Had a great shoot last night! The weather was looking dodgy but the forecast said no rain & thankfully it was right. I lugged my gear up the top of Signal Hill at Whatipu and set a timelapse running – this is four hours and 1,509 photos later…

Paratutai Island

I so love the colour shift as the sun sets – for about half an hour either side of actual sunset, witnessing the continuous gradient of changing light is about as close to religion as I get: four hours on top of a hill, watching colour drain from the sky & the stars slowly revealing themselves….

When was the last time you watched the sun set? And where?

I know I’ve made the comparison between lenses and microphones many time before, but I at last have access to a lens that can focus to the degree that my Telinga can!

If you have ever held a Canon 5D you’ll appreciate they are quite a chunky camera – if its in your camera bag you feel its weight, but it looks like a toy hanging off the back of this lens: its a Canon 400mm F2.8, the newer version of which is US$11k on bhphoto!

And no I don’t own it! But sincere thanks to Topic Rentals for enabling me – check their site for great lens and camera gear rentals

First thing I did was head up to the same spot that I have recorded a Tui twice before – there is a tree that if you wait long enough he returns to… And sure enough after about 15 minutes of shooting/recording and getting nothing much, he flew in, I stealthly reframed & focused & I shot some beautiful close up video of him singing! Stayed there for another hour and only got one more shot of him… Planning, patience and perseverance…

making of

> Jan 4th 2014, cicada?

> making music with a moebius strip?

> Resonance in your body? Eyeballs 20-90Hz, Spinal column 10-12 Hz etc…

> interesting analysis of the stereotype of video games being male dominated

> Sounds from dangerous places

> love these fragmented sculptures

> funny isn’t it, that despite all the ux researchers & people making a living from supposedly making apps better suited to our use, that these two VERY human features are only found in two apps (afaik… there may be others)

- When you are listening to music & hit stop, the app does not create a digital cut to zero. It eases out, doing a quick fade to silence. Lets face it, going from X volume to zero is ugly, and the louder X is the more ugly the hard cut becomes… Well done Vox for implementing this feature. (I have nostaglic memories of this from mixing on a fully analogue film dub stage – the mixer hitting stop and hearing analogue multitrack tape gorgeously pitch bend to a stop…)

- If I stop watching a video before its finished, why does the app not remember where I got up to & if I later restart watching that same video give me the option to start from the beginning or from where I left off? Well done Kindle app and Vox both have this option available.

Lots of work still to finish – editing, grading, sound design, score & mix… but I am so looking forward to this screening! I have a projector, big screen & decent sound system sorted for it – can’t wait to see the material I’ve been working on for 2 months on a big screen. The screening is being held in Huia Lodge, which is a beautiful old building and was actually the school at Huia until the mid 1960s.
See you there!