OF GEEKS AND ARTISTS

I have just finished reading an interesting blog about Ireland's decision to pay authors royalties on books checked-out of libraries. On the surface this sounds like a good idea, but the Law of Unintended Consequences may rear its ugly head in ways that neither Ireland, nor the blog 's author may have foreseen. This is a classic example of Geek vs. Artist. Firstly, the blog's author goes a step further by putting forward the idea of paying authors a royalty every time a used copy of a book is sold: " There is no reason an author shouldn't be compensated for a sale of a used copy of their work. It is not a technology issue since the same technology that tracks the sales of new books can track the sale of used ones too. " Again, this sounds like a good idea, but why stop with used books? Why not extend this idea to any work of art? Think about it: painters, sculptors, knitters, quilters, and anyone else who produces "art," should be paid a royalt...

 Marketing art is at best a crapshoot. This fact is made readily apparent to anyone who writes a book, creates a painting, or makes a film. Art is an incredibly personal thing that should be driven by the emotions of the artist, not a marketing committee. The problem is that some forms of art are very expensive to create, or take an inordinate amount of the artist’s time to create—time which may be needed to earn enough money to eat and afford shelter. Starving artists have been and will be the norm and I don’t think there is any way around the problem. Why do I say this? Because, people all have different tastes and when you try to make money by selling something, you want to maximize the number of people who want to buy your something. To do this you need to adjust your something so that it appeals to the largest group of people possible—you want to make your something commercial. Art, on the other hand, is personal, an expression of the artists soul. This expression may appeal t...

Why all of this interest in using cellphones to capture stills and video? There are numerous digital cameras and digital video cameras available that are small and inexpensive, yet take superior pictures. Why, then, all of this interest in cellphones? Convenience, pure and simple. To shoot a short movie, all I have to do is pull out my phone (which I carry with me everywhere) and start shooting. Total spur-of-the-moment filmmaking. As close to video stream of consciousness as one can get. Yes, the resolution isn't great and I only have 15 seconds to shoot, but these are limitations that can be overcome. The main idea is that having the phone with me where ever I go frees me to film whenever the mood strikes and if I film something striking I can possible repeat the shot using higher quality equipment. Cellphone filmmaking can be about spontaneous as one can get short of wiring a tap into one's visual cortex. Tags: filmmaking, cellphone

One of the first things you will notice about the film, Breakfast, is that a number of the shots have framing problems and this is true. I found that framing a shot using the small cell phone screen is difficult, especially since I had icons cluttering the top edge of the screen and buttons cluttering the bottom. To check this out I shot a short video of a stationary object and created a jpeg file from one of the frames. The object, a small tube of CD-Rs, should have been centered in the frame both vertically and horizontally. The frame cap shows that it is centered horizontally, but offset vertically by about 12%. I cannot explain this, but I can adjust for it by appropriately offsetting my framing during filming. Now, whether this is a quirk of my camera or systemic of video-equipped phones is anyone’s guess. What this does illustrate, though, is the absolute need for the fledgling filmmaker to become intimately familiar with his/her equipment before using it to shoot actual footage....