Yesterday was quite a busy day down here at DDA Video.  A client had a last minute request for 3 different DVDs, 2 of which we received the footage for that morning.  Laurence and I scrambled around the office to have the DVDs prepared with enough time to set up for the shoot later that day.  Everything went smoothly as we got the DVDs to the client and then proceeded to shoot 5 different spokesperson videos with product demonstrations.  After the shoot we packed the studio up and prepared for a shoot in New York which is taking place today.

Laurence and Andrew are in New York today which gives me the opportunity to take a breather and process some of the footage from yesterday’s shoot.  Hopefully I can get through the bulk of it since I’m sure that I will be greeted with even more footage on Monday!

Recently I’ve been searching for a new apartment. Partly this is because I like a change of habitat every year or so, but with rising gas prices, I’m also looking to move closer to work.

The other day, I checked out a place that is literally only 10 minutes away. It is a really nice place, in a good neighborhood, and it has relatively cheap rent. Being 10 minutes away from DDA would dramatically increase my free-time during the week - I’d save 2 hours of commute every day. On the other hand, I’d have a roommate again, something that I wasn’t too fond of in the past.

The roommate is nice enough. She is a 49-year old woman with a dog and not too much else. She doesn’t have Internet or a computer, but doesn’t mind if I bring mine so I can work on my personal portfolio of 3d animation, 2d animation, and web interactive projects, or play my video games. The apartment does seem a little small though for the two of us - while I would have my own bedroom, I don’t know how I would feel about sharing such a small living area at this point.

Sometimes we need to accept conditions we wouldn’t necessarily like, just to get by financially. It may only be a temporary thing. I am looking at other places too - there’s a place I’m checking out today that seems promising. Wherever I move, I’ll still be here at DDA doing the best video production, animation, and web design in the Philadelphia area!

Dear Thursday:

I love you. You are the last day of my work week. Most people give Friday all of the props and push you under the rug as just another day. At DDA though, you are the pinnacle day.

After 3 days of working hard programming websites, animating in 2D with flash, and/or animating and modeling in 3D with lightwave, you bring me a happy feeling. When 5 o’clock rolls around I know there is a beer with my name on it, thanks to you. Before I leave I also know that my paycheck will be given to me as well, thanks to you. When I’m driving home I get an awesome feeling knowing that I can stay up as late as I want, thanks to you. There is also the week’s best lineup of prime time shows on television at night, again, all thanks to you.

So my dear Thursday, I just wanted to let you know my feelings about you and that I appreciate all you do. Keep up the good work.

Your not so secret admirer,

Vinnie

PS: Same time next week. I’ll be waiting for you…

I’m currently part of a group who are undertaking a large scale website update on numerous pages of a site. This task involves numerous changes on every page and can’t be done with a simple find and replace command because all this new information and alterations need to be tailored to the specific page.

On the first page I did this on, I had to actually get the changes made, and then make sure that all of the tables and everything else matched up to the example page we were provided. This was sort of working out the kinks and helped me find out what needed to be changed and in what way. This also took me a bit of time, but only so I could be sure it was all correctly done.

For the next few pages I knew what needed to be changed, but I still found myself wasting clicks. I would copy some ColdFusion link information from the old page and put it on the new page and then find that I needed that information later on another part. I would then have to go and copy and paste it again.

Finding all of these little details allowed me to create an order to do the changes. This new method made the time it takes me per page as efficient as it can be. Having a set routine also minimizes the chance that I would miss any part of the updates because each part is its own step.

Setting up a method for involved changes saves time, reduces errors, and can remove the madness from the whole process.

I picked up a new game yesterday for my Nintendo DS. It’s called “The World Ends with You.” I was initially turned on to this game by the rave reviews of the game play by the enthusiastic press. After having played the game for myself, however, I have to say that it is the design aesthetic that really hooked me.

The look is very reminiscent of Japanese anime cartoons, however, it has an edgy quality to it that I can’t quite describe. It is simultaneously stylish and gritty, like the well-thought out graffiti murals that are intentionally done on the walls of inner city parks.

I love the style of this game, and it is games like this that inspire me with my work in 2D animation. At DDA I have an incredible opportunity to work with the uniquely talented artists who excel at fusing their own creative flair with a professional style. Whether it is Carrie expertly designing a professional corporate website, Judy hand crafting an eye-catching trade show brochure, or Melissa going wild on one of her amazingly inventive and unique character designs for animation, DDA’s artists are second to none. While our inspirations and influences come from a vast number of sources, the creative talent at work here at DDA is always a joy to watch in action!

We have lots going on this week! Product photography, product videos and spokesperson videos. Tomorrow we go to NYC for a trade show video-shoot which will include testimonial videos, interview videos, and some street scene interviews with the general public. Look for new additions to the DDA Video portfolio soon!

Today we have our first official video shoot in the new studio. We will be bringing in an actor from our actors gallery to do some spokesperson work in front of the green screen. Having worked with the actor before, I am confident in his abilities to really convey the clients message. Originally, we were doing just 3 scripts for 3 short videos, but recently that changed to 5. We must also shoot b-roll footage of various blinking lights for use in the videos. Even with the new additions to the shooting schedule, we should be able to complete the shoot in just a few hours. The videos will then be converted for use in a CD-ROM catalog that Laurence has been working on. I saw a proof of it and it looks great! I definitely think this will help boost the client’s sales and give the customer a much better feel for who the company is and what products they sell.

This morning on the way to work, I was listening to the SETI Institute podcast. They were discussing the search for extra-terrestrial life, and what we would want to send them if we ever found life out there listening to us.

The scientist they were interviewing made the interesting observation that it is more than likely that they have been listening to us for at least the past 50 years, throughout the age of television. His opinion was that this “cacophony of humanity” was far more accurate a representation of life on Earth, especially modern life, than some Shakespearian manuscript or clip of Mozart’s music.

In the Information Age, we on this planet have become a media-centric society. We use television, the internet, and radio to gather information from around the world, almost instantaneously. Working at DDA, I have the privilege of being on the cutting edge of the newest and most innovative media and animation technologies. It’s exciting to think that what we accomplish in 3d and 2d animation, video editing, and web design may be among the things being broadcast into space to possibly be viewed by intelligent life!

We are more connected to the rest of the planet than we ever have been before. With such a small world, it is only a matter of time, I believe, before outer space begins to get smaller as well!

When we make websites, we have the keen eyes of our designers make the website design and styles. They use Latin text as a placeholder on the pages. Our awesome staff of writers write the content and search engine optimization keywords for all of the pages to be. Once the design is approved and we are ready to move forward, the design and content have to be put together. We call this building out the pages and it can be a long and tedious process, depending on the size of the site, but it can be done no other way.

At DDA we have a large number of people who are capable of taking on this task, so it is an easy type of workload to manage. It is actually a useful thing to have around when workloads need to be managed because is a versatile job to be assigned that can assure that everyone is able to stay busy and productive at all times. Plus, it is essential to creating websites, so it has to be done.

Yesterday, we had a large floor cleaning machine in the studio that was to get the 360 degree rotation treatment. The 360 degree rotation treatment is when we take 36 digital photos from the same angle of an object but rotate the object 10 degrees for every picture. We then crop out the background in Photoshop and import the images into a program called VR Worx. VR works is a program that allows you to create panoramic images and 360 degree rotating images. All 36 images are compressed into a quicktime movie that has special controls built right in. These controls allow the user to have total control of where they want the camera to be pointing. The user can rotate and zoom the object so as to see it as if it was sitting right in front of them. This quicktime movie can then be embedded into the product’s website to allow users to see much more than your standard 2d picture. It is definitely a nice way to put big things in small packages!