The extra content, in this case anyway, might well be worth the investment in the DVD.
This seems like a pretty half-assed DVD to me. We all know the term "Special Edition" has no meaning anymore, but it's pretty obvious they've rushed this out to coincide with the release of Revolutions.
Take a good look at those "bonus features." It's a few featurettes, the kind of vapid press release crap you see on HBO before the movie's released. No commentary. No deleted scenes. Why do they need a second disc for this?
There's already talk of a genuine special edition (scroll to the bottom of the article), after the Wachowskis are done with the Revolutions hoopla. If you're not willing to buy a movie twice, you're going to be kicking yourself later.
The points you make are all reasonable. If you're genuinely as useful as you claim, management would certainly be receptive, especially in light of the discrepancy between your salary and that of the new hires (which they may simply not realize until you point it out). This could very well end up being a non-issue for you.
And don't threaten to quit on your initial approach, if you do ask. Most of my bosses have never responded well to confrontational employees, if they weren't given the chance to right a wrong in the first place.
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They do have a responsibility to their shareholders. But none to their website visitors.
This whole thread is still getting one key point of fact wrong: Google is not a publicly traded company.
Here: go look them up. Type in "Google." Nothing, right?
The people that run Google could get spectacularly rich if they were to issue an IPO. Some have theorized that any IPO from Google would fuel a new tech boom, and some have the audacity to claim that it's Google's responsibility to do this and single-handedly save the stock market.
But they don't want that. They realize that they run their company in slightly untraditional ways-- they don't hold profit as the top priority at the expense of all else (which is why you don't see larger ads, or any willingness to sell rankings on their search engine), and they like that they can make decisions based on right-and-wrong gut reactions. Their tech guy, Sergei Brin, has a nice outlook on what they value, which you can find in this slightly older Forbes article, and he's never yet changed his tune.
Therefore, they have even less responsibility to anybody than even you might think. They don't have to justify their actions to stockholders, and they're not under the legal guidelines the SEC would impose if they were a publicly-traded company.
They can do what they want, and are content (for now) to do so.
Nothing like submitting a story, only to find it posted when you get back to the main page.
Anyways. This is good, mostly-- nice to have the movies in widescreen, with decent quality. But there's a few problems, as I see it:
1. No commentary. I understand that Spielberg prefers to "keep the magic," as he's put it, but come on. These are for posterity. Let's get some thoughts. There's no way fifteen minutes worth of interview on a bonus disc is going to do it.
2. They're still trying to change the title of the first movie, and it pisses me off-- it's "Raiders of the Lost Ark," not "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark." Cripes. It's one of the most popular films of all time. If you don't already know who's in it, I think the front freaking cover is a fine clue, thanks.
3. We're gonna have to buy it all again after the fourth movie comes out, right?
On the plus side, the content of the movies themselves haven't been changed. In other words, Indy still shoots first.
More information and a peek at the cover art, if you're curious, can be found at DVD File.
The Matrix Reloaded, if I recall correctly, clocks in somewhere around at least two hours, fifteen minutes.
IMAX movies can't be longer than two hours, tops. Something to do with the plate they have to hold the print on-- IMAX film is so large that the projector can't hold a print beyond a certain length.
So, they're going to have to cut it. They had to with Apollo 13, which was a shame, because they cut out good character stuff, instead of effects. They also had to do it with Star Wars: Episode II, which was great, because they had to cut out lame character stuff, instead of effects.
Wonder what they'll be cutting out of Matrix? You can probably bet it's not going to be bullet time, or whatever other special effects they've spent their $250 million-plus budget on. Because, of course, audiences hate that boring character stuff.
I'll admit that I'm speaking a bit from nostalgia here, as I do enjoy sitting down with something physical in front of me. I also tend to think of the papers as having more substance, somehow, than their online counterparts-- as if seeing all the pages in front of me will give me a fuller story than clicking link-to-link.
But the real reason I see the death of print media as a shame is the historical record the papers provide. Any library can archive their old papers for reference for all. Electronic media, as we're all aware, is subject to technology shifts, media that decays considerably faster than paper, and so on. It takes a fire, or years of neglect, to do the same to the physical object. A mistaken click of a button in a database somewhere could lose years of information, and what then?
Idiot me left my shiny new $3000 Dell at a friend's house after a LAN. I came back later that night, in the middle of a huge rainstorm, to pick it up. Turns out his roof was leaking, directly onto my PC, which I found in a standing puddle.
After some grousing at my friend, I took it home, put some fans on it for a few hours, and anxiously pressed power... and all was good. It's been working perfectly well for the past two years.
Luck? Maybe. But I'll still be buying a Dell again next time around.
I agree that Day-Lewis has absolutely done one of the best performances in years.
In my original post I said Gangs of New York should probably win for Picture, out of those nominees. I don't think it was a great movie-- uninteresting story, and the seams from the massive edits really, really show-- but Day-Lewis made the whole thing for me. I saw it twice, just for him.
I agree that Gangs's screenplay probably belongs in the Adapted Screenplay category. Weird stuff this year: Gangs and Far From Heaven are nominated for Original Screenplay, and are both heavily based on previously-published source material, while Adaptation is nominated for Adapted Screenplay, despite being the most original piece of movie writing in five years.
On the whole, it's tough to get particularly pissed off about the nominations on the whole. It's been a very, very good year, and none of the nominations in the major categories is truly ridiculous.
Individually:
Best Picture: Will win: Chicago Should win: Gangs of New York, probably Should have been nominated: Adaptation, Spirited Away, or Punch-Drunk Love, in a perfect world Thoughts: Not a bad set of nominees. Nothing particularly outrageous, except for The Hours, which was designed for the express purpose of winning year-end awards. But on the whole you can't complain.
Director Will win: Scorsese Should win: Scorsese Should have been nominated: Spike Jonze for Adaptation or Peter Jackson for The Two Towers. Thoughts: It'll be a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for Scorsese, essentially. Gangs is far from his best work, but he runs circles around everybody else even on a bad day. (Side note: How do you nominate a movie for Best Picture, but not its director, a la TTT? These things don't direct themselves.)
Original Screenplay Will win: Talk to Her Should win: Y Tu Mama Tambien Should have been nominated: Spirited Away Thoughts: I'll be glad when they send Vardolos back to made-for-TV land where she belongs.
Adapted Screenplay Will win: Adaptation or Chicago Should win: Adaptation Thoughts: A close call-- Condon could win for Chicago if it rides the wave in, even though Adaptation deserves it. Kudos to Charlie Kaufman for figuring out a way to get the first nomination ever for a person that doesn't exist.
Best Actor Will win: Jack Nicholson Should win: Daniel Day-Lewis Thoughts: Everybody loves Nicholson. But watching Day-Lewis perform is like having ring-side seats for a hurricane.
I don't really care about the other acting categories. Nothing too interesting happening there. Sorry.
In the end, I'm glad overall. Spirited Away got some recognition it deserves-- I'm not an anime fan in the least and it was still my favorite movie of the year. There's not an unworthy film in the bunch, by my reckoning. Like I said, it was a good year. Lots of treats, lots of movies that'll last.
Think of it this way: in ten years time, what will have more fatalities per machine on the road, the Segway or the car?
Judging from everything I've read about the Segway, it'll be the car, of course. So why don't they ban cars in San Francisco, too? Because use of cars is too widespread, and the public would be outraged if you tried to take them away.
If the Segway's all the hype suggests, then maybe in years hence the new machine will become as entrenched in daily life as the car (...assuming San Fran doesn't become a national trendsetter on the issue, and kill the Segway before it's given a chance). Until then you can expect this sort of thing. Just imagine how many people are going to worry about the first supersonic turbo-boostered flying rocket cars, you know?
IIRC, part of Disney's deal with Miyazaki is that they won't alter a single frame of the films for distribution. Pan-and-scanning is obviously changing the film-- so at the very least I'm sure Disney has to offer both options.
I read this around the time Princess Mononoke came out, but I'm sure the same applies. It's why Disney (through Miramax) was willing to release a 2:20 animated film, instead of their usual 1:25-- it was that or nothing. (And that's why nothing could be done about Mononoke's glacial pacing, but that's opinion, I suppose.)
As for the language tracks, there was some hubbub when it came to the Mononoke DVD-- Disney was originally going to release it with only the English language dub, but there was considerable fan outcry (spearheaded by the folks at AICN, I believe), and so the disc was delayed so they could get language clearances and have both versions.
Personally, I enjoyed Spirited Away much, much more than Mononoke, and would look forward to a comparably well-done release, with widescreen, both language options, etc. Hopefully Disney's learned their lesson-- that Miyazaki's fan base can be downright ornery in their devotion, and will demand quality.
It seems to me that the quality of the Trek movies, on the whole, is negligible to most of the audience. Did you read the comments from the review here on Slashdot a few days ago?
So many people have said that they'll disregard what they hear, from critics or friends, and go see it anyways. "And I'll probably enjoy it, no matter how bad it is." Why is this? Star Trek has become like the McDonald's of film franchises. Bland, predictable. You just sort of... go. When was the last time you really looked forward to a meal at McDonald's?
I'm not really one to talk, I guess-- I kinda sorta look forward to the new Star Wars movies, despite myself. Same idea.
I'm a film student at the moment, and at this point I've used most of the options out there-- my school's friendly like that. For what it's worth, here's some opinions.
You've basically got three choices in software when it comes to editing-- Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Avid. Anybody that tells you that combining Photoshop and After Effects will suffice is apparently only interested in color correcting some darn pretty titles.
First off: Adobe Premiere. I've used it on both PCs and Macs, and it's the suite to which most "prosumers" will probably have access. Guess what? It sucks. Plain and simple. Sorry.
It will allow you to cut and paste and do your standard basic functions, but guess what: so does iMovie. It is the buggiest program that Adobe releases. It seems the only guaranteed feature of Premiere is that it will crash two minutes before it's done rendering, and corrupt your video files.
On some projects I've spent more time repeating steps due to crashes than it took to shoot the thing in the first place. Don't make the same mistake of using it.
Second: Avid. Probably out of most everybody's hands, because of cost, although it is the professional choice. Approximately 95% of television work and 80% of film features are edited on Avid, IIRC, but it's pricey to get the full hardware suite. They offer several levels of product-- Avid Xpress is the simplest, and will still run you $10,000. It's the only one I've used. It goes up to Avid Symphony, which is basically the same package, but with better hardware, more features, more possible video and audio tracks, etc.
My complaint with Avid is that it's not very user-friendly. Their dialogs tend to be tiny icons with no explanatory text. If you're going into the field, it's a system worth knowing, but the learning curve is high.
(Incidentally, Avid has just released a stand-alone software program to compete with Premiere and Final Cut, called Avid Xpress DV. Haven't used it, but it's apparently very similar to the rest of its family. So beware.)
And then there's Final Cut Pro. It's only available for the Mac. This is unfortunate, because IMHO, it's by far the best program out there. Easy to use, a wide array of features, moderate learning curve but decidely worth the hassle. Get yourself hooked up with a dual-1.25GHz G4 machine, and you can render scenes in less time than it takes to make a sandwich. This thing has color correction, titling, and just about anything else I've needed so far, within the framework of one program. No jumping around. Stable. Simply beautiful.
The final verdict? For the cost of the basic Avid, you could buy yourself two top-of-the-line Final Cut Mac workstations. Going from Premiere to FCP is a revelation, and I'd recommend it to anybody interested in the field. At home I'm a PC guy, and I've still got to say the Mac is the way to go.
Just be sure to buy yourself a two-button mouse, then you're all set.;)
The stuff you browse on the web isn't exactly completely free of charge. There're bandwidth costs to be paid, servers... etc.
If they didn't want to pay bandwidth costs, they wouldn't have placed their site online. That is an assumed cost of operating.
Yes, we browse their sites for free, and it's perfectly within their rights to send us pop-up ads. But I agreed to no terms of service when I typed in their address.
If they're going to recoup their costs, they're going to have to do it smarter. Salon, for example, won't let you access their premium content unless you pay, and that's fair. They've implemented a system that doesn't make assumptions. It doesn't really work, but it's still fair.
...all they're asking in return is for you to do your part and look at those ads... is it that big of an inconvenience?
Whether or not it's a big inconvenience is a matter of opinion, a moot point, and not worth discussing. The issue is whether or not I'm allowed to block their pop-ups altogether.
Wait, scratch that. That's how they want us to think. The issue is whether or not they are allowed to force me to see what they want me to see.
You don't read all that much about nanotech in the mainstream press these days, of course, but it's possible that could change. Michael Crichton-- he of Jurassic Park, Timeline, etc.-- is just about to release a new book on the subject, called Prey. And I seem to recall reading something about the movie rights already being sold.
You know a science is entering the mainstream press when Crichton writes a thriller about it. In other words, you can look forward to several dozen articles in about a year's time on Slate with headlines such as "Nanotech - Is It for Real?"
If you're really interested in learning more, a writer/artist by the name of Scott McCloud has probably done more for the medium and getting the message out than anybody else.
McCloud wrote an incredibly popular, well-written, and informative book a few years back called Understanding Comics, about the underlying principles that make comics as a whole work. He followed it up with Reinventing Comics, which was more about methods of distribution and why he thinks online comics are the future. But interesting reading nonetheless.
The first was great. I go to an art school, and the kids in the comic art program actually have to read it as a text book for several courses. In my opinion, though, the second book was less successful, and more opinion-based. I probably just don't agree with him on a few points.
Regardless, his site is worth checking out for those interested in the topic. He's probably online comics' biggest and best-known advocate.
I work at a catalogue company-- we get orders in the mail, mostly. At the moment, the only people that have to pay tax are those that are ordering in the same state that we're located.
Do you know how many people don't know how to figure out how to add 6.5% on an order? How many times a day I have to call confused grandmas because of short checks?!?
I'm getting aggravated already just thinking about this. This is going to be hell for us. It's no wonder there's a big jar of Advil available for everyone in the office.
Slightly off-topic, but the thread is an interesting one. So:
I shoot motion picture film, as a student. So take all this for whatever it's worth. You probably won't ever see 120-200fps in film for a couple of reasons.
For one, there's just not enough light to expose it properly. Shooting 24fps at f2.0 is hard enough on your average B&W reversal stock, which is ASA 160, IIRC. The fastest motion films that Kodak will sell you go to about 800 speed, but that's only three or four steps up from the 160.
I know Kubrick used some specially-made wide lenses to shoot "Barry Lyndon" in candle-light, but I think they were only as open as f0.5 or f0.7. Again, only a couple steps away from f2.0, which is as wide as the average camera lens will go.
So you'd need some massive wattage to get anywhere. But beyond that, there are mechanical issues: there's a claw that pulls film through the gate by its sprockets. The Bolex and Arriflex cameras I've used won't go any faster than 48fps, because apparently you start tearing the film itself when you go much past that.
So maybe there's specialized cameras out there-- they'd need a huge aperture and smooth mechanics, and the film would need to be super-fast and probably large and durable. Which most film is not.
Hope somebody out there might care about all of this enough to make it worth my writing. You can't really compare film and, say, monitors by numbers alone, as most people seem to want to do. Too many differences. They just happen to both result in moving 2D images.
Slashdot Mirror
Or rather an announcement of an MS-Linux release in 2 to 3 years, but nothing on shelves for, oh, 4 to 5?
We are talking about Microsoft, after all.
This seems like a pretty half-assed DVD to me. We all know the term "Special Edition" has no meaning anymore, but it's pretty obvious they've rushed this out to coincide with the release of Revolutions.
Take a good look at those "bonus features." It's a few featurettes, the kind of vapid press release crap you see on HBO before the movie's released. No commentary. No deleted scenes. Why do they need a second disc for this?
There's already talk of a genuine special edition (scroll to the bottom of the article), after the Wachowskis are done with the Revolutions hoopla. If you're not willing to buy a movie twice, you're going to be kicking yourself later.
...have you tried asking?
The points you make are all reasonable. If you're genuinely as useful as you claim, management would certainly be receptive, especially in light of the discrepancy between your salary and that of the new hires (which they may simply not realize until you point it out). This could very well end up being a non-issue for you.
And don't threaten to quit on your initial approach, if you do ask. Most of my bosses have never responded well to confrontational employees, if they weren't given the chance to right a wrong in the first place.
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They do have a responsibility to their shareholders. But none to their website visitors.
This whole thread is still getting one key point of fact wrong: Google is not a publicly traded company.
Here: go look them up. Type in "Google." Nothing, right?
The people that run Google could get spectacularly rich if they were to issue an IPO. Some have theorized that any IPO from Google would fuel a new tech boom, and some have the audacity to claim that it's Google's responsibility to do this and single-handedly save the stock market.
But they don't want that. They realize that they run their company in slightly untraditional ways-- they don't hold profit as the top priority at the expense of all else (which is why you don't see larger ads, or any willingness to sell rankings on their search engine), and they like that they can make decisions based on right-and-wrong gut reactions. Their tech guy, Sergei Brin, has a nice outlook on what they value, which you can find in this slightly older Forbes article, and he's never yet changed his tune.
Therefore, they have even less responsibility to anybody than even you might think. They don't have to justify their actions to stockholders, and they're not under the legal guidelines the SEC would impose if they were a publicly-traded company.
They can do what they want, and are content (for now) to do so.
Steps to become a better spammer:
1. Insert head in ass
2. Click "send"
3. Profit!
Nothing like submitting a story, only to find it posted when you get back to the main page.
Anyways. This is good, mostly-- nice to have the movies in widescreen, with decent quality. But there's a few problems, as I see it:
1. No commentary. I understand that Spielberg prefers to "keep the magic," as he's put it, but come on. These are for posterity. Let's get some thoughts. There's no way fifteen minutes worth of interview on a bonus disc is going to do it.
2. They're still trying to change the title of the first movie, and it pisses me off-- it's "Raiders of the Lost Ark," not "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark." Cripes. It's one of the most popular films of all time. If you don't already know who's in it, I think the front freaking cover is a fine clue, thanks.
3. We're gonna have to buy it all again after the fourth movie comes out, right?
On the plus side, the content of the movies themselves haven't been changed. In other words, Indy still shoots first.
More information and a peek at the cover art, if you're curious, can be found at DVD File.
Hi-def digital cameras do not necessarily help you make better movies.
The Matrix Reloaded, if I recall correctly, clocks in somewhere around at least two hours, fifteen minutes.
IMAX movies can't be longer than two hours, tops. Something to do with the plate they have to hold the print on-- IMAX film is so large that the projector can't hold a print beyond a certain length.
So, they're going to have to cut it. They had to with Apollo 13, which was a shame, because they cut out good character stuff, instead of effects. They also had to do it with Star Wars: Episode II, which was great, because they had to cut out lame character stuff, instead of effects.
Wonder what they'll be cutting out of Matrix? You can probably bet it's not going to be bullet time, or whatever other special effects they've spent their $250 million-plus budget on. Because, of course, audiences hate that boring character stuff.
Alright, we can do this, but this time around I've got dibs on "business.com."
It'll be a shame if print newspapers die out.
I'll admit that I'm speaking a bit from nostalgia here, as I do enjoy sitting down with something physical in front of me. I also tend to think of the papers as having more substance, somehow, than their online counterparts-- as if seeing all the pages in front of me will give me a fuller story than clicking link-to-link.
But the real reason I see the death of print media as a shame is the historical record the papers provide. Any library can archive their old papers for reference for all. Electronic media, as we're all aware, is subject to technology shifts, media that decays considerably faster than paper, and so on. It takes a fire, or years of neglect, to do the same to the physical object. A mistaken click of a button in a database somewhere could lose years of information, and what then?
Idiot me left my shiny new $3000 Dell at a friend's house after a LAN. I came back later that night, in the middle of a huge rainstorm, to pick it up. Turns out his roof was leaking, directly onto my PC, which I found in a standing puddle.
After some grousing at my friend, I took it home, put some fans on it for a few hours, and anxiously pressed power... and all was good. It's been working perfectly well for the past two years.
Luck? Maybe. But I'll still be buying a Dell again next time around.
I agree that Day-Lewis has absolutely done one of the best performances in years.
In my original post I said Gangs of New York should probably win for Picture, out of those nominees. I don't think it was a great movie-- uninteresting story, and the seams from the massive edits really, really show-- but Day-Lewis made the whole thing for me. I saw it twice, just for him.
I agree that Gangs's screenplay probably belongs in the Adapted Screenplay category. Weird stuff this year: Gangs and Far From Heaven are nominated for Original Screenplay, and are both heavily based on previously-published source material, while Adaptation is nominated for Adapted Screenplay, despite being the most original piece of movie writing in five years.
That'll mess with your head.
On the whole, it's tough to get particularly pissed off about the nominations on the whole. It's been a very, very good year, and none of the nominations in the major categories is truly ridiculous.
Individually:
Best Picture:
Will win: Chicago
Should win: Gangs of New York, probably
Should have been nominated: Adaptation, Spirited Away, or Punch-Drunk Love, in a perfect world
Thoughts: Not a bad set of nominees. Nothing particularly outrageous, except for The Hours, which was designed for the express purpose of winning year-end awards. But on the whole you can't complain.
Director
Will win: Scorsese
Should win: Scorsese
Should have been nominated: Spike Jonze for Adaptation or Peter Jackson for The Two Towers.
Thoughts: It'll be a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for Scorsese, essentially. Gangs is far from his best work, but he runs circles around everybody else even on a bad day. (Side note: How do you nominate a movie for Best Picture, but not its director, a la TTT? These things don't direct themselves.)
Original Screenplay
Will win: Talk to Her
Should win: Y Tu Mama Tambien
Should have been nominated: Spirited Away
Thoughts: I'll be glad when they send Vardolos back to made-for-TV land where she belongs.
Adapted Screenplay
Will win: Adaptation or Chicago
Should win: Adaptation
Thoughts: A close call-- Condon could win for Chicago if it rides the wave in, even though Adaptation deserves it. Kudos to Charlie Kaufman for figuring out a way to get the first nomination ever for a person that doesn't exist.
Best Actor
Will win: Jack Nicholson
Should win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Thoughts: Everybody loves Nicholson. But watching Day-Lewis perform is like having ring-side seats for a hurricane.
I don't really care about the other acting categories. Nothing too interesting happening there. Sorry.
In the end, I'm glad overall. Spirited Away got some recognition it deserves-- I'm not an anime fan in the least and it was still my favorite movie of the year. There's not an unworthy film in the bunch, by my reckoning. Like I said, it was a good year. Lots of treats, lots of movies that'll last.
Thoughts?
Think of it this way: in ten years time, what will have more fatalities per machine on the road, the Segway or the car?
Judging from everything I've read about the Segway, it'll be the car, of course. So why don't they ban cars in San Francisco, too? Because use of cars is too widespread, and the public would be outraged if you tried to take them away.
If the Segway's all the hype suggests, then maybe in years hence the new machine will become as entrenched in daily life as the car (...assuming San Fran doesn't become a national trendsetter on the issue, and kill the Segway before it's given a chance). Until then you can expect this sort of thing. Just imagine how many people are going to worry about the first supersonic turbo-boostered flying rocket cars, you know?
IIRC, part of Disney's deal with Miyazaki is that they won't alter a single frame of the films for distribution. Pan-and-scanning is obviously changing the film-- so at the very least I'm sure Disney has to offer both options.
I read this around the time Princess Mononoke came out, but I'm sure the same applies. It's why Disney (through Miramax) was willing to release a 2:20 animated film, instead of their usual 1:25-- it was that or nothing. (And that's why nothing could be done about Mononoke's glacial pacing, but that's opinion, I suppose.)
As for the language tracks, there was some hubbub when it came to the Mononoke DVD-- Disney was originally going to release it with only the English language dub, but there was considerable fan outcry (spearheaded by the folks at AICN, I believe), and so the disc was delayed so they could get language clearances and have both versions.
Personally, I enjoyed Spirited Away much, much more than Mononoke, and would look forward to a comparably well-done release, with widescreen, both language options, etc. Hopefully Disney's learned their lesson-- that Miyazaki's fan base can be downright ornery in their devotion, and will demand quality.
Unfortunately, I think you're in the minority.
It seems to me that the quality of the Trek movies, on the whole, is negligible to most of the audience. Did you read the comments from the review here on Slashdot a few days ago?
So many people have said that they'll disregard what they hear, from critics or friends, and go see it anyways. "And I'll probably enjoy it, no matter how bad it is." Why is this? Star Trek has become like the McDonald's of film franchises. Bland, predictable. You just sort of... go. When was the last time you really looked forward to a meal at McDonald's?
I'm not really one to talk, I guess-- I kinda sorta look forward to the new Star Wars movies, despite myself. Same idea.
They're going to say "See how effective the DMCA is?"
Of course, had they found any of what they're looking for, the line would be "See how bad we need the DMCA?"
I'm a film student at the moment, and at this point I've used most of the options out there-- my school's friendly like that. For what it's worth, here's some opinions.
;)
You've basically got three choices in software when it comes to editing-- Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Avid. Anybody that tells you that combining Photoshop and After Effects will suffice is apparently only interested in color correcting some darn pretty titles.
First off: Adobe Premiere. I've used it on both PCs and Macs, and it's the suite to which most "prosumers" will probably have access. Guess what? It sucks. Plain and simple. Sorry.
It will allow you to cut and paste and do your standard basic functions, but guess what: so does iMovie. It is the buggiest program that Adobe releases. It seems the only guaranteed feature of Premiere is that it will crash two minutes before it's done rendering, and corrupt your video files.
On some projects I've spent more time repeating steps due to crashes than it took to shoot the thing in the first place. Don't make the same mistake of using it.
Second: Avid. Probably out of most everybody's hands, because of cost, although it is the professional choice. Approximately 95% of television work and 80% of film features are edited on Avid, IIRC, but it's pricey to get the full hardware suite. They offer several levels of product-- Avid Xpress is the simplest, and will still run you $10,000. It's the only one I've used. It goes up to Avid Symphony, which is basically the same package, but with better hardware, more features, more possible video and audio tracks, etc.
My complaint with Avid is that it's not very user-friendly. Their dialogs tend to be tiny icons with no explanatory text. If you're going into the field, it's a system worth knowing, but the learning curve is high.
(Incidentally, Avid has just released a stand-alone software program to compete with Premiere and Final Cut, called Avid Xpress DV. Haven't used it, but it's apparently very similar to the rest of its family. So beware.)
And then there's Final Cut Pro. It's only available for the Mac. This is unfortunate, because IMHO, it's by far the best program out there. Easy to use, a wide array of features, moderate learning curve but decidely worth the hassle. Get yourself hooked up with a dual-1.25GHz G4 machine, and you can render scenes in less time than it takes to make a sandwich. This thing has color correction, titling, and just about anything else I've needed so far, within the framework of one program. No jumping around. Stable. Simply beautiful.
The final verdict? For the cost of the basic Avid, you could buy yourself two top-of-the-line Final Cut Mac workstations. Going from Premiere to FCP is a revelation, and I'd recommend it to anybody interested in the field. At home I'm a PC guy, and I've still got to say the Mac is the way to go.
Just be sure to buy yourself a two-button mouse, then you're all set.
The stuff you browse on the web isn't exactly completely free of charge. There're bandwidth costs to be paid, servers... etc.
...all they're asking in return is for you to do your part and look at those ads... is it that big of an inconvenience?
If they didn't want to pay bandwidth costs, they wouldn't have placed their site online. That is an assumed cost of operating.
Yes, we browse their sites for free, and it's perfectly within their rights to send us pop-up ads. But I agreed to no terms of service when I typed in their address.
If they're going to recoup their costs, they're going to have to do it smarter. Salon, for example, won't let you access their premium content unless you pay, and that's fair. They've implemented a system that doesn't make assumptions. It doesn't really work, but it's still fair.
Whether or not it's a big inconvenience is a matter of opinion, a moot point, and not worth discussing. The issue is whether or not I'm allowed to block their pop-ups altogether.
Wait, scratch that. That's how they want us to think. The issue is whether or not they are allowed to force me to see what they want me to see.
I say no.
You don't read all that much about nanotech in the mainstream press these days, of course, but it's possible that could change. Michael Crichton-- he of Jurassic Park, Timeline, etc.-- is just about to release a new book on the subject, called Prey. And I seem to recall reading something about the movie rights already being sold.
You know a science is entering the mainstream press when Crichton writes a thriller about it. In other words, you can look forward to several dozen articles in about a year's time on Slate with headlines such as "Nanotech - Is It for Real?"
...just because you know how to type in bold, it doesn't mean you're right.
If you're really interested in learning more, a writer/artist by the name of Scott McCloud has probably done more for the medium and getting the message out than anybody else.
McCloud wrote an incredibly popular, well-written, and informative book a few years back called Understanding Comics, about the underlying principles that make comics as a whole work. He followed it up with Reinventing Comics, which was more about methods of distribution and why he thinks online comics are the future. But interesting reading nonetheless.
The first was great. I go to an art school, and the kids in the comic art program actually have to read it as a text book for several courses. In my opinion, though, the second book was less successful, and more opinion-based. I probably just don't agree with him on a few points.
Regardless, his site is worth checking out for those interested in the topic. He's probably online comics' biggest and best-known advocate.
I work at a catalogue company-- we get orders in the mail, mostly. At the moment, the only people that have to pay tax are those that are ordering in the same state that we're located.
Do you know how many people don't know how to figure out how to add 6.5% on an order? How many times a day I have to call confused grandmas because of short checks?!?
I'm getting aggravated already just thinking about this. This is going to be hell for us. It's no wonder there's a big jar of Advil available for everyone in the office.
Slightly off-topic, but the thread is an interesting one. So:
I shoot motion picture film, as a student. So take all this for whatever it's worth. You probably won't ever see 120-200fps in film for a couple of reasons.
For one, there's just not enough light to expose it properly. Shooting 24fps at f2.0 is hard enough on your average B&W reversal stock, which is ASA 160, IIRC. The fastest motion films that Kodak will sell you go to about 800 speed, but that's only three or four steps up from the 160.
I know Kubrick used some specially-made wide lenses to shoot "Barry Lyndon" in candle-light, but I think they were only as open as f0.5 or f0.7. Again, only a couple steps away from f2.0, which is as wide as the average camera lens will go.
So you'd need some massive wattage to get anywhere. But beyond that, there are mechanical issues: there's a claw that pulls film through the gate by its sprockets. The Bolex and Arriflex cameras I've used won't go any faster than 48fps, because apparently you start tearing the film itself when you go much past that.
So maybe there's specialized cameras out there-- they'd need a huge aperture and smooth mechanics, and the film would need to be super-fast and probably large and durable. Which most film is not.
Hope somebody out there might care about all of this enough to make it worth my writing. You can't really compare film and, say, monitors by numbers alone, as most people seem to want to do. Too many differences. They just happen to both result in moving 2D images.