And before the Manager again protests against the amount of film-related content in this weblog lately, let's go for some blogland news: I just found FFWD, a weblog by h0l, the boss of Monotonik, the internet music label I did some cover designs for a few years ago. Then local Mac evangelist Rui Carmo has unveiled a new design for his strange mix of blog and wiki — mac.against.org — congratulations on taming PHPWiki so well. And finally, Red of 990000 has devised a very cool photolog interface, although I do miss the teletextesque (now try to pronounce that) design in the weblog. Now, I really ought to freshen my blogroll, some links are breaking and others began to update so sparsely I lost interest.···

Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy remakes! (Warning, the link opens many pop-ups) To be honest I have downloaded them but haven't tried them yet, as I think of the childhood timewaster that Jet Set Willy on my ZX Spectrum was and consider the odds of finishing my documentary on time. But here it is, what is perhaps a good way to start ruining your newly started summer holidays — if you are lucky.···

Oh, this is nice: a very big archive of corporate logos in vector (EPS) format. There are even a few portuguese companies there. I only hope no company is stupid enough to stand in the way of free advertising and shut the site down because of some stupid copyright law. Now there's an interesting clash of ultracapitalistic interests. (via Zeldman)···

Now this really resembles those annoying blogs that place images in every post just to look cool and waste your bandwidth (which equals time plus money). However, Roman Coppola's debut movie CQ is special. You see, I still feel a bit weird after watching this, simply because it's that kind of film that fits me like a glove. You mean, so here is this guy who is a young movie editor (I want to work in editing, so check), has a thing for documentaries (check) shot in cineverité style (check), spends all his cash in filming equipment (check) and in order to survive works at a studio editing and directing a cheesy sci-fi movie (check — the sci-fi part, not the directing or editing unfortunately) with a foxy french actress (I like that, check), and has to put up with the whole insecurities and pseudo-intellectualism of being in a film-related community (check). So... I'm a bit mesmerized, that character really could be me, if I happened to live in Paris in the 60s and had a cool haircut and wore a cool black suit. I mean, CQ is then a top film if you are into any of this stuff. If you don't find editing tables and 16mm cameras the least attractive, you probably won't enjoy it as much as I did. Only a remark: it's a real pity that it was only released in the portuguese theatres now, as the movie is two years old, and already available on DVD for ages. Then again, there were no more than 10 persons in the room and it opened today, as did crap (although I haven't seen it I'm sure to say it's probably shite) like 2Fast 2Furious that had people queueing up outside. Shitty country...···

There's something quite romantic about nightly blogging. Even though I ought to wake up in about six hours to spend a whole day of my life attending a wedding, the consequent party, but worst of all, the kind of family reunion where you find out perfect strangers are members of the family, there's still something quite unique to blog at 3AM that sets it apart from the 'professional' atitude (or maybe it is the routine) of blogging after I come home in the early evening and check what's going on in the internet. Or maybe this is just blogrrhea as I try to delay going to bed, as from there it's warp speed to morning. Whatever.···

The Portuguese weblog community has reached critical mass in the last couple of months. Although the discussion may seem passé to people seasoned in the international English-language weblog community, it's pretty much alive here nowdays, as the pioneering 'little-elite' (me included, but I guess the pact that I'm a 'pioneer' even though I started blogging in August 2000 says everything about the Portuguese scene) was suddently ripped from its small pedestals (doorstops more like), and replaced by politicians and journalists, mainly right wing, who put themselves on marble collumns as high as the Everest as the newspapers in which they write don't stop publicizing their Blogspot URLs, which contain walled gardens that many times lead nowhere but to their journalist and poltician friends' weblogs. Of course not everyone in the politicojournalistic corporation is like this, and a few journalists even spoke against their colleagues and alerted newspaper editors for the need to recognize the weblogging community is much bigger than the media makes people believe. Anyway, as it enters the phase when everyone starts writing about weblogging, I also decided to give my two-cents on blogging with my Bruce Mau-esque weblogging manifesto. Go on, laugh at will. Anyway, the Portuguese version of this text is already published at Cafeína and Teoria Unificada, and also being debated at PTWeblogs. The translation is not always very literal, but I think it retains the meaning better this way. So here it is:

21+1 POINTS FOR BETTER WEBLOGGING

01. HYPERTEXT. The use of links, placed in relevant words or excerpts, pointing to related pages, or maybe to a previous post in the articles, should be explored and as common as possible. Even if the sharing of a link isn't the main point, it is always a good way to give the readers some extra information.

02. INTERNET. A good blogger, especially if he or she has a penchant for writing about blogging itself, should do some homework in order to understand how websites and the internet work.

03. DESIGN. It's commonplace to state that form follows function and content, but it is always a good idea to learn at least how to do small changes to the templates. Even though ready-made templates are adequate for the beginner, it depersonalizes the weblog. Besides, the existence of a lot of weblogs that look the same makes it harder for readers to remember a particular one.

04. PUBLIC. A weblog is by default public, and whoever wants to keep his/her writing private or address to a particular person or a small group of friends should place a disclaimer — or even better, implement password access — and obviosly enough shall refuse any kind of publicity. If one has a public website, should not forget that is writing to strangers. Which means, that even though one may imagine a specific type of audience, a public weblog should be thought of as if it was a fanzine, not a private diary.

05. MEMORY. Unless the weblog is seen as a time-limited performance piece and that way the archives are discarded, a weblog author shall respect the record of past events. One should not discard an entire weblog and start over again for a weak reason (such as a name change) — someone who discards a weblog should have a very strong justification — such as a strong theme or a language change —, and the archives should be backed up and kept. Two years of blogging is very valuable, ten years might be absolutely priceless.

06. FIDELITY. An writer shouldn't change his/her posts, current or past, unless to correct spelling or other small writing mistakes. This should make a writer consider about what he or she is going to write, and if an error is made, a correction should be posted without ever deleting or changing the original post.

07. WIBBLE. To wibble on paper is a pain, but to wibble on a flickering screen really makes my eyes hurt.

08. FRIENDS. A weblog is not a soap opera readers catch halfway through. Writing a post, the author should give some bits of information about the person he or she is talking about, even — as it is most usual — if this information consists of just an adjective or a link to his/her website. If the author wishes to preserve people's identity, he should avoid naming them altogether using just something like 'a friend of mine', or alternatively — if it gets hard to follow this way — use fake names. Initials, seen sometimes, should be avoided as they are often even more confusing.

09. EVENTS. A good blogger should have permission before making accounts of events concerning other persons, unless he judges the story rather safe and inoccuous, or he preserves people's identity.

10. GENEROSITY. They say it is better to give than to receive, and in the weblog community this is no exception. Links and references to others should be made without expecting any kind of retribution. The blogroll shouldn't be based on the author's desire to be linked in these weblogs. And to plug a weblog — or worse, to offer to trade links — via e-mail or a forced commentary is not a very wise thing to do. People who are linked in a weblog soon will find out. Let them judge for themselves if you are worthy of a reciprocal link.

11. BLOGROLL. The blogroll also should be eclectic, instead of being confined to one's friends and acquaintances. The blogroll should be the result of merit, should be a list of the best weblogs in existence according to the author. For a visitor, a website's blogroll should warrant good weblogs.

12. WEBSITE. Don't ever forget: a weblog is a website. In case the author is responsible for the programming and/or the design of the website, he should comply with the basic rules of good website (although many disagree on these).

13. DIALOGUE. A weblog should avoid long and authoritary monologue, but shouldn't also be just a part of endless inter-weblog dialogue that confuses visitors. For that, community blogs or weblogs with multiple authors are a better choice, and either away to do nothing but to constantly applaud the others is annoying. Dialogue then, should occur between the author and his/her readers, via some feedback/commentary system.

14. HUMILITY. Self-criticism and humility are good. Given the nature of the internet and its myths, weblogs will never, ever, be the right place for someone to write about his/her great achievements, unless the writer can prove them — which in most cases, can't.

15. HONESTY. Sincerity and honesty should be among a blogger's higher values, and so an author should always express what he or she really thinks about a certain matter. To force him/herself politically correct opinions ought to be avoided. If in such a space of freedom and possible anonymacy a weblogger can't be honest about his/her views, it's highly unlikely this person will be able to be so in any other situation.

16. BLOGRRHEA. Bloggers aren't paid by each pound of text they produce, so — don't. A blogger should really consider if something is interesting, at least to parts of the audience.

17. TIME. Time is a precious commodity and an author shouldn't abuse his/her readers' time. To make someone lose part of his or her life reading futilities means making sure that someone isn't coming back.

18. COMPETITION. Contests such as the Bloggies do harm to the egoes of the majority that doesn't win them. Besides, the processes that make a particular weblog stand out when there are many other great weblogs out there are often dubious, and the winners will inevitably face criticism and insinuations.

19. BRAIN. Weblogging should be a constructive hobby, and writers should use them for their own auto-discovery, cultural enrichment and to become aware of the world surrounding them. Thus, a weblog should be about the author's brain, not the belly.

20. OPINION. Certain references, such as made to a movie, a book or a band, should have the writer's personal opinion attached, even if only using a single objective to classify the item as good or bad. Simple namesdropping often resembles concealed ignorance.

21. LOVE. After all a weblog is just a hobby. As any hobby, shouldn't be taken very seriously while being a product of love and labour, not a product of momentaneous passion fueled by a desire to seem fashionable and savvy.

There's also the ZEROTH RULE OF WEBLOGGING: That in fact, there are no rules, and all advice can be tested and challenged under strong reasons.

Eduardo J. Sousa
Porto, June 23rd 2003 — translated from Portuguese on June 27th···

It's done! Done! Done! Done! Hm, ok... You might not understand, but I'm quite satisfied because I just finished my feature-length script, and I did it one day early (I feel like the first portuguese person ever to do such a thing — finishing work early). Ok, it was nice. For months I had been losing faith in my story and I let it pile up with all the other work, but now the heat was rising I somehow managed to find a satisfactory third act. 'Um Céu Cor De Número' (a good translation would be 'A Sky Painted by Numbers') is a mild science-fiction story (that is, set in a parallel universe's eighties, in which technology is in the eighties but people dress nicely and savagely attack clockradios playing Bon Jovi songs) about a lowly mathematician who falls victim to an April Fools prank, and because of very unfortunate coincidences starts to actually believe he's in possession of an Asimovesque formula that allows him to predict the future, and in fact it works — for a while — but in the meantime he starts going mad and gets into Prozac (yes I know it was invented in the 90s but who cares?, it's fiction!) like any person would in such a situation. And near the end, he sees the Matrix the future paths of people's lives as glowing straight lines coming out of people, only that he's actually drunk and fucked-up and imagining the whole thing while sitting on a pool of vomit in his bathtub. So I indeed fell to the easy escape route — write something that requires complex million-dollar special effects (at least I didn't create spaceships and aliens) — so do not expect to see this hitting the theatres any soon.···

Yesterday I went to see Gus Van Sant's Gerry, that movie that takes Lynch's Straight Story even further. It's as simple as this: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's brother are lost near the Death Valley, and at first it is fun but then they really want to come back. From the director of Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester (but also that pretentious Psycho remake), I found Gerry excelent. It's an A+ movie full of beautiful atmospheric sequences and the landscape is gorgeous. And the end is even more chilling than Eric von Stroheim's 1924 classic Greed (also in Death Valley). Be warned though: Gerry is not for everyone. The story is minimal, there are long, long minutes without dialogue, long, long shot-sequences that might make something like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey look like an action-packed movie. Still, I loved it. It was almost surreal to walk out of that near-empty theatre to find the Porto downtown full of life in the middle of the afternoon. In a way some of landscape remebered me hiking in Trás-os-Montes, and it really makes me want to visit the United States, although carrying a GPS, a compass and some maps. One final note: It's a shame this movie is at Porto's worst theatre, the Passos Manuel — that has dwarf size chairs (I'm an average 1.80m — or 6'00'' — tall and I couldn't sit confortably), a shitty small screen and you could even hear the street outside while inside the theatre — while the AMC megaplex still has three rooms featuring The Matrix Reloaded.···

Flash-art links people sent me on e-mail: Shapevent (I wonder why I keep pronouncing this in my mind as 'shape event') has some nice generative apps. Japanese Freeware (warning: the browser window goes annoyingly full-screen) is a 'videogrid', which is a 5 track, 20 step video sequencer.···

The Editing Room: Bastardized and abridged movie scripts. A few, such as the Matrix ones or the latest Star Wars', are absolutely priceless.···

Ed's fashion advice — the unfashionable look: 'Everything is fucking colorful' could be a nice name for a Matador Records compilation CD, but sometimes my daytags do have a sense. And it isn't that hard to figure out I tried to go buy some clothes. The problem is, everything is fucking colorful. Either that, or that bloody beije people choose when they offer me clothes on Christmas. People who know me know the only saturated color I'll wear is red, and I tend to like wearing dark colors such as black or dark gray, even though I have the inevitable white t-shirts, plus a Brazil-green one for comedic purposes. The thing is, what's wrong with the shops? Why can't I buy black trousers? Ok, there are always gothic shops that I'll pass, and I also pass buying myself a suit. So I need black trousers to wear at my cousin's wedding next week, and I want something that I can also wear normally on my daily life. Is it that hard? And what's with all those shirts with shit printed on them, and with the t-shirts with massive store logos I should be getting paid to wear? Again, further proof that shopping centres (or 'malls') sell everything except the things that are useful and you really want.···

Here are a few photos [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 or click the imagelog link above] I took during last Friday's fiasco at the Aveiro swamps. These were taken using 35mm film instead of a digital camera and were 'enhanced' with color-adjustment filters (you can see a masking effect in the edges the wider-angle photos because of the filter adapter). The sky was actually gray-ish when I took the above photo. And thankfully photos didn't capture the smell of rotten seafood and the Estarreja industrial park nearby. Thought it looked idyllic, didn't you?···

Well, in a couple of weeks I'll be on near-vacation, as by then I will have delivered my documentary (currently in editing) and my script, and the last two exams due next week will be behind my back. Anyway, as lectures finished last Friday, it is now time to consider what I learned at college this year, both in theoretical and practical classes. So here it follows:

- Art History: How to distinguish Manet from Monet. Finally.
- Sociology of Art: In fact, Art is just a money-making scam.
- Cultural History: Everybody is shite. Everybody was shite. Everybody will be shite.
- Screenwriting: Ninety-nine percent of all movies ever made are exactly the same.
- Film Analysis: Hollywood is shite. But Jean Luc Goddard is a wanker. Feel free to choose.
- Sound: The Audio CD is a stupid format that always forces you to waste time converting files to 48KHz. Plus, don't drop that mike or you'll be dead.
- Cinematography: Film is expensive as hell. In order to make good videos, you need to spend just as much money.
- Documentary: Since it is impossible for a documentary to accurately represent truth, why won't we all have a deliberate attempt at fiction instead?

Also, during the film shootings that were practical work for the last three disciplines, we all learned a valueable lesson: get rid of set photography. It will always get in the way and during a 16-hour work day the only picture they'll take of you will be in the precise moment you reached for that newspaper on the floor to look at Calvin & Hobbes, making you look as if you haven't done shit all day. Now, I only hope my professors won't read this weblog.···

By the way, the imagelog now contains the only decent eleven photos [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ] among the dozens I took with my digicam during the idle time of last Wednesday's film shooting. Hm, projecting slides on people really worked well, let's hope the 500ASA film reacts as well as my digicam did.···



Like, got it?···

Via 990000, the Sony Qualia 016, the deluxe digicam. Wow, even though Sony are hardware-crippling scum (but who isn't these days?), this camera is the kind of thing where I'd spend $3200 right away if I was rich and already had a good video camera, a good computer, a good SLR... hm you get the idea. Still, even if it is a stupidly overpriced 2 megapixel camera, it has something that makes you long for it: it comes in a suitcase together with a lot of handy parts such as other lenses, viewers, battery packs, etc. So, it seems like, even if it has a price, Sony took a tiny step in the right direction: most video and photo cameras sold nowdays are designed to last only a couple of years before they start malfunctioning all the time (like my 2.3MP Fuji) and they stop releasing drivers for newer OSes, so it makes no sense to buy a bunch of extras that won't work with a new camera. Instead, in the golden age of robust 35mm SLRs, a photo camera could last for 30 years or more and they were relatively standartized, so you could purchase lots of addons if you were serious about photography, such as new lenses, filters, remotes, flashes, panoramic adapters, etc. Nowdays you have to buy ultra-expensive digital SLRs if you want a small portion of such extendability, so Sony, please take note: make affordable digital video and photo cameras that last long enough and are extendable (try to get together with JVC, Panasonic and Fuji and agree on some standards), and then release all kinds of useless lenses, filter packs, bigger-size viewers, external flashes, etc. that are the kind of stuff people buy. And stop selling those ridiculously small video cameras nonsense, people can't hold them properly to make stable shots and you can't even screw in a filter adapter or a wide-angle lens.···

The footy season is over, so all those anti-popular intellectuals who want football out of this weblog can have a break for the next couple of months. Anyway, it ended nicely, as FC Porto won the Portuguese Cup against União de Leiria with a 1-0 victory (again Derlei scored the decisive goal), thus becoming the fifth club in Europe (and first portuguese) ever to win an european competition and both main domestic competitions. FC Porto is elite. Which is nice. Still, I didn't watch the match as I was really busy both finishing an essay and studying for this morning's Sociology exam (which went so-so by the way), but it seems that the last few minutes of the game were quite troublesome for Porto. Anyway, we won, we are elite, we feel nice and Benfica and Sporting fans don't.···

Film number 2 — 16mm Survivor: So I met my colleagues at the Cunha (a great american-style 'diner' downtown which is open until late) around midnight. We ate and drank something before going to grab the equipment at our professor's house. Then came word that because of the tides there was no way we could go to the island and we would have to shoot somewhere else. Still, after a few stops we arrived at Bico da Murtosa (in the Aveiro swamps) to meet our 1st and 3rd year colleagues around 4:30AM. Each one of us was asked to figure out a 30sec sequence that would have to be 'compatible' with the others. Right. Everyone was too tired to imagine something like that, and there was one small problem: it was dark and we couldn't see a damn thing of the surroundings. Sundawn, and everyone went to watch the third year shooting their scenes. Then they took off. In the meantime, the first year also did their scenes and went back. We were left there with no clue on what to film, so we went to have breakfast. Delay delay delay. We came back. Word came that we could go to the island after all. I hate it when after choosing Plan B, people decide to go back to Plan A. Anyway, just before stepping on the boat we found out the camera's batteries were dead. Dead! All of them dead! They decided to put a battery pack recharging for a few hours at a coffeeshop nearby, but some of us were too tired and pissed for that and came back to Porto. After another 24 hours without sleeping, I finally could lie in my bed. Later when I woke up for diner, I phone a friend and found out they did manage to shoot a couple of scenes in the island before the battery died again, but I didn't care. I'm still too pissed with the whole thing.···

Film number 1 — Purple-light tram: As you can see from the title, yesterday's shooting in Aveiro went horribly wrong. But we'll get to that later. Wednesday I woke up at 8AM to go work at the Museu do Carro Eléctrico (Tram Car Museum), helping out with the lighting of a Fassbinder-esque affair going on inside a tram. We shot the few daylight scenes quickly — and I also had to work as a boom operator (that is, holding a very long stick with a microphone on the other end) — and we came back at 9PM to resume work. The first scenes were shot around midnight, but after that things started to go slow, some people started to get insubordinate and wouldn't shut up as we needed absolute silence to record sound, and in the end everyone went home at 8AM with a few scenes still left to do, forcing us to go back there next week. Then I slept until 4PM, browsed the web for a bit, did some Sociology work, had some diner and went to have a cup of coffee with the Manager before going to meet the rest of the Aveiro crew.···

Really good ideas that somehow will never be implemented: Metric Time and the Permanent Thirteen-Month Calendar (which is incompatible with Metric Time but could be implemented easier). It's a shame, I think current time systems are a product of historical inertia and massive habit-changing efforts such as the adoption of the Euro were quite successful and show it could be done.···

A transcript of the dialogue between Neo and the Architect. It's a pretty massive spoiler, so do not click if you haven't seen The Matrix Reloaded yet. Has anyone noticed the Architect is a white-bearded old man like God or Santa Claus? I start to notice an amusing phenomena however: the movie was crap, but still I can't stop speculating on what was that all about. Perhaps the new Matrix is a much better piece of sci-fi literature (and a good demo of visual effects sometimes) than a good movie. It's concept and story grips you, but you leave the theatre with the sensation you've been through a couple of hours of a wasted screen adaptation.···



Here are a few photos I took during last week's shooting. Don't bother clicking them as my digicam didn't work too well under the extreme lighting conditions required for film resulting in pretty crap images that look better small. A few of the best shots are in the imagelog though. Anyway, film number two begins shooting Wednesday, and then we are going to an island off the coast of Aveiro (a smaller city southwards known as the 'portuguese Venice' so you have an idea of the landscape there) to shoot at Friday's sundawn. It's quite unlikely I'll blog in the meantime, so don't waste my bandwidth until then. Shoosh <grin>.···

And from the low-end to the highest-possible-end: my cinematography teacher said "see and drool yourself over" the Dalsa Origin digital cinema camera. It has 4096x2048 resolution (twice the resolution of Star Wars HDCAMs), a 35mm-sized sensor (so you can set the aperture / depth of field the same way you do in a film camera) that captures 16bits per channel (which means latitude — working with 48bit colour you can sub/superexpose as with film), and an adjustable frame rate. So if you do the math, each second recorded with this monster at full resolution, colour and at 24fps will take up 1.2GB disk space. The website doesn't say the price, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is more than a million dollars / euros, as a regular 35mm cinema camera costs around 200 thousand euros. Add the fiberoptic link and a harddrive rack the size of a fridge, and the fact that this camera will be out of business in less than 10 years (while working 40 year old 35mm cameras aren't at all uncommon), and you better shoot a lot of movies with that or it'll be much more expensive than the already ultra-expensive 35mm camera + film + processing combination. However, the nice part is to consider that D1/DV was invented in 1986 with an outrageous price tag, and that now MiniDV is cheap video camera standard. In 10 to 15 years we might be able to buy UltraDV (or whatever they will call it) cameras as powerful as the Dalsa Origin in any shopping centre, and the days of film will be over. Unless Hollywood brings forth a DRM dystopia, the cost of making an high image-quality movie will soon drop to near zero (consider that a typical 4 minutes 35mm roll costs around 250 euros / dollars, then add processing charges, intermediate and distribution copies etc.) — to the point of being much harder and more expensive to have good sound than good image quality — and will allow minor or inexistent industries (such as the portuguese) to make more movies and to distribute them much easier as digital projection systems also become more affordable, and distribution becomes frictionless via networks or cheap media (i.e. UltraDVD or whatever it will be called). Of course making a good movie will still require lots of money (to pay for professional technicians, artists and actors, and all other production costs — sound and lighting equipment, set design, food, etc.), but the sheer effect of being free from the finantial shackles of 35mm film will have a resounding effect on things, unless those evil greedy men behind desks at grim skyscrapers try to pull an Edison and charge a patent fee for every minute recorded with digital cinema cameras.···

Well, the 16mm film is going reasonably ok (although some of the staff means more hassle than help), with only couple of scenes still left for tonight. We have been shooting at the old Sá da Bandeira theatre, as the movie is a really depressing drama that takes place in the dressing rooms. The really interesting bit is that Sá da Bandeira is now a porn movie theatre (and also a venue for those hip and trendy electroclash parties some Saturday nights), so while we were shooting our movie behind the stage we kept listening to all those grunts, sighs and moans coupled with 70s easy-listening. Anyway, I took a few pictures of the set, and will post them as soon as I have a chance to run them through Photoshop.···