Even before the Flash-animated movie Waltz With Bashir took home a Golden Globe for foreign-language film prize, I had been interested in seeing it. After all, it rated an impressive 95 per cent Fresh Pick on rottentomates.com
The New York Times has a thought-provoking video interview with the movie’s writer/director Ari Folman in which he discusses how Waltz With Bashir was animated in Flash using 3,500 keyframes, giving the film its unique, graphic-novel style look.
Preview for Waltz With Bashir
You can check out more details on Folman’s innovative techniques in studiodaily.com’s story.
The team used photographs to build realism into the environments, then added the background details.
Waltz With Bashir was made for two million dollars, and took four years to complete. Animators would slave a whole day over a second and a half of footage. That’s dedication, but it looks like their toils were well worth it.
LG Electronics made a splash at the Consumer Electronics Show when it introduced a fully functional, touch-screen wristwatch cellphone.
The watch-phone is expected to be available for sale in the second half of the year.
It looks a little clunky from the photos displayed, but has many features, such as:
- a built-in speaker for text-to-speech
- an MP3 player
- a Bluetooth compatibility camera which can be used for videoconferencing
I am not sure that I would want to watch TV on my wrist, but I do like the idea of all-in-one gadgets. How handy to have devices such as GPS, phone, camera, video recorder, all bundled together, like my fetish object, the Nokia N96.
Why carry 10 gadgets when one can do it all?
As well, LG and all of the major television manufacturers are expected to push 3-D technology at this year’s CES, according to a story on CBC.
That could open up all kinds of opportunities to develop more interactive games …. combine that with a Wii (with better graphics of course!) ….
So now I am enrolled in the Star Trek webmaster program. Embed!
This wee widget I grabbed from its site packs in a lot of functions, and acts as almost a mini-website for the upcoming Trek movie (T minus 121 days!), featuring a photo gallery, synopsis, downloads, and of course my favourite movie trailer.
What a great way to promote a movie, get buzz going online. And its cool interface transitions (like the website) mimic the way DVDs transition once a button is clicked, slick.
I would advise seeing Trek’s amazing high definition trailer, give you a taste for the Imax version of the movie, coming May 2009.
High definition viewership online is rocketing according to a recent story on TechCrunch: Move Networks Streamed 100 Million Hours Of HD Video On The Web Last Year.
The article says that Move Networks, which powers the Web video streaming for ABC, Fox, the Discovery Channel, and Animal Planet, streamed 180 million hours of video, 100 million of which it claims was in high-definition. And with Hula and YouTube adding HD services, “you can expect that 100 million hours to be dwarfed this year across all the major Web video services.”
Yeay to less pixelated video offerings!
So much upheaval in the newspaper business this days, 600 recently laid off at Sun Media chain, there is even a website, Paper Cuts, that keeps a running tally of layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers. Christmas parties cancelled all over.
Big media sites have redesigned their websites to accept user content and now use of social media tools. A TechCrunch post cites a Pew Survey that most Americans are getting their news from the Internet rather than newspapers. Although it states that TV still beats both the Internet and newspapers as a news source, it goes on to say, “give it a couple more years and the Internet should overtake that as well.”
But online advertising won’t always pay the kind of cash that a full page ad can. No wonder the newspapers have been turning their photographers into videographers … a 15 second commercial at the beginning of a clip can be a money spinner.
There is some good news on the horizon for media geeks though … MediaShift states that, “As newspapers and broadcasters slice their senior-level workforce, they are also quietly building their digital and online teams.” And a Fast Company story points to the impending retirement of aging baby boomers and a new tech boom.
Plus for us West Coast Canadians … the 2010 Olympics is rumoured to be creating a job or two …
