Turn down the heat please

Okay, where did this heat wave come from and when's it going away? I was outside Saturday at an SCA event and it totally destroyed me. And seriously dented my confidence about crown tournament. I'm considering calling in sick to work to get in an extra practice this week. Mmm, perhaps not a thought I should post on the internet.
On the production side, the more I work that harder it is to eat well, or perhaps the easier it is to eat poorly. I'm going to try and fix that over then next couple weeks, or at least cut out the fast food. I'd skip the soda to, but I'm tired and as previously mentioned it's too hot for tea. However, here's my first editing project for my newest client:

And finally, here's a quick video of my son and his cousin at the Discovery Center:

Update Time

Time to upgrade my editing suite. I found a nice looking tutorial on-line, but I couldn't do it because it needed a more recent version of Motion to do it.
On the plus side, I'm getting enough production work right now that I can justify buying the upgrade. Plus I'd like to invest in some hardware upgrades as well: an HD deck for logging tapes, a blue-ray burner (now that the HD disk war is over), a new faster computer (to reduce the load on the laptop and aid in multitasking) and eventually a new camera (though I really don't need one right now)
On the down side, I'm so tired. I'm trying to squeeze in all the work I can now, because as fast as it's all shown up it could all dry up in a couple of months.

And now, bubble fun:

Music Video

So last week I got footage for a music video to edit. I cut together two versions. One that was kind of a story, which is what they said they wanted. And a second version which was a hodgepodge of effects with no real theme, just something to give them an idea of what was possible. After review they said they'd like a third video, one with a story but more effects. Like Joey from Friends would say: "Put your hand together."
It's okay though, more work is more billable hours, its just that my schedule is getting full. It's good, but with the baby 2 months away I'm a bit nervous about staying on deadlines. And I might be picking up a new big client, but more on that if it happens so I don't jinx it. When it rains . . . well, if it gets too much I could always hire an assistant.

Anyway, here are the two videos:




And now, my son doing a puppet show for his mommy. It's a little morbid, if you can't understand him the puppets are saying: "You die!", "No, you die!" back and forth.

Learning, Always Learning

So, I decided to try and tackle learning Apple's Motion software. The program in Final Cut Studio that I haven't really seen a use for in my production projects to this point. But over the weekend a friend was walking my through some things he was working on and I decided that knowing how to use Motion would, at the very least, be a good back burner skill. So, I tried out some basic tutorials, with moderate success, and then tried a basic (very basic) rotoscoping project based on this tutorial which I found off a blog about the program. And while the matting is much easier in Motion, I still have much better success keying in Final Cut.
Anyway, here's the movie I was playing with. It's very rough and has no visual effects on the second half, mostly because it takes a long time to rotoscope in the effect (one frame at a time) and I have actual work that needs to be done. Also, I feel like I'm ready to move on to the next tutorial now, thanks.