D Minus 2

Video

-Crew meeting. I am glad that the participating AVT members are all very smart.
-Purchased a 10.4″ monitor that has a native resolution of 800×600. The saleslady claimed that it has a resolution of 1024×768; while this isn’t a lie that resolution is only supported through emulation.

D Minus 3

Video

-Notified police on Monday’s filming.
-Purchased all the bulbs I need.
-Purchased blue and white colored strips.
-Checked out LCD monitors.
-Confirmed that Cinerent does not have the MK41 microphone I want, despite the microphone is listed on its website.
-Scheduled for crew rehearsal tomorrow.

HD in Hong Kong: A Long Way to Go

Video

First the best pro-sumer grade–pro-sumer in international standard, but considered “professional” in Hong Kong–25p HD camcorder, Panasonic HVX200, is carried only by one retailer. Second even though that retailer has the camcorder in stock it does not have the necessary recording media. Third Panasonic Hong Kong charges a ridiculously highly price for the recording media, over 3 times the price in US. Add to this the fact that HD Broadcast is not happening anytime soon, I can confidently say: Hong Kong, you are not a world city when it comes to HD.

General

(香港旅行社協會執行委員胡兆英)胡兆英表示，當計算遣散費時，公司一向也只會補償底薪及出團費，小費並不包括在內。胡認為這種做法恰當，小費屬於出團才會有的收入，僱主「無理由要畀錢佢放假」。

Does Mr. Woo understand what “paid holiday” means?

Political Economy

For those of you who know me well you understand how notoriously slow my decision making is; that’s what you get when you take economics theory literally. In any case as I ponder today I believe my decisions are correct in most cases. For one I rarely suffer from buyer’s remorse–I suppose someone who actually calculates price per ounce during the purchase of potato chips is incapable of that. At this moment I am clearly smoothing my consumption–taking a huge debt that is. Given how easy it is to sell things on Ebay and Craig’s List one could argue that borrowing, try and sell if unsatisfied is a dominate strategy. Not that this is easy to do–a lot of self control is needed for the “sell” part to work. That said, the $5000 credit card debt an average American takes on is not consumption smoothing; for them there is no foreseeable huge raise in income. I would even say the right thing for them to do should be saving.

Consumption smoothing is not as easy as it sounds; one really have to be thinking in terms of “the very long run” for this to work. And the real difficulty lies not in how much to spend but how to spend. Last but not the least credit constraint is very, very real.

Video

Just got off a chat with a former chairman of the Audio and Visual Team of my high school; the Team is not in its best shape but I do feel more confident now that I can get the crew I need. The next step is to figure out the cast. Moreover since I am leaving the States in two weeks, I have to make all purchases in the next few days.

Equipment that renting in Hong Kong is a lot cheaper:
Camcorder
Lights
Microphones (really great prices, probably due to the much longer life expectancy of microphones over camcorders)

Equipment that buying in US is not a lot more expensive:
35mm adapter (Cinerent only carries P+S, too expensive for me to use. As a side note shallow DOF is completely a personal taste; nothing about shallow DOF = film-look)
Digital Sound Recorder (again Cinerent only has high end models)
Gels for lights (in fact they are cheaper considering the colors I can get by buying)

Equipment that is more expensive to buy but nevertheless I am buying:
Follow-focus set (have to buy because I think this is something that takes a lot of practice to get use to)

Equipment I have not decide what to do:
boompole

I have to constantly remind myself that I cannot spend all my budget on equipment purchase since I need to have enough money for compensation, rental and the coming Eastern Europe trip.