While Nirvan has been working with Jason on building the site, he's been working with me on the 'bells and whistles'. Well, at least the bells. Right now it's the flash animations that will pepper the site. The 'produced by' animation under the menu, the lovely producer quotes on the bottom, the slideshow which will be featured in the middle of the homepage. We usually go through several styles, then end up settling on the simplest and most elegant version. It's done when it just feels 'right'

Well, not really... I've never been involved in a site that drew so much traffic. I've heard the stories before, of course, how a site became popular instantly and the people behind the scenes had to scramble to get the host to pump up the bandwidth. It' a good and a bad problem to have, of course. I wish I could say the flash intro was the reason, but in truth it's the hypnotic idea of the 1 second film. This project will continue to grow into something amazing. Can't wait to do it together with all our new producers! Welcome! Don't hesitate to ask questions if you have any, either on the forum or our profile pages. Michael B

So there was this huge fire in the Hollywood hills on Friday. Apparently it was threatening the historic Hollywood sign. I had birds-eye view from the top of our building and was able to snap some shots with my D70. Even though they are scary, I've always been attacted to the beautiful chaos a fire can create; the strange lighting it makes while blocking out the sun.

I love our producer Stephen Colbert. Not only did he help us to get on imdb, he is constantly toying with the power of the internet.

"It's official. Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American, or at least now ranks tops for that phrase at Google. It's all come from the latest Google bombing campaign sparked off in part by Stephen himself. The backstory on this, plus the "I thought Google bombing didn't work anymore" angle, all below..."

Read the full article here

The call came at about 12:30.

NIRVAN: "Hey Mike, Fox News is doing a story on us tonight..."

ME: "Yeah? Cool."

"Uh... yeah... they uh... need some footage..."

"Oh yeah? Well, you have lots of that"

"...On Betacam."

 "Betacam?"

"Yeah"

"Um. OK. When are they going to be there?"

"Around 4:00"

 "I'll see you in a few minutes"

 Nothing like a little ultra last minute dvd-burning, quick tape-to-tape crash recording and assemble-editing from DVD and HDV to BetacamSP to get your spirits up. For once, I'm actually looking forward to the news.

This is not really related to the 1 Second Film, other than that these guys kind of remind me of the Evangenitals a little, in that their songs are often musically cool with a humorous tone. A little like 8-bit too with the robot song, both of which were at our funraiser at Mr. T's the other night. Anyway, Flight of the Conchords is definitely maybe my new favorite show. These guys are genius.
A Song for Sally
The Humans Are Dead

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Here's a picture I took of one of our larger producers when we were at the farmer's market in pasadena a few weeks back. I discovered a cool way to turn photos into a simulated infra-red, and thought it would be fun try try in on this pic. It is illustrated nicely here with the red trees and the cyan sky. You can see larger versions on our flickr set.

One of the many grand locations for jumping, this location was the grandest. Here's Nirvan (upper) and me (lower) doing what you're supposed to do... well, while wearing jumpsuits.

see a larger version on our flickr set

Yes I finally posted my Road to Oprah images. These were all taken along the way during our 30 day bus trip to Chicago.

You can view a slideshow by clicking here

Visit the set by clicking here

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So we have a few 750 GB Maxtor drives we've been storing video on, but had lost one of the power adapters. This makes it nearly useless. We were swapping with another drive, which means unmounting drives, powering down, switching cables, missing media, etc, etc. Let's just say it's a huge hassle. Nirvan and I called Seagate/Maxtor the other day and told them we lost it. The phone call was strange, I think we were expecting some type of resistance, as these customer service calls often go. Alas, THEY SENT A NEW ONE FOR FREE, NO QUESTIONS ASKED (except for our serial number)! We were so suspicious on phone too, we could barely get out a proper name or address. They ended up shipping it to a non-existent person. Today it arrived and I've been cleaning up our media situation, so we can organized for the long haul. It's refreshing to get such amazing customer service these days. They've definetly kept us as a loyal customer.

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