Kopieër de link van YouTube, plak deze in de balk op de website en druk op Download. Je moet Java geïnstalleerd hebben, dat kun je hier downloaden.

Je krijgt dan een lijst met mogelijke downloads die er zo uit ziet:

De getallen achter de download links staan voor de resolutie van de video. Hoe hoger het getal, hoe beter de kwaliteit.

Een alternatief is om een bookmark te maken van deze code:

javascript:void((function(){ var e=document.createElement(‘script’); e.setAttribute(‘type’,'text/javascript’); e.setAttribute(‘src’,’http://clipnabber.com/scripts/bookmarklet.js’); document.body.appendChild(e) })())

Als je een Youtube video aan het bekijken bent en dan op de bookmark klikt, word je direct doorgestuurd naar een download pagina voor de video.

Let me put it like so. This school has damaged my views on the educational system.

And that is not an exaggeration, that is how bad it was. I do not feel I have wasted 4 years of my life, quite the contrary, I just wonder how much more productive they could have been.

Things have improved on the years that followed mine, I can see that. For me and my class they were always empty promises of improvement on the years following though.

I do not know if film school is obsolete, it might be. It is an ongoing topic that often inspires many interesting discussions between me and my fellow video or film professionals. My personal experiences say that schools have huge problems keeping up with new technologies. The most important thing that no school can teach you in the end is to be creative, and dedicated. This is so obvious it’s painful, I know, but damned if it isn’t true.

Okay, sudden unplanned rant on the education system is now over.

With the impending graduation and subsequent unemployedness, I am forced to think about what it is that I actually do want to do. My first thought is to start freelancing, doing the kind of production work I did and enjoyed doing in Sydney, at least for a while. If a decent opportunity of employment comes along I might take it. It might be abroad, I’m not set on staying in The Netherlands all my life.

I made a short film for my graduation. It took me about 3.5 months of full time work. It is a visual effects loaded 11 minute experiment that involves airplanes, explosions and my sister and neighbor as primary actors. It might involve killer robots and nukes at some point. I think I can make some further improvements on the storyline, which is the only reason it’s not online for the world to see yet. I would post a trailer but not really because it is only 11 minutes long and that would totally ruin it.

Those are just my ramblings for today.

Here’s a video of me landing above airplane!

My life has made a full 180 degree turn this year, in many ways I feel like a different person altogether. From simple things like enjoying a larger diversity of foods to the way I talk to and deal with people.

The most important lesson I’ve learned this year, the one thing that keeps coming back to me again and again: it is important to be surrounded by people that are creative and like minded. These can be the people you work with or your friends. They can not be the kind of person that gives up easily, loses interest quickly or has no focus. They must love what they do unconditionally. To these people being awake until the early morning hours because they’re working on a project and enjoying it is a regular occurance. I sat down recently with a good friend and he described these people as ‘animals’. Finding them is real hard and the only way to really know if somebody is one is to work with them. There is one thing a lot of them have in common: they tend to drink a lot of coffee.

That’s it for now. Tomorrow I fly, with great reluctance but also somewhat eager to get it over with. Counting down for months sucks.

The Rocks is one of the oldest areas in Sydney, located between the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. It is an area filled with, what Australians consider to be, old architecture. Of course for most Europeans this looks like an ordinary city street, but it’s still an area that is pleasant to the eye. Every Friday night there is a small market, with some food and music. An opportunity for some snaps!

They had poffertjes! I’ve never liked them so I didn’t have any.

This guy was not happy.

There is a national park about an hours drive from Sydney. Hidden in that park is the most beautiful coastal walk I’ve ever walked. Now, granted, I haven’t done much coastal walks in my life. Actually, this was my first coastal walk. I’m not much of an outdoor activity person either. For as far as coastal walks go however, I’m pretty sure this one is awesome.

There are several massive cliffs hanging over the sea, eroded away over many millennia.

When you stand on one of those cliffs, you can feel the sea bashing into the rocks underneath.

Half an hour into the walk, there is a large clearing, with a small stream and waterfall.

An hour into the walk there is a wonderful hidden beach, with large dunes behind it, a very steep sand hill and suddenly – a lake.

When you see someone standing at the edge of this sand hill, it is like they are standing at the edge of the world. We had a lot of fun jumping down onto the edge of this hill.

And then throwing rocks and sand into the water with a 1/8000th of a
second shutter speed (very fast).

This is the dune we had lunch on:

This is the Sydney Skyline as viewed on the way back. From where this photo was taken to the tallest building in that photo (Sydney Centerpoint Tower) was about 27km.

Can you believe I have to cope with this stuff? : )

Next up for improvement is probably the sidebar itself, it looks like crap at the moment.

Update: Oops, looks like it’s not actually showing Sydney time! Further investigation is necessary…

Update 2: All done, now displaying proper Sydney time!

Turns out the position is for a low budget feature film in it’s final stages of post-production. I met with them that week and after an interview, they decided to get me on a number of other tasks as well. One of those includes a polish edit of the movie.

Over the last few weeks I have begun correcting small mistakes, continuity errors and general polishing of the 90 minute movie. In that process, which is suprisingly time consuming, I have to go through a lot of footage to find new shots with which I can replace shots in the movie. There was one scene in particular where I had all sorts of ideas on what to do with the scene after spending some time going through footage for it. I made my pitch to the director and he agreed to let me recut the scene from scratch. Which I did, and it was screened to the rest of the team in a cinema last weekend. That was totally awesome and an eye opening experience in every way. Seeing my work on a massive screen like that was amazing.

The team liked the recut so much they want to get me recutting other scenes in the movie as well. I’m getting along well with the director and the rest of the team, who are all very friendly and professional people. What makes the whole project so beautiful is that everyone is genuinely working towards a common goal, which is to make a great movie. Working late nights and having fun is a part of the job. Which really isn’t a job. It’s just what we do.

As a friend of mine reminded me off just the other day, there is a movie you write, there is a movie you shoot, and there is a movie you edit. The audience will only see the latter so what is done with the first two really does not matter to them. What is so cool about editing a movie is to dive into how audiences will first perceive the cuts you make.

Working in an environment where so much data has to be continually organised is very interesting as well. It’s given me a lot of ideas on how to undertake the data management of a project on this scale for future endeavours.

Last Thursday, during a meeting with the sound team, it was decided that the film in it’s entirety needs to be locked by Monday next week. That means a picture lock, no more editing. There will be some placeholder shots for graphics and visual effects, with enough timing information for the sound team to create a realistic soundscape for the movie, but the storyline in theory should be complete at that point. With that in mind, we did a pickup shoot this week (with 6 days to go!!!) to correct some gaps in the storyline. It wasn’t a minor shoot either, the scene involves a key plot point and had to be perfect. It took us all night, and we didn’t get back until 6am. The sun rose as I was driving home accross the harbour bridge.

Shooting at this stage in a production is, well, a perfect recepy for chaos and missed deadlines. My job in the whole process, editing, is the most intense of all right now. I’m only travelling home every other day. I sleep on the office couch some nights, other nights I don’t sleep at all. It’ll be like that until Monday, at which point I’m taking a few days off to rest. But the end result is worth it, that’s all that matters.

I will discuss with the team if it’s possible to post some behind the scenes videos here.

In the background is my dinner for tomorrow, ready to be refrigerated.

Anyone interested in knowing what caused this change to come to pass, please contact me directly.

To aid in finding a new job, I did some work updating my website and showreel. I’ve updated the list of projects on my website as well, adding a lot of the projects I’ve worked on over the last 7 months.

In the meantime, I try to keep myself occupied by taking on various other projects. The speed of my laptop is slightly limiting in that, it’s not sufficient for any intense video editing or graphics work. So I’ve been working on improving a web system that allows me to easily preview work in progress videos to my clients using vimeo and a passworded login. Here’s a screenshot of the admin area: