Start Working On Something Familiar At An Unfamiliar Place

It has been exactly 20 days since I started my life in Macau. You know, 20 days is not a long time for some people, but I used that 20 days trying to switch my lifestyle and habit from San Francisco to Macau. Right now I have adapted my everyday life, except for my stomach, I don’t know if I’m acclimatized or not, my stomach doesn’t seem like the food and water here. I have to use the toilet 3 to 4 times a day on average, which is above my average toilet usage in San Francisco. And because of that reason, I look a little slimmer than I was in San Francisco. Is it a good thing or bad thing?

Anyway, that’s one thing I wanted to talk about. Another thing is that I started exploring my career in this small town, this is not easy for me because I was not here for more than 10 years, most of my friends were my elementary and middle school classmates. In order to help myself getting into the career I desire, I have to get into the circle and acquaint with the people of that circle. Say coincidence, while I was still in San Francisco, about a month before I headed back to Macau, I saw on Facebook that a local non-profit creative group called “macau.creatives”, they were about to shoot music videos for their newest project called “6/7 Hints”, “6/7 Hints” is a CD album that provides hints for the human race, that brings up world issues including nature, disasters, environment, war, doomsday and inequality. Okay long story short, I saw that they were going to shoot MVs and I felt I’m interested, so I sent an email to the group expressing my interest. Sio, the Director of the association, responded my email the day after. She told me that they need some extra people on helping the shooting of MVs, and if I was interested, just let her know. But she also reminded me that everyone is working voluntarily, so there will be no pay for working on this project, except for transportation and catering. I said that’s okay, I mean I don’t really care about if I’ll or I won’t get paid, I just want to work on something that I’m familiar with and to learn something from it. In addition, I’ll have much easier path getting into the creatives circle and the media industry of Macau by working closely with the production crews, two birds with one stone. So I have decided to join their crew.

A few days after I arrived Macau, I sent another email to Sio and told her that I’m interested to help them, then she called me back and asked me if I wanted to come to a production meeting, I said okay, I’d be coming for sure. On that night, I, along with several other people of the production crew, met at a coffee shop. (yeah it’s coffee shop again, I don’t know if all the creative people love going to coffee shops or not, when I was working with Mark I always met him at the coffee shops) We were listening to Sio, who is also the director of that MV. Sio told us a little bit about the song and how she is going to shoot the MV. She also made a props list and asked everyone in the team to look for the props. I’m responsible to find some small rocks and a few books about doomsday. At this time, everyone has been assigned a role of the production. Besides Sio is the director, we have two ADs, an Art Director, a makeup artist, a LD, and I’m one of the three FMs. Tonight, I’ll be helping the crew on loading the props to the studio, and I’ll be coolie again.

Indeed, I’m also working on another MV from the same album, I’ll talk more about that on my next post. If you want to learn more about the project that I’m involved with, you can check out their FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/67%E6%8F%90%E7%A4%BA/122443537832480. For more information about the association, you can check out their website: http://macau-creatives.org/

Meet Mark

Reblogged from idtv2012:

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A one time corporate guy, Mark Castillo is now, like many of us, a struggling student. After eight years working as a stockbroker for a number of well know financial institutions, Mark is now a full time student at CCSF. For the last season of IDTV he wrote, directed and produced. He also was the producer for the “Best of IDTV” and openly admits that “IDTV is one of the best experiences I’ve had,” in terms of building the necessary skills to be successful in the workforce. Things used to be very …

I was working with Mark very closely for almost the entire year of 2011, including the shows of IDTV 2011 and the “Best Of IDTV” last Fall. I can say that Mark is just a terrific guy who always attentive to detail of every video production, and he always seeks for the best results. Personally he is also my good friend, we often hangout at coffee shops and discuss our shooting / production plans there. Even though I’m no longer living in San Francisco, I still remember the greatest days that I worked with him. I wish I could work with him once again in the near future.

Avid Marketplace

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Avid To After Effects

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Meet Chun!

Reblogged from idtv2012:

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Chun Yu Chiu is a rather reserved and quiet guy when you first meet him, and in class discussions, he typically lets the rest of us do the talking, which is okay because many of us on class have LOTS to say. But, what Chun lacks in class discussion, he more than makes up for in knowledge and talent. From what I gather watching Chun silently mill around the studio, setting up the projectors, playing with cameras, fixing the monitor I thought I broke by stupidly running into it (I’m a natural blond …

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Chun is a great person with a lot of talents, he is certainly a guy who believes less talk and more work. Nice job Chun!

Almost Two Weeks In Macau – Have I Adapted My New Life?

Time is going really fast, this Thursday marks two weeks after I moved back to Macau. Although I’m getting familiar with the things here in Macau, I think I still need quite a while to fully adapt a lifestyle that fits here. After all, I haven’t lived in this place for more than 10 years, so everything is new to me.

Speaking of the things that I feel unfamiliar, the nasty traffic of the roads in Macau is certainly one thing. Macau is a tiny place with only 30 sq. km of area, but there’s a huge number of registered vehicles, (I don’t know the exact number, but I believe there should be ten thousand something, what a huge number for a small town!) and the population density is very high here. Many roads are jammed with people and vehicles, and there’re so many motorcycles all around Macau. The streets outside the apartment are full of motorcycles and cars, I can barely walk on the sidewalks. Even worse, I often have to walk on carriageways with a lot of vehicles around me. Every bus is always fully loaded and I often can’t get on the bus, even there’s a lot of buses on the streets. Now I know that if I go somewhere near the place I live, I won’t ride the bus at all, I’ll walk instead.

There’s still a lot of inconvenience of living in Macau, and there’s also a lot of differences between the life in Macau and San Francisco, I’ll talk more about my life in Macau on the next posts. Until next time.

Welcome to the IDTV Blog!!

Reblogged from idtv2012:

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As I walked back into the IDTV studio at City College of San Francisco, I could feel the electricity in the air. I looked around at the eager faces of the students in the class, the amazing state of the art cameras, lights, switcher and audio equipment, and I thought to myself, “This is gonna be another amazing year!” For those of you unfamiliar, IDTV is a magazine style variety show that airs three times though out the year on Comcast Channels 27 and 75, each program running a half hour. IDTV can also …

IDTV rocks!!!

Stress, distress, distressed text!

Reblogged from Digital Video Editing & Effects:

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Again, Richard Harrington give folks a great intro into working with text for strong titles in video. His tutorials on distressed text make use of PS and AE and keep and editable connection alive between both applications. Tutorial 1 Tutorial 2 If you are asking yourself where this technique can be useful in video check out the following post on this USTelevsion blogsite. Not all logos make use of the “distressed” technique, but there’s enormous possibilities here.

Former IDTV alumni FTW! (for the win!)

Reblogged from IDTV Video Production:

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Folks in BCST 149 should still remember the videos we watched on Wednesday morning over in AX 168, right? Both video creators (MMJ/reporter and AP ) were still students enrolled in IDTV last year when the landed or zeroed in on their job around the end of class. Wednesday, we watched Kay’s compilation reel of stuff she’s been shooting with the station she works at in Eureka with KIEM-TV 3 Check out and support her still humble YT channel – she deserves it. We also watched a bit of an episode of KQED’s …

I was working with Kay Recede last year on “Best Of SF”, she really rocks!

Text in video…resources

Reblogged from Digital Video Editing & Effects:

Whether you are animating credits and titles or displaying static text, fonts, theirs sizes and colors demand a closer look in the video environment. With older digital video formats like DV, the outcome was often less than desirable. The good news is that many HD formats, due to their higher resolution and PAR (pixel aspect ratio) have made life a lot easier. Still, if we are aware of problems in the past, we can actually create better titles in both the former and current environments. Here are some …

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I always like to create animated text, it looks really cool.