I have seen that there is some software available now that will allow me to mirror what is on the iPad on my Mac computer screen and in that case I would be able to record it using ScreenFlow. The only problem with that is that I don’t have an iPad 2 and I won’t be able to afford to buy the iPad 3 which is due out in about a week. It is necessary to have at least an iPad 2 to be to use this other software for the mirroring. Maybe if I get some work during the summer time I will be out to afford to buy the latest iPad when it comes out.

As far as the writing is concerned, I am still very interesting in the process of writing and I did take part in the NaNoWriMo in November of last year. I wrote my 50,000 word novel which will probably never be finished as it was complete drivel. I am still proud that I managed to write that many words in just 30 days though. If I do NaNoWriMo again then I will surely do some preparations before getting started, so that I have the outline available for the story and I will know what I need to write each day. On my first NaNoWriMo though, I wanted to give myself the challenge of having to write the 2000 words per day by letting the text just flow from my consciousness.

If you would like to see what I have been doing with my videos please have a look at the Wizardgold channel on YouTube. You can also have a look at those other websites to see all the articles that I’ve written about using the Mac and also about using the iPad. I do have to say that one important thing with regards video, is that it does take more time than writing. On the other hand, if a picture is worth a thousand words then a video must be worth around ten thousand words. By concentrating on making the YouTube videos during the first two months of 2012 I have seen a threefold increase in the number of views of my videos. Obviously that is very pleasing indeed.

Philippa Ballantine is a writer of fantasy novels from New Zealand and you can find her work on her Website. This is quite a long interview as we were having such a good chat and she had so much to say about lots of details do to with being an author.

I am listening to her novel Chasing the Bard now and enjoying the story Seeing as I was born in Stratford upon avon I feel I have a tenuous – very tenuous link to Shakespeare himself. So I like the way that Shakespeare is woven into the story as a fictional character. Philippa reads the story well and it is entertaining. You can get it by going to Podiobooks

She is going down the traditional route of getting published alongside the new and exciting podcasting of novels and electronic Books to use on the likes of the Kindle and the iPad.

Although from NZ Philipa is in the U.S. for most of this year to promote her work at conventions and signings. In the interview she also tells us about a course she is giving in fantasy writing. On Saturday 19th February, Philippa Ballantine will be at Borderlands Books reading from the as yet not released Spectyr, and signing books. Afterwards will probably find a local pub and kick back. Philippa says  ”I hope some of you can make it out. Borderlands is a great store, and my favourite place to shop in San Francisco.”

About Philippa Ballantine

Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Philippa has always had her head in a book. For this she blames her father who thought Lord of the Rings was suitable bedtime reading for an eight year old. At the age of thirteen she began writing fantasy stories for herself.

She first earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Political Science and then a Bachelor of Applied Science in Library and Information Science. So soon enough she found herself working in the magical world of libraries where she stayed for over a decade.

Her first professional sale was in 1997, and since then she has gone on to produce mostly novel length fiction. In 2006 she became New Zealand’s first podcast novelist, and she has voiced and producedWeaver’s Web, Chasing the Bard, Weather Child and Digital Magic as podiobooks. Her podcasts have been short listed for the Parsec Awards, and won a Sir Julius Vogel award.

Philippa is the author of the Books of the Order series with Ace- the first of which Geist was released in October 2010. Spectyr (June 2011), Wrayth (2012) and Harbinger are to follow. She is also the co-author of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series with Tee Morris. Phoenix Rising will debut in May 2011.

When not writing or podcasting, Philippa loves reading, gardening, and whenever possible traveling.

FilmSnobbery.com shines a spotlight on independent filmmakers and their projects, and gives exposure to great films that would otherwise be ignored by the mainstream media.

FilmSnobbery Live! is a web broadcast live interview show that takes an in depth look at the rapidly changing world of indie film. Host and film critic Nic Baisley gets up close and personal with the people at the leading edge of indie film to uncover the stories behind the making of their movies.

You can watch it all happen, and participate in our live chat room, every Thursday night at 10 EST/7 PST

FilmSnobbery.com… a Voice for Indie Film

Stacey is the famous author of the book ‘Drive Your Woman Wild in Bed’ tells me how she skived off from school so she could write her first novel. I was flabbergasted to hear that she was only 19 when you wrote her self help sex book and described some of the difficulties in getting the book published. It is totally amazing that she was able to do that and not get ripped off by the published and agents, it seems it wasn’t easy though.

Stacey is of the old school in as much as she writes long hand with pen and paper. I find that totally weird seeing as it is so easy to use a computer and the writing has to go on a computer at some point anyway. It must be really difficult to do any editing when it is all on paper. But the important thing is that you get the ideas and the story out of the head and made real. I suppose my problem is that I am such a tech head geek. When asked about where she saw her writing going in the next five years Stacey was enthusiastic about the possibility if having control of the publishing, perhaps through self-publishing. Especially seeing as the publishing houses now expect authors to get out and promote their own work to a large extent also.

Stacey Keith has been on more than twenty talk shows, including “Montel Williams,” “Geraldo Rivera,” “Real Personal with Bob Berkowitz,” “Sally Jesse Raphael,” and “Joan Rivers.” In addition to hundreds of radio interviews, Stacey has lectured throughout the United States and the University of Toronto. I really enjoyed talking to her about her writing and I would love to see her move to a second stage of her writing career now that her children are getting grown up. In her blog she has plenty to say and also performs a agony aunt role with answering peoples’ questions about various topics.

During the interview I mention that I have recently self published and information eBook, and I did it though Lulu.com. I was stunned how easy it was to set it up. I exported the eBook out of Scrivener into the correct ePub format. I got an ISBN from Lulu.com and it will be going live on the iBookStore and I think the Amazon Kindle store too. Delighted that it was possible and the next thing for me to do is to promote the book, I think that is certainly the bigger job.

My wife was sitting on the bus coming back home from Girona and in the next seat was a guy talking to a friend about his writing and his stories. I was fortunate that she spoke to the guy and asked him if he would be interested in appearing on a podcast for writers. Well the long and short of it is that John Oehler and I worked out a time to record a conversation about writing.

Social networking and the writer

We discussed the use of social networking for writers and how to build an audience or a fan base by talking to people on line. Drip feeding bit of story to the public and getting them hooked on your stories. Seeing as the Independent film making community are doing great with the use of Facebook and Twitter.

Used Ladies underwear

John and I talked about all sorts of thing to do with writing and among them was the story that was on NCIS recently on TV which had used ladies underwear as the subject matter. I was a bit miffed because I had written a story / sketch based on the very same subject. I’d heard about vending machines with used underwear in from a guy that had visited Japan. I was amused by what he had told us about and I started into a story involving knickers. We were talking about cultural differences, east and west. Anyway my story is more comedy sketch than murder mystery. This came up in conversation and also tied in with what John had to say about perfumes.

Perfume

Aphrodesia – The latest story that John is working on is about the top student in the world’s best perfume school creating a phenomenal new scent – an aphrodisiac. But a counterfeiter’s knock-off starts killing people, and efforts to find the culprit involve a mystery that goes back to the Queen of Sheba.

We talked about how the idea came to him and about things smelly, which brought us back to ladies knickers again. Had to have a bit of a laugh about that. I think it is a great idea and I am looking forward to reading the story.

Character, scene based or Plot

How do you start your stories? Do you start with a character and do you build a back story behind that character, perhaps even letting the character tell you where the story is going? You never know what your players in your creation will do and sometimes the story goes off in a direction that is dictated you never would have expected, when they get a life of their own.

Writers workflow

John tells me that he works with his writing in the morning and will do more in the afternoon. While he is writing John will also edit as he goes and because of that he doesn’t get too many words out daily. Some people like to get into a flow of words and writers creativity in the zone. Then on the morning after doing the editing. It really depends on what works for you and helps you get the story out in front of your readers and fans.

Christina Rose is a totally delightful actress based in New York and Video20Q was lucky enough to get an interview with this extremely talented young woman.

This singing, dancing, fighting, acting, piano playing whirlwind is hitting the TV and movie world after having experience on the stage in the touring musical Oklahoma. She is working lately with Gary King on ‘Death of the Dead‘ and ‘How Do You Write a Joe Schermann Song‘.

In ‘Death of the Dead‘ which is a horror, comedy action movie, Christina plays Wanda, a sexy variety and a nerdy sort too. High kicks and ninja zombies, does it get any better than that.

Christina will be able to better showcase her musical talents, singing and playing the piano in the movie ‘How Do You Write a Joe Schermann Song‘

In the interview we talk about using improvisation when acting, and the nuts and bolts of being involved in the movie business. There are funny stories that have Christina relates during the interview and she tells me how she enjoys being an actress in New York.

Christina likes to go to premieres of the movies that she is in and enhance the experience for her fans by taking an active involvement in social media. You can find Christina on Twitter and Facebook, so that you can make contact with this incredibly talented actress, singer, dancer, choreographer.

It is pretty obvious that Christina has a great future in front of her and has been working hard since leaving college with theatre work and now with the movies and TV.

Just saw that the iPad has got as far as Girona and slated as being out for delivery. I think I may be doing some playing this afternoon. I could maybe even do an unboxing video. Wicked or what??

Legend of Black Lotus is a re-imagining of the story of Mulan. In his story, an Empress gives birth to a dark-skinned child who is prophesied to restore the war-torn kingdom to glory, but must endure the hardships of slavery to achieve her destiny.

Extended for one more day, every backer who joins Angelo on Kickstarter to help make Legend of Black Lotus will get a free download of Broken Hearts Club. Broken Hearts Club is a romantic comedy drama wherein an apathetic psychiatrist is force to treat and onslaught of melodramatic love-lost couples, and in the process uncovers the root of his distant behaviour that jeopardises his marriage.

For your free download, just visit his profile at Kickstarter . Once you join the growing list of backers you will receive an email, from Angelo with a special link for a digital download of Broken Hearts Club in addition to the perks associated with your donation!

Angelo Bell is a writer, director and an independent producer in Los Angeles whose professional goal is to develop and create engaging and commercially viable, low-budget films. Angelo is an award-winning filmmaker with two best-in-festival wins for El Ride (as producer) and Until Next Time (as consulting producer and editor). In 2007, he set a record at the Los Angeles International Shorts Festival when four of his films were accepted.

I went to see the Knight and day movie at the local movie theatre in Platja d’Aro and enjoyed it thoroughly. But I have to say the screen writer should be shot. If I said to you that I was going to New York and I was looking forward to seeing the homes of the famous actors in Hollywood on the first day of my visit there and on the second day I will check out the cowboys out on the range in Harlem
You might think I was stupid or crazy
But then US writers think they can get away with having the Streets of Sevilla filled with the Bull running event which everyone knows – or nearly everyone knows – takes place in Pamplona.

The whole movie was a stringing together of action sequences that were well shot and made for a engaging movie as evidenced by the number of people that would agree with me that the time goes so quick while watching it. I think if the next movie I see is Shrek then it will be hugely more sensible than was Knight and day.

There is poetic licence and the suspension of WTF in the movies and things that have to be so for the sake of the movie but there are some things like the aforementioned Sevilla joke – that should not be messed with so that the film at least tries to have some credibility. That effort of trying – is what it takes for the viewer to have some hope of achieving the suspension of reality to be able to enjoy the movie by believing what is going on for at least the length of the film.

What do you think? Does it matter if the result is a very entertaining diversion in the cinema while stuffing yourself with popcorn.

News

YouTube has increased the limit allowed for the movies posted on there from ten minutes to fifteen minutes. Good news there seeing as I have sometimes found the 10 minutes to be too short for what I wanted to do.

The interview with Angelo

The first part of the interview with Angelo Bell the Director of films such as Resurrection of Serious Rogers which is The Usual Suspects meets The Professional — a multi-layered neo noir thriller about an assassin who finds redemption in the eyes of a nanny; a drug addicted FBI agent out for justice, a military hero hungry for revenge and the mystery man who controls their fates.

Angelo also made the Broken Hearts Club movie which is a raw relationship drama which after airing at film festivals got broadcast as a series on TV.

Angelo is deeply committed to the independent film movement and supports other filmmakers with their creative endeavours. through his blog at AngeloBell.com. He has been quoted in the Filmmaker Magazine blog and writes about DIY distribution, crowd funding and film sales. Angelo’s articles and film reviews can also be found online at AssociatedContent.com, HubPages.com and Examiner.com.

We had a long chat so I have split this into 2 parts I will publish the second part of the interview with Angelo next week

Academy & Emmy nominated Frederick Marx is either clever or lucky or both because he is able to follow his life’s passion and is able to live it every day. His mission as a filmmaker is “Bearing Witness, Creating Change.” Human change, human transformation – one story at a time.

There is ‘Hoop Dreams’ One of the most acclaimed and successful documentaries ever, HOOP DREAMS tells the story of Arthur Agee, William Gates, and their families over a four and a half year period, covering the boys’ entire high school careers as they pursue the elusive dream of professional basketball success. It is a three hour documentary following two teenage inner city Afro-American lads to play basketball professionally.

Frederick gives back to the film making community to with workshops and talks Speaking topics include:

• Buddhism and Film
• What young filmmakers need to know
• Living a life of mission
• The role of documentary in social justice
• The changing landscape of independent film production and distribution – a 40 year perspective
• Journey From Zanskar and educating your own children
• Take the Zanskar vow – become a social change agent
• The necessity of rites of passage and mentorship for youth

The ‘Journey from Zanskar’ was a topic in the interview that Frederick spoke about in more detail. talking about the ordeals of travelling and shooting film out on the trail. He tells us about what cameras he was using and how he had to make do with other cameras when the main camera no longer was available to him. He got inside the lives of the people that were the subjects of the movie as should happen in a good documentary. The monks were able to tell their story to the world with the help of Frederick, who is clearly a talented and intelligent independent film maker.

I have to admit I learned a lot listening to Frederick and you will not be disappointed in hearing the podcast

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Really pleased to have another film maker guest on the show. Travis is just about to start shooting a horror – slash movie. Just before the interview I saw him tweet that he was covered in blood. Transpired he was doing tests for the film special effects.

He is friends with Julie and Jessica of Kingisafink and Phil Holbrook, I think it is great to see such a vibrant group of film makers taking advantage of social media. helping out with each others projects as well as moral support.

Like Danny Lacey Travis has been using the crowd funding Indiegogo to raise money for this movie he is about to shoot
which btw is called Danny Did It and if you want to help out with the film you still can – by going to his film company website and he is taking Paypal donations.

Many films wouldn’t get off the ground without this type of support so if you are in to horror send Travis a dollar or two.

Raymond Did It is a slasher film in the tradition of Halloween and Prom Night. When twelve-year-old Bryce Rourke is accidentally killed in a playground scuffle, his friends decide to blame Bryce’s developmentally delayed older brother for the accident. Raymond is taken to a state hospital while the true killer walks free.
Six years later, Raymond escapes from the hospital to seek bloody revenge for his brother’s death.

This is how it worked out with Indiegogo for the crowd funding.

$10 or more = Fan Contribution: A special thanks noted on the film’s website and Director’s blog.

$50 or more = Fan Plus Contribution: An 11 x 17 movie poster in either the theatrical or comic book design, signed by writer/director Travis Legge in addition to the aforementioned perks.

$100 or more = Friend Contribution: A DVD copy of the film upon the film’s release, signed by writer/director Travis Legge in addition to the aforementioned perks.

$1,000 or more = Family Contribution: A copy of the DVD signed by members of the cast and crew, a producer’s credit in the film, and a VIP invitation to the official wrap party in Rockford, Illinois at the end of June (travel costs not included)

Funds generated via donation will go to cover the costs of catering, location management, prop purchases, and transportation associated with the film.

Kurt has been podcasting since 2008 and his topic of interest and expertise is Web Comics
He has interviewed people like David Reddick who created the Legend of Bill and Star Trek comics
Phil Foglio and many other comic artists.

This version of the podcast is the short version concentrating on the video end of things. There is another podcast that is quite a bit longer in which Kurt talks more about the worlrd of comics.

The reason that Kurt is being featured on the Video20Q podcast is because he told me some of hos plans to extend his podcast with video and is going to do the lone gun video interviews at a comic convention taking place in Chicago. Well not quite lone gun as he will have a friend helping him out with the video. He has an inexpensive JVC camera and will be interviewing artists at the show.

Kurt likes the manga and anime influence on comics is a manga fan, comics such as Dragon Ball but grew up with the Marvel style also

We also talk a bit about comic influenced movies such as, Sin City – Frank Miller
Watchmen – which I have not seen yet but Kurt reckons is too long, dry and painful to watch.
Kick ass Movie – story based on comics

Moving from tape to a hard drive camera bought a JVC for 600 dollar with a 80 gb HD
He is working with a friend called mike to record the interviews at the comic conventions
Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame will be at the event also.
Kurt is an Audacity user for the editing of audio, he tells me that he loves the Mac and may think of getting one for when he needs to do the video editing. Kurt has been known to make really long podcasts – up to 3 or 4 hours, he was using Talkshoe for the podcsasting but the quality was bad – still uses it for the hosting of the audio podcasts.

He was or is a World of Warcraft player and that got him into podcasting since 2008 has done 97 episodes, starting with WebComicPlanet.com

Here are a few links for those amongst you interested in the world of comics.
The Drunken Fools – created by Antoine Gagnon, this is the comic that I’m helping co-write based on my character submission Stubby the guardian angel skunk.

Web Comic Planet run by Byron Wilkins it’s a combination collective site run by fellow webcomic creators and links through a database over 2200 webcomic sites. This site also has a batch of tutorials and processes for up and coming webcomic authors and artists from veterans in their fields.

1977 The Comic – is Byron Wilkins actual webcomic site. About 1977 in Chicago loosely based on his life.

Danielle Corsetto, wonderful person and very active in the community

Penny Arcade These two are pretty much the godfathers of Webcomics. They didn’t start the community but they have been the most consistent and successful at it.

Eldon Cowgur created this and I’ll let you decide what you think about Astray 3.

Devils Panties – Jeannie Breeden consistently updates every single day without fail for many many years.

Johnny Saturn created by Scott Story This comic could easily rival DC and Marvel

Kurt has been podcasting since 2008 and his topic of interest and expertise is Web Comics
He has interviewed people like David Reddick who created the Legend of Bill and Star Trek comics
Phil Foglio and many other comic artists.

This version of the podcast is the short version concentrating on the video end of things. There is another podcast that is quite a bit longer in which Kurt talks more about the worlrd of comics.

The reason that Kurt is being featured on the Video20Q podcast is because he told me some of hos plans to extend his podcast with video and is going to do the lone gun video interviews at a comic convention taking place in Chicago. Well not quite lone gun as he will have a friend helping him out with the video. He has an inexpensive JVC camera and will be interviewing artists at the show.

Kurt likes the manga and anime influence on comics is a manga fan, comics such as Dragon Ball but grew up with the Marvel style also

We also talk a bit about comic influenced movies such as, Sin City – Frank Miller
Watchmen – which I have not seen yet but Kurt reckons is too long, dry and painful to watch.
Kick ass Movie – story based on comics

Moving from tape to a hard drive camera bought a JVC for 600 dollar with a 80 gb HD
He is working with a friend called mike to record the interviews at the comic conventions
Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame will be at the event also.
Kurt is an Audacity user for the editing of audio, he tells me that he loves the Mac and may think of getting one for when he needs to do the video editing. Kurt has been known to make really long podcasts – up to 3 or 4 hours, he was using Talkshoe for the podcsasting but the quality was bad – still uses it for the hosting of the audio podcasts.

He was or is a World of Warcraft player and that got him into podcasting since 2008 has done 97 episodes, starting with WebComicPlanet.com

Here are a few links for those amongst you interested in the world of comics.

The Drunken Fools – created by Antoine Gagnon, this is the comic that I’m helping co-write based on my character submission Stubby the guardian angel skunk.

Web Comic Planet run by Byron Wilkins it’s a combination collective site run by fellow webcomic creators and links through a database over 2200 webcomic sites. This site also has a batch of tutorials and processes for up and coming webcomic authors and artists from veterans in their fields.

1977 The Comic – is Byron Wilkins actual webcomic site. About 1977 in Chicago loosely based on his life.

Danielle Corsetto, wonderful person and very active in the community

Penny Arcade These two are pretty much the godfathers of Webcomics. They didn’t start the community but they have been the most consistent and successful at it.

Eldon Cowgur created this and I’ll let you decide what you think about Astray 3.

Devils Panties – Jeannie Breeden consistently updates every single day without fail for many many years.

Johnny Saturn created by Scott Story This comic could easily rival DC and Marvel

Here is the trailer for a gritty, dark psychological thriller based in a weather station in the back end of no where up in the mountains. Guns, shooting, sex, and death, this movie is not a chick flick.

Psychological thriller from Russia. A mysterious 18-year-old and two meteorologists are visited by a seductive beauty and her rich husband. When two detectives are sent up to investigate their disappearance, the secrets of their past merge with those of the weather station and they get sucked into a vortex of mistrust, betrayal and murder.

MarsEdit

As you know I have been very fond of Blogo the blogging software. What I like best is the way I can use it with Ping.FM. The way it deals with other blogging sites is OK but perhaps a little unconventional. I had looked at Marsedit before but decided that since I had bought Blogo I would stick with it and its foibles with regards the actual blogging on the WordPres sites.

Lately though I have been getting a bit miffed with the way it handles putting more than one image into the post. I have to say that MarsEdit does a far better job of handling images and where they are placed in the text. So I bit the bullet and bought the MarsEdit software. I like the way that the Categories and Tags are separated. The Options panel which slides in and out as a panel is handy for setting up the post.

Then there is the drop down list in the top right corner of the application where I can choose the make text bold or headline and do some of the basic formatting. Just noticed also that it is possible to add some more markup macros. So I will be setting one up that will put in images with a bit of spacing around it. This option actually takes the software that one big step to total flexibility, which I am really impressed with.

Would it be too much to ask for to have the ability to post to Ping.fm also.

So there you go I give a big thumbs up to MarsEdit and I will be using Blogo for the Ping thing.

I went to WordPress.org and looked in the forum and someone suggested that the Twitter Tools plug in was causing the problem. The problem bugging me for the last load of hours is gone. There is a chance too that the other problem I have had with WordPress will also vanish. I will know when I click Publish on this post.

The other problem is still there. Not too worried as I have been getting around that by using Blogo.

I am still pondering on the usefulness of the e book, Could see a case for it on a device like the iPad or other ebook reader. The schools market is going to get a big shake up thats for sure. Would not see a use on a desktop or a laptop – We open up web pages if we want to get information that way

Or theres the PDF – except that the PDF format from Adobe is not always that safe to use – so some people would decline to open such a file. That is those people that don’t want to leave themselves open to what Bart Buschotts would call Arbitrary code execution on the computer

The ebook readers & creators I have looked at on the OSX platform so far leave me totally cold as far as the reading experience is concerned. I tried out Stanza, Calibre & Sigil & had a look at Indesign also. Some apps are more readers & organisers of e books than creation tools.

Looking in Calibre it seems that it should be able to send an e book to the iPhone but I have not managed to make it do so yet. I thought it Could be that I would have to have the iPhone USB tethered where I am expecting it to work like Stanza, In which you click on share & then you get to opportunity to download the ebook in the iPhone app via wifi.

I was able to download the UK Guardian News paper into Calibre & then I open it in Stanza to push to the mobile device. Not a good reading experience for the Guardian ebook on the iPhone though, There is a poor quality image of the front page & then pages which have a header with a link & a short part of the story below that.

When you get it in the iPhone in Stanza – you can’t click on any link because the whole screen is taken over by controls of the book, Left side to go back, Right to go forward & the centre is for getting to the interface of the app. So none of the links will take you anywhere – When reading it in the Calibre reader the links do work, & take you to the Guardian web site. This example helps to make the case I think for Newspapers & Magazines to have an app rather than ebook distribution for E readers

There is quite a variety in terms of quality interface & feature sets in the ebook apps I looked at. Stanza is a reader & convertor which also has an app to sync with on the mobile device it isn’t at all a creator of epub books & it recommends using Calibre for creation of the e books.

Calibre is more full featured but confusing at first look because of having such an ugly interface
Obviously started life as an open source or Windows program, It fell out of top of the ugly tree & hit every branch on the way down.

Sigil is more of the creation tool & is pretty enough. Still needs work in terms of ease of use but does the job of creating the epub format e books. All you need to do is to drop in some text & images & the job is nearly done

I already have a Canon Vixia HF100 which does HD video & does a good job of it. My friend Paul has a similar Panasonic camera.
What we are both looking for is something in the Prosumer line of video recording devices.
I want a camera that has the 3 CCDs so that I get better quality video & also has better controls that you can find on the better cameras, like focus & zoom rings on the lens for example so that manual features can be better used to enhance the final video clips.

Paul talks to me about his reasons for wanting a Prosumer camera & what he plans to use it for. For Myself I want something that I can capture video for microstock video sites as well as the possibility of doing some corporate work & even some narrative shooting.

Because of my needs I did wonder about the DSLR cameras that also shoot HD video such as the Canon 7D & the Canon 5D Mk2 & even the new Canon T2i. Nikon also have DSLRs that will shoot video. Many good things have been said about these DSLR cameras & their abilities to shoot video.
If you have good glass on them the video is extremely good quality especially in the area of Depth of field. Some people will use depth of field converters on cameras like the EX1 to get the same sort of results

Of course though there are some disadvantages too.
I think the main one is the lack of good audio input – usually you will only find the 3.5mm jack input. Then you would need to use a juiced link or beachtech pre amp to be able to get good results from connecting a XLR type mic. I have connected an XLR mic to my Vixia though just by using a converter connector cable & for what I do it is OK

The other thing with the DSLR is the length of shot you can take. I think the max is going to be about 12 minutes. If you wanted to shoot a conference or maybe other events which are long then you would come up short. I am leaning more towards a proper video camera like the NX5 or the AX2000 from Sony

But Like i said I have seen many posts & reviews of the latest DSLRs in which the film makers are raving about how good they are.

Obviously there is a bit of a gold rush going on here and the makers of the software realise that there is a premium to be had by being the first iPad apps in the App Store.

All of this is a mute point for the thousands of Apple fans world wide that have been let down by Apple. I did see one person say that Steve Jobs lied to us about the date of availability of the iPad. Seems that it took more than the 60 days. Whether it was a lie depends on the intent at the time of saying what he did.

Apple has forced many fans to go to buy an iPad from Ebay at inflated prices and have to pay the postage and probably the import duty also. I suppose it is all down to how many units they could get made in the time available. Would it have been better to have a date when they could get the iPad out to everyone worldwide? Seems that Apple have got used to the idea of the drip feed method, starting off with the announcement followed by availability  and  distribution to the first class citizens of the Apple World then moving on to the next layers down.

Well it won’t make much difference in the long run Apple will still sell tons of these devices anyway. My plan still remains the same, I could buy one for my wife because she deserves the love. Seeing as I have the iMac and MacBook and Mac Mini and iPhone, I don’t need one but I want one. I would be content to stroke the iPad belonging to my nearest and dearest. Although I would be tempted to sell a few items to gather some cash together. I could even sell my iPhone as I hardly ever make phone calls and I am finding the 3G model I have, to be slow to do things lately. On top of that I am sort of saving for a Video camera and that will get priority, spending on other things will only slow me down in aquisition of the camera hardware that I need and will earn me some money.

What about you ??

Following the week with no electric there was, certainly as far as I was concerned, too much time in the garden trying to sort out the devastation the storm left behind. Our garden is full of mostly cork trees and a few pines. Five of the pine trees fell down and all  of the cork trees lost branches, such was the weight of the snow. I still hate gardening, even if I get to use a chainsaw.

I did have interviews arranged during the month and the people were unable to keep the appointment. One of them seems to be very busy and the other had a bad cold. These have been re scheduled but has left us without the interview content. That is the problem with the fact that the shows rely on content coming in from external sources.

I did do something different last month also with the production of the Mac20Q ramble as a video. I enjoyed that experience because I did it with green screen in Final Cut Express. Of course it does take longer to arrange such a production, but I thought it came out well enough that I will do more of those. Good to have the video posted out in varoius places too all pointing back to the show notes for the audio podcast. I have bought a set of LED lights to illuminate the green screen and I will post a picture of the set in the studio shortly.

The lack of podcasts was overall for the Answer20Q network and I think I will have to do some catching up. Also though I will have to get a schedule. I plan to chose a day of the week for publishing a Mac20Q podcast and do that once a week. The Video 20Q can be a every other week and the others I will aim for one a month and I’ll see if I can ramp it up when the summer is over.

During the summer I work in a camp site, a bit of cash is nice,  I improve my Spanish and get to practice my German speaking too. It does mean though that the podcasting lessens during the summer also.  I have started work for this year already but until the end of May it will probably only be weekends. That works out quite nicely and I am not looking forward to the working 10 hours each day in a reception that has no air conditioning. The owners are too tight to look after the staff at this place. At least maybe I can write a script or two in the quiet moments. It is a shame though that it will have to be as today written using a Windows computer and a Spanish keyboard which has a few extra characters and a few in different places.

Funny thing about camp sites is that you get used to seeing people walking to the showers in the dressing gown and a toilet roll in the hand. Maybe I should think about a story involving a camp site as a location. I have seen one or two other funny things here.

I have started work on a story /  comedy sketch that I want to make as a short movie. Writing it first in Scrivener as a narrative as the first draft and for the second draft I will make it into a screenplay- script. I will perhaps keep doing that in Scrivener but I might try using Celtx which is dedicated script writing software. Planning to send the script to my son who is a professional cameraman because I can envisage him helping me both with the camera part of the filming and with the acting side of it. I need 3 actors for the job and I could see two of my sons and a friend filling the roles nicely.

I have not  written a screenplay before so I am also in the process of learning how to do that, luckily I found a web site that shows the correct way of doing it as per the industry standard and gives good practice type of tips too. After I have the short film made I will publish the script also on Video20Q.

APRIL FOOL !
Let you know more when I have had a chance to play with it a little more.

APRIL FOOL !

If you want to know what this was all about select the text above &  read between the lines, literally……..

Got to have some fun sometimes.

Only changed to the Mac properly as he was a Windows fan up until about a year ago. He did have contact with Macs in 2003 with a Bluberry iMac which was sold through Ebay before getting any use from Ben. He tried a previous Hackintosh but was unsuccessful but now for the last 7 months or so has running OSX. Ben even produces a Mac Podcast and it doesn’t make much difference to his approach to the podcast.

Ben has been with Mac OSX long enough now that he finds it confusing to go back to Windows. He was telling me that he was very untidy in the way he arranges his files on the desktop and all over the place. The audio connections baffle Ben for how it works and how is able to record with his Heil PR20 mic connected to a Yamaha mixer. We talked microphones and I told him about my Behringer B2 studio mic I use for the podcasting and the mixer and also about the Shure SM58 which get used with the Canon Vixia camera.

Ben is planning to make a video podcast at some time and is finishing up with a tech based podcast he has been doing moving on to a podcast that he will do with a friend that is a truck driver. It will be stories and tales from the road. His mate is a hoot that loves talking so should be a fun podcast.

Terminator surprisingly gets a mention in the podcast – ‘I’ll be Back’ Automator and Applescript are not part of the staple diet for Ben, he found it a bit fiddly to use. Talking about tagging of files I mention MetaX which is an application that will tag video files.

He gets his Blackberry filled with podcasts and music by bringing in content with an RSS feed reader, and tells me how Windows media player messed things up with bring in some of his music.
Most expensive application he has is CS3 for Photoshop and uses an application that works out colour. The first things that he would put on a new machine would be TinyGrab which is a screenshot application that would be similar to Skitch. Ben also has to have Skype on his Mac along with Text Expander. I like Text Expander too and I have recently upgraded to the latest version. Ben likes to use Textexpander to do some automatic spell checking.

DropBox gets a recommendation, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Filezilla has hot been working as well as he would like so I suggested that he might try Cyberduck for FTP file transfer.
Bens’ Twitter usage gets the Tweetie application and he has recently found it to be not functioning as well as he would like, but prefers if because he doesn’t like Adobe Air applications like Tweetdeck. Memory sucking pile of rubbish, but II have been using Tweetdeck because it has so much more in the way of facilities.

Ben uses GarageBand for his podcasting and has made about 80 podcasts on his Mac. He does other creating things with the Mac too like images creating in Photoshop.

Follow Mac20Q on Twitter

Mark was at the MacWorld 2010 and had a great time there. He met with a pile of his mates and enjoyed meeting many face to face to face for the first time. Mark bought a few toys there, not least a photography application which he got for $130 instead of the usual $180. Mark attended the Nosillacast castaways party, which must have been fun, especially meeting the venerable Allison Sheridan.

He is taking it step by step with the photos increasing his knowledge and skill while also using the camera to take sport shots of his girls playing football (soccer) and the camera being in a mode Canon have set for sports.

Back ups are all well taken care of with a system that includes, DVD’s, BackBlaze, Carbon Copy Cloner and Time machine. Something that a photographer really has to do to protect the portfolio or archive of photos. Using a To Do list is not a good idea for Mark as like me the items on the list are less likely to get done than noting things on a piece of paper.

Mark was a super bloke to talk to on the Mac20Q Podcast and I know that you will enjoy hearing what he had to say about how he uses his Mac, a 20 in iMac. he would like an iPhone but can’t switch away from Verizon which doesn’t have the iPhone available. Mark is sorely tempted by an iPad though and can see many uses for it in his daily business.

I also comment on using Kinemac, After Effects, and about learning what Motion can do to make a video animation fly through that could be an intro to the videos I make.

This video is made using my new green screen set up in my studio, with the new LED lights I have bought. These lights are work lights that I bought for 25 euro each at Lidl. I got five of them and I might buy another two or three. I used 4 of what I have to light the green screen and the other one to light the subject. I do have one more small video light that is the type you can fit on top of the camera but works well on a light stand as a fill light.
I did put some white gauze material over the light to soften the light and I might at some time see about getting some filters to put on them to warm the light up. Not too necessary because it is easy enough to colour correct in Final Cut. Still have to do some more working out to get the set up right but pleased with the results so far.

I also mention another Mac in the family. My 70 year old mom sent me a text message to tell me she was buying things in the Apple Store in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre in Birmingham. She got a white MacBook and iWork & one on one training to go with it. Tomorrow she will go into the store for them to move her data off her old Windows laptop.

Tell me how you would cope without email and power

Contact me by email !!

Ever since Douglas’ Mother mysteriously vanished when he was 8 years old, his life has been controlled by panic, fear and desire. Now, two decades later, Douglas returns home to his small industrial town to take care of his dying father. In a bar one night he finds a mysterious wallet and in attempts to return it, enters a world of lust, deceit and murder; a world that holds the secret to his family’s tortured past.

The sepia look of the trailer is interesting and I was impressed with the sound design in the trailer. High drama and a Film Noir look about it. Violent and bloody – captivating….

Thanks to @Kinkisafink for the suggestion for this weeks’ Film of the week.

At least if I get the power back and I can use my computers again I will be able to make some more screencasts showing how to do some things with various software. I have to finish one I started already about using MarsEdit. This will be a bit of a comparison with using Blogo for which I made 2 screencasts last week. I am using Blogo to make this post by the way. Also coming, when I am able to is the interview with Ben from DrinkBrainJuice, the developers of Blogo. He has told me that he will give Mac20Q a copy of Blogo to be won by the listeners.

I have a mind to make some more screencasts about Scrivener the writers software. I only scratched the surface with what it can do in the previous screencasts. I was using Scrivener the other day with a project I am writing at the moment. It is a comedy story which I will first make as a story and when I have finished I will turn it into a screen play. Right from the off I see it as a short movie and I have actors in mind to play the parts. Can’t say more about it right now except that ladies underwear is involved.

When I do the screenwriting part of the job I may give Celtx a bit of a run. Celtx is specialist screenwriting software which gives FinalDraft a run for its money. It read the FinalDraft format and the only downside that there is is that sometimes the output does do such a good job of representing the time in a script. Maybe I should see if I can get a test copy of the software to do a proper comparison. There is another screencast possible out of that.

Thanks to Paul Shadwell for telling me about the Sony AX2000 video camera which looks very good. It is 500 dollars cheaper than the similar Pro version NX5 and has the same lens and many other of the same specs. I think I could live without the GPS and the time code and the ability to add a memory pack to be able to record for up to 11 hours. Mind you with only 500 dollars being the difference it may be worth saving the pennies for a while longer.

I was also interested in looking at the Canon 7D or 5D for video. There are some advantages and some drawbacks to using a DSLR rather than a video camera, but quite a few videographers are very impressed with the video shooting DSLR cameras. With a video camera you will get better, smoother zooming features and much better audio. Getting around the audio is possible though with recording it separately

iPad Available in US on April 3 Pre-Order on March 12 CUPERTINO, California—March 5, 2010—Apple® today announced that its magical and revolutionary iPad will be available in the US on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models. In addition, all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April. Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple’s online store (www.apple.com) or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store. “iPad is something completely new,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

link: iPad Available in US on April 3

That is the word directly from Apple that US customers get the iPad before the rest of the world. April 3rd and it looks like non US customers will have to wait until late April. Probably due to the manufacturing problems that have been rumoured. By the way only the US will be getting iBooks on the iPad too. What we need is a company that takes care of us in Europe.

iBooks
The books will be in the ePub format and I am looking into making ePub books. I have downloaded one application that may be good for making eBooks of this type. What would be handy though is to have that capability in Pages from the iWorks suite of applications. I will make an ePub book an let you know more about how it goes. Could be interesting for podcasters as a way for us to get our content out there. The e book could have the links in to the podcasts

I talked to Paul Boag who is a popular guy, there have been over 400 downloads of the Mac20Q Podcast 84. Paul is a web developer that goes out extensively to talk about making web sites and I found him to be very interesting.

Then there was Video20Q podcast 17 featuring the filmmaker Jon Reiss, who made the movie ‘Bomb It.’ I watched it and was impressed. Great that it tied in with what I have been doing already with the Graffiti Podcast, you can watch the first two episodes of the Graffiti Podcast on YouTube also.

Peter Boodts from Belgium was the next to be featured on Mac20Q. I find it amazing that I get to talk to so many interesting people doing some super stuff with the Mac, and Peter was no exception.

Andrew Jones, who is a British guy living in New Jersey in the U.S. doing photography, art, web design, video and all sorts of artistic endeavour was featured on the Mac20Q Podcast 86. He has set up a web site that he would like to see as a community of Mac users helping each other, which follows on from the work he does helping Mac users near where he lives. For a change I came upon Andrew via YouTube instead of Twitter, where I seem to meet with most people.

Screencasts
During February I also posted two screencasts showing how to use Blogo. This came about due a bug in WordPress that was annoying me and Blogo filled the bill in terms of avoiding the bug and since then I have gone on to love using it. I am using Blogo to make this post. I expect to be talking to the developer of Blogo soon and he will be donating a copy of Blogo for listeners to win. So keep an eye out for that.

YouTube
I have also been putting out video from the local Carnaval, in Platja d’Aro. One video of Josep Marin a magician that has been seen over 800 times and another of Xirois Drummers from Girona. The drummers were astounding, I loved getting into the thick of them to film the shots for that.

Twitter
I am still working on growing the numbers of my Twitter followers and I am as of this moment up to 13,619 followers for @Wizardgold and there are over 3000 followers on @Video20Q plus another 2000 approx on @Mac20Q. Trying to keep Mac20Q for Mac related things and Video20Q for film making items. Wizardgold will be for general tweets and Rt’s of the other things to ensure max coverage. Well pleased with the growth of the Wizardgold account seeing as I only had 2000 followers in December.

All in all it was a busy month and great to be creating content for the listeners and viewers. Let me know if you would like to be featured on any of the podcasts, would love to hear from you. I will ask you 20Q about whatever subject you would like to talk about.

[contact-form 1 “Contact form 1”]

I mention that there are keyboard shortcuts and menu items to be able to format your text in the post and do things like add lists. Of course very important to me is ability to publish a podcast in the blog post with Blogo. I show you how it is done with Blog.

Our chat was very informal and we had a laugh along the way. He is also into video creation and uses a Canon video camera to capture his images. I met up with Andrew first of all on YouTube which is a surprise seeing as Twitter seems to be the place these days. Mind you seeing as we are both into vide then it should not be a surprise.

Andrew is a photographer too and loves nothing better than getting out and about taking pictures of amongst other things , Fire Hydrants. Have a listen to the podcast because he talks about what he has in his camera bag and also about the workflow he uses to take something from initial idea to a finished art work.

In August 2009, a special teaser promo was created to raise awareness for a horror feature film called ‘INVASION OF THE NOT QUITE DEAD’ which has the support of such names as: Tom Savini, Kevin Pollak, Ken Russell, David Hess, Lloyd Kaufman, HG Lewis, Lee Boardman, Justin Kerrigan & talk show host Jonathan Ross…

The teaser was shot on S16mm film on location at a small farm in Kent and stars horror veteran Leslie Simpson (Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Doomsday), Efisia Fele and Frank Jakeman.

Having to run when they see a car with blue lights on top kind of makes things more difficult. The police will prosecute even if the painting is any good and enhances the locality. Can’t expect them to make a decision based on artistic taste. It is all black and white to them, either guilty or not.

In the next podcast I will be looking again at the graffiti in Girona. Far better quality than what I have in this video and the intro and outro picture I have used in this video will be in that video.

You know what? I like it and finding to be a great way to work with my blogs. I can do keywording and enter the categories, although I did get a little confused at first it is pretty easy. Have a look at the video to see how it works.

In this video I show also how to use Blogo to deal with un-moderated comments as well as using the bookmarklet that will allow you to place YouTube video in your post. In the next video I will show how to place a Slide Show from Flickr. Wicked eh?

Another thing to come in these quick tips will be publishing a podcast in the blog and making sure that the category is correct so that it goes in the right feed, you can see some of that in this video too.

Look out also for a video that will make a comparison with some other blogging software that I have also tested.

In the story an apathetic clinical psychiatrist who prefers treating the criminally insane is forced to confront his inner demons when his criminally insane patients are replaced with the clinically heartbroken.
Written/Directed by Angelo Bell

Setting up a database with Bento and using the information stored in record that you have already in Address Book and getting access in the same place to iCal events and Apple Mail.

Using data that is stored in one place and one place only is a nirvana for databases. That way you can?t have different versions of the same data and lose your database integrity. That?s what I want to have this work so that I can collect the data in Address book and so long as I put in a keyword in the Note fired then the information will also propagate into Bento also.

So I don?t have to have Bento open all the time but when I do open the application I will have all at my finger tips.

Why I think Bento is so useful is because it is easy to set up extra fields for information that you want to track and even though it isn?t a relational database like Filemaker is it so much better that keeping your data in a spreadsheet table.

Technorati Tags: Bento, Address Book, Email, Apple Mail

Jon made a movie called Cleopatra’s Second Husband’

A diabolically clever psychological suspense movie. An assured and daring dramatic feature debut for writer-director Reiss. Kevin Thomas LA Times
Jon Reiss debut feature is a harrowing yet delicious and often wickedly funny study . . . one of the most unusual power struggles in cinema history. Filmmaker Magazine
Fascinating, strange, twisted and f**ed up . . . I’ve never seen anything like it. Juan Morales Detour Magazine
An insidiously clever movie, a variation on those creepy 1960s British classics, ‘The Servant’ and ‘The Collector’. John Hartl The SeattleTimes
First-time director Jon Reiss evinces indisputable control over his material, which most directly recalls the Pinter-Losey classic “The Servant” in its look at an insidious power shift between unsavory men in a household. Todd McCarthy Daily Variety

You can buy the book ‘Think Outside the Box Office’ from Jon’s Blog and it will take you to a page with more information as well as descriptions of all the bonus gifts we provide when you buy the book from our website. Free movie tickets, discounts on distribution services and until December 15th 2 raffles – one for an OpenIndie membership, the other for 3 hours of consultation from Jon Reiss. Plus the book is discounted at $21.95!

Other News
Veoh the video sharing site goes bankrupt and out of business.
The first episode of the Graffiti Podcast is available at Graffitipodcast.com

More on Using Illustrator

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can see that if my Mom gets a Mac, and she has said that she is looking into it. I would be able to help her out with using screen sharing even when she is in England and I am here in Spain. Also I have some applications on my iMac that I might want to control from the Macbook either because I am too lazy to get off the sofa or if I am away somewhere else.
I will have to set the iMac to wake up when I contact it for the screenshare. Those applications would be the ones that I have bought for the iMac but are only licensed to work on one machine. I don’t like those licenses. If I have bought software I should be able to use on which ever of my computers, it can even be set so that they can’t be used on two computers at the same time. I have not yet worked out how to be in two places at the same time, so no worries there.

I suppose though that using screen sharing will be like being in two places at the same time allowing me to use an iMac paid application from my MacBook. Then when the iPad comes I could use an application on there to do the same. Now that makes the iPad even more useful.

It worked and So I come back to Mars Edit to see if I can do something similar to get a Podcast into a post from a url. You can click on Media and do an upload to the blog of your media. But what I wanted is to continue using Libsyn because I like the stats from Libsyn.

So same as with Blogo you have to go to the menu Post and click on Edit Enclosure. In the dialog that comes up you can paste in the url and even cick on a button that will fetch the type and the length of the podcast in bytes from the url.

For the fact that MarsEdit has the box ready to past in the url and that fetch details functionality it gets the nod on that side of the job.

I have also noticed that in the edit window there is a field especially for Tags or Keywords and a separate area to the right for Categories. In Blogo you have to put in a hash symbol to say if it is a category and it all goes in one place. I think I prefer the MarsEdit way.

I am still waiting to find out if Marsedit can post to Ping.fm. I use that a lot and it is a deal breaker for me. I have the paid version of Blogo and I like its ease of use and the Ping thing. Will not pay out extra money for MarEdit when Blogo does all but is a little more fiddly for some things.

The other possibility is MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software, and this one does look like I might be able to add the tags too.

The reason for looking at software to do this rather than go into the WordPress installation is because at the moment when I want to publish, WordPress always fails the first time. It usually gets saved as a draft and I can go back in to edit it up to the auto save on the draft. But it is really annoying.

As you can see from the previous post ‘Struggling with RSS‘ that went in from Blogo I can put in picture OK That was done with a drag and drop. With this one I have to click on a media button. After clicking the Media button another window comes up and there is drag and drop. Blogo does a better job of the placing of the image. I like to have some padding around the picture, as it makes the text read better.

I do like the way that you type into one window and there is a preview window that shows what the post will look like too. Adding links is pretty good too with MarsEdit.

It is hard to choose between the two of them. Blogo does connect up to Ping.fm nicely though, and I do use that a lot.

I think I will have to give both of these more testing.

What makes me think that it is contained within one of the posts from Mac20Q is that fact that the feed was working when I moved some posts over to a temporary category and the problem was not present. Also all of the other category feeds seem to be working, so it has to be to do with a post just in that category.

I will get to the bottom of this at some point in time.

By the way, What do you think of the new logo in the header? I had no internet for some time yesterday so I set my self the task of creating a new logo.

At my Spanish class yesterday we we trying on costumes for Carnaval which is taking place this weekend. A bit of clowning around

Paul started building websites back in 1994 when the web was simple and grey backgrounds were the order of the day.

Now he is the primary web strategist at Headscape and one of its three founders. Most of his day is spent helping clients get the most out of their website.

When he is not doing client work he talks and writes about web design. He speaks regularly on web design both in the UK and abroad. Engagements have included SXSW, @media, FOWD and the Highland Fling. He also hosts the longest running and most popular web design podcast over at boagworld.com.

Between speaking enagements Paul is endevouring to complete a book as well as writing articles for .net magazine, Think Vitamin and other publications.

Paul confessed to be a country yokel or Redneck because of where he lives, so we chatted about what it is like living or working in rural England. Paul though surely must be too tech savvy to qualify as a yokel anyway. he is a fairly recent switcher and said much of the change was down to the fact all his contacts at conferences were using sexy MacBookPro machines and he was embarrassed to get out the Windows laptop computer. Now that is part of the mac community we will forgive him his winding up of Mac Users in the past.

Paul runs a web design business and is well known enough that he is asked to talk at events like SXSW. He gave me a few recommendations for Mac software and iPhone applications. MagicPress is an application he says is good to use with the Magic Mouse but warns not to set up too many fancy touch commands for the mouse or it will get confused.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I also filmed some by a playground near to the Carrer Migdia. All in all a variety of street art and graffiti including some good creative stuff and some of the usual rubbish.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I love the Magritte references in the video

Today’s podcast is about the first year of Mac 20 Questions and a bit about what I plan for the show in the second year.
Well it has been one year and a couple of days with the Mac20Q blog and podcast
It has morphed into a whole series of podcasts called 20 Questions

Last year when I started the podcast I was bashing out a podcast nearly every other day in order to build up a catalogue of podcasts for listeners to find when the arrived at the site and I kept up a fairly frantic pace through most of the year, only slowing down when I was working during the summer in the camp site reception.

I have had good feed back and great following from quite a few people during the year and each podcast at the moment has about 200 downloads in the first 30 days but keeps on getting downloaded after that. The most popular people like the photographer Steve Carty from Canada has been listened to 984 times at this moment and there are quite a few like the Rob Hanson, Adam Christianson and Don MacAllister episodes which have been downloaded more than 700 times.

The podcast still has not reached the critical mass and gone viral but I believe it will given time. I keep the Apple rumour mongering to nil if I can. I only ramble for about 5 mins at the start of the podcast and I like to make the podcast about the person that is the Mac user or the film maker or the photographer.

Creativity is what interests me and even the lowliest Mac user gets doing some creative things with his or her Mac because that is what Macs are so good at. It is no surprise that some of the Mac interviews have been able to be re packaged and sent out in Photo20Q or Video 20Q or Writers 20 Q

Give a donation to the Haiti Fund

So the other monetary comment for me to make now is about donations, as in donation ware like you have with software. Other podcasters work with this model so I put up a donation button. Someone will use it one day I expect, although if cash is short and you are thinking that you would rather give to a charity than pay for what I am giving away for free anyway – then the desperate people of Haiti have a better claim to the money right now.

My aim still is to be a professional podcaster and seeing as other people have got there then I should be able to also. Persistence and loving what I do should win the day eventually. Compared to a bricks and mortar business where you could see 3 to five years before your business starts to see a profit – being a podcaster is not at all bad in the scheme of things.

It has been a good year for Mac 20 Questions and looking towards the second year I expect things to get even better. Video20Q is really taking off and thats exciting, Writers 20 Q has also been great with having best selling authors like David Hewson on the show and successful audio book podcasters like JC Hutchins. There are more interviews to come with novelists and writers.

Updating the web presence

It was getting a bit tedious with looking after each of the podcasts on its own website with all the WordPress installations. WP is pretty easy but becomes a chore when you have a few sites that you have to be updating WP from time to time, and also the plugins too. So I have just found out that I can do it all from one site with category podcasting . Enter stage right Answer20Q.com

I can re direct the visitors of the current web sites by forwarding them at hosting level with Godaddy so the change should be fairly seamless. And I can publish each of the podcasts separately as categories.
There is some messing about with the RSS feeds a little – although that is made a little easier by using feed burner. I only have to change the feed going into feedburner and that is a lot less painful than trying to change the feed at iTunes.

For Mac20Q there have been some a few screencasts, with a Mac tip or two and I plan this year to do more with video. I have my green screen and the Shure SM58 mic that I can connect to the camera so I am all set to go.

Thanks to all the guests that have been on the shows, couldn’t have done it without you. Huge thanks to all the listeners likewise.

PluralEyes

PluralEyes for Final Cut Pro

PluralEyesPluralEyes saves hours in post-production for multi-camera edits, dual-system audio or multi-take workflows such as music videos. It automatically synchronizes all your audio and video clips without the need for timecode, clappers or any special preparation.
PluralEyes for Final Cut Pro

Try it out for yourself at Singular Software

There are a lot of people stating there preferences for the iPad. Loads of negative comments as well as positive ones. The most telling are the comments from those that managed to get their hands on the iPad at the event and they all say only good things. Andy Inahtko, Stephen Fry , to mention a couple of them. Here are a few things I came across initially mixed in with a couple of thoughts of my own.

Leave a comment below and tell us whether you will be buying one or not. Tell us what you plan to do with it. What application do you think will be your most used app from the ones you have already on your iPhone

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I like the look of it, I want one but don’t really need one. My wife will be getting one of these beauties though. She is a teacher and has been on the look out for something exactly like this for using with her work. She wanted a MacBook Air for the lightness of it and this is lighter. The iPad has a super looking version of Keynote on there for $10 and she can do all her information management that teachers have to do easily on this device.

Best of all – She may let me touch it from time to time, perhaps even use it?

Fail to understand why there are some bitching about it not having Flash which is a resource hungry pile of rubbish we really don’t need.

I would have thought there would be a camera on the iPad though.

Some complain about it not being 16:9 in shape and I wonder about that too seeing as it is touted as a perfect device for watching movies, but then it does have to do other jobs too, the book reader thing and general usage is best with the shape that it is I think.

One nice thing is that all the iPhone apps that are there already work on the iPad. Those I have bought already will go straight on there without re buying. There are file management apps in the App Store already so the people griping about it not having file management on it are talking out of places where the sun doesn’t shine.

What are your views on the iPad now ??

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Time for all the rumours to be quashed and all the picking apart the bones of whatever Apple comes out with today. 10 inch form factor with an iPhone like interface. Will it be fast? Will it have Kindle like abilities? Will it be a game changing platform that will take the world by storm. Are you going to buy one as soon as it is in the store?

It is still all questions right now as I write this but in eight hours time there will be an explosion on the internet when every Mac fan has one topic to talk about. The iSlate, iTablet or the iPad. For sure some will be deleriously happy with the new toy and many will snipe at it, saying well it doesn’t do this or doesn’t do that. It will depend on whether the hype has been over done or not.

There are number which indicate that a lot of people will buy one what ever it looks like and whatever they think it can do. I am sure that if I had the cash I would be one the first in the queue even though I already have a MacBook and my iMac, an iPhone  and a Mac Mini.

In the picture above the concept artist put in a pen type of thing to use alongside the taken for granted touch interface. Could be a good idea for the artists among us to have a pen / brush interface and not have to resort to finger painting.

What would you like to see in the upcoming device? Will it have a dock to use on a desk and connect with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse?

Have Apple done deals with content providers so that you can download books movies as well as your music. More deals perhaps with mobile phone companies to give it constant internet like with the iphone?

Leave a comment below or fill in the form to send Mac20Q an email.

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Zak Forsman is an American independent filmmaker whose emotionally-charged work is known for highly authentic performances and beautiful compositions. His work has been praised by Ain’t It Cool News as “Brilliant” and “Absolutely Gorgeous.”

His stories depict compelling human threads in a poetic and minimalist style. Zak has directed two shorts films, “I Fucking Hate You” and “Model/Photographer” which have won several international audience, jury and festival awards. He is currently developing two new features for production in 2010 and 2011 and serves as editor of the New Breed blog at The Workbook Project.

His wish is simply to provide a safe environment for the actors to explore the hopes, longing and loneliness of their characters in an effort to capture their humanity truthfully, and without judgement. Considering himself less a director and more of an interpreter, Zak nurtures a family-like atmosphere on set through guided improvisation and radical collaboration to elevate each artist’s creative contribution to the project.

The hope is to realize an understanding of the film that could not have been discovered alone. Further, for the stories to resonate in very real and unexpected ways with an audience starved for meaning in their motion pictures.

FILMOGRAPHY
I Fucking Hate You (2009)
Heart of Now (2010)
Eloquent Graffiti (2011)

Sabi Pictures is his production company which he founded with his friend Kevin. He likes a high level of collaboration in his movies. Zak explains that he like to let the actors improvise  as the make the movie.

We also discuss what got him into movies and how he got to discover film makers such as Tarkovsky after being into war type movies inspired by movies like Platoon.

Zak is always itching to get the camera working on set filming something. Planing to write two screen plays in 2010. He will be working with people involved with Sabi Pictures.

He uses the SAG ultra low budget (Screen Actors Guild) agreement to determine the money spent on his movies.

Zak told me about the way he likes to use the casting process, letting the actor play off each other and see how the work together and how they can take direction .

Video20Q News

In my ramble at the start I talk about going to Girona and shooting video in a squat inhabited by some hippy types. They invited me in to see the graffiti they had in there place.

This morning I got my Shure SM58 microphone which I connected to the Canon Vixia HF100 via a converter cable going from XLR to 3.5mm jack. Works a treat and I am pleased that I will be able to get better audio with my shooting video. It will do until I can get a wireless lavalier mic. Although I do have a clip mic I can use with my Zoom H2 audio recorder.

I comment on a couple of cameras that I would like to try out. A JVC HM100 and the Sony NX5 which is only just becoming available now.

As you know I love using ScreenFlow to do my Screencasts and I thought I would have a look at what else Telestream do and this seems like it will be a great piece of software for some video professionals.

There is a trial version so I can only suggest that you check it out for yourself. Tell me what you think about it. I am in the process of testing it too, so lets compare notes.

Ultimate desktop video encoding for media professionals

Episode Encoder Pro is a powerful cross-platform desktop video encoding application that includes all the features and functionality of Episode Encoder plus support for advanced professional formats: MXF, GXF, H.264 High Profile, DVCPRO HD (with Final Cut Pro), mobile multi-bit rate and more with unlimited batch processing. Also includes complimentary instructional video, ”Complete Training for Episode Encoder and Episode Encoder Pro”.

Unrivaled Professional Format Flexibility

• Supports virtually every SD & HD video & audio file format, in and out
• Encode to new media plus high-end professional formats, such as GXF, H.264 High Profile, DVCPRO HD, MPEG-2/4 Transport Stream, mobile multi-bit rate and more
• Unlimited batch processing

Optimized by Media Experts for Media Experts

• Includes a wide range of encoding templates or create your own customized settings
• Powerful preview window lets you analyze your settings before the encoding begins
• Choose from hundreds of video and audio filters to enhance your media files
• Drop finished projects into Watch folders for automated encoding

Scalable desktop to server solution

• Upgrade to server-based Episode Engine Pro with ultra-fast job processing for high-volume, time-critical workflows

Includes Training DVD: Complete Training for Episode Encoder and Episode Encoder Pro by Nate Caplin

Final Cut Integration for Mac OS X Users

Includes direct integration with Compressor 3. Jobs can be submitted directly from the Final Cut Pro timeline. Expands Final Cut/Compressor access to virtually every video & audio file format available. Provides extensive list of formats. Maximizes user control of the encoding process to optimize output quality. Use as a stand-alone video encoder for all single-file and batch encoding needs.

Today’s interview is with Adam Weiss who uses a Mac Pro that is a quad processor antique and also a MacBook. Not only that he has hackintoshed a Dell mini9, just for fun and using on trips where he can’t carry much. He says it is useful but very slow in use. Good as a portable storage device and quiet to use as a recording computer and works with the microphones he has.

Adam Weiss is a successful educational podcaster and podcast consultant, as well as a sought-after digital media strategist. An expert interviewer and communicator, he aims to show that digital communication is more about story, presentation, and technique than fancy gear and tech toys.

He is the creator of the award-winning Current Science & Technology Podcast for the Museum of Science in Boston, which he hosted for more than two years. He now hosts his critically-acclaimed Boston Behind the Scenes Podcast, and has profiled everyone from street vendors to senators and astronauts in his career.

Adam also provides consultation on social networking, living with technology, web design and best practices, and general digital media strategy. He has started working in the digital video realm recently, and has been a photographer for years.

Adam does video reviews in which he shows what you can do with iPhone applications. He films using a Canon 7D SLR camera that also does video. He tells me that the main restriction would be the length of the clip you can record and that it doesn’t do autofocus while in video mode.

Adam is a podcaster too working as a podcast producer and also as the host on a podcast. One of the podcasts is a nature – science podcast. He even helps other people out with their podcasts as a podcast consultant.

Today’s interview is with Adam Weiss who uses a Mac Pro that is a quad processor antique and also a MacBook. Not only that he has hackintoshed a Dell mini9, just for fun and using on trips where he can’t carry much. He says it is useful but very slow in use. Good as a portable storage device and quiet to use as a recording computer and works with the microphones he has.

Adam Weiss is a successful educational podcaster and podcast consultant, as well as a sought-after digital media strategist. An expert interviewer and communicator, he aims to show that digital communication is more about story, presentation, and technique than fancy gear and tech toys.

He is the creator of the award-winning Current Science & Technology Podcast for the Museum of Science in Boston, which he hosted for more than two years. He now hosts his critically-acclaimed Boston Behind the Scenes Podcast, and has profiled everyone from street vendors to senators and astronauts in his career.

Adam also provides consultation on social networking, living with technology, web design and best practices, and general digital media strategy. He has started working in the digital video realm recently, and has been a photographer for years.

Adam does video reviews in which he shows what you can do with iPhone applications. He films using a Canon 7D SLR camera that also does video. He tells me that the main restriction would be the length of the clip you can record and that it doesn’t do autofocus while in video mode.

Adam is a podcaster too working as a podcast producer and also as the host on a podcast. One of the podcasts is a nature – science podcast. He even helps other people out with their podcasts as a podcast consultant.

We talk about microphones and how you can get more credibility when out and about shooting video. Adam like to shoot using natural light where possible. Using a reflector is a good way to enhance your lighting. He is a FinalCut Express user like myself and doesn’t yet need to move to Final Cut Pro. It is possible to use Keynote to do some transitions and effects in his video.

One of the sponsors of the show is GoSim and they have a product that is great when you are travelling to other countries and you don’t want to get stuck with high roaming charges. I will be giving a try on my next trip away, for sure.

Adam recently lost his iPhone and was wishing that he still had his Mobile Me account. The ability to wipe the phone from a distance and perhaps even locate the phone would have been very useful. He has Qik and other video apps on his iPhone and is interested in the streaming of video

Click here to view the embedded video.

A poignant tale about a young girl, Seonag, who travels back in time to visit her recently deceased Grandfather.

www.lilyislandfilms.com

On Video20Q we like to do filmmaker interviews, cinematographer interviews, and talk about movie production. Let me know if you would like to be featured on the Video20Q Podcast

I watched some of Tylers’ work and he like to use antique films as can be seen in The Fourteen Minute Gap and also in ‘Il Mio Canto Libero’. He has experience with working with non profit organisations. So working as a indie film guy that will be an advantage, unless he gets lucky and a movie goes viral. Which can happen.

there is Gather ‘Round the Mic’ which is broken up into parts and available on Vimeo.

For more than 10 hours on a sultry Cleveland night, in a bar roughly the size of a small two-bedroom apartment and on a “stage” cordoned off by tables and place marked with an Oriental rug, musicians from all over the world played and sang their hearts out.

Tyler has been making movies since 2003 and was working on film scores before that, slowly working more towards the visual end of the game. Of course Tyler is a Final Cut user, he doesn’t have the latest version and is happy with version 6.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Danny Lacey has set himself off on a course of learning how to make movies. Danny makes video for corporate customers anyway but making movies, either short films or feature length film is a whole different kettle of fish. As part of his learning regime he has mad a short movie for a horror competition called ‘Angel of the Night’. I watched the 3 minute version of the movie and was impressed. You have to have a twist in a movie to make it more interesting.

Danny talks about how he takes an original idea, writes the script, tears it apart and puts it back together again and then takes it all the way though to the finished article. He has managed to come up with a very professional looking movie using this process. He says that the planning stage is vital to the process. Making a list and checking it twice, just like the one you send to Santa when you were a kid.

I was amazed that even for a short movie like ‘Angel of the Night’ he was able to film it in one day. Danny was able to make the movie with no budget if you don’t count the pints of beer he bought for the actors to consume in the pub scene. With no cranes being available he tells me that for one scene the camera man was hanging out of a tree to get the angle for the shot in the woods. A bit of film making  monkey business.

STADA MEDIA

A dedicated, creative and affordable video production company. Danny makes video for the web and for promos

Danny’s next movie is going to be called ‘A Love Like Hers’ he wants to have higher production values and for it to be longer. He is using a site called Indie Go Go to help him raise the $8000 he will need to make the movie. Obviously a more ambitious project and I am looking forward to seeing it when it is finished, later this year.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tyler has been working for a non profit organisation and has produced some movies for them. There is ‘Il Mio Canto Libero’ in  which there is some totally enchanting music that just swept me away. Means something like ‘Its my song of freedom’ then there is Gather ‘Round the Mic’ which is broken up into parts and available on Vimeo.

For more than 10 hours on a sultry Cleveland night, in a bar roughly the size of a small two-bedroom apartment and on a “stage” cordoned off by tables and place marked with an Oriental rug, musicians from all over the world played and sang their hearts out.

Tyler also likes to produce movies using vintage footage and this can be seen in The Fourteen Minute Gap and also in ‘Il Mio Canto Libero’

The lastest movie that Tyler saw in the Cinema was ‘Avatar’ – Same for me too. We discuss the 3D quality of the film and agree that Cameron didn’t overdo the effect and used it to give more depth rather than have loads of stuff flying out at you.

Have a listen to the podcast and you will get the full details on our chat about movie making. Of course Tyler is a FinalCut Pro an Mac user too. Good man.

If you would like to hear the podcast without any advertising then sign up for the news letter and this interview is available along with other interviews of  film makers and some Mac users.

If you don’t want to miss any episodes of Video20Q then go to iTunes and subscribe. You will get the newest podcast automatically as soon as it is published. While you are there in iTunes if you would put a review of the Video20Q show I would really appreciate it because it makes the show more visible so we can get it out to more listeners. Thanks again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you would like to get this interview in the raw as it were without advertising or preamble sign up for the news letter and you can listen to this one with 3 other movie maker interview and 4 Mac20Q interviews. All without advertising or ramble from me. Give it to me in the RAW

I do have two interviews in the bag that have to be edited. One of them, the one featuring Tyler Weaver a film maker is nearly editing and I will be turning into a podcast today and tomorrow. Then I have another interview with a film maker Danny Lacey, from the UK, that I will be publishing here and on Video 20 Questions during the next week also.

I should have shot some video at the Red Hot buffet style restaurant. The food was great. I easily ate three platefuls and I wished I could have found room for more.

If you get a chance to meet some of your Twitter buddies in the flesh then go for it. People are often as nice face to face as they are online.

Here is the video

Click here to view the embedded video.

‘Libidoland’ is the title of their latest movie short and the trailer for it looks like fun. Jessica and Julie told me that they have a weird sense of humour and like to combine that with social comment in their movies. They ask,  why should movies follow the Hollywood trait of having to have a tidy ending or even a tidy story. Life is messy and there is no reason why movies can’t reflect some of that and still give a level of entertainment.

I would say that you would get a higher level of entertainment if the story makes you think a bit too. Get those brain cells working for a change, while it is good to have a suspension of disbelief while watching a movie it doesn’t mean that the thinking processes have to be dormant too.

Have a listen to the podcast to find out about their way of working, to take an idea, work it through to a finished movie via the writing, story boarding, filming, collecting the sound, editing, and finally getting the bums on seats, or eyeballs in front of the movie.

One of these two is a teacher, Jessica I think, and she challenges her students to watch movies that are not the usual Hollywood blockbuster in order  to get some critical thinking happening and an open mindedness that will lead to them seeing more interesting films.

I am often watching movies and TV drama on the TV and wondering how they got that shot. I sometimes count how long a film maker will use a shot before changing say from a wide to a close up and so on. Most shots only last a few seconds and change with a cut to the next shot. Lots of work there for the film editor. Thank goodness for FinalCut.

Here is the ‘Libidoland’ trailer for you … have a look at their ‘Snow Bunny’ trailer on YouTube also

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Their website: http://kingisafink.comTwitterfeed: http://twitter.com/kingisafinkEmail: kingisafink AT gmail DOT com

The other thing I will do with the newsletter is to send it out monthly to list the latest podcasts published and let you know if there are some good ones in the pipeline.

One more thing. In order to improve the podcast I will set up a couple of surveys which I can put on the site here. or send out if I feel I need to add as part of the monthly news.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

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The other addition is for the audio. While I was in Liverpool before Christmas there was a friend there with a similar camera to mine and he had a converter cable to go from the 3.5mm mic jack on the camera to an XLR cable with a Shure SM58 microphone on the end of that. It worked pretty good and so I have got the same. The guy from Shure was suggesting a cable that they sell costing about 60  but I found one much less than that. Maybe it will work right and maybe it won’t. At least worth a try anyway.

I had tried to use a wired lavalier mic but while it works connected to my Zoom H2 recorder it did not work in the Canon Vixia camera. To have the EX1 would be great seeing as it has XLR inputs already. I can record the audio separate with the H2 and I might still use that method for some shooting. It is just that it takes time to marry the audio back up with the video afterwards. I think I had better start saving to get a better camera.

I have just set up a Video20Q Newsletter. I will only be sending infrequently because usually if I have something to say I will put it in a blog or post onto Twitter. But after seeing a video by IzzyVideo about running a site like this he was saying that he wished he had set up something like that much earlier than he did. Here is the place to get the video from Israel Hyman. Also do check out his Video site that shows how to use FinalCut Express. which is a series of very good video tutorials.

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‘Libidoland’ is the title of their latest movie short and the trailer for it looks like fun. Jessica and Julie told me that they have a weird sense of humour and like to combine that with social comment in their movies. They ask,  why should movies follow the Hollywood trait of having to have a tidy ending or even a tidy story. Life is messy and there is no reason why movies can’t reflect some of that and still give a level of entertainment.

I would say that you would get a higher level of entertainment if the story makes you think a bit too. Get those brain cells working for a change, while it is good to have a suspension of disbelief while watching a movie it doesn’t mean that the thinking processes have to be dormant too.

One of these two is a teacher and she challenges here student s to watch movies that are not the usual Hollywood blockbuster to get some critical thinking happening and an open mindedness that will lead to seeing more interesting films.

They told me that they are serious about the movie making and look to generate and build upon ideas with a view to being able to sell them on. The shorts are the show reel that lets the movie business know what they are capable of with the writing and the film making. The tasks required to bring it all to fruition are shared between them and they work very much as a team with helpers coming in to ho;d the boom for the mic or take the acting roles. One of them does do a cameo role in the ‘Libidoland’

Hope you enjoy the interview and please put in a comment at the bottom of the post. I really want to hear back from you. here is the link to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes and while you are there please leave a rating and a review. It all helps to get the word out there and grow the listenership of the podcast.

Here is the ‘Libidoland’ trailer for you … have a look at their ‘Snow Bunny’ trailer on YouTube also

Click here to view the embedded video.

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This interview started over at Video20Q blog and podcast and seeing as Phil is a Mac user it is only right that I publish here on Mac20 Q also. I have cut out some of the interview that was more specific to film making and if you would like to get the full skinny on Phil, then you can listen to the interview in full at Video20Q.

Phil is working with an older Mac at the moment and is aware that he will have to trade up to a newer Intel based Mac soon.

Phil made the film short ‘Honest work’ using his editing skills with FinalCut Pro on his Mac and the video is to be found on YouTube. Nice idea for a short movie. I actually like the was he did the titles at the start of the movie too.

His advice to people that are thinking of doing film or video work is to get training first if you can but mainly the advice is to get out there and just DO IT. No point waiting around doing nothing because that will get you no where.

What Phil did was to buy the computer and software he needed to do the work he wanted which was to edit in TV and movies and learn how to do it well and found work from that. Excellent way to go.

Had a good time meeting with friends in Liverpool at the Tweetup.

Despite being videoed with other peoples’ cameras while there and it being streamed live to uStream, one person has asked me not to use the video off my camera that I shot with him in it  at the event.

Of course that person has a right to his privacy and I will not be using the video of him or his friend. As for the rest of the footage shot then if you were at the tweetup and want to remain anonymous then send me a message and of course I will not use the video. I am not in the business of upsetting people, not on purpose anyway, so just let me know and anything with you in it will be deleted.

Seemed like a reasonable thing to do, at the time, to take pictures while at the Tweetup seeing as we are all socially networked people and some are podcasters too. I even took it for granted that it was expected seeing as we were put up on uStream, which I personally didn’t have any objection too either.

To contact me and tell me what is your preference with the footage let me know with a email to mac20q AT gmail dot com or post a comment on this Blog post.

Life is too short for worries, problems and unfriendliness so lets keep it all sweet. Mac 20 Questions podcast is for the people that have been featured on the show and for the listeners. Here is wishing you all a good new year for 2010.

I love my iPhone but the results I get from the camera in it are not that good. I only have the 3G version and I think they may have increased the resolution with the 3GS model. Apple added video capability with the 3GS anyway. Even if the best camera is the one you have with you I don’t think I will be up loading many pictures to any of the microstock sites that come from the iPhone.
I suppose there is still possibility of getting a good shot when you have all the necessary things in place like good light and an interesting or exciting subject. It just depends on what you want to do with it afterwards.

There are loads of photography applications for the iPhone, some that are for reference when you are using other photography equipment and some that are to help you get the best from the camera on the iPhone. Then there are the applications that are to do things like post your photos to the internet and geo tag them etc. On such appp could be the iPhone application “Sekai Camera,” a social, Augmented Reality service for browsing and sharing user-generated text, photo, voice, and other location-linked information.

Tell me what iPhone applications you have and what you do with them. Leave a message in the comments section. You just need be on the page for the post by itself and scroll down to enter your comment

Phil Holbrook goes by the name of Philontilt on Twitter and also has a web site called CreativeJinx. He works in the TV business editing footage and during his free time he makes films.

Phil runs a film festival entitled EgoFest Films and will be working hard on that up until February.

One of Phil’s’ films is ‘Honest Work’

Simon and I talked about how he uses his Mac. he is a tech support guy working with Windows installation in the main. There is on place that has Macs so he has to be content with having fun with his Mac when he gets home.

Simon is planning to start a Mac podcast soon in which he will be doing reviews of Mac software mainly and probably other stuff too. I am looking forward to hearing and seeing the screencasts that he brings out. Get Simon on Twitter

He likes to use iMovie and is planning to get the latest version soon to be able to do a better job with the screencasting for the podcast. I did tell him about ScreenFlow for the screen capture part of the job, but he already has different software for it.

In my ramble I talk about the Liverpool Tweetup which is starting on Friday which I am so looking forward to. There are some of the group celebrating birthdays so I expect there will be some boozing. With me being a teetotaller it won’t make a difference to me. Will be a pile of fun anyway.

I might also see if I can catch a movie while I am there too. I wonder if Avatar will be showing in Liverpool at the weekend. So long as I don’t have to go to do too much shopping although part of the meet up includes going to the AppleStore.

Look out for the podcast that will come out of the Liverpool face to face interviews. We should have loads to talk about.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I went int the forest next door and took my Canon Vixia with me to film something. I used the technique of putting the camera on a mono pod and putting the end of it in the top of my trousers. I am sure it must have looked rude. I saw the technique being demonstrated in a YouTube video and thought I should have a go. The main point was to have some footage to play with in FinalCut Express. I wanted to use the Ripple, roll slip and slide tools for arranging the clips on the time line. Really keen to make something creative with the camera and my Mac too.

Here is the result of the adventure and I will be putting up another Mac20Q Quick Tip about what I was doing with the sound also. I recorded the sound with the Zoom H2 recorder and a wired lavalier mic and matched up the sound after in AmadeusPro. It worked nicely.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you have to convert video files then get Visual Hub..

So…how do you get your film on iTunes? What’s the secret password or magic number?

That question has come up a lot lately on Twitter among indie filmmakers enduring the plight of self distributions. I decided to do some quick research on the matter and figure out for myself how one might go about getting their film on iTunes.

I know the filmmakers of Ink did it, but then again their film has a huge  following and has been around for a few years. I wondered if the little known indie filmmaker has the same access to iTunes that a more well known film has.

Read More

Gary Rosenzweig pictured here in an English pub  (Mind you if he was doing it properly he would have a pint of beer in his hand) talked to Mac20Q about what he does with MacMost Video. He has been very busy producing Mac tips in video form for about 2 years and is doing very nicely on YouTube.

He was previously into making games with Flash and still might do the odd game. He has also made an app for the iPhone. So as you can see he is multi talented with the programming, podcasting with video, writing books, drinking beer and probably many other things too. He is successful in bringing in revenue from his podcasting, He has the links on the MacMost site and apart from one month doesn’t have the advertising in the videos.

Gary also has an Sony HDV camera which is plugged into his MacPro and he records live into Wirecast which comes from the same company as ScreenFlow. I was amazed that his preference for movie editing was with iMovie because it is so fast to do the editing. He could use FinalCut Express but prefers iMovie. He compresses the file at the end of it all with MPEG StreamClip. He uploads to Blip.tv and it will send the file off to YouTube which saves some time with the uploading. Naturally you will find Gary on FaceBook and Twitter.

He recommends that if you want to get into video podcasting and you don’t yet have a HD Camera then just shoot in standard def. move up to HD when you are able to. If you wait until everything is perfect then you will never get to make a podcast.

Gary admits to being a geek, and using terminal editor on his tiny netbook rather than using the Ubuntu that was installed. He was using EEE Ubuntu. He has been using as Mac for a long time though and was issued a Mac SE in 1987 when he was in college. It was a requirement to have a Mac there.

For a favourite application he has to choose between Garageband and iMovie, but was perhaps edging towards iMovie more. Gary does use Audacity and although it is a free application I would recommend that you use AmadeusPro, it looks prettier, more Mac like and I think it is more stable too.

He uses Fluid the custom browser application that you can use to make a web application for one specific purpose. I have it for FaceBook but Gary uses it for a Todo application. he is an iPhone user and use MocaVNC, Tweetie, Cycle Meter, and Scrabble plus other games. On the MacMost Newsletter he does a recommended iPhone app of the week.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Marcelo is the NewMediaDude an he talks to me about his new media business and about how he creates new media and gets paid for it. As you can see he is shy because he only supplied me with a very small photo of himself, despite being a handsome man. I thought at first that I should pronounce his name in the Italian way but he informed me that the correct way is the Argentinian or possibly French. Aren’t we being very international here on Mac20Q.

Honestly though I had a great talk with Marcelo and I know you will learn things from what he had to say as well as enjoy the interview. He has a pro camera with the Sony EX1, I know is good because my son who is a professional cameraman has one the same and the guys at Double Edge Films told me that either they would like one of they have one, can’t remember which right now.

Marcelo Lewin, CEO / Founder
As the CEO and founder of Center For New Media Studies and CNMS TV, Marcelo Lewin is in charge of the vision, the day to day operations of the company and building strategic partnerships and alliances. Previously, Marcelo founded and was the CEO of Pixel Heads Network, which was acquired by ProMAX Systems in 2008. Prior to that he founded My Internet Desktop, which was acquired by Internet Appliance Network in 2000. Having worked with a variety of companies, from Walt Disney Imagineering to NBC to Toyota, he is always on the forefront of interactive and new media projects.

I have looked at his site and it is certainly impressive and I have signed up to see on of his Webinars later this month.

Marcelo was telling that sometimes it is just him working alone like a one man band with his camera, sound gear and the cymbals attached to his knees, a harmonica around his neck and a large drum on his back. That has got to be funny to look at. Seriously though he asks the questions and holds the camera and I can only imagine how difficult that can be trying to control some impressive technology at the same time. Marcelo is a great guy and I really enjoyed talking to him.

Here is a movie from DV Expo

Click here to view the embedded video.

Honestly though I had a great talk with Marcelo and I know you will learn things from what he had to say as well as enjoy the interview. He has a pro camera with the Sony EX1, I know is good because my son who is a professional cameraman has one the same and the guys at Double Edge Films told me that either they would like one of they have one, can’t remember which right now.

Marcelo Lewin, CEO / Founder
As the CEO and founder of Center For New Media Studies and CNMS TV, Marcelo Lewin is in charge of the vision, the day to day operations of the company and building strategic partnerships and alliances. Previously, Marcelo founded and was the CEO of Pixel Heads Network, which was acquired by ProMAX Systems in 2008. Prior to that he founded My Internet Desktop, which was acquired by Internet Appliance Network in 2000. Having worked with a variety of companies, from Walt Disney Imagineering to NBC to Toyota, he is always on the forefront of interactive and new media projects.

I have looked at his site and it is certainly impressive and I have signed up to see on of his Webinars later this month.

Marcelo was telling that sometimes it is just him working alone like a one man band with his camera, sound gear and the cymbals attached to his knees, a harmonica around his neck  and a large drum on his back. That has got to be funny to look at. Seriously though he asks the questions and holds the camera and I can only imagine how difficult that can be trying to control some impressive technology at the same time. Marcelo is a great guy and I really enjoyed talking to him.

Here is a movie from DV Expo

But the secret is out and I have made a Screencast showing you some of the settings and the successes I had while learning what it can do for my work flow. Matthew of the StealthMac Podcast suggested that I use MPEG StreamClip with the movies produced by ScreenFlow before putting them into FinalCut Express. I found that a good idea. It means that there is less rendering to do once you have the clips on the time line.

I did try to convert a DVD to .h364 but that was not a success. the finished file was bigger and also the sound was way out of sync. Have a look at the video below to see what I have been doing today and you will see how you can make use of the free application too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Apple news has been fairly slow seeing as they came out, early in the month to say that there would be nothing more in the line up for the holidays. The rumour mill can take a bit of a break now until CES in January and then MacWorld in February. Still no sign of a tablet computer from Apple and even rumours to say that the thing was likely to be delayed. Amazing how you can delay something that was only a rumour in the first place. We don’t do rumours here on Mac20Q anyway.

I have spent loads of time watching video from Lynda.com to learn how to do video with FinalCut Express. Pleased I got it despite that fact that it is more work to do things sometimes that it is with iMovie. Well I still have iMovie there to avail of but there is no point in having FinalCut Express and then not using it because I have iMovie. There will come the video projects that need FinalCut Express and I want to know what I am doing for that. So I will have to just devote the time that is needed to the learning curve. I expect that after a while I will be so au fait with FinalCut Express that it will seem to be as quick, anyway.

One of the things that I struggled with, was the getting the video files to be a decent size for uploading to the web. I did manage to find some settings that still gave me the quality I wanted from the 1280 by 720 video but then this morning Matt Hillyer gave me information about MPEG StreamClip, an application that is so small, must be using the Quick Time conversion already on my iMac but gives the controls to do a better job. That is often the way with this video conversion utilities, I also have Videovangelist to try out. There is of course the tried, true and tested Visual hub application though. I did try MPEG StreamClip to convert a DVD but the result was even larger and the sound was offset. Took ages to do it and I had to delete the resulting file. I do like Matts’ work flow though for getting files from ScreenFlow to FinalCut Express and then from FinalCut Express to the web. One test I did today worked a treat. I ended up with a file about half the size and still good quality at the same resolution.

You can see the videos I produce on YouTube on the Wizardgold Channel.

Remember to subscribe to the Mac20Q Podcast on iTunes and even tell your friends about the podcast, or write a review of the podcast there, which will help promote the show. Thanks for those of you that have done that already.

You may leave a comment on the site here too. If you are on the home page of the site, click on the page for the single post and then scroll down to the form to fill in. Looking forward to hearing from you. Let me know if you would like to be featured on the show.

Bob has been a supporter of Mac20Q for some time and was telling me that he has listened right from the start of the podcast. Thanks Bob, good to have you along for the ride. He was the winner of one of our software giveaway competitions too!

A good chat was had and covered all the good stuff about being a Mac user. Bob is in the process of making a podcast about Bridge the card game. He started doing it as an audio podcast then decided to start again but with video. Makes more sense if you can see the cards, for this he has been using BoinxTV. I also have BoinxTV but it didn’t work on my iMac and when I looked at it working on the MacBook I decided that it was more for making Live TV programs with multiple cameras. I think I am better off using FinalCut Express or iMovie.

Whilst on the subject of FinalCut Express, I have still been working away to learn how to use the application and I am pleased that I am getting into it due to using Lynda .com with the excellent tutorials they have there. I also found FinalCutKing web site and there is a whole load of video tutorials on the IzzyVideo web site. All good quality stuff. I checked out YouTube also but the quality of the tutorials is much more variable and at the lower end of the scale.

I though it was funny that all the news sites have been talking about Applecare not being available to smokers because the filth that had accumulated in the machine had made it un safe for the technicians, Well smokers are disgusting creatures and deserve it if it is true. Blackened lungs and blackened insides of the computer. So there you go passive smoking is bad for computers too.

Back to Bob – he is certainly a die hard Mac user, having experience with Macs from the very early days, he did veer away during the dark days when Jobs was pushed aside but was happy to come back to the fold when Intel processors appeared in the Mac computers. Thanks to Bob for coming on Mac 20 Questions. I had a great time chatting with him and if you would like to be featured on Mac 20 Questions then why not contact me and we can make a date and time to record an interview.

Leave a comment by hitting the blue button above and then scrolling down to get the the input form, or send me an email using the form below

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I have the Magic Mouse for a couple of weeks now and I have to say it is thumbs up all the way. I was listening to the Mac Geek Gab podcast this morning and Dave was going into huge detail about his experience with the mouse. One of thing he said was about the size of the mouse. It is not very high or thick, or tall and seems small, built for small hands. The comment was that Steve Jobs must have small hands. Well my hands are not that small but for me the mouse is a good size. I had suffered with some RSI pain for about a month prior to getting this mouse and now after using the Magic Mouse for a couple of weeks I now can shake hands with people when we meet without wincing. Definitely a big plus for me there.

Another problem that other people have reported is the tracking speed of the mouse, and perhaps needing to run a third party utility to get to work fast enough. Strangely I have not had that problem. I installed 10.6.2 before I started using the mouse, which could have been a factor with this, and the tracking has been good. I adjusted it to the speed I wanted in System Preferences and that was that. I am working with 2 screens on my iMac also and I can easily track the whole width no hassle whatsoever.

So if you have not had a chance to try one of these Magic Mouse rodents from Apple then I would say you should definitely jump in there and have a play at your local Apple Store.

FinalCut Express

I have been learning how to do things in FinalCut Express during the week and using Lynda.com to teach myself. It is taking some practice time to get my head around the roll, ripple, slip and slide tools but I am getting there. The training videos in Lynda are very good and makes the learning much quicker and in depth. Reading the PDF manual is painful in comparison. So far I have been working on one video with footage I took while at a friends’ horse riding school. I had some good shots in there and I managed to make a short movie with FinalCut Express without too much bother. I struggled with moving clips on the timeline and I still need to learn how to make the audio fade where I want it too. In this case I looked at the length of the audio required and opened up AmadeusPro to do the job for me, but it can be done in FinalCut Express.

In the Lynda training videos there are details on how to set up the preferences to work better. It seems the standard prefs are not the best for working with. If I had not got Lynda.com to work with I would never have found this out. There is always a gap it seems between the designers of software and the users, the lessons are from people that know the application inside out and that is a huge benefit. As part of my learning I have been watching the videos for Final Cut Pro also and there is a separate series that deals with LiveType, the application that deals with titling. I am quite impressed with that application.

I have noticed that there are some small differences between the Express application compared to the Pro but for the most part you can do all that you need in FinalCut Express. For instance one difference is the speed controls. I see that in Pro it is possible to have easing in and out of the speed of a clip or a selection of a clip, so that when ramping the speed you can do it with more finesse. There is no 3 way colour corrector in FinalCut Express, which I saw being used in tutorials on the FinalCut King site. So nothing major anyway and watching the tutorials for the Pro application are also helpful and not potentially confusing.

The first video I sent out of FinalCut Express is now on my channel at YouTube, if you would like to have a look,

I really enjoyed talking to him and also enjoyed listening to it again when I edited the interview. If you want to listen you will be able to find the podcast at the Writers20Q web site. JC is a great guy and I teased him a bit about mental hospital experience, which he thought was very funny, he has an excellent  sense of humour which is always good in a person.

The story that he podcasted is called 7th Son: Descent and is all about human cloning. It is a Science fiction, thriller adventure story and I enjoyed listening to the series.

He now has a book out called Personal Effects: Dark Art and is a fully immersive experience which is augmented by physical items included with the book to allow you to actually take an active role in the adventure. I have started to listen to the prequel story connected to this novel ‘Personal Effects – Sword of Blood‘ and have been enjoying it so far.

See how you can set up active corners that will work with a modifier key so that it doesn’t just annoy you when you are trying to something in one of the active corners, like hit the Apple in the menu bar at top left.

I made this video with ScreenFlow to capture the screen and narrate, then I put it in Final Cut Express to set it up. It is really the first project I have set up in Final Cut so I was pleased that it went so well. I have been using Lynda.com to learn how to use Final Cut. It cost $25 to get Lynda for a month and I would say that with the quality of the screencasts it is well worth it. I have been doing the TrueType lessons as well as Final Cut.

I have been amazed by the capabilities of LiveType and being able to do some round trip editing between it and FinalCut Express. I have opened a Live Type section in FinalCut Express – gone in and changed it, saved it and returned to Final cut to see it updated ready for action.

Here is the Video and if you want to see in High Definition then go to the YouTube site to watch it in 1280 by 720

Click here to view the embedded video.

Today I am talking to a guy that nearly confessed to being a makeup guy, you know lipstick and blusher and all that, but did confess to being a geek. Unfortunately his wife is not a Mac person yet but he is working on her, I tell him to get out the thumbscrews. His son aged five though is a computer user with a laptop of his own.

David does have an iMac 20 inch model and is a recent switcher. He got drawn into the Mac world with iPods and moved into it with a white Macbook, he has moved on to a later model MacBook though. He is a firm believer in AppleCare. I have not had AppleCare on any of my Macs but he has got his moneys’ worth out of it.

We talk about Boxee and Plex, I don’t use those because I can’t get the best out of it because I live in Spain. I just wish I could use the BBC iPlayer, I may have to get something that will hide my IP address.

I talk about getting a satellite box from Elgato which will allow me to save things to watch later. He has a Sanyo Xacti video camcorder and loves using iMovie to make professional looking DVDs for the family.

He has his own podcast and is on episode 14 at the moment. He said the latest was going to be about Christmas presents for the Geek in your life.

David confesses to being an inbox zero type and also to having been outside the Milton Keynes Apple Store at 4am in the morning to get an iPhone. He uses Tweetie two and uses Brizzly which is a web based twitter client. There was a Twitter client in the latest MacHeist, Twitterific

Hooray I finally got my hands on Final Cut Express, Only took 2 weeks to get here from Birmingham to Spain. There is a chance that it was in the post office here for a few days because I didn’t get the note to say it was in the post office to collect. Often the post person is completely useless putting the post in the wrong box. Some of the house owners don’t check their post for months because they don’t live here – they live in Holland or Germany. Then when they do check and find a letter or whatever that is not theirs, they just dump it rather than put in the right box

Grrrr !!

Ah well I have it now just because I called to correos and asked if they had anything for me, or it would have probably sat there for a few more days or weeks. I still am happy to have saved 70 euro by buying off the Apple Store site in the UK rather than getting from the Apple Store Spain.

As soon as I had installed FinalCut Express I had to download a 180 mb  to update it to the latest. I will talk more about how it is going in a blog post and podcast.

Great guy from Enniskillin in Northern Ireland. He is Lecturer In Media Applications & Computer Science, Specialising in Video Game Development. I used to go there to Enniskillin, quite often either for shopping or to go to the Theatre. I did even once go kayaking on the river, with a bunch of kids. A good day out.

In the ramble I mention my new Magic Mouse which I am really pleased with, Google Wave and The Film Ink which got featured on Video20Q Podcast, the film got put on torrent this week and was downloaded thousands of times. I would like to see them getting paid for it though. Excellent looking movie. I have a DVD on its way to me now.

Paul McGovern is a new media teacher – lecturer in Northern Ireland and in impressing his students with being a total tech head. He tells me about apps like Blender, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere. He also does things on the audio side with Audacity and other apps you can find out about in the interview. He is fond also of ScreenSteps an Application which Allison of the Nosillacast often bangs on about.

Planbook is designed to replace your traditional paper planbook with a robust digital scheduler. Planbook is designed and written by a full-time teacher and includes all the features you need to save time, stay organized, keep others informed and help you finish your teaching day a little bit earlier.

ProfCast is a versatile, powerful, yet very simple to use tool for recording lectures including PowerPoint and/or Keynote slides for creating enhanced podcasts. ProfCast provides a low cost solution for recording and distributing lectures, special events, and presentations as podcasts. ProfCast offers an integrated workflow that makes creating, recording, and publishing podcasts easy. It’s as simple as Launch, Load, and Lecture!

Paul tells me of a thing called Moodle, which is  a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites. I must check it out my wife is a teacher, maybe she could find it useful.

As I am making these screencasts I am learning more about the power that is in this application. There will be more Screencasts to come to show you what can be done.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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In this podcast I am talking to two people from Telestream, the company that make ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow is a super product that I use often to make screencasts. Barbara deHart and Christine Porter tell me all about ScreenFlow and also mention other products from Telestream.

I was able to give them direct a feature I would like to see in the ScreenFlow, they are keen to improve ScreenFlow and you never know my suggestion about being able to specify the placement of a clip within the screen might make it into ScreenFlow. It pretty good that they have snapping lines that let you snap a clip to the centres and to the edges but sometimes you might want a clip be at an exact position and for that you need some boxes where you can enter some numbers in the same way you can enter a number to specify the zoom level for example.

I also use VideoCue from Telestream and other people have requested some of the features in that to be merged into ScreenFlow, I agree with that for sure.

I know there are other screen capture applications out there and I have paid for a couple of them but in the end I had to get ScreenFlow because of what it can do with the editing. It really is handy to be able to do all you need to do in the one application, from capturing the whole of the screen to uploading it to YouTube.

See the Screencast I made about using ScreenFlow. I show some of the basics like adding extra media and using transitions in between clips. I will be producing more screencasts as soon as my cold/flu symptoms abate a little.

These guy have been using Final Cut for a lot of years now and also use Final Draft AV while giving a recommendation to Celtx. When they are organising a project, one of their reality TV Shows like Scream Queens or Beauty and the geek they will use Bento. Joke tells me that she rescued Biago from PC sufferance 13 years ago and he has not looked back since. They are also making a documentary about a friend, Steve Mazan who is a comedian who has cancer and it is called ‘Dying to be on Letterman’.

In the interview we talk quite a bit about the making of TV shows because that is what they do and the interview is destined for Video 20 Questions too.

They seem to do mostly reality TV shows but also do scripted work. As you will tell from their interview they are totally committed to what they do. As you have to be in a business that takes no prisoners. If someone can get in there before you with your idea but better then you should watch your back.

Joke (her real name) and Biagio (Sicilian roots) als talk to me about the technical side of the work and about how they organise themselves using Macs, well they are using Macs to edit with FInal Cut Pro so it make sense to use Macs for everything.

They can be found on Twitter and FaceBook. Like many independent producers they are building a following online to get their name and brand out there, and doing it quite successfully it seems. And their brand new Joke and Biagio Facebook page, which has 1 fan: Biagio. Would love to change that!

They have  advice to folks that want to break in to showbiz: Become a Hands on Producer. Here’s the post Well Joke and Biagio are not the only ones that recommend you just get in there and learn the process by doing it. here they say that making a short TV promo is a great idea for selling the project to the Television networks. maybe not making a full pilot episode unless you want to have the experience of doing it.

These guys are the fanatical producers and directors of Scream Queens Reality TV show and Beauty and the Geek Reality TV show. They are also making a documentary about a friend, Steve Mazan who is a comedian who has cancer and it is called ‘Dying to be on Letterman’.

They seem to do mostly reality TV shows but also do scripted work. As you will tell from their interview they are totally committed to what they do. As you have to be in a business that takes no prisoners. If someone can get in there before you with your idea but better then you should watch your back.

Joke (her real name) and Biagio (Sicilian roots) als talk to me about the technical side of the work and about how they organise themselves using Macs, well they are using Macs to edit with FInal Cut Pro so it make sense to use Macs for everything.

They can be found on Twitter and FaceBook. Like many independent producers they are building a following online to get their name and brand out there, and doing it quite successfully it seems. And their brand new Joke and Biagio Facebook page, which has 1 fan: Biagio. Would love to change that!

They have  advice to folks that want to break in to showbiz: Become a Hands on Producer. Here’s the post Well Joke and Biagio are not the only ones that recommend you just get in there and learn the process by doing it. here they say that making a short TV promo is a great idea for selling the project to the Television networks. maybe not making a full pilot episode unless you want to have the experience of doing it.

Since the first Nic Costa title, A Season for the Dead, appeared in 2003 the series has grown a book a year, and spread to some twenty different languages around the world including Japanese, Thai, French, Spanish and Italian. It has won multiple plaudits including, most recently the American Library Association award for Best Mystery of 2008 for the sixth book, The Garden of Evil and was on the shortlist for the Theakston prize for Crime Novel of the Year.

David talks to me about using his MacBook Air which he will carry with him when he is traveling. He likes to use the excellent Scrivener software and the his other favourite is MacJournal. He is not a fan of the iPhone and has an Android phone on which he uses the task manager Remember the Milk.

He can’t decide whether to keep using Mobile Me, but likes Dropbox and Evernote. The fact that you can use Dropbox to have your files available to you while you are out and about.

He treats writing as a job or profession and works 5 days a week writing. I found out about him because I have on my shelf the book The Seventh Sacrament, which is of the NicCosta series. I have not read the earlier books but I don’t think it will matter in terms of needing to know what went on before. One of his early book has been made into a film Semana Santa

David talks about how he went to Italy, learned the language and writes about italians in Italy rather than writing about an English man in Rome, His books are translated into Italian as well as about 20 other languages and he says that the italians love his books too. He likes to choose an area and go there and walk the streets, visit the cafes and talk to people to get the feel for the place where he will be setting the story. His book The Garden of Evil won Mystery of the year.

Since the first Nic Costa title, A Season for the Dead, appeared in 2003 the series has grown a book a year, and spread to some twenty different languages around the world including Japanese, Thai, French, Spanish and Italian. It has won multiple plaudits including, most recently the American Library Association award for Best Mystery of 2008 for the sixth book, The Garden of Evil and was on the shortlist for the Theakston prize for Crime Novel of the Year.

ScreenFlow

the best ScreenCapture Application

I use ScreenFlow and I am an affiliate for the application. I paid for the application initially but I was pleased to get on the Beta program to get version 2 upgrade without having to pay for the upgrade. I have tried other screen capture apps such as iShowU and SnapzPro, both of which I also paid for. It was the fault of Don McAllister that I lashed out more cash to get ScreenFlow when I already had to screen capture applications. When I met him at Podcamp Barcelona he gave me the recommendation. I tried it and decided that buying it was a no brainer for what I wanted to do. So you can trust me when I say that if you have not tried it yet then I would say give it a try. Once you have made a couple of Screencasts with it you will want to have it past the trial period too.

Here is screencast in which I show you the basics of ScreenFlow. How to put in video actions and callouts and set them up to work and look right. I will do some more screencasts featuring ScreenFlow soon. Why not hit the Leave a comment button below and say what you think yourself. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Clive has an interesting approach to writing, particularly with his choice of tools to do the job. He told me he use Excel to start with to outline the characters, moving on to using scrivener and then on to Final Draft, which is the industry standard for presenting the movie when makng the film. Final Draft gives the timings for the movie apparently.

The Filmutopia company website, where people can see clips from Clives’ movies and there is also a Filmutopia blog, The blog is published with a new post every Sunday morning – European time, which I then discuss with readers on twitter.

Here’s a little bit of blurb about about Filmutopia :

Clive Davies-Frayne is a screenwriter and producer, whose company Filmutopia Ltd develops and produces feature films for cinema. So far, Clive has written and directed half a dozen short films, including one which won a UK Royal Television Society award.. and also two feature films. The first “Punx,” never completed due to funding issues… the second “No Place” was made in HD with a $750,000 budget was completed in 2005, but has spent the last four years mired in distribution issues…

Filmutopia was founded after “No Place” was completed, when Clive decided to walk away from his previous production company and a nine year business partnership, in order to change dramatically the way his movies were made, in particular the business strategies adopted. Clive admits “Everything I ever learned about how to make movies, I learned by first getting it completely wrong”

Filmutopia’s latest movie project, “Smoke” is a comedy and is currently in the development phase… the projected budget, €6M.

“After making movies the indie way for years and seeing little in return for my efforts, I decided to look at different way to make, finance, market and distribute movies. My passions are movies and the movie business… I don’t see the two as contradictions. All I want to do is entertain people and make a profit in the process.”

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