#41, Hawaii Videos Released

Let Us Catch Something Big, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Within less than a week, I released four new videos, all of them from Hawaii: Fast Paddles, Sandy Beach, Evening Canoe, and Kite Surfers. The good weather permitted me to film in several places, now quite familiar with, over the period of two weeks. I have chosen for everything to happen on beaches, for a simple reason, no matter where you go - there is another beach there. And some of them are good, famous, and pleasant to spend time at. After some swimming in the Ocean for a while, I would start to film whatever was happening at that time. Hardly ever any script or much planning went into those videos. When I film in California, I usually sit down for a moment and decide where to go and what to shoot, things are a bit more organized. Over there I would grab my equipment bags and go. I wonder if this shows in my videos!
Now I am sitting and composing a new music that is going to end up in one of the next videos. A piano piece is almost done and sounds quite good, must say that is somewhat different from my previous pieces. Not sure what the next video is going to be about yet. I also brought some good quality audio recordings from Oahu, from beaches of course, might use those in some future videos as well.
For a while I was reading about shooting at short shutter speeds, from moving vehicles. That’s why I mention below The Filmmaker’s Handbook. An idea for a new video along those lines is brewing in my head now.

Breakfast: McCann’s Irish Oatmeal with some cinnamon, green tea, http://www.mccanns.ie.

Book: Steven Ascher & Edward Pincus, The Filmmaker’s Handbook, A Plume Book, ISBN 978-0-452-28678-8, http://www.penguin.com.

#40, W Cliff Rd, US Video Is Out

Phalaenopsis Orchid, Santa Clara, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

I managed to release my latest video filmed mostly in Santa Cruz, California. Everything in that video comes from a West Cliff Rd, hence the title, but I expanded it to something broader. And added a little bit of dream quality through color changes. I was cruising up and down the street, filming everything that looked interesting, and then edited the best pieces I could. The filming part is the least time consuming part and most pleasant at the same time. Editing takes much more time, many, many hours. The longest one is writing the music, however, at least several days. It sounds good in stereo, as it is mixed for stereo, but ended up only in mono – not exactly sure why that happened since I did everything to make it sound stereo. The first part of the composed piece is a piano solo, Steinway D to be exact. The second and the third parts just add more instruments but play the same melody. I limited the number of instruments here to: Steinway D piano, Stradivari violin, cello, vertical bass, double bass, string section, and timpani to close it. Not too many but the sound is already getting quite rich. There is a definite need to post my music separately in its highest quality, but this site does not let you do it easily. This becomes more and more urgent. Writing for the piano is indeed the most challenging part of all.
I think I am going to write something for Spanish guitar, finished Celino Romero’s book and listened to the CD, and liked it a lot. Why not give it a try.
Comments do not seem to be working on YouTube very well; the whole site is full of new problems.
What next? Lots of filming, lots of tape, lots of natural sounds, lots of battery recharging, but a little bit of break from editing, and submitting videos.

Lunch: cooked mixed grains of rice, buckwheat, millet, and sorghum with Marie Callender’s marinara sauce and La Mexicana mild salsa. Mint tea to drink, hot not iced. Almost no fat, just pure goodness!

Book: Celino Romero, The Art of Spanish Guitar, Amsco Publications, http://www.musicsales.com, with CD, ISBN-10: 0-8256-3461-X.

#32, Editing Music Video

Downtown San Jose From A Distance, San Jose, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

I hope by now I have enough tape for a short music video. The weather was very nice to shoot in the early evening outside of northern part of San Jose. Last year, in about the same place, I shot one of my first videos in HDV format (1920x1080). Liked it a lot and decided to continue from then on with that format. It is less obvious if it was the best decision as far as YouTube goes, since those two black bars that show up on the top and bottom of a YouTube video window do take some important space away from the video. People who shoot for YouTube in a lower resolution, and worse quality, may actually have an advantage over those who shoot in HDV! But when you watch at home the HDV video that you made, plus the higher quality sound, you think of those other YouTube videos – "Forget It".
I wrote perhaps half of the music for the video, and have some ideas what to do with the other half. Tomorrow I will start working on the remaining part, one note at a time, my favorite way so far, although as I already mentioned previously, not the fastest one.

Breakfast: green vegetable salad with Italian dressing, ham and egg sandwiches, hash browns with Heinz ketchup, and iced tea with lemon.