2009 Round-up

For the convenience and enjoyment (?) of those who've asked what I've been up to lately, here is a selection of a few exerpiental videos I've hacked together at in the later half of 2009. It's been a rare year in many ways, but was far from unproductive.

The process of producing a Pale Blue Dot episode involves, among other things, the consumption and digestion of a lot of media, in the ongoing search for the perfect bits. This sometimes leads to strange ideas, which can lead to the production of irrelevant side projects and one-off videos that tend to explore some aspect of audio-visual juxtaposition that I found interesting at the time. They're not masterpieces by any means, but they were enjoyable to create and contain some footage that may well survive into the next episode of PBD.

First up is a music video, created initially as a background video for a more complex Final Cut "Motion" project; it's set to Vangelis' track "Albedo 0.39". It's officially untitled, but currently lives on YouTube as "Albedo3":



Next up is a video stitched together from some BBC video ("British Isles, a Natural History") set to a Sphongle track called "Shpongolese Spoken Here." I'd been looking forward to the new Shpongle album for a while, but I initially detested "Shpongolese Spoken Here", especially what I felt to be its jarring and rather unmelodic beginning. Yet after a few listens, though, I began to appreciate what the track was about and the video magically clicked together in my imagination; I cut it together in a few hours and am quite pleased with the result. It baffles most, and bewilders the rest, but give it a shot. I could explain more, but what fun would that be? If nothing else, enjoy the BBC camera work, which is impeccable as usual.



With that out of the way, an update on Pale Blue Dot: Episode 2 will follow soon. To all who've waited -- thanks for hanging in there! Happy new year...

Soundtrack listing, and latest news

It's been ages since I last posted -- indeed the world has changed pretty dramatically since July of last year. Yet to my surprise and delight, I continue to receive enthusiastic mails about PBD -- about five or so every month. They're always a blast to read, and I thank everyone for taking the time to share their thoughts despite my lack of project updates.

Several recent mails have asked about the soundtrack for Wanderers, so in this post I'd like to list the tracks more or less in order of their appearance, and maybe add a note or two about why I chose them. In keeping with the motif set by Cosmos, the vast majority of the music is by Vangelis, one of my favorite composers and musicians. I've made a special effort in PBD to dig a little deeper into his discography than many people have heard, and make appropriate use of some of his more obscure tracks; I am continually amazed at how varied, and useful, his music can be in documentary film making.

1.) "Memories of Blue" - Vangelis, "Oceanic" (titles)
2.) "Movement 4" - Vaneglis, "Soil Festivities" (introduction)
3.) "Piano Concerto in E major, Op 59 - 2 Adante" - Moritz Moszkowski
4.) "Rapsodia" - Vangelis, "Rapsodies"
5.) "Tin Oreotita Tis Parthenias So" - Vangelis, Rapsodies
6.) "Ignacio" - Vangelis, "Ignacio" (Sagan on the beach)
7.) "La Mer Recommencee" - Vangelis, "L'Apocalypse Des Animaux"
8.) "La Dande Du Feu" - Vangelis, "Odes"
9.) "Mouettes" - Vangelis, "Opera Sauvage"
10.) "Reve" - Vangelis, "Opera Sauvage"
11.) "Sword of Orion" - Vangelis, "Albedo 0.39"
12.) "La Mort Du Loup" - Vangelis, "L'Apocalypse Des Animaux"

One of the goals I had for choosing music was to approach, as closely as possible, the overall feel of Cosmos and some of the classic BBC series produced by Adrian Malone (the director of Cosmos), while avoiding any of the actual music used within the series itself unless absolutely necessary. Editing requirements forced me to use a bit from Vangelis' "Ignacio" because a clip used to bridge the introduction and chapter 1 of "Pale Blue Dot" called for a bit of the famous "Sagan on the beach" (from "Cosmos"), where he hinted at the image of earth as a "point of light". Careful observers correctly noticed that I added music to this originally silent scene, transforming it from a decidedly somber rumination into something quite a bit more inspirational. I'm very pleased with how it all turned out.

Google Video has kept track of the number of times PBD: Wanderers has been viewed, and I'm very pleased that it's been watched over 50,000 times. I've been incredibly slack in re-releasing a high(er) resolution version of the video, but because so many have asked I'll be releasing a torrent before too long.

In other news, work on Pale Blue Dot episode 2 continues, although at a pace far slower than I would have preferred. Work and life commitments have regrettably pulled a lot of my attention away from my video projects, but the delay is merely that. With any luck and a bit more buckling down, I hope to have some good news to share in the near future.

Until next time, thanks for your continued interest in this project. Questions, comments, and offers of assistance in any way are gladly welcomed.

September update

It's been a little while since I updated this, although that doesn't mean nothing's been going on. I've got three newsworthy items to discuss.

First , I wanted to advise everyone that PBD Episode Two is indeed coming, and work on it is well underway. I've gotten a fair number of mails and comments about this, and wanted everyone to know "Wanderers" was not a one-off thing. The series will continue!

A full, low-resolution "sound sketch" exists of the 59-minute episode, although development has stalled for a bit due to some technical issues (see below). For what it's worth, I consider the contents of Episode Two to be among the strongest material in all of Pale Blue Dot, and I'm quite pleased with the way it ended up falling together. I'm very satisfied so far, and look forward to previewing this sound sketch to a select group of supporters and collaborators in the near future.

Second, as I mentioned above, I've been beset by a number of fairly nasty hardware issues that claimed the lives of both my primary editing PC, and one of my scratch drives. Naturally, everything was backed up on redundant disk arrays, and I needed to migrate my production environment onto a much faster PC anyway, but it still slowed everything down. It actually died while rendering a small video I made about the recent tragic I-35W Bridge collapse, and it took some doing to reconstitute that video from the bits I salvaged from the disk arrays. I am working on another short video now (about the Mars MER landers) to work the kinks out of this new system. So far, so good. I'll try to post it soon.

Lastly, just yesterday I noticed a fellow on YouTube decided to use five-minute nonstop chunk of "Wanderers" to make his own little video.

I've embedded it below. Not bad... definitely a totally different audio interpretation of the images and video I chose, but not inappropriate at all. In fact, it's an interesting synthesis and I'm pleased an entirely new audience will get to see my work (even if it's uncredited!) the video is even (at this moment) featured on the front page of YouTube!



That's all for now...