Yet more new technology. Awesome stuff indeed. Check it out.

No words to describe this brilliant new technology. Has to be seen to be believed. Running on a laptop no less.

Here's to the crazy ones.

The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing that you can't do is ignore them.

Because they change things. They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

http://www.timshim.com/downloads/ItuKamu_Web.mov (Filesize: 56MB)

Directed by Jack Wung.
Cinematography & Post-Production by Tim Shim.
Shot on a DVX-100a and a Canon XL2 with Mini35 adapter and an Angenieux Zoom Lens.

A great big shoutout to the guys (and gals) from Motion Effects:
Producers Jimmy and Umi, Jac, Sashmar, Roy, Adlin and the rest of the crew.

Special thanks to all the girls who took the time to participate in the video:
Jasmine, Syarizad, Stephanie Chen, Gurdev, Melina, Alia Yusof, Iryana, Rimona, Stephanie Balling, Tasha, Rachel, Anne, Zehan & Alia Soraya, and Deborah.

Shoot details to come.

Download and Spread the Music Video for Evenstarr's 'Patah':
QuickTime : http://www.timshim.com/downloads/Patah_Web.mov (~24MB) (Please right-click and Save)
YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMF4xjtOnAY

Evenstarr's new song 'Patah' was donated for use to 'The White Ribbon Campaign' in conjunction with the campaign's media event this coming 25th November 2006 in Kuala Lumpur. The band will be joining other well known Malaysian celebrities such as Manbai, Reshmonu, Ferhad and Alex Yoong in support of the campaign. The band will also be performing live at the event this coming Saturday.

About 3 weeks back, I was commissioned to start work on the music video for 'Patah'. Click on the link below to read on about the 'making of' the video.

Link to Footage 01 (First Day) - 13.5MB
Link to Footage 02 (Insect Macro) - 7.5MB

Great LOOK! These guys over at Motivity Pictures posted some footages shot with their Panasonic HVX200 cam equipped with the Redrock M2 Adapter and some Nikon SLR lenses (50m, 70-200mm, 105mm Macro), then graded using Magic Bullet in AE.

Looks amazing and the better color space and lesser compression of DVCPro HD using the HVX200 is a better format to work with in post. As compared to HDV, that is.

Chris Ullrich shares some of his thoughts and tips on Indie Filmmaking. Interesting read. Click on the link above to check out the Cinematical article.

http://www.timshim.com/downloads/DouJiangYouTiao_Web.mov (Filesize: 44MB)

Recently, a longtime friend asked me if I could help him make a short video clip of him spewing elegant prose for a girl he likes very much. Well, one thing led to another and we decided a music video clip with her favorite song would probably work better - and would definitely be a whole lot easier on the ears. ;)

Planned in less than 2 hours at 3am in the morning, then shot and completed in 3 days, this clip is essentially a slapstick parody on their past memories and events. Technical details after the jump.

Anyhows, I'll be posting up some recent works next. So stay tuned.

What are some common mistakes that student and beginner filmmakers make? The above link will take you to a blog posting by Paul Harrill where he points out an interesting observation he made while sifting through all the film entries he received for a recent short film festival he organized.

Thinking back, I have, in my own works, been unconsciously using this method when working with people who have never studied acting. I generally have an outline or general idea of how the scene should play out and instead of trying to make the actors follow the script to the dot, I will allow them to come up with their own interpretations.

Sometimes, when I know for sure I will be working with non-actors, I would intentionally write the script with that person's real character in mind. These would be friends or family whose personalities I know well enough to write into the script.

Read on for Scott Shaw's full article here.

A great interview by Spline Doctor with Pixar Writer/Director Andrew Stanton. Andrew wrote and directed 'Finding Nemo' and in this interview, he talks about how he got into animation, story development, and gives many insights into working at Pixar.

Again, kudos to Spline Doctor for this great interview. I've re-edited this 3 part interview into one lower bitrate mono mp3 file for a smaller filesize for your listening convenience.

There's also a new interview with Ralph Eggleston who was Art Director for 'The Incredibles' on Spline Doctor's blog. You can also subscribe to his podcast in iTunes. Search for 'SplineCast' in the podcast section.

They've been churning out personal short films and music videos for a few years now and it's great to see how they've improved from when they first started out. Great work, guys.

This RenderMan related tutorial shows mainly how to animate RenderMan shaders in Maya. To illustrate this tutorial, I decided to create an Ocean shader animated purely through the use of procedural textures with RenderMan.

This tutorial isn't a guide on how to create a photorealistic ocean shader in any way. No real world ocean effects like frothing and waves collision - none of that. That would be a whole new tutorial on its own.

For some purposes though, this simple effect may be good enough for production. Here's the final clip: http://www.timshim.com/downloads/ocean_demo.mov. The compositing work was quick and dirty - I added in a still image of a sky picture and animated it to match the ocean somewhat. Not very good but better than leaving a black hole for a sky.

So here we go ...

#1: Be Narrow
Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. Small things, like a microscopic world, almost always turn out to be bigger than you think when you zoom in. You can much more easily position and market yourself when more focused. And when it comes to partnering, or being acquired, there's less chance for conflict. This is all so logical and, yet, there's a resistance to focusing. I think it comes from a fear of being trivial. Just remember: If you get to be #1 in your category, but your category is too small, then you can broaden your scope - and you can do so with leverage.