Vjing the Ferrari

Betcha you'll never see this on Top Gear, but what happens when the Ferrari 599 GTB you've been given for a test drive gets a puncture?

And consider this there's no spare tyre in a Ferrari.

Coming up on viewmagazine.tv

REFLECTIONS

As we bid adieu to this year in expectation of the next, a look back on a few things, in no particular order of fun, frivolity and work, which are now deep memory pylons.

Most are just images which capture a moment and reveal their own story.

FT
One of the real pleasures was working alongside the FT.com team.

Sharp as razors, as you'd expect, but full of fun.

How often, from afar, we mentally prep ourselves only to be immensely surprised at the turn of events.

The digital pages of the FT will be one to watch with a new team unravelling new areas of multimedia reportage.





8 Days


It may have weathered, but as new outfits or traditional ones try out video and the rest, 8 Days still appears a favourite from my logs.

As with most of the dedicated films on viewmagazine.tv there's a sense of he movie poster about it; something that heavily influences my work.



You can't see it


Using the clone tool in photoshop I comped this image to illustrate how some of us just can't see it, this new Event Horizon.

Disturbing somewhat!

In a film (was it Greenaway?) I recall a beast had his eyes in the palm of his hands.

What was that film again?


IM6 VideoJournalism


I've often interchanged this coinage IM6 or MI6; the latter more interesting as that's the acronym of the UK's foreign intelligence service.

But this image was one of 6 on viewmagazine peeling back the idea of integrated multimedia video journalism.

The main window is the deep sea dive off Gallipoli which includes the BBC World Service report from Gallipoli


VideoJournalism circa 1993


How far we've come.

An image of an old colleague from the days when we lugged around a huge camera costing 40,000 us dollars working at London's equivalent of New York One.

Rachel, now a professional motivator, has recently been knighted with an MBE for her services to Afghanistan teaching and empowering women with communication skills in radio.

More here on the videojos 10 in 1994




Take a 300,000 US dollars car, a network TV presenter and me, the VJ, and this is what you might get from an unrehearsed shoot.

My friend Kevin was taking the car back to Ferrari's base and asked whether I wanted to come along.

He was late and so wasn't really up to many of the sequences I threw up in the air as we drove.

"David, sure, maybe some other time, but I'm a bit late returning the car".

But this is waht we got and you've been generous.

Perhaps some more tests in 2008.

Any sponsors?

The Ferrari 599 GTB isn't she something here for viewmagazine.tv which has far less compression or if you prefer here on Brightcove
Or here on Youtube.

Part 1


Part 2




The Superstar-in-waiting

And how, how can I forget the amazing Nancy Ginindza - a former student of the University where I lecture.

The head of the course, Kienda called me up:

"David quick you gota come and listen to this".

Nancy's music, raw energy is the stuff of William Wallace.

Kienda and I have spent a few late evenings at her gigs trying to capture what she does.

She hasn't broken through yet, but if we can still play a part - great.

Looking forward to devising her promo in the New Years



Same song with visuals




Happy festive season

Flying Ferrari

So about this time, Kevin Haggarthy who reviews high performance cars for a living. Lucky ********** should be on a private jet courtesy of Ferrari with 10 other big press members jetting to sunny climates to test Ferraris.

Yesterday he passed by to grab a DVD of the Ferrari shoot we did. The original file because of its post in After Effects held a lot of visual data so the export size came in around 3gigs.

I manged to wash that through the H2 codec with a more fluid data rate so the size is now down to 200mb, and so on a DVD the data rate of transfer from disc to screen is comparable. There should be no stutters.

The only question now is whether I have a career in the future in high performance car shoots. You can judge for yourself here

Ferrari -part 2

Youtube chews this stuff up. I'll put a better quality one on a server somewhere even Viewmag.
Njoi

The Ferrari

Some nice ees from you regarding the initial look and feel of the supercars pages.

We're going to be testing an initial ad space buy for this. We've got a number of high performance cars and invites from the EU. It's all a question of time really for me.

But I do like the feature we're considering of the school for mechanics - women only. They drive high performance cars and are shown how to deal with some of the more pernicious problems vehicle owners face e.g. changing tyre, spotting oil levels, changing spark plugs and

The first part of the film is up. The second will follow shortly.

Couple of things I have spotted. I have "crushed" the blacks to get this high contrast look, which has bleached the film in place. That's the effect I wanted, but has overcompensated on other areas with low light, so there are heightened shadows, where I'd prefer them not to be. I'll correct this by going back to the original rushes.

The original file size was around 3gb. So to get it down to 48mb and 55mb before artefacting and some fraying of the images, I have been brutal with the compression. I'm going to ease up on that as well.

This film is really about "look". On Youtube it looks aweful. Hopefully over the weekend I'll have the time to change and then reconfigure a panoramic 800 X 540 on a different server so you can watch it in full size ( Yummy).


It will yield no difference to the story, but make the film much brighter. The gamma ( light) on a windows PC tend to, by default, display images that are darker when compared to a Mac.

But hopefully when all those glitches are solved and I have introduced sime rigorous SEM the site should begin to work itself.

Then if you are interested and you values/brand are smiliar please email Ads@viewmagazine.tv which gtes looked at by Kienda - very nice chap.

And he'll do some whizzadry pokery of calling you back. There, hard sell done.

Back to creative and why Multimedia is about playing with time and space rather than entities.

The Ferrari - the Ultimate Performance Car!

Part 1 of the Ferrari. You can read the accompanying article on viewmagazine.tv.
Part 2 loaded at some time today

Unfortunately, Youtube's compression takes away from the aesthetic. The original file size was 3gig, before I reduced it to 55mb as you can see on viewmag. Youtube them does its own mash-up. They'll get it right soon.

How do you shoot a car sequence - or even car show

This week I have finally got through to finishing off the Ferrari piece after some final project markings.

Anyways, so how do you shoot a car show with no budget or using videojournalism, without any rigs, jibs, dollys, reds, aerial mikes, filters, specialised lenses, mounts, and so on ?

All I used was the A1 Sony in HDV mode, the rest is Gonzo.

Car progs

About to post the full 20 mins of the film on Ferrari 599 GTB soonish.

If anything I hope it demonstrates what you can achieve with video journalism outside the confines of news productions.

I'm no where near doing a first here. Scores of programme makers have used dvcams to make progs.

But I hope what comes through is the mobility and turn around. On the day I filmed it was raining sheets, so that added to the drama. The film took a couple of hours to produce and then i developed this dummy site.
If I were to pursue the car idea, I think the K.app is, it's not a programme on cars per se, but one on the culture and lifestyle that surrounds the car, so nuances such as people talking to the presenter, Kevin Haggarthy, get a look in - where it's relevant of course.

I cut it on my powerbook and then took the final cut into Afrer Effects to add some tints. BBC Top gear can use up to 24 production crew for its show : Editor downwards. Cost? A couple of thousand pounds. A VJ prog maker? Er you do the maths.

Not quote top geat, but one gear - fast and furious. You judge. Up by the weekend. You know sometimes companies give freebies when they like what you've done. D'you reckon Ferrari might give me their 170,000 pound GTB 599?

You gota try

Is this the most amazing car in the world?

Long day. Currently at Kevin (Hs) houses musing over the day's work. Weekend tested this and filmed, it's a Ferrari 599 GTB. I'll post a prop blog soon. Just whacked and need to get home. The film will be up soonish as one of the last Im6 reports.
Kevin H's has started a blog. With the cars he tests, I look forward to the read ahead.
p.s we got it up to 140 mph, from around 30mph in a couple of secs. My guts need realigning. :)
This Photo and many more fabulous ones by © Warren King. email here warren@wkphotography.co.uk