rates to be edited together in real-time, a new uncompressed HD format for editing with, 5.1 surround sound output and better integration with other tools. Motion, their motion graphics package is upgraded to 3.0 and features more particles, vector based paint strokes and very easy to use 3D motion graphics. New to the stable? An application for colour grading, called ‘colour’ except spelt the yankee way. A dedicated tool for colour grading at all levels of resolution, suited for developing ‘signature cinematic styles’.
Adobe’s After Effects 8 / CS3 delivers new shape layers, better photoshop and flash integration and a puppet tool which includes many ways of intuitively bringing to life animated characters. ‘Brainstorm’ adds a new interface to offer animated variations based on selected design and animation parameters. Alongside AE, Adobe has re-introduced the editing software Premiere for the mac, the competition hopefully proving fruitful over time. Photoshop CS3 includes a major upgrade to everybody’s benchmark image manipulation tool, but also a new capacity to import video onto an ‘animation timeline’ for painting on top of ( or rotoscoping ).
Downloadables
www.vidtaker.com provides yet another way to more conveniently download online videos from video hosters such as youtube, break, google video, myspace, etc etc. Download the Firefox extension, this enables right clicking on any page with a video and then gives a pop-up selection via for downloading the file as an editable avi divx.