The second album by Lady Gaga, “The Fame Monster“, was released today. It includes 8 new songs, and one remix. The new album is very electronic, but it also feels more mature too than her previous album. In detail:

* Bad Romance – 8.5/10
* Alejandro – 9/10
* Monster – 9/10
* Speechless – 7/10
* Dance In the Dark – 7.5/10
* Telephone (with Beyonc̩) Р10/10
* So Happy I Could Die – 7.5/10
* Teeth – 8/10

Best moment: The opening of “Alejandro” between 00:25 to 00:42 seconds.

Overall rating: 8.3/10

This places this album on my top-10 favorites for the decade, next to Madonna’s “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album. I know that many of my readers don’t understand my fascination with Madonna and GaGa when 95% of my music is actually alternative rock, but I recognize good pop when I see it, and I try to give it credit when it’s due.

I also bought Adam Lambert’s “For your Entertainment” album, but it’s not as good as GaGa’s (still, some very good pop in there too — “Sleepwalker” is the best song on his album). Rihanna’s & Shakira’s albums (also released today) felt very blunt and un-catchy to me.

The internet is abuzz right now debating if Adam Lambert’s AMA performance was softcore porn or simply somewhat raunchy. During his performance he and a dancer touched his crotch (Madonna did this before), he had male dancers on leash (Madonna did this before), he put his face to another male’s crotch (Madonna did this before), and finally he kissed a same-sex band member (Madonna did this before).

So, everything of what Lambert did on stage last night was already done before (17 years ago, no less). The difference is that what he did was all part of the same number, and that it was broadcasted live in national television (most of what Madonna did was for her live performances only available on VHS/DVD). And when Madonna kissed Britney and Christina on stage it was for the cable MTV channel rather than on a network channel (in the US, there are different rules for networked and cable TV channels).

So basically, what shocked most people is not exactly what Lambert did (since it was all done before), but the fact that it was all that shown on network television within 4 minutes — and rumor has it that ABC did not know of the kiss. But the question really is: was it really that shocking?

In my opinion, no. I found his performance theatrical and entertaining. I was not offended at all. And I don’t really understand why people get offended over real or simulated sex. It’s just sex. It’s something everyone and every living thing does. Why the taboo? Why the shock? My guess is because half of the people who found the performance “offending” are boring puritans, and the other half are homophobes. That’s how I see it.

BTW, Lambert told CNN that his kiss with the male keyboardist was not rehearsed, but I don’t buy that. The keyboardist did not look shocked at all. It was probably not rehearsed at AMAs (and that’s why ABC didn’t know about it), but it was surely agreed with the band. I mean, come on. Lambert will have to play that card and say it was just an impulsive move to avoid future award/TV/show banning. Of course, if TV viewers didn’t get offended that easily he wouldn’t have to lie to do what he wanted to do.

The bottom line is that Lambert is doing his thing one way or another (I never expected anything less from him btw), and just like Madonna, he will use that controversy to build a career. It was a calculated risk he took last night. I would have done the same thing.

Geeks.com, sent over the consumer Kodak M420 digicam for a quick look.

This is a 10 megapixels camera, shooting at a 3648×2736 resolution. It features a sensor of 1/2.3-inch CCD, a 3.0-inch wide angle color LCD display, a 4x optical zoom, digital image stabilization, 64 MB internal memory, SDHC slot, face detection, high ISO support up to 6400, text and sound tags, records continuous VGA video (640×480) at 30 fps and QVGA video (320 x 240) at 30 fps (MJPEG), and it comes with many scene modes.

According to the specifications it has a Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens, 28 – 112 mm (35 mm equiv.), f/2.6 – 5.8, shutter speed of 8-1/1000 sec., auto focus modes at normal, macro, infinity selectable, white balance with auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, open shade options, a flash range of 0.2 – 4.0m at wide, ISO 400; 0.5 – 1.8 m at tele, ISO 400. Flash modes: auto, fill, red eye reduction, off, burst modes: self-timer (2 sec/10sec, 2 shots), burst 3 shots, scene modes: portrait, sport, landscape, close-up, night portrait, night landscape, snow, beach, text/document, fireworks, flower, museum/manner, self-portrait, high-ISO, children, backlight, panning, candlelight, sunset, panorama (right-left), panorama (left-right), blur reduction, program. There’s also AV output with NTSC/PAL selectable support.

The package came with a wall charger, which is pretty rare for Kodak cameras. Charging the battery for the first time took a whopping 7 hours. Battery life was so-so with this camera, mostly because of the large screen it had to power up.

On paper this camera’s abilities look good, but the quality we got out of it was sub-par. As you can see from the sample pictures, there’s fringing, and a very grainy look — reminiscent of interpolated cams. We also found it impossible to focus close enough in our macro shooting experiments. More over, the camera over-exposes like crazy in auto mode. The only good thing about its actual shooting abilities is the wide-angle aspect of the lens.

The ergonomics for the camera are not good either. I usually don’t complain about ergonomics on digicams, but this one is worse than usual. The flash/on-off/shutter buttons are glued next to each other, and more often than not I kept clicking the wrong button. The trash/menu/info buttons are very small and round, and so I needed to use my fingernail to press them — using just the thumb would press the wrong button. The D-pad’s round and stiff nature is as problematic too. Only good thing about the ergonomics was the zoom rocker buttom, which in fact I found it better than in most other digicams.

On the plus side the flash was pretty powerful and had an effect even from pretty far as you can see below in the without and with flash example:

The video mode is very basic (30 fps VGA MJPEG .mov) and there are no manual controls for it. In fact, the only manual control that the camera has is in its “P” mode, where there’s exposure compensation. When manually reducing exposure we were able to shoot a few acceptable pictures that weren’t hopelessly over-exposed.

Overall, I don’t think most people would be happy with this cam. Even every day people who just snap random pictures and don’t care about controls won’t be very happy with it. The pictures produced are too grainy, and the cam over-exposes way too much. If you need a cheap digicam I would suggest the Kodak Z1285 instead, which shoots better pics, has good manual controls when needed, has 720p HD video recording support, and it’s much cheaper too!

Rating: 5/10

From any Canon video dSLR or digicam h.264 format to AVID’s Media Composer 4 (MC4), using the Avid DNxHD intermediate format: step by step tutorial (PC & Mac). For 1080/30p timeline support on MC4 you will additional need the Symphony Nitris DX hardware though.

This is a 38-second preview of a music video I shot 1.5 months ago, and it should be completed in December, after we do some necessary re-shoots. The Bay Area artist is Andy Kong, the song is called “Accidental Love Song”, and it’s part of his newly released album “This Beautiful World“.

It was shot with a naked Canon HV20 (just an ND filter was used). The specific “band” scenes you see here were shot in PF24 (at 1/48), but the rest of the video actually has cut-scenes of a little background story we put together. The cut-scenes were shot in 60i, interpolated to 60p, and then slowed-down to 24p (2.5 times).

Edited with Sony Vegas Pro 9, Cineform removed pulldown to 24p, and the following plugins were used: AAV ColorLab, Color Corrector, and a custom Magic Bullet template.

Finished watching The Prisoner‘s 2009 remake last night. A total of six episodes, starring Ian McKellen (as 2) and Jim Caviezel (as 6). Spoilers below.

The cinematography and pacing was good throughout the six episodes. It starts with 6 finding himself in the desert and getting back to this seemingly idealistic “Village”. The people there have accepted that there’s nothing beyond the village, that there’s no other world beyond it. During the six episodes, No 2 is trying to break No 6, to make him believe that there’s nothing beyond the Village. However, unlike most of the others who only have dreams relating to other places, No 6 has clear as day memories of his New York life that happens in parallel to his Village life. Naturally, he tries to break free of it, but he can’t. No 2 is the authority in the Village, and he’s got a son and a comatose wife. The Village is not a nice place in reality: everyone’s spying on everyone else, people are getting abducted or getting killed if they are reported. The idealistic nature of the Village is only skin deep.

At the end, is revealed that the Village is not a real place, but a subconscious (or other state of consciousness) level, ran by the brain of No2’s real-life wife in New York, who’s a scientist and creator of psychotropic drugs. The other inhabitants of the village are random NY people, most of them employees of Summakor, the corporation that real-life No2 leads (and that No6 recently resigned from). Summakor runs this project supposedly to help these people, who are all chosen to occupy the village since they lead a troubled real life. So basically, the Village acts as a restrain of the subconscious mind in order to control unwanted behavior of the real life person.

Some people were not happy with this resolution, that the Village is not a real place, but I like it just fine. I think it’s sci-fi enough, and pretty interesting too. Others were unhappy because the series was not like the original ’60s series. Personally, I don’t care about this at all, I review this series on its own merits, as an individual work of art. My problem with the series is elsewhere.

My problem is with the ending. No2 is blowing himself into pieces in order to free himself from the Village’s plane of existence, just as 313 (6’s romantic interest in the series) takes a special pill that makes her real life NY counterpart the new “brain server”, rather than No2’s wife. Now, No2’s wife is not comatose anymore (she was comatose in both lives, because her brain was needed at 100% operation in order to run the Village), and 313/Sarah is. At the very end, 6 is trying to make the Village a better place (in the Village life), and he’s accepted back a higher ranking job at Summakor (in his NY life). The last thing we see in the series is 313 crying, and we don’t know if it’s because of happiness because 6 will indeed try to make the Village a better place, or because 6 has turned, without realizing it, into the new 2: a tyrant.

See, this is a very unsatisfactory ending. We spent 5.5 episodes seeing 6 fighting the status quo and rebel against the tyranny. Even just 20 minutes before the ending the NY counterpart of 6 was questioning the ethics of running such a project. Are we to believe that just like that 6 accepted the Village for what it is and decided to stay in it? Why? Just because of a woman? And was No2’s plan all along to get 6 to accept the Village and be part of it, even if 6 had full knowledge of the other world? In other words, was the whole thing a trap, to find a new boss for the Village? A new boss who while he knew of the truth he would choose to stay?

I just find it stupid knowing the truth and not killing yourself to get out of it. Regardless if there’s a woman involved or not. Made no sense to me. Or is this an allegory for “yeah, you’re young, you’re rebellious, and then you get married, and your life is over“. Because honestly, that’s the only “deeper message” I got out of the series. Or are we, the viewers, to believe that such an experiment with people’s minds “is a good thing” and that’s why 6 accepted it? I personally don’t see anything good with it, it’s evil. Especially since none of these people volunteered for it!

What should have been done instead was the NY 6 destroying all computers and maybe even No2’s wife in order to end the Village. That’s what any sane person would have done. Instead, (a pretty confused throughout the series) No 6 becomes a conformist himself, in both lives. Or was 6 brought into the Village in order to tame/conform him, a subconscious development that subsequently controlled his NY counterpart to accept the job as the new high ranking exec of Summacor? Is this how that corporation hires people, by manipulating their employees’ morality in their subconscious level first? Most people do conform later in their lives, so I guess the ending does mirror real life.

Regardless, the ending just felt unsatisfactory as it left a negative, hopeless mental let-down to the viewer. And the writing was particularly confusing at the end. This is a series that could have been done a bit better if the story and subplots were spelled out a bit clearer with less over-done “artsy” cuts like the ones at the end of each episode. Less surrealism please in the last 5 minutes. Thank you.

Having nothing more to do tonight I browsed the archives of the HV20.com forum to search for good HV footage (and I already check out properly tagged videos on Youtube and Vimeo daily). Found some interesting stuff. Two full-length HV movies for one. “Hollow” is a drama, and “Envelop” is a horror movie (login to the site to be able to view the screen-caps). Both movies are in post-production right now.

Secondly, I found this beautiful music video shot with an HV20 (w/ 35mm adapter). I believe VH1 and MTVU was going to show it, not sure if it actually reached the TV sets. It did reach their web sites though. The song is currently offered for free for promotional reasons. Get it here.

And one more music video, with the same director and band. I believe this was also shot with his HV20, but I will have to confirm with the director. UPDATE: Confirmed, it’s also with the HV20 and a Letus Mini adapter. Here’s a picture of the director’s rig, and a yet another music video by the same director and band, with the HV20.

It’s been over 2.5 years since the release of the HV20. During that time it became the most game-changing camcorder to ever hit the market: it was the first consumer camera with 24p support, and with its improved lens/sensor, it inspired thousands of amateur filmmakers who were previously limited by the hardware to do what they always wanted to do. Some amazing videos were shot with the HV series, short films, and about 600 official music videos too — an amazing feat for any camera, let alone a consumer one.

However, in the quickly-moving technology of today, the HV series is now fading away: it’s bowing to AVCHD cams, and to the Canon 5D and 7D dSLRs. Once upon a time there were as many as 30-40 HV videos uploaded on Vimeo daily, now we are lucky if we get 5-6. Obviously, as with everything, its time is passing. It’s fully functional of course for those who want to still use it, and it still outperforms some non-Canon AVCHD camcorders! But most artists from the “old gang” on Vimeo have moved on, and I have done so too with my recent purchase of the 5D Mark II.

In light of this, and by trying to close this chapter, I decided to put together a best-of. These are my top-5 favorite HV videos for each category:

Short Movies
1. A Thousand Words *
2. White Red Panic
3. Manifest Destiny *
4. The Ring *
5. Semblance

Runner up: The Unfortunate

Music Videos
1. Malbec – Story Of a Broken Heart
2. The Album Leaf – There Is a Wind
3. Twinn – Don’t Cry *
4. Arman Bohn – Combat
5. Pitchblend – Celsius *

Runner up: D.A.A.N. – He Hallo

General Art
1. Rainy Day
2. Birth.Life.Death. * (NSFW)
3. Ape *
4. Mirror, Mirror
5. Seeing Red
6. Reflections of Home
7. Luna 2 *
8. Unspoken
9. GAY = SIN
10. Wii Boxing *

Special mention: The Condition:Human sci-fi web series.

* The asterisk denotes the usage of a 35mm adapter.

More of carefully selected best-of-the-best HV videos can be found on the HV group.

Reza Productions just posted on Vimeo the full short movie they shot last March with a bare-naked Canon HV30. In my opinion, it’s on the best top-5 of all the HV short films shot so far: it’s color graded well, light and photography is great, it’s cut pretty well, and the director was smart to setup his shots in a way that by zooming-in he would introduce some slight shallow depth of field. Shallow enough to make this short movie to look very “filmic”, as in “movie-like“. I am very impressed by the look he got out of his naked HV30. Download the 1080p HD version here.

This short movie proves that HV’s 1/2.7″ sensor & semi-fast lens are enough in most cases, if you know how to light & shoot properly. From all the gadgets I’ve bought over the last 2.5 years to feed my filmmaking hobby, the 35mm adapter was the most useless one. Except the initial test with it, after it arrived on my doorstep, I never used it to shoot anything. I wasn’t happy with the vignetting, the loss of resolution and stabilization, the bulkiness, the difficulty of actually shooting with it. Instead, I learned how to maximize my camera’s ability to achieve a shallow-enough-for-my-purposes DoF. Even a tiny bit of shallow DoF is enough to get rid of the “video look”. You don’t need massive amounts of it! The latest music video I shot has some pretty shallow DoF at times, and it’s shot with a bare HV20 too. Here are two snapshots from it:

I believe that most of the videographers who bought a 35mm adapter are misguided. Except maybe a handful of HV videos shot with a 35mm adapter on Vimeo (out of about 500 such videos watched so far), the majority are just shaky “tests”. Sure, there are situations that very shallow DoF looks better, but I am personally just not sold on it. There are more important things on a video than blurriness. And I am not willing to lose so much just to get blurriness. In fact, now that I have a 5D MarkII, I will do my best to keep shallow DoF under control.

Ingredients (for 2)

For the fish
* 2 fillets of tilapia (thawed)
* 1.5 cups of white flour
* 1 egg
* 1/2 cup of olive oil
* 1/2 teaspoon of paprika
* Two wedges (1/4 each) of a lemon

For the rice
* 2/3 cups of Thai or Indian rice
* 1/3 cup of frozen peas
* 1 tablespoon of butter
* 1 teaspoon of turmeric
* The rest half of the lemon

Execution
1. On a pot, start boiling some water (3-4 cups) under high heat. Vigorously wash the rice with some cold water so its natural white powder substance goes away. Pour the rice into the boiling pot, along the turmeric.
2. Wash the fish with some cold water. Pour the flour on a clean surface, and coat the fish.
3. On a deeper dish, add the paprika and beat it well with the egg. Coat the fish fillets on both sides with the egg mixture, and then coat them again with the flour.
4. Bring the olive oil in a big frying pan under medium heat. When hot, add the fish and fry well on both sides for a few minutes. When done, remove them from the oil and let them rest and dry in kitchen paper towels.
5. Three-four minutes before the rice is done, add the frozen peas. When done, drain the rice/peas, and bring them back to the pot. Add the butter, and squeeze the half lemon too. Stir a few times under a medium heat, until most of the liquid is evaporated, and then remove from the stove.
6. Serve the rice and tilapia with wedges of lemon, and some toasted bread.