Thanksgiving events - Clear!

Hi guys, Shawn here.

 Yet another week has flown by quickly. Another few days of ChristmaSing work in the studio before the highlight of the week happened again, the Thanksgiving dinners.

We had to do three of them because they were all done in different languages. The Cantonese and English dinners were held on Saturday and Sunday respectively, and I took up different roles for each.

During the Cantonese Thanksgiving dinner I took up the role of the camera operator and brought the audience close-up shots so that everyone in the room could see what was happening on stage. Image magnification, in short. There were 72 tables that night, so many that some who attended the dinner had to be moved to a different room where the programme was streamed down to them.

And then I took up the role of a lighting technician the next day. Alex gave me a quick crash course on how the board worked. I picked up it up pretty quickly. Lighting boards I used back in my secondary school days were all non-digital, and this board is no different, just much bigger with much more sliders. I eventually found out that the board has been around since the 1970s and still works well.

The lightboard that has been around since the 1970s

The big teardown happened right after the English Thanksgiving Dinner was over, and I must say, it was the fastest teardown I've ever seen. Maybe because there were so many helpers around. We ended up back in our apartment an hour earlier than expected.

On one of the weeknights we had the opportunity to attend SF Cutters, an editing community in San Francisco that holds regular gatherings discussing various topics. It was held in the Adobe building itself. Presentations were informative, with Adobe's product manager introducing new features that were released with the new update for Adobe Creative Cloud.

We were taken to a quiet dessert place for supper, called Tart to Tart. Desserts here generally taste much richer than what we have back in Singapore. As I recall the tastes of desserts I've tasted back home, especially the cakes, mostly flour, maybe a hint of chocolate. The ones here are generous with their toppings and flavour. We take care not to have too much of them, because it's very easy to get... sick of the taste..? Quite like Krispy Kreme donuts, the sweetness gets to us after having a few, though we wouldnt mind going back for some occasionally.

Chocolate Cheesecake

In between working in the studio and preparing for the Thanksgiving dinners, I've had time to experiment with some photography techniques. This week's full of them, a timelapse, star trail photography, multiplication of the same subject in a single photo, etc etc. I guess my creative juices are finally beginning to flow here, after nearly one and a half months. Ideas keep coming in, sometimes to the point of great distraction. Gotta keep penning them down to get them out of my head, and execute them when I have the opportunity.

Part of the Gemini Constellation with Jupiter

Jupiter and the Moon

Orion Constellation

Star trails

This week's gonna see Black Friday and Cyber Monday on the following week, everyone's going online to see if there's anything that interests them. Alex mentioned to me that work-wise, things are going to start picking up really soon for Christmas too. Getting ready for the big production.

Alright, probably one of the shortest posts I've made (but there's lots of photos). But don't worry, more to come in the following weeks :)

Signing off.

Week 4

Hello! I'm gonna recap Week4 now.(:

That weekend, we helped to take down the old lights the church have been using for 2 decades or so. & replaced them with the new LED lights the Mass Media department bought!

We setup scaffolds etc to help us to reach the heights of the lights!

I also climbed up to the "rooftop of the stage" i don't know what this place is called, I'm sorry. Basically, its where they hang the lights from. I helped to get the old lights out and cleaned them together with Shawn & Kenneth.

On Sunday, we were finally down to operate the cameras.
After service, we went to In&Out Burger for lunch. The freshest burger joint because they only make the burgers when you order them.

Then Harry dropped us off somewhere at Missions Street area as Kenneth wanted to get a bag. Took a walk around and found this lovely graffiti street!

Full of cultural everywhere.(;

Monday was Veteran's Day, a PH in America so we got our off too!
It was a day for fun!
We went go karting, super fun though! Except that I got into a minor accident. Super AA(attract attention) haha. Oh wells, memories I'll look back on when I leave this place! (Talking bout which, we only have 2 more months to go..Noooo:( )

Mandatory group shot.
The guys were crazy good go karters btw! Haha
Oh, boss went with us too!
& Korean food for our late lunch & early dinner!

Yummmmmss
(idk why the photo's rotated when uploaded!)
& Thats about it for Week4!(:

Week 3

This is actually Week 5 here, so I'm kinda backlogging my entries. But hopefully, I'm still able to recap the previous weeks here interestingly!

Week 3
On Friday, as Wind & Kenneth were still busy trying to finish the storyboard for our Thanksgiving film, Shawn & myself pack up the equipments, went over to the huge grip shop with Harry to pick up certain requirements he rented for the shoot. Such as a doorway dolley etc. & we packed everything into Harry's car. Haha.

It was quite funny though, stuffing everything in, & Harry says that this is not the full capacity his car can take yet! Haha
We also setup the green screen for Christmassing Shoot on Sunday. Yes we have a busy weekend ahead with 2 shoots. Haha.
Saturday came and I was the camera operator for the film. It was a little intimidating and nerve wrecking as the only camera experience I had was during live events, in which I handled a still camera for like minutes only. Still, the shoot went well and we managed to finished so many pre planned shots in one day. It was amazing, cause even though we knew we only had one day to shoot, in the back of our heads, everyone thought it was impossible to finish it. Only God.(:


The more difficult part of the shoot as a cam op for me was the shot where I was sitting in Harry's car and as he drives, I have to shoot the car that was passing by. I had to balance the weight of the camera and also ensure that my shots were stable enough as the car was moving.
Looking back, I definitely could had been more efficient and though to be honest, I'm not the best camera operator around, I'm so thankful that the crew was so nice and gracious with me.(:

My first time on a dolley operating the camera!

Sunday came, and this time round, I was the vision mixer for the service. It was a fairly easy job but I still need to familiarise myself with the other functions of the Tricaster.

The other guys in their respective roles.

We also had our first Christmassing shoot in our studio that Sunday.

I mainly was the person in charged of controlling the speed of the teleprompter.
Shoot took longer than expected as we needed to make sure the Tricaster could key out the green perfectly and lighting was good etc.

& don't worry, we are not overworked or anything. Haha. Monday came our off day and we rested before starting on our next project. Half of us worked on the Thanksgiving video(which is titled Thankfullness) and the other half of us worked on the Christmas video. I'm doing the graphics for the Christmas video.

&random snippets(will title it RS in future posts haha), we watched Gravity in 3D this week too!
The movie was sick. Haha. I really enjoyed it.
Okey done with Week3!(:

Week 2

Hello!
So for Week2, we did quite a few stuff.
We went out to record and create folleys  for the Thanksgiving film.
& on Sunday,  I did the remote control camera for Service It was quite a new experience for me as I've never controlled a camera in this way. (You can control 3 cameras from this!)

& then we had Burger Meister for lunch(from the locals, they feel that this is one of the better burger joints.)

& the first time I've had milktea since I've been here!
Ah, how I miss my milktea..Haha anyway back to the week.
In the following weekdays, we shot Pastor Crook's message for Harvestfest.
I was the camera operator together with Kenneth.
That night we went to Harry's house to shoot the backgound plate for Pastor Crook's message.

& also, you have a whole building of Krispy Kreme here! Haha. Harry bought us one dozen. Thankyou Boss again!
& random snippets, we also had Five Guys!

I spend the whole next day editing Pastor Crook's message & compositing the background video in.
This was not as easy as I expected it to be as I had some difficulty syncing the video and audio perfectly.
We also had another Mass Media meeting that night to gather more ideas and refine the script for our Thanksgiving short film.

The next day was Harvestfest. In the morning, it was Christian Heritage Day for the kids in school.
They had a parade at the front of the school and we helped to setup speakers and the sound system for the parade.

That afternoon Shawn & myself worked on the Thanksgiving script, final editing, refinements etc. & I did the formatting for the script.
Wind & Kenneth worked on the storyboard for the film.
We also tested the videos that will be shown during Harvestfest later at night and Pastor Crook's message was very out of sync on the big screen, more so than when we previewed on our computers, not sure if it was the player problem or what. But I was a little disappointed that we were not able to show a perfectly synced video during the event.
At night it was the Harvestfest event, we rotated duties as a pair. I did the lighting, switches and Wind was in the soundbooth.

We also had time to sightsee this week.
Harry brought us to see the Palace Of Fine Arts, the famed Golden Gate Bridge and  Muir Woods.

Harry also taught us how to use the public transports to head Downtown.

Why the faces? Haha. We were at a Game store and Shawn & Kennth were off wandering through the stores and we were waiting for them.

There, the happy guys coming up.

The really pretty interior of a Disney store! (Sorry for the moving woman in the shot.) haha

We also went to the highly raved about Cheesecake Factory for dinner

Some of us were not able to finish our portions(as usual), but looks like we will be able to in time to come as our appetites are generally getting bigger in our 5th week now. Opps. Haha

& random snippets, we also had Five Guys for one of our lunches. I personally feel that this is the best burger+fries I've had so far in the States.(:

Okay, that's about it for Week2!

Continued...

Hello everybody. Wind here.
This is my second post.................................................okay.

This is already my 5th week here in San Francisco! And my last post was until week 2. So now I'm gonna share with you guys what I've done for the pass 2 weeks(till week 4).

In my precious post, I'd mention about a second project called "Thankfullness" AND YEAH WE'VE COMPLETED IT! haha! For this project, I was the storyboard artist and DP. It felt like i'm doing my Final Year Project all over again, but at a tighter deadline and with more manpower. The deadline was so tight that we need to complete 76 shots (around 100 takes) in one day. Everyone was sooooo tired after the shoot. Zzzzz

Then the next day we have a shoot for another project for Chirstmas Sing 2013. The shoot was held in our Green screen studio. So thankfully we didn't have to travel. So yeah, we survived the two days straight of shootings~

After that we went on to post production for both the Christmas Sing and Thankfullness projects. But I was more focused on the Christmas Sing project. For the whole of week 3 I was working on the weather map that is needed for the Chirstmas Sing video. And also the rest of the graphics. I tried to do some animations so that I can have drafts to show.

On the Friday of week 3, We went to set up stage lighting. We took down quite a number of old lights and put up the new LED lights. Pictures coming up to show us doing work.

On week 4, other than continuing my weather map graphics and editing Christmas sing project. We also did a stage set up in the Cafetorium for our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night.

And on 18th NOV is our KENNETH BIRTHDAY! HAPPEE BURFDAE! Haha! We went to Alcatraz to celebrate his dinner and watched Thor- The Dark World at night.

And now photo time..

Thankfullness Shoot.

Whenever we shoot outdoors.... IT'S COLD!

green screen shoot.

 Setting up teleprompter.

Yeah, fooling around on the scaffold while setting up stage lighting~

This is me on top of the ceiling. Feeling so "Phantom of the opera"~

ALCATRAZ

Hehe.

I guess that's pretty much of the last two weeks.
See ya! 

Windz.