Hem
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 6.12.06It always makes me sad when I discover an amazing Indie band merely because they’ve finally gained larger audiences. They were amazing before, why can’t people find them?
Ben Wolken recently gave me the heads up on Hem. As a modern folk band, they’re one of the best I’ve heard. Similar in acoustic themes to Nickel Creek, but with more classical, country, and pop influences (if that makes sense). They’ve just recently garnered a lot of popularity with the Liberty Mutual Ad. While discussing what music to use, someone at the Hill|Holliday advertising company brought up Hem, and suggested they listen a bit. Needless to say, it was the perfect sound for the commercial, and they procured rights to a song from Hem’s 2001 Rabbit Songs.
The selected song, Half Acre, is just incredible. Not much more to say; the instrumentals, the vocals, it all comes together with haunting beauty. No wonder everyone’s suddenly clamoring to find out more about this band! You can listen to a couple tracks (including Half Acre) on Hem’s MySpace page, or go through some of their live recordings courtesy the Live Music Archive and a compilation list by Duke of Straw.
Enjoy!
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Changes Coming
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 3.12.06The Iaian7 blog will be moving to a dedicated domain setup, so no longer will you be seeing “www.symboleffects.com/iaian7/...” I highly recommend double checking your bookmarks, as the correct URL should simply be http://iaian7.com (or http://www.iaian7.com, if you prefer).
The links will also change from messy (index.php?s=blog) to section based (iaian7.com/blog). I’ll try to contact blogs that have linked to me in the past and make sure everything’s updated.
I’m terribly sorry this wasn’t done from the start, but previous hosting limitations were… limiting. After the migration to Feedburner a couple of weeks ago for RSS and Atom feeds (and MyYahoo, and Google Reader, and iTunes, and…), and now this dedicated domain, it should be the last major change for quite some time.
Thanks so much!
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Apple's Advertising
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 3.12.06If you haven’t seen the latest iPod Shuffle ad, do so now! Fun, clean, and elegantly bold design. I had to go through frame by frame a few times before I was sufficiently satisfied it wasn’t done by beings from another dimension. Compositing is, I’m happy to announce, still done by humans. And green screens, though possibly gray screens, since that’s what I’m seeing in a few of the edge errors. Oh well, they’re still working some hot stuff!
It’s been interesting to see Apple’s designs played out through much of culture, and I’m anxious to see what styles they’ll be working on next. We’re already seeing more emphasis on texture in some of the iPod ads, and while the luxurious simplicity holds for now, things seem to be gaining a bit of depth and richness. Slightly odd to see them as a “trend setter”, but since few other companies place such importance on design, I don’t see the title going to anyone else. Can’t say I’m upset, though, Apple design rocks.
Sadly, the continuing series of “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” ads have stooped to even further depths of hypocritical mire. Though I don’t disagree with the horrors of advertising ploys (dirty, dirty starbursts…), Apple should know better than prey upon them with… well, merely more advertising ploys. Sigh.
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Trailers
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 3.12.06We have a new trailer for Hot Fuzz! This one is a bit longer, gives a much better overview of the movie, and promises plenty of off the wall action. Not only do we get the return of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Bill Nighy, all of whom were in Shaun of the Dead... but Jim Broadbent (_Chronicles of Narnia_) and Paddy Considine (_In America_) as well! Can’t wait to see another great British comedy, bloody good fun!
From the same distribution company (Working Title Films), we have Smoking Aces. While this could easily be similar to last years’ Domino (and judging from the trailer, this may not be too far off), I’m hoping for the best. Some cool people producing, and while yes, Afleck is in it, perhaps it can still be fun? I love the concept of battling hit men (and women), but if craziness isn’t your style, you might want to walk on.
The Architect seems to be a very interesting movie. How often do we get to see strong character pieces revolving around government housing? Not to mention, it involves an architect. I really hope this film can rise above political messages and stand as a compelling, emotional, and less encumbered story. There’s a lot of potential here and hate to see it weighed down by too many messages. Just a couple would be great.
Closing this weeks latest trailers would be Mimzy, billed as a “Family Sci-Fi” movie. I’m really not sure how that works, since it seems more along the lines of, say, Poltergeist. Yeah, there are kids, but it starts off with a palm reader, and ends with “This is Mimzy, she’s my teacher… She teaches me everything.” I’m thoroughly creeped out now.
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Official words
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 29.11.06The entire Apple-sues-podcasters thing was a bit silly, since it was specifically stated they had nothing against users of the term “podcast.” It still frightened a few people, but a recent Digg article has the latest correspondence from Apple.
Good to know, I suppose, that our podcasts are safe for a little while longer. Hopefully the silly fanaticism surrounding “netcast” will die. Not only is it dreadfully inaccurate for podcasts (since a netcast could be any RSS-fed media type), but it’s a sad replacement for a word that’s been in the vernacular for quite some time and in the dictionary for over a year.
In other Digg oriented news, we have another fun Google Maps location (no, not more naked people!). Evidently one can find the FireFox logo as a crop circle (go ahead, zoom in).
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Rendering
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 27.11.06
And the work continues… a total of 28 G5 processors, all 2.3Ghz or faster, and four straight days of rendering. Things are mostly done for a set of animations I’m working on. Whooo! I’ll leave you with a screen shot I took last week while testing the render network. Story of my life… four processors maxed out, and often multiple programs rendering at a time!
(For any Lightwave users out there, the most in-depth ScreamerNet tutorial I’ve found is by DreamLight Interactive)
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Tyranny in China
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 20.11.06Watch the video on Metacafe.
About a minute and a half into it, you see a man covered in burn scars… “human rights are more important that living.” And this is in Beijing, not too long ago a free city.
Also chilling are the comments to follow, this one from a Canadian: “You Americans built your country on democracy and freedom, don’t let the pursuit of money destroy what set you apart from the rest of the world.”
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I've failed
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 19.11.06As a movie goer. Completely failed.
Halfway through Casino Royale, someone’s phone rang. Multiple times. As I sat their wondering what idiot could have left their phone on in a theater, my own phone rang… and wouldn’t shut up! So as I sat there wondering just how long the theme from Boondock Saints would play till the phone finally paid attention to my attempts to send the call to voice mail (so sorry Adam!!), I ended up trying to muffle it in my pants. Seemed to work ok.
So save for the public shame, the movie was just incredible. I’ve not been a huge James Bond fan in the past, they’ve always been a little over the top and very sexual, though the entire espionage thing really gets me. This 007 movie, however, starts over. Literally, it’s the start of James’ career as a “double O”. Beginning in grainy black and white, he takes his first two major kills… finally earning elite status among spies.
May I point out the opening sequence is beautiful… stylish… elegant. Blocky vector style characters run through stylized backgrounds, and as each one dies, fall apart into showers of hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. Much like the visual feast of Lemony Snicket’s end credits, it’s an awesome treatment of the style and subject of the movie in a kinetic motion graphic piece. After which, well…
There follows some of the most impressive action I’ve ever seen in a movie. With a few nods to Parkour, we’re rid of the preponderance over ridiculous contraptions, and stripped of the unnecessary baggage, are free to fly… (Sebastian Foucan, of Parkour fame in France, plays a fleeing bomber with ineffable talent). Through buildings, over cranes, fighting and chasing, jumping and falling, moving at a speed that’s breathtaking.
Sure, there’s the obligatory Bond girls (and plenty of offscreen sex), but we’re also witnessing the tragic hardening of a man who used to be able to love. To anyone that may have enjoyed James Bond in the past, I can not recommend this enough (though do beware a particularly brutal torture scene), and to those few that might enjoy a bit of action… man, you can’t go wrong!
Oh, and the beautiful cars… so pretty…
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Colin and Cumberland
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 13.11.06On the lightwave forum I came across a short film shown in the Raindance festival of London. Fetch is one of a series of character sketches by one of the UK’s leading animation houses; Axis Animation. They seem to have a lot of fun with it, not to mention it’s done using Lightwave!
It’s all part of the language efforts by the BBC, helping teach kids some of the remaining celtic languages. While my efforts to learn any language are generally met with utter demise, it’s a nicely done site, and seems to be a cool way to learn.
Axis was also the studio to do CodeHunters, an 11 minute film used as part of the MTV Asia awards. CGSociety published an excellent article on the animation and design process. You can find higher res formats here, and believe me, it’s worth it. There’s a lot of nice touches to the style that have to be seen in detail to be appreciated!
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Reading Job
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 11.11.06I began reading Job a month or two ago; figured it’d put me in my place, give a better perspective on life. Always a good thing.
Somehow I started by reading the last chapter, the epilogue. It’s interesting because as you start again, from the beginning, you read everything knowing it’s all wrong. In the last chapter God tells Job’s three friends to make sacrifices for saying untrue things (Job 42:7). Giving faulty counsel, they denied God’s character. I’m paraphrasing a bit, so do read it for yourself!
Elifaz is the first of Job’s friends to speak, and what he says seems so good and righteous. God won’t let evil prevail, or piety falter. Oh, how frail is man! How could God look upon him? But take heart, and trust in God… He will be sure to save the righteous, and uphold those that are truly just.
It’s all “good” stuff. You could probably hear this in any Bible believing church in America or elsewhere! But it’s wrong. So what’s wrong with it? The only thing I could think of is that they believed their own righteous works beholden them to God, they could make themselves good enough that God would have to bless them. They believed their faith guaranteed earthly prosperity.
But that’s not the case, God is so insurmountably Holy, nothing we do even comes close to making our sin-stained life tolerable (Isaiah 64:6). It’s merely by His grace that he reaches down and saves us, it was true when Christ died on the cross, as it always was throughout the Old Testament. Something I’d never realized before… it’s always been God’s grace. He really hasn’t changed! People were never saved by the blood of animals, or by rules and regulations (Hebrews 10:3-4). Those were in place to remind people, but it was never about the externals. God has always saved by grace.
He is so much greater, more wonderful than can be comprehended. Easy to say, I suppose, and impossible to really grasp.
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