Jason Zada.com

I haven’t made a non-stop mix in a while, so I broke out the digital decks and made you something. Yes, you. It’s filled with some of my favorite songs that make this summer of 2009 more enjoyable. The mix is a nice little toe-tappin, head nodding, dance on the roof on your car, 30 minute summer mix. Enjoy, pass it to your friends, buy the artist’s music (phoenix, emperor of the sun, dizzee, vampire weekend, friendly fires, moby, etc) and enjoy your summer. Love, Jason.

Listen.
Download Sumer 2009 Mix.

A few months ago I directed a commercial for Draftfcb and the Ad Council to celebrate Smokey Bear’s 65th birthday. The spot is called “Bonfire” and was a blast to bring Smokey to life.

Na Na Na, Hey Hey, Goodbye. Killing it.

I shot a crazy music video on Tuesday night for the band Wallpaper. It’s going to be a bit of a haul in post production, but should be quite an interesting video. When we debut the video, I will post about the process in making it. It took a fair bit of patience and planning to get what we ended up capturing. We bucked the stop-motion, FX heavy music video trend and went a little all in camera, all in one take, 90’s style.

It’s very interesting and inspiring to see people doing new and interesting things in producing music as well as the distribution of music. I have been overindulging in a variety of music videos, old and new, as I prep for the first one I am shooting next Tuesday. Ironically, I was fascinated with the golden age of music videos (the late 80’s, early 90’s) where technique and newness was the visual crack that everyone looked for. These days, similar rules apply, but the things that move me are very different. The web site I stumbled on today, Fredo Viola, is perfect example of technique, technology and innovation all wrapped up into even a cool interactive web site. It’s close to perfect in my opinion and had my attention for at least 20 minutes. Another interesting example is Dustball. Animated, made from making various sounds, it’s an interesting full screen flash video.

I have been thinking a lot about the future of music videos and the interaction between visuals and music. Here is a very quick small list of some of the more interesting interactive music videos of the last year or so. 

Director Sam Jones from my production company recently directed this video for the Cold War Kids. Sam directed Wilco’s film, “I am Trying to Break Your Heart”. Play around a bit with the variations and you can make some pretty interesting combinations.

Not sure of the artist or the song (Labut?), but this music video is one of the more interesting in terms of technique. I do love the beauty and simplicity of this idea, but it does start to drag a bit and I don’t think I have finished to the end.

Vincent Morisset did a pretty amazing job putting together the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible music video. The interaction is minimal, switching between angles and versions, but very powerful.

A video for Julian Perretta’s Ride My Star  is a step into some cool augmented reality interaction with music. 

All of these together start to form a very intriguing picture of art, music, experimentation and interactivity within music. I am sure there are many more, so please post links, but this is certainly just the beginning of these rich musical experiences.

Really have been interested in an into the idea of augmented reality. Besides being just a gimmick, interacting with products and being able to really play with them is really incredible. Earlier today I played around with Living Sasquatch.com. I have tried these things before, but haven;t had a ton of luck. This worked instantly and was really fun to play with. You print out a big foot and the sasquatch stands on your paper and you can program it to do different things. Very cool. Try it out.

I have been hearing about color grading your footage in Photoshop recently, since the DSLR boom is getting a lot of photographers into video. I really don’t understand why anyone would want to color grade footage in a photo program, until I tired it. I use Magic Bullet and Apple’s Color for most of the work I do. Both are great, but do take some serious getting used to. So I opened a clip I shot of my daughter in the backyard. It was easy, just went to the file menu and found the Quicktime file I wanted to open. Here is what it looked like :

I wanted to really bring out the orange-y sunset time of day and get away from the colder blues in the original. I went for a warmer, vintage 70’s looking film stock that easily accomplished with just using an adjustment layer with Curves. If you want to play what it looks like in motion, you can go to WINDOW > ANIMATION to open up the frames and the play controls. It takes a little while to render to your cache, but once it does it plays back smoothly. Here is my vintage grade :

I wanted to see what else I could do, so I added a texture to the video. It was a rough paper texture. Just simply add another adjustment layer, this time time I used PATTERN FILL. It will just be a solid layer over your video until you use a blend. I used COLOR BURN since I think it really adds to the vintage look I was going for.

Once you have something you like, I rendered out the video, EXPORT > RENDER VIDEO. I chose Pro-Res HQ as the compressor, since it will play well in FCP. If you are a photographer and know Photoshop really well, grading in PS is second nature. If you already know FCP’s 3-Way, Magic Bullet or Color, you should give it a try. It’s an interesting way to grade. I will have to play with it a bit more to find how to apply changes over time and add more to it, but so far, impressed with the quality. Here are a few great examples of Canon 5D footage graded with Photoshop.

DSLR’s, or the new Scarlet that’s coming out soon (??) that shoot full resolution HD video are here to stay. The idea of the camera being a very small box that you attach lenses to seems to be the future of digital cinema for pro-consumers. Jumping into the some quick camera tests with the 5D, I realized that you really do need some help in shooting with this. If you are going handheld you need some sort of support. If you are outside in bright light, you can’t rely on the LCD screen for focus. I have been poking around on Red Rock Micro and Zacuto’s DSLR kits. It was hard for me to stomach spending another $2k in accessories, but in order to really use this camera as a pro level set up, you can’t just point and shoot.

Follow focus, I believe, is very necessary since focusing while you are shooting with the lens focus rings are very difficult. Stabilization, handles or shoulder support is very important as well. HD external monitor or eye piece? You need either or to properly focus the camera in most situations. I picked a few people and would love anyone’s advice, experience, discussions on these kits or anything else to try. 

The Sharpshooter (picture above) is pretty amazing. The eye piece would be the best way to make sure everything is in focus, but the price tag is pretty steep at $3600.

DSLR Cinema Bundle is one of the At $2900 for this bundle and a shoulder brace, it’s also in the high end.

“Captain Stubling” DSLR Bundle is the cheapest and features two of the three features one would need, with follow focus and support grips. 

For proper monitor of the image, you can either add a  Ikan HD Field Monitor for around $750 or you can purchase the Zacuto Viewerfiner for only $400.

I decided, after years of not having a blog, to finally slowly ease my way back into it. I started with a tumblr. Love tumblrs but wanted more control and a better way of keeping track of my digital self. I moved the what I had over here and have moved the work to work.jasonzada.com. As most people are deleting their blogs and just using twitter, I am starting my blog back up. I have never been one for conformity.

I am sure things are going to be broken, look strange, etc. Please comment and let me know. I have a ton of new work launching soon, so you will hear about it always here first. I also plan to post lots of artsy side projects I am working on. If you have any ideas, suggestions, let me know. Today is, after all, the first day of the rest day of my life. So let’s get to it.