The Revolution Pack revision starts on January.

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Do you want this addon for the FZ50?

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From 2009

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fettes Event — einzigartig in Europa steht am Mittwoch, 16.12. auf der Boarderweek in Val Thorens eine FSX Snowcross Show, das heisst es werden ordentlich paar Schneemobile über die Tables gehen — check this von den Frosty Demons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffvq2AyLoU0 oder diese Verrückten…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Qq5zYYDo8

It was obvious from the very beginning that Lucidity was no ordinary game. Jesse Harlin and I knew that we had the opportunity to do something unusual with the audio. As the game was set in a dream world we wanted the soundtrack to have an ethereal feel to it. So we hit upon the idea of focusing the audio around the music, with sound in the game complementing to and blending with the music.

We tried to blur the lines of where sound design ends and music begins, with Jesse doing a first pass on the majority of the prominent game sounds, from the musical notes of picking up fireflies to the cymbal crash of the exploding bomb. Meanwhile I created some “instruments” for Jesse to use in the music from our sound design library. This included tuned owl calls and frog chirps turned into rhythm sections.

As I was creating the sound effect ambiences I carefully tuned each element in the mix from bird calls to the drone of crickets to match the root note of each level’s music so that they blended to create a single musical soundscape. We also timed all of the sounds related to Sofi in the game to play on a 16th note Grid so they were not only tuned to the music but also in time with the music.

The enemies in the game, such as the hornets, mushrooms and dust bunnies, needed to create a sense of danger to the character, so the sounds we chose were deliberately non musical and not timed to the music to create a sense of dissonance with the Sofi’s dreamlike musical existence.

As you can imagine with our melding of music and sound design the division of labor wasn’t clear cut, as the overall soundtrack of the game ended up as cross over of ideas and work between the two of us.

IS have now fixed the user authentication problems that were affecting services campus wide. So all services that use Shibboleth or ADS authentication, such as NOW, ‘My Library Card’ in Web OPAC, eSearch and RefWorks, are working again.

However, if you do discover any further problems, then please let eServices know.

Canadian special effects artist, Remy, was arrested on 29th October, is facing serious criminal charges for corruption of morality and might even get jail time because his website dedicated to his art is judged too extreme.

To help publicise Remy’s situation and to find out how to contribute to his legal fund financially or simply offer him your support, please become a fan of his Facebook page and spread the word. To read the page in English, click on the Read More link at the bottom of the Personal Interests section.

I don’t want to talk about my personal feelings on the subject of criminalising art in an increasingly sterile global society because this would turn from a few paragraphs in a blog to a thousand page essay, but suffice to say Remy’s situation makes my blood boil.

Remy’s work can also be seen on deviantART and on his business website.

Spread the word through the wonder of online information sharing, social bookmarking and other such clicky things : Digg . StumbleUpon . Reddit

Hollywood Edge is sitting on some of the best sound effects around. Many of them are constantly being used and have been used in tons of Hollywood movies. Yes, you can buy some of the same sounds used in big budget Hollywood flicks. And they’re giving away 99 of ‘em free of charge.  The collection dabs a little into animals, weather, jets, explosions, machines, etc. etc. Many of them are just perfect for motion graphics.

Go to HollywoodEdge.com and start a free account and then you’ll get access to the free sound effects. You’ll have to download each one separately from their player.

H20 is the first in Zenhiser series of Sound FX & Foley. This broad collection of extremely high quality 48 khz water sound wav files scopes the realms of water fx and delivers a large digital library of water sounds second to none. Recorded on site these are original recordings of water sounds ranging from Ocean Sounds, River Sounds & Waterfall Sound through to Water Drop Sounds, Water Splash Sounds, Tap Sounds & a great array of Running Water Sounds.

These attractive water sound fx suit a multitude of pro audio purposes and combine an extensive collection of water sounds for both pre and post productions. H20 includes over 320 mb of pristine water sounds available in wav format. This sound fx pack also includes a full description list of each water sound and intuitive file descriptions to keep these water sound fx extremely easy to catalogue.

If you’re looking for water sound fx then ‘H20′ is a must. Simply listen to the water fx preview to hear what we are talking about.

Want to hear more. H20

Jacob’s Ladder is a 1990 psychological thriller / horror film directed by Adrian Lyne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin. It stars Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello, and Jason Alexander. Actor Macaulay Culkin appears in an uncredited performance.

Tagline:  The most frightening thing about Jacob Singer’s nightmare is that he isn’t dreaming.

Trivia:

• All SFX were filmed live, with no post-production. For example, to achieve the famous ’shaking head’ effect, director Adrian Lyne simply filmed the actor waving his head around (and keeping his shoulders and the rest of his body completely still) at 4fps, resulting in an incredibly fast and deeply disturbing motion when played back at the normal frame-rate of 24fps.
• The Bergen Street station in the film was actually an abandoned, lower level portion of the station, which had to be re-tiled and fixed to look as if it was still in working condition.
• All ads in the subway and Bergen Street station are anti-drug ads.
• According to the original script, the subway station Jacob arrives at in the beginning of the movie was supposed to be Nostrand Avenue – not Bergen Street.
• According to the original script, after Jacob is nearly run over by the subway train, a sequence involving a man being raped in the subway station mens bathroom was supposed to occur. It was filmed but deleted from the final cut (parts of the scene can be seen in the Making-Of featurette Building ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ (1990) (V)).
• Writer Bruce Joel Rubin wrote the script for Jacob’s Ladder in 1980 after he had a dream of being trapped in a subway. He spent ten years trying to get it produced, but the script remained languishing in developmental limbo. During this period, Rubin’s agent told him that the film would never be made as “Hollywood doesn’t make ghost movies”. After the Rubin scripted Ghost (1990) became a smash hit, coupled with the success of Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987), studios became more open to the possibilities of Rubin’s script. After taking on the role of director, Adrian Lyne spent over a year refining the script with writer Rubin.
• Adrian Lyne made sure Jacob and his visions never appear together in the same shot.
• The hospital gurney that carries Jacob was deliberately unbalanced by Adrian Lyne. He raised one wheel slightly off the floor, causing it to rattle and spin.
• The confrontation between Jacob and Geary originally takes place in a courtroom corridor. Lyne moved them to the stairs in order to downplay the height difference between Tim Robbins (who is 6′ 5″) and ‘Jason Alexander’ (who is 5′ 5″).
• Some additional scenes from the original script which were changed or removed by director Adrian Lyne: – During the dance scene, ALL the dancers turn into demons. – During one of his Vietnam flashbacks, Jacob has a vision of a “celestial staircase” accompanied by heavenly music. – Jacob watches a reverend on TV who rants about the world coming to an end. – Jacob sees an image of a demon on the wall of his living room, which, when he looks closely at it, becomes a portal to Hell. – A scene following the “antidote” sequence in which the ceiling explodes and Jacob is surrounded by a vision of Heaven. – A different ending, where Jezzie turns herself inside-out and transforms into a huge demon, which Jacob has to fight before ascending to heaven.
• The closing legend of the film mentions the testing of a drug named BZ in Vietnam. BZ is NATO code for a hallucinogen called 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, which was rumored to have been administered to US troops during the Vietnam War in an attempt to increase their combat abilities.
• After initial test audiences reported that the film was overwhelming, director Adrian Lyne cut out almost thirty minutes of material, almost all of which came from the last third of the film. Four major sequences were removed after Jacob (Tim Robbins) first meets Michael (Matt Craven); a scene where Michael gives him an antidote for the Ladder, a scene where Jacob thinks he is cured but turns out not to be; a scene where he goes to Michael’s apartment and finds Michael decapitated; and a scene just prior to his final meeting with Gabe (Macaulay Culkin), where he meets Jezzie (Elizabeth Peña), who shows her true form.
• For all of the chiropractor scenes, director Adrian Lyne ensured there was a real chiropractor on-set, who would work with actor Danny Aiello so as to ensure authenticity. According to Lyne, chiropractors often approach him and thank him for going to the trouble of getting what they do exactly right.
• According to director Adrian Lyne, most of the dialogue in the opening scene between the soldiers was improvised on set by the actors themselves, especially the conversation between George (Ving Rhames) and Jacob (Tim Robbins) about masturbation.
• Prior to the commencement of filming, former US marine Dale Dye took actors Tim Robbins, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Eriq La Salle, Ving Rhames, Brian Tarantina, Brent Hinkley and Anthony Alessandro to a 5-day military boot camp.
• Adrian Lyne also heavily rewrote the scene involving the biblical Jacob’s ladder at the end of the film. Writer Bruce Joel Rubin had written the scene to involve a massive staircase ascending into the clouds, with crowds of people lining it, towering columns, and huge gates at the summit. Again however, Lyne felt that such an image could come across as preposterous (he refers to Rubin’s original conception as the Liberace scene’ on the DVD commentary track). As such, Lyne rewrote the scene to involve simply the staircase in Jacob’s house, basing this on the principal that heaven is wherever you were happiest.
• In the original screenplay, writer Bruce Joel Rubin had created a typical Biblical hell, complete with winged demons, cloven hoofed devils with horns, people with beaks and strange objects lying randomly around (director Adrian Lyne likens Rubin’s vision to the work of Hieronymus Bosch). As with Rubin’s general depiction of demons however, Lyne felt that such scenes could very easily make an audience laugh. As such, he decided to rewrite the scene of Jacob’s descent into hell; ultimately coming up with the hospital sequence where Jacob is wheeled on a gurney into a metaphorical hell which becomes more and more grotesque as he moves.
• In Bruce Joel Rubin’s original screenplay, all of the demons who appear throughout the film were typical biblical demons with horns, wings, cloven hooves etc. Director Adrian Lyne felt that this kind of imagery could very easily come across as comic, which would destroy the film. He felt that the fact that the imagery was so far from human lessened its impact, and as such, he decided he wanted the demons to be humanesque, but not quite human. During his research into this (which was when he discovered the photography of Joel-Peter Witkin), Lyne came across the Thalidomide scandal. Thalidomide was a drug made available for purchase from 1957 to 1961. Ostensibly, it was designed to treat pregnant women; primarily as an antiemetic to combat morning sickness, and secondarily as a sleeping aid. However, prior to its release, inadequate clinical tests were carried out, leading to roughly 10,000 children in Africa and Europe being born with severe physical deformities because their mothers had taken thalidomide during their pregnancy. The most common defects were phocomelia, dysmelia, amelia and polymelia; all conditions which affect the appearance of the limbs. During his research, Lyne studied the Thalidomide case, and came to feel that the birth defects caused by the drug represented the perfect starting place for his redesign of Rubin’s demons. The Thalidomide scandal was also the inspiration for David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981).
• According to director Adrian Lyne, the drug aspect of the story was inspired by the Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain book, “Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and Sixties Rebellion”.
• Director Adrian Lyne used the art of painters William Blake, H.R. Giger, and Francis Bacon and photographers Diane Arbus and Joel-Peter Witkin as his primary influences for the visual style of the film.
• The film was green-lit by Paramount Pictures (with whom Adrian Lyne had made both Flashdance (1983) and Fatal Attraction (1987), and with whom writer Bruce Joel Rubin had made Ghost (1990)), but there was a change of leadership in the studio and the new executives were unsure of the film. They demanded that the end of the movie be changed, but both Lyne and Rubin refused, and so Paramount pulled the plug on the film. It appeared as if the project was going to have to be completely abandoned until Mario Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna of Carolco Pictures saved it with a budget of $25 million. They also gave Lyne complete creative control as well as final cut of the film.
• In an ironic reversal, Adrian Lyne turned down directorial duties on The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) so he could direct Jacob’s Ladder. His first choice for the role of Jacob Singer was Tom Hanks, but Hanks turned down the film so he could make The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990).
• According to writer Bruce Joel Rubin, the script was heavily inspired by the Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead), the biblical story of Jacob’s ladder and Robert Enrico’s Oscar-winning short film La rivière du hibou (1962), based on the 1890 Ambrose Bierce short story ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’, in which much of the narrative is a man’s experience of an imagined life in the spilt second before he dies.
• Actors who were allegedly interested in playing the leading role of Jacob Singer included Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino and Richard Gere. For the role of Jezzie, director Adrian Lyne auditioned roughly 300 women, including Julia Roberts, Andie MacDowell, Madonna and Jennifer Lopez. The role eventually went to the very first person who auditioned – Elizabeth Peña.
• Sidney Lumet, Michael Apted and Ridley Scott all tried to get the project green-lit during its ten-year period of non-production.
• Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke both turned down the lead role.

Amazon Specials!

Arizona Virtual Studios just uploaded a 3D tracking shot at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5vFg-4gcSg

We went to South Mountain, AZ – armed with our Panasonic HPX300 to get the background plate.  The motion tracking was done in Boujou.
The truck was produced in Lightwave 3D.  We used global illumination with a matching HDRI image.

Since the road was curved in all three dimensions, we had to match this exactly in order to get an accurate shadows.  Interestingly enough, this was more tedious than the 3D animation and 3D tracking.  

http://www.azvirtualstudios.com/

Arizona Virtual Studios is now offering motion tracking!

We are using Boujou and Syntheyes to get the 3D tracking data. Both programs work excellent. There are several important pre-production thoughts to consider. Here is my initial list:

1. If you are using a camera with long lens (lots of DOF), make sure your markers are not too blurred. Possible solution: Use couple of C-stands with bright colored tennis balls on it (3 minimum).
2. If your tracking plate has lots of contrast and color elements, you most likely don’t need markers.
3. A handheld shot from a standing position creates sometimes issues for 3D tracking. Solution: Walk a few steps towards your final mark while recording. This create true 3D tracking data.
4. Mask out cars and other moving objects that you don’t want to use for 3D motion tracking.
5. You only need a few markers (or original background contrast points) most of the time. Don’t overdo it with 3D tracking points!

I’m always open for advice and your thoughts about 3D motion tracking!

John Koop
www.azvirtualstudios.com

Es gibt in Flash ja mittlerweile wirklich viele Online Anwendungen welche wirklich sehr ausgereift und brauchbar sind. Heute möchte ich euch zwei sehr nette Audiotools kurz vorstellen. Beide könnt ihr kostenlos verwenden.

Hobnox Audiotool

Das Hobnox Audiotool bietet ein virtuelles Soundstudio, dass man nach belieben mit virtuellen Geräten bestücken und dann realistisch verkabeln kann. So kann man die Geräte direkt wie die Originale bedienen und entsprechenden Musikstücke erstellen und in Echtzeit variieren. Sehr coole Spielerei mit der man auch ernsthaft etwas produzieren kann. Die Musik kann man mit einem Recorder mitschneiden.

Folgende Geräte sind mit an Board:

• Drumcomputer TR-909
• Drumcomputer TR-808
• Synthesizer TB-303
• Synthesizer ToneMatrix
• 16-Kanal Mixer
• Splitter und Merger
• 12 Effekt-Geräte

http://www.hobnox.com/audiotool.1046.de.html

Aviary Myna

Myna ist ein vollwertiger Audioeditor, mit dem ihr bestehende Samples abmischen und bearbeiten, eigene Sounds aufnehmen und alles mit Effekten belegen könnt. Eine umfangreiche Sound Datenbank steht direkt im Programm zur Verfügung. Beispielvideos und Dateien zeigen was so alles machbar ist. Eine große Datenbank von Benutzerkreationen ist verfügbar, und umfasst derzeit über 14.000 Files.

Das Tool bedient sich recht komfortabel und ist schnell zu erlernen.

http://aviary.com/tools/myna

Und jetzt viel Spaß beim kreativ sein.

All of the presentations from the EPUG-UKI-SMUG Dayschool 2009 have now been uploaded to the secure files area of the JISCmail EPUG-UKI-SMUG list.

* To access the presentations, go to: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/

* Login - using your subscription email address and password (your institution may be configured to use a Shibboleth login for JISCmail)

* Select the Subscribers Corner link

* From the list of subscribed lists for your account, click on the link for EPUG-UKI-SMUG

* Choose the Files Area link in the menu options on the right-hand side of the screen

* Select the 2009-10-Dayschool folder to access the presentations

Und natürlich haben ich auch Making-Offs vom Sonntag der Maskerade in Venlo. Hier sogar noch einige mehr, als vom Samstag. Es war auch einfach unheimlich spannend wie sich gerade bei den Special-Effect-Projekten die Kunstwerke entwickelten.

Mein Hochachtung an alle Beteiligten für die enorme Mühe und absolut geniale Arbeit!

Neben den Making-Offs auch ein paar Bilder von der Bühnenpräsentation und anschließenden Siegerehrung.

Alle Sieger kann ich, ehrlich gesagt, gar nicht mehr nennen – Entschuldigung dafür! Abgebildet ist aber Kris Bülow, Siegerin in der Kategorie Airbrush und das Team Farbträume um Michaela Zeng, die den ersten Platz in der Kategorie “Special Effect” verteidigen konnte. Michaela Zeng wurde zudem mit dem Ehrenpreis “The Ferenc Hottya Award” ausgezeichnet.

Am Montag gibt es dann zum Abschluss noch Bild von der genialen Schwarzlicht-Performance. Das sollte man nicht verpassen!

As the tech music scene grows around the world so does our understanding of the tech sample market. Abstrakt Tech Noises is a three part collection of mind blowing abstract and tech noises which suit a multitude of music styles including tech, tech house, techno, minimal, minimal techno, progressive house, tech trance, trance, drum & bass, glitch hop, electro and more. A huge amount of attention to detail has been incorporated into these exclusive abstract tech noises and samples.

To put it simply, Abstrakt Tech Noises is a veritable feast of brand new noise fx that sizzles through your tracks and adds that level of polish we all need within our music productions. 150+ blips, tweaks, slides, rolls, sweeps, clips, riders and fills you simply have not heard before makes this collection of abstract & tech noises an essential piece of kit for all electronic music producers and remixers.

Films used:

1900 – The Enchanted Drawing
1903 – The Great Train Robbery
1923 – The Ten Commandments (Silent)
1927 – Sunrise
1933 – King Kong
1939 – The Wizard of Oz
1940 – The Thief of Bagdad
1954 – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
1956 – Forbidden Planet
1963 – Jason and the Argonauts
1964 – Mary Poppins
1977 – Star Wars
1982 – Tron
1985 – Back to the Future
1988 – Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1989 – The Abyss
1991 – Terminator 2: Judgement Day
1992 – The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
1993 – Jurassic Park
2004 – Spider-Man 2
2005 – King Kong
2006 – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
2007 – Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
2007 – The Golden Compass
2008 – The Spiderwick Chronicles
2008 – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

We are experiencing major problems with University username and password authentication. This is affecting access to all services that use Shibboleth or ADS authentication, such as NOW, ‘My Library Card’ in Web OPAC, eSearch and RefWorks. IS are currently investigating the problem.

In the meantime, these services are unavailable.

A further update will follow once there is more news to report from IS.