For sale: Petrol Sound Bag (SOLD)

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Update: The bag has been sold.

I’m selling my Petrol sound bag. It’s a great bag, used very lightly. I upgraded to a larger bag recently and no longer have a use for this lovely agile one. Details:

Petrol PSDMB-302, is a professional field recording mixer bag designed for use with sound devices SD302, SD-744T, SD702T, or Sonosax SX-R4. It also works great with smaller mixers such as Sound Devices MixPre. Organizes gear so its safe and workable on the job. Free access to all mixer panels-side,back top. Ample pockets hold batteries (especially NP-1 type), connectors, etc. Movable dividers, padded shoulder strap. Two allow for expandable snap-on pouches house transmitters or receivers. Features that can be added are the raincover (PERC) and the harness (PEHR).

Price is $90 firm and includes shipping via UPS ground within US. Unless you’re local to Seattle, I’ll require payment via PayPal. I will ship within 24 hours.

Here’s some pics:

Shoot me an email to dan at danmccomb dot com if you want it. I’ll update this post with “SOLD” in title when it’s been sold.

Economist Film Project

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Let me begin with a disclaimer: I hate internet advertising. And I know hate is a strong word. But let’s face it: advertising sucked in newspapers, and who reads them any more? It sucked on TV and it sucks on billboards. Advertising is the primary reason I almost never listen to the radio (but joyfully listen to podcasts), and don’t EVER watch TV (No, I don’t count watching Battle Star Galactica on Netflix as watching TV).

When I was running Biznik, we experimented with advertising as a business model. It failed utterly. So few people clicked the ads, that we didn’t even generate enough revenue to operate the servers. It’s my opinion that advertising as a revenue model works on only the largest of sites. I doubted it would ever work on Facebook, and it didn’t for the longest time. But then Facebook became so big that even a ridiculous, antique business model that depended on them annoying their members could, and does work for them. But I’ve never clicked on a Facebook ad.

Until today. This is the ad that caught my eye:

I was reading a post that my friend Hazel Grace made about my film, Shine: The Entrepreneur’s Journey, which became available online last week (thanks Hazel for posting that!) and the words “Economist,” “independent” and “film” entered my consciousness somehow from the right sidebar that I normally tune out completely. Just goes to show that advertising does penetrate our consciousness on some level. So I click on the ad, and discover what is perhaps the PERFECT venue for my film: The Economist, in partnership with PBS NewsHour, is looking for films that they can cut into 6-8 minute segments for airing on NewsHour.

“…the project will feature films whose new ideas, perspectives, and insights not only help make sense of the world, but also take a stand and provoke debate.”

Well I read that and immediately realized SHINE is a perfect fit for this venue. 15 minutes later, I’d submitted the film at the Economist Film Project website, which makes it a snap (allowing the submission of films posted on Vimeo, thank you very much).

If my film gets aired on PBS as a result of this ad, I may have to amend my hardline position against internet advertising. If advertising can help an indie filmmaker find an audience for a niche film, is it totally evil?

Life Flashes before my eyes

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I almost never post rants. But today I’m going to make an exception. Because there’s really no excuse for seeing this when you go to to a major website:

I read about the slick new Life in a Day channel that filmmakers Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald set up to showcase their crowdsourced documentary. I go there, and it won’t load in Safari without installing a Flash plugin. So I go through the steps to install Flash, getting highly annoyed. Then I’m redirected to Adobe’s website when the player is finished installing, instead of the site I want to visit. I go searching through my history, and find the site. I open it. And I get this. What the fuck. This is the state of the web in 2011?

OK here’s a promise: No matter how slick my films are, I guarantee they’ll never be so special that they require Flash to view them.

My 24-min film about entrepreneurship, SHINE, is now online

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I’m pleased to announce that my first film is now watchable online. I made this film with co-director Ben Medina, from whom I learned much of what I know about filmmaking. It’s a talkumentary about the elation, fears, dreams, and tears that accompany anyone on the entrepreneur’s path.

We had a nice review of shine today on AllBusiness.com, who sent a reporter to our premier of the film which happened Sunday evening at a small theater in Seattle.

Through intimate interviews with entrepreneurs, experts, and educators, the journey of entrepreneurship unfolds revealing the challenges, pitfalls, rewards and successes of self employment. SHINE encourages you to ask yourself what kind of entrepreneur you are, and inspires you to think about what kind of entrepreneur you want to be.

The film includes interviews with typical entrepreneurs as well as a handful of high-profile entrepreneurs including iStockphoto founder Bruce Livingstone and Scott Shane, a professor at Case Western Reserve and author of 13 books about entrepreneurship.

Connecting Zoom H4N to Sound Devices MixPre – Part II

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In part 1 of this post, I outlined the problem of connecting the Zoom H4N to Sound Devices MixPre. In a nutshell, the signal the MixPre sends via it’s Tape Out is too hot for the Zoom’s line in. I posted a workaround that allowed us to get by, and a proper solution using a -10db inline pad. Since then, sound recordist Lisa Cooper and I have been using this combination on an almost daily basis shooting a documentary called Beyond Naked. And we’ve hit on an even better solution that truly kicks ass and makes us smile. Here it is:

The problem with these lightweight 3.5mm jacks is that, when we used ones that go straight in, they tend to stick out and get knocked around in the sound bag (see photo below):

Because it’s coupled with the -10db pad at the critical connecting point, it tends to lever itself loose, causing static, or worse, it could break off or damage the internal jack on the MixPre. The right-angle connector, on the other hand, lies flat, which gives everything a safe, low profile in the sound bag.

The Pink Noise cable is the way to go. Because it’s -25db, you have to set the recording level on the Zoom H4N a bit higher. We’ve found the best setting is 28. (The best setting is 20 with the M-Audio -10 pad). Any higher, and it’ll start to clip on the Zoom before the MixPre limiters kick in. The best thing about the Pink Noise cable, besides the fact that it makes the tape out signal usable, is that it has a right-angle connector that allows it to connect to the MixPre without sticking out.

Here’s the parts list:

Hosa Right-Angle 3.5mm to Right-Angle 3.5mm Stereo Cable ($3.99 at B&H Photo)

1/8″ Stereo Phone Coupler ($3.99 at Radio Shack)

Pink Noise -25db DSLR Cable ($54 direct from Pink Noise Systems in UK)

Live Wire 3.5mm TRS to dual 1/4″ cable ($8.99 at Guitar Center)

If you order the Pink Noise cable, make sure you email and ask to have the VAT tax dropped (you don’t have to pay it if you’re ordering from US). They have great customer service if you ask, but you’ll get overcharged if you simply place the order via the web form, since there is no option to not pay VAT on their order form.

And finally, here’s why it’s such a big deal to have the right-angle connectors: because sound bags in real life look like this! Cable management is very important to getting the job done.

Color grading with Colorista II

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I’ve been using Colorista II for pretty much all my color grading ever since it was released a few months ago. Why? Because it’s awesome, and I know it’s awesome because of Stu Maschwitz’s killer video tutorials. He posted an unusually long clip earlier this week: a full hour color correcting session with a client. To watch the tutorial is to be right there in the room, listening in on their conversations, learning the steps to get perfect color. Thanks Stu!

I had a chance to put everything I learned to work on Thursday, when I shot a series of series of brief interviews, called 619 Stories, for a Seattle startup called Intersect (which has posted many of the finished clips in the 619 Building Timeline). The lighting was abysmal in the venerable artists building (which I myself once briefly lived in nearly a decade ago). I knew I was going to need to augment the light with something on-camera at least for fill, and I found a decent way to configure my custom shoulder rig with LitePanels Micro Pro just to the side of the camera, off one of the rails:

What I like about this is that it’s true quick release. I can instantly remove the LitePanel just by squeezing the clamp, which grips it with plenty enough force that I don’t have to worry about it coming loose accidentally.

I used Colorista II to do the grade, and Magic Bullet Looks to drop in a vignette and spot exposure. I could have done all of this in Colorista II by stacking additional Colorista filters, but Looks and Colorista work fine in tandem.

Here’s what I started with:

And here’s what I finished with:

I shot this interview with one knee down, which gives her the hero pose, with the lens angled slightly up at her. Shooting with a shoulder rig off one knee pretty much gives the same perspective you’d get holding a camcorder football-carry style, which was my preferred method of carry before DSLRs made me never want to touch a camcorder again.

And finally, here’s the finished video:

While editing this piece I accidentally discovered a (possibly gimmicky) solution to the dreaded jump cut problem: I inserted a cross dissolve between questions, and in Final Cut’s Motion tab, I set the clip to scale 100 percent at beginning of transition; and 200 percent at completion of it. The result: The old clip flies up at you, revealing the new clip underneath. It wouldn’t work in every interview, but I kinda like the effect.

Going steady with my new shoulder rig

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Today was my first day of filming with my custom shoulder rig. And to sum it up in a word: sweet. The rig is light, easily shifts aside so I can have off-camera conversations, and rock-steady when I need it to be.

One limitation is that everything starts to look like it’s shot at eye level because, well, it is. But I discovered a workaround for that today: wear knee pads. Seriously. With knee pads on, I can drop lightly to one knee while shooting, and put the camera at the same level as I’d be if I were hand-holding the camera football style. Touchdown!