Media

Jun 6, 2011

I Came for the Post-Apocalyptic Setting, I Stayed for the Nerdiness

Jon Lim Amazon, books, Kindle, Marcus Alexander Hart, The Oblivion Society Blog, Books 0 Comment

I finished reading The Oblivion Society by Marcus Alexander Hart on Friday. I enjoyed reading it, especially when you have gems like this:

“I’m with you,” Bobby agreed. “Let’s eat already. I feel like somebody did an ‘rm star’ on my stomach.”

It makes me sad that I read that, understood it, and laughed so hard that my fellow subway riders probably thought I was crazy.

Of course, there was this as well:

“We should all find souvenirs,” she said. “Look around. There’s probably some stuff we can use in here. At the very least we should all find something to wear to keep warm.” “Hell yeah,” Sherri said, loosening the belt on her coat. “I call dibs on the first thing anyone finds that’s black and encrusted in metal studs!” “Fine,” Bobby said. “I’ll let you know if I find Dennis Rodman.”

And don’t even get me started on all of the Canada-related puns on the billboards they kept running into. Oh boy.

Great read.

May 29, 2011

Lessons From Shooting With the SLR

Jon Lim Canon T2i, SLR, Video Technology, Video 2 Comments

Shooting with a Canon T2i It has been just about 3 months since I have bought my Canon T2i, and I have done my best to really get to know it better. I have done quite a bit of video in the past, and I have done some video with SLRs as well, but there are just tiny little tips and tricks you figure out along the way.

Here are a few for the beginner videographers to help you along your journey to shooting better video!

Tip #1: Autofocus in video sucks with the T2i.

Seems rather silly, but autofocus on the T2i in video mode is… well, it’s shoddy. It is slow, it is loud, and it opens up your aperture as wide as it can while it does it, and will whitewash your entire video. Instead, get comfortable using manual focus and zooming in to check on the focus. At least that’s how I do it.

Tip #2: Invest in a good microphone.

This is especially important if you have people speaking on camera. I recently filmed an interview with Wes and Darcy of Dealpage, and we were on the roof of my office building on a rather windy day. If I didn’t have a mic, I am pretty sure my audio would consist of bits and pieces of their answers, but mostly the wind blowing right into the mic. And nobody wants to interview the wind.

The mic I use is a Rhodes VideoMic. I’d love to buy a wireless lavalier mic in the future, but for now it isn’t viable for me.

Tip #3: Don’t cheap out on the SD card.

When I took the camera to Austin for SXSW, I had JUST purchased the camera along with this cheapo 32GB SD card from Canada Computers. Worked great for photography, but when you used video mode and you moved in the slightest, you would memory buffer right out. Why? The SD card just wasn’t fast enough. Instead, invest in a card that gets at least 30mb/s and memory buffer issues should be a thing of the past.

I bought the SanDisk Extreme 16GB card, best purchase ever.

Tip #4: Auto settings are versatile enough for most situations, but get comfortable with manual settings.

This is something I have only recently started fiddling with, because for the most part, auto exposure settings were just good enough for anything I was doing. However, setting it to manual is the best way to control image quality and the look and feel of your video. Get some practice down by shooting a still scene and changing the settings until it looks right to you. Soon enough, you’ll get comfortable enough to change the settings on the fly and while on the move.

This has been the largest effect on my work, simply because being able to change the settings at will has given me the control I need to make it look just the way I want it to look.

So there you have it, a few nifty tips I have picked up along the way, and I hope they help you out too!

May 23, 2011

Awesome Link: OliviaTech

Jon Lim OliviaTech, photography, Video, video tutorial Photography, Video 1 Comment

I love discovering useful and/or educational content that is well made. That’s why I was quite happy to discover about OliviaTech, a blog of Olivia Speranza, sharing her tips and tricks about audio, lighting, photography, and videography. This is my favourite kind of site to stumble upon, because you immediately learn a million things.

There’s an even better part: her video tutorials and reviews!

She has a collection of very professionally made videos on YouTube and Vimeo that educate us amateurs about different equipment and techniques. They’re short and they pack a lot of good, educational content.

Thanks Olivia, you’re doing great work!

Feb 1, 2011

The Birth of #MixtapeTOSF

Jon Lim Lan Nguyen, MixtapeTOSF, Music, San Francisco Music 1 Comment

Magical things happen when you act on spontaneity.

Example: On Sunday night, Lan and I had decided, to start sending each other mixtapes on a regular basis. Every week, we’d assemble a good lot of songs and sling them over. I thought it was great because I kill two birds with one stone: I get to keep talking to a friend in San Francisco, and I get to hear a bunch of music I may not have heard before.

Yesterday was our inaugural #MixtapeTOSF exchange. It went even better than expected.

Here are our mixtapes, mine (“Energetic Mondays”) on the left, and Lan’s (“I Love The Unknown”) on the right.

Totally looking forward to next Monday. I’ve already started working on the mixtape!

Be spontaneous!

Jan 1, 2011

Why I Love Teletoon at Night

Jon Lim Fearless Fred, Teletoon, Teletoon at Night Media, Television 2 Comments

One of my favourite channels to watch is Teletoon. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of cartoons and that I watch Futurama almost religiously, and Teletoon does a great job of letting me get my Futurama fix on a daily basis.

Recently, Teletoon did a bit of changing with their “Teletoon at Night” program. They added Fearless Fred to their roster, added a bunch of new shows, and are doing their best to promote not-so-well-known cartoons!

I LOVE what they are doing with Teletoon at night. The simple addition of Fred to do some really basic voiceovers and segues between shows is great: he’s personable and he’s witty, and he can even take a boring message about parental discretion and add a bit of good natured humour to it.

It’s difficult for me to explain exactly why I love it all, but I will do my best: Teletoon has managed to create a great atmosphere for not-so-kid-friendly cartoon shows, and they have fun while doing it.

It seems simple enough to do, but it’s a pretty fine line to walk. I hope more people tune into Teletoon at Night and Fred at Night because they are such a treat to watch.

Thanks Teletoon, you make watching cartoons easy!

Nov 2, 2010

Jamie Oliver’s Branded Video Content

Jon Lim Business, Marketing, Video 0 Comment

Jamie Oliver has always been one of those guys I have a tremendous amount of respect for – he’s an accomplished chef, and he is on a mission to make people around the world healthier by giving them the knowledge to cook good food, fast.

Well, I just noticed that he has a YouTube presence which he’s using to promote his book, 30-Minute Meals (Aff Link), which is exactly what he’s all about: good food, fast. In the channel, he goes through a lot of basics of cooking, such as knife skills, herbs to use, and a plethora of other useful hints and tips. This is exactly the type of videos that I have been pushing for the past year – they are interesting, they educate you on Jamie’s area of expertise, and it promotes Jamie Oliver and all of his initiatives.

Cheers Jamie, keep up the awesome work!

Oct 7, 2010

YouTube: Copyright Hero?

Jon Lim Copyright, Margaret Gould Stewart, TED, YouTube Business, Music, Technology 0 Comment

Margaret Gould Stewart, the head of user experience over at YouTube explains the Content ID system over at YouTube, and mentions that the minute you upload some copyrighted material, the rights holders get to determine what happens to your video.

Once again, not a huge fan of copyright protection being too far and overreaching, but you really do have to realize that YouTube is making small and incremental changes to copyright protection. The story from the video is a great example: the wedding video that uses Chris Brown’s Forever brought the song back to number 4 on the iTunes charts, having been long dead before that. Had Sony, the rights holder to Chris Brown’s Forever, simply blocked the video from appearing, that song would have stayed off of the charts.

Keep in mind, years ago, these RIAA companies would simply have blocked the content and prevent anyone from enjoying the video. Now, you have companies thinking about all of the possibilities that can come from that one video. As Stewart said:

By simply blocking all reuse, you’ll miss out on new art forms, new audiences, new distribution channels and new revenue streams.

Now, the real task is to get them to move from only allowing popular videos to benefit from this sort of leniency, and to all videos that simply want to share the song – you want more people to listen to your artists, don’t you?

Oct 6, 2010

No Copyright Protection – Doing Just Fine

Jon Lim Copyright, Fashion, Games, Johanna Blakley, Movies, Music, Piracy, Software, TED Business, Media, Technology 0 Comment

This great presentation from Johanna Blakley discusses how the fashion industry, which does not have the luxury of copyright protection, is a flourishing and innovative industry despite their lack of protection. Being strongly opinionated on the matter of copyright protection, I felt I had to make a few comments.

I think Johanna’s use of the fashion industry doesn’t necessarily apply to the movie, music, software or games industry (Anything that suffers from piracy.) because in fashion, it’s designer to designer copying, not consumer to designer. In other words, it isn’t a consumer issue as much as it is with the aforementioned industries.

But Johanna brought up a fantastic point: designers are making it more difficult for other designers to completely rip off their designs, but they aren’t making it more difficult for the consumer to consume, unlike all of the initiatives that the movie, music, software, and game industries have been undertaking. (Cough, Ubisoft, cough.) I think it’s a very valid point: these people who have no copyright protection are becoming very creative at designing something difficult to rip off, and people want it because it’s designed well.

So lesson to the movie, music, software, and game industries: make something we want, something unique, and we’ll buy it.

Trust me.

Jul 28, 2010

My Mic Broke, And They Fixed It!

Jon Lim Audio Distributors International, microphone, RODE, Video Video 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I have blogged here, but I have been busy traveling, building the business, and creating a list of things to consistently blog about (Hopefully!) So here’s the very first: my RODE VideoMic broke, and they fixed it for free – and fast too!

The Story

While filming something with my good friend Darius Bashar, I accidentally left my camera standing on a tripod in his car while we started driving. All it took was one hard turn for the camera to fall down and for one of my fears to come true: my microphone was broken. In reality, the functionality of the microphone was still intact, it was just now impossible to mount it onto the camera even after countless attempts to superglue the cold shoe pieces back together.

Tape all over.
I went on for months sort of sulking about my loss – the RODE VideoMic is $230 + tax on the regular, and it seemed stupid to buy another just because of the cold shoe. I did the stupidest thing I could think of and resorted to taping the microphone on whenever I was filming something – making me look rather unprofessional and making my tiny camera look even worse than it already was.

Finally, last week while filming with Andrea Liew, she asked me “Why didn’t you just buy another one of those parts you broke? I’m sure you could buy it for a couple bucks, it’s plastic!” After hearing that, I immediately cringed due to my extended stupidity and shot out an email to the Canadian service agent for RODE products: Audio Distributors International.

Within a couple hours, I received back an email from Eric Lasnier telling me they would not only replace the part, but they would do it for free! Well, the package came yesterday with two, count them, TWO cold shoe replacements!

I am quite impressed and appreciative of the prompt response and service that I was given by ADI, and they’ve probably just made a customer for life. Thanks guys, you’ve saved my life (and career!)

The new cold shoe on my mic

Feb 19, 2010

Featured Album Fridays / Field Music – Measure (2010)

Jon Lim Featured Album Fridays, Field Music, indie, Measure, Music, Pop Featured Album Fridays, Music 0 Comment

This week on Featured Album Fridays, the 2010 album from Field Music – Measure.

Here is the description of Field Music from their Last.FM:

Field Music is an experimental pop band from Sunderland, UK, formed by brothers Peter and David Brewis and their schoolfriend, pianist Andrew Moore. They have recently reconvened after an extended hiatus with a new line-up featuring guitarist/keyboardist Kev Dosdale and bass player Ian Black (Andrew having taken time out to train as a chef). A new double album is due to be released in February 2010.

The band’s first album, the eponymous “Field Music”, was released in 2005, followed in 2006 by a collection of b-sides and early tracks entitled ‘Write Your Own History’. During this time they toured with fellow bands from the North East England, such as Maximo Park and The Futureheads, as well as sonic adventurers from further afield, including Melbourne’s Architecture in Helsinki and Portland’s Menomena.

In 2007, they released ‘Tones of Town’, a critically acclaimed song cycle, which captured a particularly English variety of post-industrial frustration. However, sensing that a quick follow-up could lead to a dilution of ideas and purpose, the band announced a hiatus shortly after the album was released. In this time Peter and David each released solo albums as The Week That Was and School of Language respectively.

All of their albums were self-produced at their own ‘8Music’ studio in Sunderland.

As usual, the stream is below. Enjoy!

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