Happy Trip Around The Sun

Happy New Year ProLost peeps!

It's going to be an exciting one, I promise. Rebel's Guide events, cool new software for DV Rebels from Red Giant and others, and hopefully some reports from the trenches of my filmmaking endeavors.

I am thrilled and honored to link you to the first post of the year on HD For Indies. I've never felt the need to post about Mike Curtis's thorough and unique blog—becuase quite frankly the vast majority of my readers find thier way here from there—but in the off chance you don't know about it, HD For Indies is my daily source of the latest info on all things HD, including the Red camera. Mike's first post of double-oh-seven is a review of The Guide followed by a brief interview with yours truly.

Thanks for the kind words Mike—from you they mean a lot.

And to all my readers, Happy New Year and all the best from ProLost.

Rebel Mac

And so it begins. I will be speaking about The Guide at Peachpit's booth at Macworld Expo San Francisco at noon on January 10th, 2007—the first of many such appearances. I'll have my MacBook Pro and will demonstrate some of the post-production techniques from the book.

Peachpit will be in the South Hall of the Moscone Center, right between Adobe and Apple (sweet). Download a map of the South Hall in PDF form.

If you can stop playing with your new iFone™ long enough, I hope you'll stop by!

To help you keep track of Rebel events, I've created a Google calendar which you can view or subscribe to. There's a nifty button for this way down the page on the right.

(I know this is kinda lame, but if the shipping delays are real, this might be a good way for Bay Area folks to get their hands on The Guide sooner than later. I can't imagine Peachpit would hold this event without some copies for sale at the booth!)

Stu on Filmmaking Central

You can hear me ramble on about The Guide on the current episode of the Filmmaking Central Podcast, which is an excellent resource for filmmakers at any budget level.

FC Blog, FC main site, MP3 direct link, iTunes link, link to a random picture of a taco.

Rebel = Late

Like I said, The DV Rebel's Guide will be shipping on December 26. Oops.

The good news is that I've seen it in person, and it is real! It has pages and everything. So while you won't be greeted with one under your tree come Christmas morning, at least you'll know just what to buy with that Amazon gift certificate!

Now You Con Duit

Pauli Ojala, one of the masterminds behind Conduit, has a blog where he demonstrates the power of the plug-in's nodal niftiness.

Conduit is awesome, but personally I have no use for it in FCP or Motion. Maybe someday it will be an After Effects plug-in, and then I will be (in Dieter voice) as happy as a little girl.

I am so tired of people saying that nodal interfaces are "high-end" or obtuse or anti-art or whatever (is anyone actually saying that? Or does it just float around as a sourceless wrong-headed notion?). It takes a lot more esoteric knowledge and wetware wear to work effectively in After Effects than it does in a nodal application, unless you're doing interesting things with time. Conduit provides a fun and punishment-free environment to experiment with nodal compositing. Try it!