Today we welcome a new chunk of visual content to Cheese Media, The Galaxy Song!

Experience an out of this world adventure through millions of light years of space! And remember: Not wanting to learn about the galaxy is not an option!

For more information, check out the official web page!

last post! Tanzania was splendid, and climbing Kilimanjaro was a terrific although exhausting experience. I have added some photos to my rarely updated photo gallery in case you want to see some proof.

On the projects front things have naturally been standing a bit still these last few weeks – but not any more!

My friend and collaborator Nick ‘Lost’ O’er There is actively working on something new, a musical video of some sort but it’s still unknown exactly what this means. We – yes you heard right, we – also have a new musical piece in the works, with me arranging and Nick playing the violin. Hopefully it will please your ears when it’s ready.

Last but not the least; we’re back on track with Pivot development! The last major change was an upgrade to the latest version of Game Maker, GM8.  Doing this cost us a couple of hours of work, but it paid off! One problem that we kept facing while working in GM7 was its sprite engine. All the sprites we drew in Flash and Photoshop would have jagged edges in Game Maker – it just wasn’t possible to make them look smooth. GM8 however comes with full PNG alpha transparency support, allowing all our sprites to be silky smooth. Apart from this feature the new version also fixes a heap of bugs and saves both CPU and memory.

]]> http://cheesemedia.net/newsblog/?feed=rss2&p=296 3 http://cheesemedia.net/newsblog/?p=241 http://cheesemedia.net/newsblog/?p=241#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:59:29 +0000 LostOverThere http://cheesemedia.net/newsblog/?p=241 Today we’re mildly pleased to announce the release of a short, 3 minute film, Chicane.

With the bulk of the filming and editing completed in under 24 hours, Chicane tells the story of Nathan Wallner, and ASIO officer sent to assassinate a threat which has the ability to wipe out an entire nations sovereignty. Additional information relating to the film can be found on its official page which can be located here.

Although physical filters on cameras is slowly becoming marginally less common (sans filters such as depth of field) – with the advancement of Non-Linear Editors, more time is being spent in the editing suite rather then on location.

To this date, most consumer quality cameras fail quite hard at detecting light and displaying true colours well, this is especially true with Canon camera’s in particular. Although companies like JVC and Sony have really paved the way for rendering true colours, a filter can still make all the difference.

For instance, just check out the before and after screenshots below. The before shots all come straight from the rushes, whereas the after shots come from post-post production with colours and lightening modified to produce a more surreal look.

This first shot was taking with a $300 Canon consumer camera, certainly not the best, and terrible at reproducing colours. Yes, it looks bad, but notice as soon as a few filters are added, in addition to a nice big manual contrast and lighting modification, things start to really pick up. Suddenly the nice shot with bad lighting becomes a nice shot with quite decent lighting.

Now look at these shots, the main difference to the previous pictures is this was all shot with a JVC consumer camera, which are known for the excellent colour reproduction. Notice how the before shot starts off beautifully already, yet the filter just makes it all the more sweeter.

Finally, let’s finish off with a really ugly shot. Remember that filters can’t fix everything, but can do a great job at softening the damage.

In summary, don’t expect that you can film some dodgy footage and expect it to turn out well after chucking in a filter. What you can expect, however, is for your footage to be refined by using some nice filters, while manually adjusting all the basics such as light and contrast. But just remember what Werner Herzog says; If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!