how to find your blog

I've got lots of free time on this study leave so I've been busy messing around in HTML5 video, and while doing that I somehow managed to stumble across the Blogger API in Google code labs. And I found something to fix a common problem: that a teacher can't find the URL for a student's blog.

Twitter log

During production of the final task we used twitter to communicate with each other. This morning I complied the entire twitter conversation log, hopefully it'll give a small insight into how we worked together. It's also an example of flexible short-form communication being put to good use.

#Voicetweetup

Yesterday evening I went to #voicetweetup at the Jam Factory, I was going to liveblog the event, I was all prepared with my netbook fully charged, and then it failed to find the Jam Factory's Wi-Fi network. Forced to use traditional methods of pen and paper here are my notes:

Machinima in Modern Warfare 2

Here's how to do it on the Xbox:
1. Start a Hardcore match. This gets rid of most of the Heads-Up-Display.
2. Make sure your actors have the 'Cold Blooded Pro' perk enabled. This means their username doesn't come up when seen by the player designated as the cameraman.
3. The cameraman should equip a flashbang and hold down the left button. This pulls back the character's arm in the motion of throwing it, but as long as you don't relese the left button the character remains in that position without releasing their projectile. This leaves the screen completely empty and ready for filming.

I discovered step three when wandering aimlessly with Matthieu around Overgrown, and it's essential. It's also useful to note that very different from Halo you'd need a minimum of 2 Xboxes either conected locally or over Xbox LIVE. All the filming takes place in real-time so you can't rewind time to re-shoot the same events again and again.
You also have very little control over the costume of your character.

Despite all that it's not impossible so people will definitely attempt it sometime in the future.

we broke the rules

There was one shot which we thought had violated the 180 degree rule so I went back to the saved scene, viewed it from above and marked on our camera positions.

In conclusion we did break the 180 degree rule, but nobody watching the film actually noticed.
To justify the breaking of the rule it was the only way that shot could have been set up, otherwise the second monitor would have gotten in the way. The shot was also necessary to break up the conversation by viewing it from another angle.

Evaluation

Here is the filmed evaluation on YouTube:

As usual there were some points I missed out on my two and a half pages of notes. I will explain them here.