Sweet summer rain

It's been a bit warm in Caerdydd the last few days. The nice weather made setting up for the ball enjoyable, but somehow the easier task of taking it down seemed harder with the heat!
I burnt in all the obvious places, I now look like a clay bust that got dropped on its own sculptors head!

I've been mixing tracks for Cardiff LMS for their freshers CD the last few days, im up to about 8 tracks, some of which are the genuine thing, the real deal, a finely polished turd. On the other hand, some of them were really nice to mix and the songs were good!

Worry is starting to set in about getting enough work to keep me in wales. I've got sporadic union shifts, and im hoping to get some photography stuff from back home, but everything starts to go a bit quiet halfway through july. God's led me through difficult times before, even when i didn't know i was being guided, so I have faith that I'll come out fine.

Let's go see a movie

Today I got given a DVD of a film I engineered sound on a while back. It was a single day shoot involving over a dozen cast members all playing on character, one after the other.

The film "Delusions" was one of two films I did sound for that got sent off to the Cannes film festival, the other being a film called "Displacement", which was a final year film project for some film students.






















The shoot went really well, with a rigorous schedule kept to so that the younger cast members could go home at a reasonable hour, and with a good level of professionalism from the cast and crew.

Upon watching the DVD though, I despaired again at the ability of film-makers to discern quality from crap.

The sound wasn't uniform; they chose to use the sound from whichever shot was on screen, which meant on-board microphones for the other two cameras (the wide shot didn't have a microphone so that wasn't an issue.) So in one shot the sound was tinny, then another it was full and louder. There is one part where the shot changes halfway through a word and the second half is lost.
I'm not saying the sound recorded was amazing but all cameras were running at the same time so my boom audio could have been used for every shot.

Other issues included bad focus, panning, tracking, framing and some editing where it repeated a frame in the new shot.

I think i'll stick to non-video recording in the future.

The upside is that apparently BOTH films spelt my name wrong in the credits for cannes, so people won't know I worked on them if they say the sound is bad.

You learn something new everyday

During a quiet period at the forum the other day, Gilbert was playing with my camera and asked "what happens if you take take a photo with the lens off?"

This is the answer:

The forum's stage with no lens.

Now for the science bit:

The camera lens works just like the lens on our eyes, including inverting the image once it has been focused. The Photo sensor in the camera collects the parts of the image together and compiles it into a single image.

Here endeth the lesson, class dismissed!

Third Day @ The Forum, Kentish Town

Nearly every time i write something it seems to be about something i've done with Ignite, but my life isn't that interesting otherwise!

Ignite put on a gig in The Forum in Kentish Town in London, Third Day were headlining with The Sonflowerz supporting.



I had my whole morning routine planned down to what socks i was going to put on, but for some reason, which will remain a mystery to even the greatest scientiic minds, i didn't set an alarm on my phone!

Therefore, at half 7, when i was meant to be meeting Dianne at the grape and olive so she could take me to Taffs Well, I got a phone call from tim asking where i was. my reply was "not quite left yet" which actually meant "I've just opened my eyes and now frantically rummaging around for some clothes to put on!"




As I'm part of the infamous techie crew, Gary decided that I should be in charge of the bus's sat nav, so I was sat in the front of the City temple LDV minibus with Anita and Doive! Did you know Anita can drive artics?

The load in and soundcheck were uneventful for everyone apart from gilbert, who had to fight with third day crew for mixer channels and soundchecking time.

Doors opened on time and thousands of people poured into the venue, it was quite a sight from the balcony!


The Sonflowerz played six songs, with Abi Williams drumming, and the bassist alternating between bass and keyboards.

I noticed something strange with both the Sonflowerz and Third Day bass arrangement, which got the signal direct from the bass and bypassed the amps completly!

This seemed a bit strange since third day had a really nice Ampeg valve bass head with two 8x10 cabs, and the sonflowerz had my Trace stack, which had to be taken all the way across the country just to look nice!


















We arrived back in ponty at about 4 in the morning, apparently I was the only one who managed to sleep the whole night!


Here's a question, would you rather sneeze marbles or fart confetti?

Thanks to Meg for that one.

Logos hope and other boats

Yes indeed, the OM ship Logos Hope is in cardiff bay and I, along with a motley crew from ignite, went to visit and put on an event.
I didn't take on a technical role this time, i took photographs instead. Though will was pretty impressed by the versatility of the techies. "i'll just take a photo, then re-wire a microphone, then hop on guitar for a bit"
unfortunately because nearly everything was set up and it was a small venue, the techie run hardly made an appearance.

BEFORE

AFTER

oh, and the bit about the other boats was just loosely referring to gilbert's shiny van he gets to drive to london tomorrow, its a cosy ride in the passenger seat, but they've got everything they need for a pleasant journey.

Hopefully get some photos up soon of third day in concert as well soon!