Interest is apparently at an all-time high, especially with a lot of 'alpha geeks' trying to revive functional programming (clojure, for example). However, I'm not seeing that translate into actual jobs although I imagine it'll be a grassroots "we're a microsoft.net shop, we want to explore functional style programming in our particular domain, let's give it a shot" or a shop that's just starting up with little legacy codebase or PHBs to get nervous about new technologies. I know the financial industry is also having a look at it, especially shops where OCaml is in play. I'd like to add F# to my toolkit, as well, not for any reason other than professional curiosity.
WGU looks like a decent deal. How are they with the computer science fundamentals or are they just a code school?
The curriculum really looks like a glorified "code school", but at least they're affordably priced. For someone who just wants the bach to get past the HR filter, I imagine it could be decent, but I do worry if they're skimping on algorithms/design to focus on a certs based degree. I admit that for some, that's all that's necessary.
Right, especially if you're using the incamera mic. It's pointed "forward" and anything behind the source you're recording also gets picked up, which is why we boom from the top, typically, pointing down as less noise bounces. It's not fool proof. We did a small shoot and the damned industrial HVAC units on top of a building a few football field's length kept a constant drone in the background and even with booms it'd do the same thing you're describing.
And this is just sound, lighting is also a bitch, especially as a shoot goes on. The angle of the sun, for example, changes over a long shoot and across different angles. Astute viewers can pick out inconsistencies in the time of day, for example. I believe it was American Graffiti that took weeks to shoot the race scene because they only had an hour in the morning and at night during the "golden hour" to shoot.. if you watch carefully you can see the difference in morning and evening time, etc.
I've got 3 videos to shoot in the next few months, and Im anxious to get back in the mix. I don't plan to record sound, though (they're all music videos), and am planning quite a bit of foley work afterwards if I can't get a boom for a couple scenes.
In the context of this discussion, 60 minutes is produced more like a slick TV show and not a news piece. Due to being a more highly polished work, techniques used in other mediums (documentary and narrative) are integrated, including sound design/mixing. We may have our differences in opinion about how much should be used, but the facts are it's used and 99.99999% of the time you don't even notice (which is just how good these guys are). I agree in that adding motor sounds where there should be none is not an optimal outcome, but instead of calling the editor a "fucking moron", it could just be ignorance. I can absolutely see some guy being handed some footage to work on and him saying "who recorded the audio? I don't hear anything.. shit.. Well, gotta fix this..." But at the same time, someone also had to vet that footage, watch the whole piece and should've caught that. So it's not just a failure of the sound editor, someone had to watch the whole piece and someone had to say "yeah, that's good, it's ready..."
Well, even with shotgun mics, there is a bit of noise cancellation due to the design. This is why when you see mics on booms, they're typically pointed *down* at the ground as they have a cardoid pick-up pattern. The ground typically doesn't have a lot of sound coming from it, but the truck behind what you're recording does. Now, with ENG style recording, the microphones are typically pointed directly at the reporter, which also has the unfortunate effect of picking up everything behind the subject, too. In real world under ideal circumstances, there's a mixer who can blend/adjust the output of the lav/handheld mic and the camera mic to produce the "best" sound, but for small productions this isn't always possible.
I will also comment that this (editors are morons!) is quite frankly, insulting. I'm currently a film student and the difference in a good film and a really shitty film many times comes down to the AUDIO. The things you and I take for granted dont' quite work that well in film. Capturing different levels of background noise. An errant door slam down the street creeps into the audio, right where you're trying to do a vantage cut now gets cut off, or some constant hum of a refrigerator that's on and now the compressor is off when shooting from a different angle, you now have to compensate (and curse the asshole who didn't unplug the fridge for the shoot, and call the sound mixer and say "Dude, you couldn't hear that goddamned fridge?" or the constant 60hz hum from lighting fixtures and the like. Things *we* don't notice because it's all background noise, come through loud and clear on a recording, especially when cutting back and forth.
It would be like an editor calling all software devs morons because "why can't they just put encryption on everything" or, better, a PHB telling you that everything is now going to be written in the latest because he read it in a magazine on the airplane. In this case, YOU are the PHB.
Well, invent a way to mic a car to accurately record that without sounding like shit? And, seriously, as I mentioned before, that footage of the duke boys taking off? Most likely shot with no sound *at all*. Everything you hear, the burnout, the engine revs, THE CAR DOOR SLAMMING (well, not in the duke boys, they jump through the window), the road sound, the goddamned birds chirping, the idle conversation going on behind the main action, all of that is foley and serves to produce an illusion of reality (or a particular reality).
Well, good luck with that. Go shoot a movie and edit it. See how your sound stacks up. You'll find that frequently, it sucks. This is why we have foley, ADR, etc.
Now, granted, in a so-called news piece, it's much more egregious.
Guess what? CG is also a fraud on the viewer. Those Channel 5 graphics don't really exist outside of a computer. Your favorite newscaster is wearing makeup. Etc.
Erm, news segments tend to be a little different, but I consider those 20/20 and 60 minute shows as produced more like cinema than a newscaster standing in front of a hurricane..:)
You need to come work in the industry, then. Happens all the time. The scary part is: You will never know unless they do something as obviously wrong as this. Now, try to watch any show/news/movie and realize that the vast majority of sound is "fake". Your favorite action movie? That fast paced car scene? They are almost *always* shot MOS (without sound). Think about that.
"incompetence" is a strong word for this. "Ignorance" is much more appropriate. As the other poster said, if you've been editing for 30 years and are used to having crappy audio sources, this is just the thing you do. And generally speaking, that footage would come with little or no documentation other than "clean this up".
I think the making of is also interesting (which is why we have so many dev post-mortems on gamasutra, etc, but also think about behind the scenes on movies, etc). The challenges teams can face, from technical hurdles, to even political ("We didn't raise the 25 million we needed to finish this the way we wanted to, so what can we do to come in on what we DO have and still have a playable game?"), etc....
Hell, i've got a shelf full of bayonet lenses for my film making endeavors.. Seriously, just because you make the phone come with a built-in mount, I'm not so sure that's patentable. We've been asking for that kind of crap for awhile now for those of us interested in shooting film (errrrrm... video) on cellphones (nokie n8 and 1020, for example). I mean, good on you, Apple, release it! But a patent?
Probably also because they had a vew "backroom" visits by the NSA who explained quite clearly that revealing or admitting to this sort of behavior will quickly get them thrown into a federal PMITA prison instead of a cushy white-collar prison. How many "hackers" have been "accidentally" put into a "real" prison who end up getting beaten nearly to death and viciously raped because they pissed off a particularly vindictive DA? (I can remember at least one. And there only needs to be one...)
The whole "we are meant to sleep for 8 contiguous hours" might just be an invention of the industrial age. Now that'd be interesting for the paleo folks to embrace, as well...
Check out how much some of your favorite artists make via spotify and the like. Of course I'd rather you buy my $15 CD than give me.00005 cents off a hundred plays. If that. The "long tail" is yet to be determined.
I can't imagine that streaming services such as Netflix pay that much to the studios, either, so of course the studios want you to buy the DVDs. If you can't wait for the streaming option, by golly, Best Buy will have it for $19.99 or $24.99 for the bluray on release date. I know many of you will just get it from BitTorrent anyway, but there's plenty of us who would rather just use the convenience of the disc or the Netflix app.
WhatsApp? OculusRift? I have a feeling that Zuck really has no fucking clue as to the direction he wants to take his company and will end up taking down a few companies with him once Facebook gets Friendstered. It really smacks of "I want to be as cool as Elon, but damned if I know how to do it.. "
Holy smokes, that's actually a pretty good challenge! I may have to try that myself, albeit at a slower pace. I assume (ass, u, me whatever) that he had the ability to do this with no distractions like a real job, but it's a great start! Thanks for that, although I have to say his "put together your own degree program" kinda reads like a 4 hour workweek spam.
It's a master's degree program from what I can tell. I'd rather start at the undergraduate level. What's sad is that even though I denigrate my math skills/comprehension I've still probably forgotten more than most non-STEM people have ever learned. SIGH.
What does it mean when your biggest regret from high school at age 40 is I wish I hadn't slept through Algebra II & Advanced Math instead of "I wish I had asked Suzy out" or, I dunno, gone out for the wrestling team?:)
I've always wondered what it is that prevents us from creating a fully accredited* Computer Science Degree (bachelor's) completely online, for cheap. I'm not talking code-school, I mean let's learn Computer Science, with all the math and non-shortcuts that entails. The "industry" might want programmers, but *I* want to be more than that, and I'd like a formal education to get it without spending $30-40k/semester and would prefer to do it at my own pace while I continue working in the field. Perhaps this needs to be a Y Combinator style start-up. Courses from Algebra (yes, Algebra), Geometry, Trig, first principles kind of stuff focusing on the WHYS not just rote memorization. Sure, you'd still need the social sciences and what not (and I would be happy to just take those at the local community college for $cheap and transfer them in), but the real meat at the real school. Hell, it doesn't even have to be accredited if you actually learn something.
This also brings me to self-taught computer scientists: I've begun an adventure down "Teach myself math from scratch" lane because, at age 40, I'm still rather annoyed at my math education in high school. I was more concerned about learning to the test, not the concepts, and that's haunted me ever since. Anyone have recommendations for learning math starting from, say, Algebra I or II level (high school) that will actually teach in a way that will be useful rather than taking a test? Stuff that will carry over into future classes as the proper building blocks, etc?
Definitely, at least it's "opt-in" (for now). When my gf comes over, GN is already giving her times to get to our favorite restaurants, movie theaters, etc. Don't get me wrong, progress is great, but holy hell it's kinda creepy.
SHIT out of me. My girlfriend uses it and, well, who the fuck needs the NSA when you have Google figuring out what and where and why you do what you do. No thanks./neo-luddite.
Younger programmers (well, workers in general) also seem more eager to prove they can do the work. Everything is new and exciting! Plus, many want to prove that "you made the right hiring decision" and give up everything to get in the door and stay there (or move on to a pay raise). Older devs seem more content to try and find stability. That mortgage isn't going to pay itself and as a younger worker, couch surfing or living at home with mom and dad is much easier to deal with the ups and downs of the start-up industry. Well, not even just the start-ups the way a lot of major Fortune x00 types are outsourcing.
Anyway, when I'm 50, if I'm still doing development for a living, I'll feel as if I've done something horribly wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Interest is apparently at an all-time high, especially with a lot of 'alpha geeks' trying to revive functional programming (clojure, for example). However, I'm not seeing that translate into actual jobs although I imagine it'll be a grassroots "we're a microsoft .net shop, we want to explore functional style programming in our particular domain, let's give it a shot" or a shop that's just starting up with little legacy codebase or PHBs to get nervous about new technologies. I know the financial industry is also having a look at it, especially shops where OCaml is in play. I'd like to add F# to my toolkit, as well, not for any reason other than professional curiosity.
http://www.citeworld.com/artic...
WGU looks like a decent deal. How are they with the computer science fundamentals or are they just a code school?
The curriculum really looks like a glorified "code school", but at least they're affordably priced. For someone who just wants the bach to get past the HR filter, I imagine it could be decent, but I do worry if they're skimping on algorithms/design to focus on a certs based degree. I admit that for some, that's all that's necessary.
Right, especially if you're using the incamera mic. It's pointed "forward" and anything behind the source you're recording also gets picked up, which is why we boom from the top, typically, pointing down as less noise bounces. It's not fool proof. We did a small shoot and the damned industrial HVAC units on top of a building a few football field's length kept a constant drone in the background and even with booms it'd do the same thing you're describing.
And this is just sound, lighting is also a bitch, especially as a shoot goes on. The angle of the sun, for example, changes over a long shoot and across different angles. Astute viewers can pick out inconsistencies in the time of day, for example. I believe it was American Graffiti that took weeks to shoot the race scene because they only had an hour in the morning and at night during the "golden hour" to shoot.. if you watch carefully you can see the difference in morning and evening time, etc.
I've got 3 videos to shoot in the next few months, and Im anxious to get back in the mix. I don't plan to record sound, though (they're all music videos), and am planning quite a bit of foley work afterwards if I can't get a boom for a couple scenes.
In the context of this discussion, 60 minutes is produced more like a slick TV show and not a news piece. Due to being a more highly polished work, techniques used in other mediums (documentary and narrative) are integrated, including sound design/mixing. We may have our differences in opinion about how much should be used, but the facts are it's used and 99.99999% of the time you don't even notice (which is just how good these guys are). I agree in that adding motor sounds where there should be none is not an optimal outcome, but instead of calling the editor a "fucking moron", it could just be ignorance. I can absolutely see some guy being handed some footage to work on and him saying "who recorded the audio? I don't hear anything.. shit.. Well, gotta fix this..." But at the same time, someone also had to vet that footage, watch the whole piece and should've caught that. So it's not just a failure of the sound editor, someone had to watch the whole piece and someone had to say "yeah, that's good, it's ready..."
Well, even with shotgun mics, there is a bit of noise cancellation due to the design. This is why when you see mics on booms, they're typically pointed *down* at the ground as they have a cardoid pick-up pattern. The ground typically doesn't have a lot of sound coming from it, but the truck behind what you're recording does. Now, with ENG style recording, the microphones are typically pointed directly at the reporter, which also has the unfortunate effect of picking up everything behind the subject, too. In real world under ideal circumstances, there's a mixer who can blend/adjust the output of the lav/handheld mic and the camera mic to produce the "best" sound, but for small productions this isn't always possible.
I will also comment that this (editors are morons!) is quite frankly, insulting. I'm currently a film student and the difference in a good film and a really shitty film many times comes down to the AUDIO. The things you and I take for granted dont' quite work that well in film. Capturing different levels of background noise. An errant door slam down the street creeps into the audio, right where you're trying to do a vantage cut now gets cut off, or some constant hum of a refrigerator that's on and now the compressor is off when shooting from a different angle, you now have to compensate (and curse the asshole who didn't unplug the fridge for the shoot, and call the sound mixer and say "Dude, you couldn't hear that goddamned fridge?" or the constant 60hz hum from lighting fixtures and the like. Things *we* don't notice because it's all background noise, come through loud and clear on a recording, especially when cutting back and forth.
It would be like an editor calling all software devs morons because "why can't they just put encryption on everything" or, better, a PHB telling you that everything is now going to be written in the latest because he read it in a magazine on the airplane. In this case, YOU are the PHB.
Well, invent a way to mic a car to accurately record that without sounding like shit? And, seriously, as I mentioned before, that footage of the duke boys taking off? Most likely shot with no sound *at all*. Everything you hear, the burnout, the engine revs, THE CAR DOOR SLAMMING (well, not in the duke boys, they jump through the window), the road sound, the goddamned birds chirping, the idle conversation going on behind the main action, all of that is foley and serves to produce an illusion of reality (or a particular reality).
Well, good luck with that. Go shoot a movie and edit it. See how your sound stacks up. You'll find that frequently, it sucks. This is why we have foley, ADR, etc.
Now, granted, in a so-called news piece, it's much more egregious.
Guess what? CG is also a fraud on the viewer. Those Channel 5 graphics don't really exist outside of a computer. Your favorite newscaster is wearing makeup. Etc.
Erm, news segments tend to be a little different, but I consider those 20/20 and 60 minute shows as produced more like cinema than a newscaster standing in front of a hurricane.. :)
You need to come work in the industry, then. Happens all the time. The scary part is: You will never know unless they do something as obviously wrong as this. Now, try to watch any show/news/movie and realize that the vast majority of sound is "fake". Your favorite action movie? That fast paced car scene? They are almost *always* shot MOS (without sound). Think about that.
"incompetence" is a strong word for this. "Ignorance" is much more appropriate. As the other poster said, if you've been editing for 30 years and are used to having crappy audio sources, this is just the thing you do. And generally speaking, that footage would come with little or no documentation other than "clean this up".
I think the making of is also interesting (which is why we have so many dev post-mortems on gamasutra, etc, but also think about behind the scenes on movies, etc). The challenges teams can face, from technical hurdles, to even political ("We didn't raise the 25 million we needed to finish this the way we wanted to, so what can we do to come in on what we DO have and still have a playable game?"), etc....
So what you're saying is.. don't hate Eich for his stance on gay marriage. Hate him for javascript.
Works for me.
Hell, i've got a shelf full of bayonet lenses for my film making endeavors.. Seriously, just because you make the phone come with a built-in mount, I'm not so sure that's patentable. We've been asking for that kind of crap for awhile now for those of us interested in shooting film (errrrrm... video) on cellphones (nokie n8 and 1020, for example). I mean, good on you, Apple, release it! But a patent?
Probably also because they had a vew "backroom" visits by the NSA who explained quite clearly that revealing or admitting to this sort of behavior will quickly get them thrown into a federal PMITA prison instead of a cushy white-collar prison. How many "hackers" have been "accidentally" put into a "real" prison who end up getting beaten nearly to death and viciously raped because they pissed off a particularly vindictive DA? (I can remember at least one. And there only needs to be one...)
You should read up on second sleep: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
The whole "we are meant to sleep for 8 contiguous hours" might just be an invention of the industrial age. Now that'd be interesting for the paleo folks to embrace, as well...
Check out how much some of your favorite artists make via spotify and the like. Of course I'd rather you buy my $15 CD than give me .00005 cents off a hundred plays. If that. The "long tail" is yet to be determined.
I can't imagine that streaming services such as Netflix pay that much to the studios, either, so of course the studios want you to buy the DVDs. If you can't wait for the streaming option, by golly, Best Buy will have it for $19.99 or $24.99 for the bluray on release date. I know many of you will just get it from BitTorrent anyway, but there's plenty of us who would rather just use the convenience of the disc or the Netflix app.
WhatsApp? OculusRift? I have a feeling that Zuck really has no fucking clue as to the direction he wants to take his company and will end up taking down a few companies with him once Facebook gets Friendstered. It really smacks of "I want to be as cool as Elon, but damned if I know how to do it.. "
Holy smokes, that's actually a pretty good challenge! I may have to try that myself, albeit at a slower pace. I assume (ass, u, me whatever) that he had the ability to do this with no distractions like a real job, but it's a great start! Thanks for that, although I have to say his "put together your own degree program" kinda reads like a 4 hour workweek spam.
It's a master's degree program from what I can tell. I'd rather start at the undergraduate level. What's sad is that even though I denigrate my math skills/comprehension I've still probably forgotten more than most non-STEM people have ever learned. SIGH.
What does it mean when your biggest regret from high school at age 40 is I wish I hadn't slept through Algebra II & Advanced Math instead of "I wish I had asked Suzy out" or, I dunno, gone out for the wrestling team? :)
I've always wondered what it is that prevents us from creating a fully accredited* Computer Science Degree (bachelor's) completely online, for cheap. I'm not talking code-school, I mean let's learn Computer Science, with all the math and non-shortcuts that entails. The "industry" might want programmers, but *I* want to be more than that, and I'd like a formal education to get it without spending $30-40k/semester and would prefer to do it at my own pace while I continue working in the field. Perhaps this needs to be a Y Combinator style start-up. Courses from Algebra (yes, Algebra), Geometry, Trig, first principles kind of stuff focusing on the WHYS not just rote memorization. Sure, you'd still need the social sciences and what not (and I would be happy to just take those at the local community college for $cheap and transfer them in), but the real meat at the real school. Hell, it doesn't even have to be accredited if you actually learn something.
This also brings me to self-taught computer scientists: I've begun an adventure down "Teach myself math from scratch" lane because, at age 40, I'm still rather annoyed at my math education in high school. I was more concerned about learning to the test, not the concepts, and that's haunted me ever since. Anyone have recommendations for learning math starting from, say, Algebra I or II level (high school) that will actually teach in a way that will be useful rather than taking a test? Stuff that will carry over into future classes as the proper building blocks, etc?
Definitely, at least it's "opt-in" (for now). When my gf comes over, GN is already giving her times to get to our favorite restaurants, movie theaters, etc. Don't get me wrong, progress is great, but holy hell it's kinda creepy.
SHIT out of me. My girlfriend uses it and, well, who the fuck needs the NSA when you have Google figuring out what and where and why you do what you do. No thanks. /neo-luddite.
Younger programmers (well, workers in general) also seem more eager to prove they can do the work. Everything is new and exciting! Plus, many want to prove that "you made the right hiring decision" and give up everything to get in the door and stay there (or move on to a pay raise). Older devs seem more content to try and find stability. That mortgage isn't going to pay itself and as a younger worker, couch surfing or living at home with mom and dad is much easier to deal with the ups and downs of the start-up industry. Well, not even just the start-ups the way a lot of major Fortune x00 types are outsourcing.
Anyway, when I'm 50, if I'm still doing development for a living, I'll feel as if I've done something horribly wrong.