Note that once the ISO gets above 800 or so the quality of output drops off significantly IMO.

I used Magic Bullet to add a more contrasty curve and to create a warm film stock “ish” look. I also raised a few clips around .7 of a stop of exposure and lowered a few others about the same to get exposure I was looking for.

This was shot this morning as I was making my breakfast and wasn’t really edited as much as thrown into a timeline and marked to music.

I ended up buying the 7d over the alternatives available at the time and, rather than getting a Mac Pro, I built a Hackintosh. I’ll go over why and how I did these two things and let you know how much I actually ended up saving in the end.

*hint* I saved an a$$load

“wtf is film grain and why is this ass writing a post about it?”

Well, film grain is randomized noise patters that naturally occur in film stock (from old film cameras). The softness, character, intensity, shape and colour of the grain varies according to the type of stock. AND, adding film grain (preferably in your 5dtoRGB decompression or in Post in AE) can significantly reduce the ugly artifacting that comes from web compression. I’m currently uploading a bunch of B-Roll clips that I shot and made into a sequence in order to demonstrate my point.

I suppose I should probably explain why I’ve started to use 5dtoRGB rather than mpeg streamclip or the Canon E1 plugin for FCP when decompressing my clips from H264 to Prores. It might also be useful to explain what this decompression actually does and why you need to do it rather dropping h.264 files into your timelines (I’m looking directly at you CS5 people).

We’ll get to that.

All stats link to source material.

Greece

GDP 2008: 343 Billion (cia factbook)

National Debt (as of 2009): 405.7 Billion (reuters)

Yearly Tax Revenues (as of 2009): 126.5 Billion (reuters)

GDP Growth (as of 2009): -2.0% (economia.estadao.com.br)

Debt as percentage of GDP (2009): 113% (timesonline.co.uk)

Budget Deficit as a percentage of GDP (2009): 12.7% (timesonline.co.uk)

Estimated Yearly Tax Shortfall due to Tax Evasion and Misreporting (as of 2009):

At Least 35 Billion/year (bbc)

What this signals, to me, is that if the Greeks were able to change their culture of tax evasion they could potentially add some 35 Billion to their yearly tax revenues. 35 billion is 28% of their yearly tax income and almost 9% of the Greek national debt!

So, why are the austerity measures adopted by the Greek government, and lauded by EU and North American leaders, focused on cutting social and public services and slashing wages rather than reforming the system of taxation in the country? How can a nation that generates revenue through income taxes expect to get out of debt by cutting the wages of one of the few sectors in the country that actually pays tax?

So, I’ve decided to take a look at the EU and hopefully gain a better understanding of it’s politics, it’s relationships with outside nations, and the dynamic between member nations that make up the EU.

My first attempt to further my knowledge is Lenin’s, The Proletarian Revolution and The Renegade Kautsky; this is not due to any chronological or historical importance but mainly as a result of a friend’s recommendation. If I remember correctly his description was, “…a literary beat-down… Never would get away with publishing something like that today.”

So, my strategy will be to read an important work from some of the major thinkers/actors and only once the characters have been made round will I delve in depth into the historical chronology.

Very exciting.