Finally I took the plunge…at a cost of US$618.

The package weighed 18 pounds!

The background music of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers trailer has deeply impressed me since the first time I heard it. As more and more movies adapted the soundtrack (Da Vinci Code and I am Legend, the latest example being the forthcoming 24: Redemption). Turns the the soundtrack was originally written and popularized for the movie Requiem for a Dream. This site provides a good overview of the adaption of the soundtrack.

Technology is not a prerequisite for good ideas. Here are three of my favorite Hong Kong TV advertisement of old,

1. Meiji Chocolate Gummy

2. Vita Chocolate Milk

3. CIT Long-Distance Phone Call

This is becoming a tradition. For the third year in a role Berkeley Economics PhD class of 2010 has produced what now known as “Metrics Videos”–videos that mock the life of economic graduate students. This year Metrics Videos are our biggest production ever, featuring real professors, dozens of graduate student extras, HD recording, special effects, etc. Besides that we also set a new record in the time we finish product, as principle photography was done over a week ahead of the skit party. A big thank you has to be given to all the faculties involved, particularly Prof. Powell and Prof. Ruud who actually performed the music in “No Dissertation”.

So without further due, enjoy the show:

Note: To view the clips in High Definition click on the link beneath each video instead of watching it here. If you cannot see the videos click here.

Now this is crazy:

You can also watch the video in high definition on the official website: http://www.barackula.com/

One thing that indie filmmakers will find exciting is that this musical was filmed with the ultra-high definition RED ONE.

So after trying a bunch of different recovery softwares, one stood out as the superior solution: Zero Assumption Recovery. The site is not boasting when it says “our do it yourself data recovery software is far more persistent than many of the other solutions on the market.” Where as all the other recovery softwares I have tried failed to access my drive, ZAR succeeded in pulling out all my data (albeit taking close to 24 hours). Even through it is not cheap, I still recommend this recovery tool to anyone in need.

It has just come to my attention that my motherboard’s microphone records in a single channel only, and my guess is this is the case for most of the sound cards out there. Granted most computer microphones are mono, but stereo microphones certainly exist and plugging those into a microphone jack could degrade their sound quality significantly.

Sometimes even a Hollywood production needs to resort to unauthorized acts. The following is a interview with one of the visual effects supervisor of the blockbuster Cloverfield:

We hired a helicopter, and went up various buildings to try and get the right angle, but ultimately we found out that the only place to get exactly the camera position that we needed was at a restaurant at the top of quite a famous hotel — and they wouldn’t let us take photographs in there, so it was a real problem. In the end, we all very covertly booked a table at the restaurant and asked to be as near the window as we could be. We took our cameras in there, and kind of snapped away whenever the waiter wasn’t looking. And had a very, very nice dinner.

Read the full interview here.

I am pretty convinced that my Western Digital 120GB 2.5″ Hard Disk is malfunctioning. Some data recovery softwares can see the partitions inside, but the data is unaccessible. This is a serious set back for the CS^2 project since all the project files are inside the disk. I do have backup of everything (less the most recent two weeks of work), but the tape containing the bulk of the footage is back in Hong Kong. For now this would mean the project is on hold until June.

不得不一讚容祖兒這套<<陪我長大>>的MTV製作水準高。曲易上口，詞不壞，容祖兒也交足功課。但要數特出絕對是攝影和編劇。容祖兒身後的演員演繹出每日在列車上發生的點點滴滴，香港每日上百萬的鐵路乘客當中定有不少心中有共鳴吧！