Glenn “Avene” Thomas is an old timer in the HV20 community, but he lately experiments with the cheap Canon HD digicams. This is a music video with one of these cams.

Downloading the original WMV file looks great. Here’s a re-sized still from that WMV:

One very interesting tidbit that I was made aware of just a few moments ago: even the cheapest Canon new digicams now, like the A490 that costs $100 (announced last week), do 29.97 fps instead of the traditional 30.00 fps. This shows a change in the mentality of Canon regarding video, and how they feel that their digicams can play a role in the video market. Happy times ahead for us video geeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if their near-future models also do 24p (23.976 fps), selectable to 25p and 30p.

“Pandorum” is a sci-fi movie released last year. I just watched it tonight, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it to be some really good sci-fi, very well made. It’s such a shame that critics killed it. It cost $40 mil but it only made back $14 mil after the critics backlash.

The interesting thing here is that I enjoyed this movie more than I enjoyed “Moon” (which I watched last week). “Moon” was highly praised, and it’s a miracle film made for just $5 mil, but I found its premise a bit more boring than I found the action-based “Pandorum”. Only “District 9″ came ahead of “Pandorum” last year, IMHO. “Avatar” was great for its tech, but less intense for me.

[SPOILERS] While critics found the zombie-like monsters “derivative”, I actually found them to be an allegory. They were created because Gallo was insane, with Gallo representing humanity. And Gallo got insane because of the effects of the cryogenic technology. The movie delivers a message without sounding technophobe. I liked how at the end the 1162 people survived, they had nothing with them. No tools, not even clothes, to start again anew to the new planet. Another allegory to show us that if we want a second chance as a species we’ll have to fight for it, and that we’d really have to start from zero.

Overall, very enjoyable, and a great sci-fi flick. The critics can go suck it.

This is a new section I’m starting on my blog, titled “band of the week”. It’d be a band that I discover through my endless music researching daily, and that I think you should listen too.

The first band I’m presenting is Scanners, from London, UK. Scanners’ second full album, “Submarine“, was released yesterday. It’s great hooky indie pop-rock, with some elements of goth punk rock. You can legally download three songs for free here, and one more here.

Here’s a great new band from San Diego you should check out: The Burning of Rome. On their first album (free downloads) they played a delicious kind of melodic “death-pop” music: think of 50’s Vampire movies and musical rock, mixed together. On their second album (free downloads) they jump from genre to genre, and have more complex musical constructs, but they still keeping some elements from the first album. Check their music video below for one of their few hard rock songs, shot with two Nikon D90s. While most of their songs are free for download at their PureVolume page, please do buy their music to support them.

Official music video for “Solomon”, by the San Francisco rock band As A People. You can download the song for free at the band’s site, or the HD video at Vimeo.

I had immense fun shooting this video, the band was really cool, and the song rocks. I consider it the most complex, and best video work of mine so far. I learned a few new things about the process, and I believe that the next step for me as a videographer is rigorous story-boarding, and having a grander plan. It’s the only way to avoid weak spots of continuity, like the ones found on the first 30 seconds of the video.

I shot the video with a Canon 5D Mark II, at 30 fps, and then slowed it down at 24 fps. I can’t wait for Canon to at last release the 24p firmware, it’s a long time waiting. It was my first major video with the 5D. Overall shooting time was 3 hours.

On location tools: a tripod, and a shoulder rest. A single Canon 50mm f1.4 lens was used. Software tools used were Sony Vegas Pro, Cineform, Magic Bullet (tools that didn’t always want to co-operate very well, so editing took quite some time: crashing, and bugs).

Many thanks to my beloved husband, Jean-Baptiste, for his support and feedback. I wouldn’t be able to do jack without him.

I heard a lot of people wondering: “Why doesn’t the radio play less known artists? There are some amazing songs out there that are lesser known and need to be heard. Commercial/ClearChannel radio sucks.”

However, it’s not the radio that sucks. It’s the listeners.

Consider the following: The music director at San Francisco’s Live 105 (owned by CBS) is Aaron Axelsen (who I’m a fan of). Aaron decides what’s get played by the DJs during the day, but he also has a show of his own on the station: Soundcheck, every Sunday night. In it, he plays the kind of music we are longing to listen to during daytime: From Manchester Orchestra, to The Temper Trap, to Surfer Blood, to many local Bay Area bands that caught his ear (scroll down for his latest playlist).

However, the rest of the daytime programming is terrible: the same 20-30 hit songs are playing on a rotation. How many times it happened to me already: driving for sushi lunch, Phoenix’s “1901″ would be playing on our car’s radio. Coming out of lunch, and Phoenix’s “1901″ would be playing AGAIN. The rotation is so fucking short that it’s not even funny.

Now, it’s easy to put the blame on Aaron or his corporate overlords, but it’s not really their fault. They are just doing what makes sense for their business. And what makes sense is to keep the listeners from switching channels.

You see, the vast majority of the radio listeners don’t listen to music. They hear music instead. There’s a difference. They put the kids on the SUV, and drive them to school, and turn on the radio in the meantime. Or, they’re stuck in traffic, pissed off, and need to listen to “easy” music to pass the time. Or, they’re sitting on their sofa, reading a magazine, and have the radio ON as a background.

Very few people actually drive somewhere in order to turn on the radio and listen to music. Or sit on their sofa, closing their eyes, and listen to just music. Normal people instead, are so busy with their lives, their problems, the quick pace of this civilization, that simply don’t have the time to discover new music. Listening to unknown kind of melodies, or new kinds of sub-genres altogether, takes them out of their comfort zone. Listening to something like Dan Deacon instead of Lady Gaga, for example, while the kids shout at each other at the back of the car, makes it difficult to level your head. Not only you have your problems, but you have this new ‘annoying’ music playing instead of the music (or kind of music) you already know so well.

Basically, commercial radio works as a kind of a depressant for the masses. At first, it feels like music is exactly the opposite: an excitement that is, but in reality, in the large scheme of things, as far as FM radio is concerned, it’s nothing but one of the ways that helps you kept in check. No, this is not a conspiracy theory, it’s just how things work. Listeners want it that way too.

And that’s the reason why you’ll never be able to hear Fever Ray, Antlers, or Local Natives on commercial radio, during daytime, at least in the US. Unless indie bands hit it big on their own, their music will play only late at night, or at specialized radio stations like college radios, KEXP, and Indie 103.1.

So stop hating the radio stations for doing their job. Either hate the system, or the listeners, or don’t hate anyone, and listen to your favorite music in your own accord. But don’t expect the population to follow too. They won’t. They have mortgages to think about rather than HEALTH’s awesome off-beat noise.

I shot the following interview with the Bay Area band Geographer last Sunday, for The OWL Mag. One of the tracks heard on the video below is unreleased as of yet. I shot it using the Canon HV20, since I had to save the battery of my Canon 5D MkII for the As A People music video that I shot an hour later after this interview. It was a busy Sunday. But I loved it.

The following video, shot with the Canon 5D MarkII, contains snippets from a video I shot at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco last Friday, for As A People, a local post-punk and politically charged band. Parts of the live recording will be used for the music video I’m putting together for the band. The second part of the shoot, under a day light, will take place soon. The track we shoot the music video for is “Solomon” (free download here).

Tonight I reached 7500 tracks in my iTunes library. A far cry from my husband’s 15,600 tracks (he’s got more CDs and Creative Commons tracks than I do), but that’s still 20.5 days of non-stop listening. For years we were only buying CDs, but 2009 was the year where we went mostly digital after iTunes went DRM-free. For us, that was the key to move to digital. I started collecting free promo mp3s sporadically back in 2006, but it was in 2009 when their numbers exploded in my iTunes library. In fact, I’ve noticed that especially after 2007, there’s a stream of freeware promo mp3s out there that gets bigger and bigger every year. Some indie artists give 1/3 of their album for free these days (e.g. Cold Cave)! Anyways, here’s the breakdown:

7500 tracks, 44.5 GB on disk, 20.5 days

2000 were bought from iTunes in 2009-2010 (we spent a fortune!)
300 were bought from Amazon in 2010
3700 are freeware, legal promotional mp3s or Creative Commons
1500 tracks were ripped from some of our bought CDs

2430 tracks were released in 2009
4000 were released in 2008-2009

5150 are tagged as “Alternative”
1180 are tagged as “Rock”

Only about 20%-30% of the tracks are from artists signed to major labels.

4150 tracks are starred so far:
660 tracks have 5 stars
1300 tracks have 4 stars
1635 tracks have 3 stars

Most played tracks:
1. “The Keys” by Dolorata
2. “Gold for Bread” by Blitzen Trapper
3. “The Tornado Lessons” by Cloud Cult
4. “Heads will Roll” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5. “Sci-Fi Kid” by Blitzen Trapper

Most tracks by the same artist:
1. Madonna (190)
2. Depeche Mode (113)
3. Blitzen Trapper (68)
4. Portugal. The Man (62)
5. Coldplay (53)

Oldest track added in iTunes library:
“New Years” by Asobi Seksu: 10/17/2006 11:08 PM
Newest track added:
“Vapor Trail” by The West Exit: 1/15/2010 12:43 AM

Shortest track:
“Foreword” by Linkin Park: 14 seconds
Longest track:
“Rime Of The Ancient Mariner” by Iron Maiden: 13:35 minutes

Lowest Bitrate:
“Induction” by Broken Spindles: 32 kbps
Highest Bitrate:
Various at 320 kbps (mp3)

UPDATE:
I was reading an article at OSNews and tried to answer the “is there profit in a world of file sharing” question (in my case legal promo mp3s, since I don’t pirate media). So I went back to my “Purchased” section of iTunes, and checked it out. I found that from the ~2000 iTunes tracks I bought:

1. 900 tracks were bought (just in 2009) because I discovered these bands via their promo mp3s in the last TWO years of collecting legal promo mp3s.

2. 350 tracks were bought after discovering the bands due to word of mouth (e.g. from friends on Twitter or IM).

3. 750 tracks were bought from bands I got to know by traditional media, e.g. TV/radio, over my LIFETIME. However, about 300 of these tracks are purchases made FOR my husband, and are not the kind of music I’d normally buy (while the numbers above are all for music bought for my own music taste). So this leaves the “traditional PR” artists with just 400 bought tracks.

So within a single year of starting buying digital music, I bought 900 tracks from bands I discovered just in the last 2 years. And only 400 tracks were bought for bands that I’ve known for many years via traditional means. I’d say that promotional, viral, mp3s work best for heavy internet users, way more than radio/TV promotion.

I spent two very nice hours with JBQ tonight deconstructing music. JB has studied theory of music, so he delivered on my hopes to make me understand why I don’t like the hipster bands, namely Animal Collective (AnCo), Dirty Projectors (DP), and Grizzly Bear (GB). So we compared them with my favorite experimental band, the Cloud Cult, and a few other bands. Here’s what we found out:

1. We found that Cloud Cult, one of the few experimental bands that I like, actually pass themselves as experimental, but the constructions of their songs is very classic: there is always a rhythm, albeit usually hidden from the listener, but still there to not throw him/her off. And there’s melody and harmony at all times. One of the great features of Cloud Cult songs is how they start with 1-2 instruments, the song then transforms to a classical piece, and then somehow transforms back to rock. In contrast to most experimental bands out there that change their songs mid-way, Cloud Cult never change their tempo, even if they change music styles within the same song. Also, the songs’ transformation is slow enough that the listener can follow the genre changes without feeling that he has had the carpet pulled out of his feet. So basically Cloud Cult is more of a smart classic band rather than full-on non-accessible experimental.

2. I always thought that what drove me crazy with AnCo’s music is that it has no melody. Apparently, it’s not the melody, but the rhythm/beat. AnCo’s electronic music is very jazzy usually, where the instruments don’t play in sync with the vocals or other instruments. This jazzy feel confuses me musically because I don’t know to which instrument I should be holding on to in order to find enjoyment. A massive proof for that is that I LIKE the few AnCo songs that are faithful on a rock-style (as opposed to jazz-style) rhythm! Namely: Grass, My Girls, Summertime Clothes. I can’t stand jazz, so it’s no surprise that I don’t like most of AnCo’s songs. I need a “beat” to music. An instrument or vocal that tells me WHERE to latch my brain and follow it. Jazz is the exact opposite of that, and I guess, I’m just not used to it. Then again, most people don’t like jazz (at least in the environment I grew up). Some of their songs, also lack harmony (e.g. “Guys Eyes”).

3. Further proof for all that is the fact that I don’t like Nine Inch Nails either (I like maybe 2-3 songs overall from them too). While NiN are not as jazzy as AnCo, the vocals are usually off the beat, enough for me to dislike their songs. Red Hot Chili Peppers are also off in their drum and bassline, but they somehow complement each other every time in a way that does not throw me off. So NiN are out, Red Hot Chili Peppers are in, even if they’re not exactly classic in terms of music construction.

4. For Dirty Projectors, we agreed that they have no harmony. There is a melody, and there is rhythm. But there is no harmony in the vocals, so their songs sound like a bunch of kids who don’t know how to sing. The music itself feels bare and undeveloped too. The band tries to break conventions in order to “break new ground”, but all it does really is breaking well-researched parts of music theory. This is no different than the market being full of finger-friendly capacitive screen smartphones, and these guys decide to create a new phone that uses a stylus! It’s not pretty. It’s doing it differently for doing it differently, and that’s just not good enough for me to like something. As JBQ put it, that’s just a band to piss off your 40 year old parents when you’re 16 and angry at them. They offer nothing more useful than that to my ears. Without harmony in the vocals, some of their songs feel like when my neighbors are fighting for attention.

5. Grizzly Bear have harmony, rhythm, and some melody. But they’re boring as hell. It feels like they didn’t even try to write music. It’s like a bunch of lazy kids sitting on the balcony and getting sun, and someone walks to them and orders them to “write music, or there’s no dinner for you tonight”, and then they looked at each other and say “you write something”, and then they all reply “no, I don’t feel like writing anything, you do it”, “no, you do it, take one for the team”. Finally, someone replies, “oh, whatever, I’ll do it”.

Tonight we established that we don’t want to hear DP & GB ever again in our lives. They’re annoying as hell. We established that we, like most humans, require both rhythm, harmony, and melody, plus a joyous, and/or catchy beat. If all these requirements are met, we usually like the song. If not, they fall apart for us.