FBI Visits ISI? A little bit of Boston in Vancouver

Gastown’s a pretty popular area to find lights and sets of tv shows and movies shooting in Vancouver.

This morning I noticed more cars than usual parked outside the ISI building.
I snapped some photos with Jennifer in the afternoon of some props and vehicles for I assume a shoot for the tv show Fringe.

Jan 22, 2010 | Work | 1 Comment »

Livin’ it up in 3D for a day

I didn’t want to miss the final week of the “Wild Ocean 3D” IMAX performance, so I dragged Travis to downtown Vancouver for an afternoon viewing at Canada Place.

The only way I am able to drag Travis to a movie theatre is if there is a movie playing currently that he cannot replicate the sheer quality in high definition or surround sound with his home theatre system.

I agree in some aspects of being “anti-movie” theatre:

- Can’t choose your seats (unless you’re willing to come early)
- No pausing in movie (risk missing a crucial part of a movie for a “potty break”)
- Can’t laugh out loud (unless you laugh on cue with everyone else, or else you’ll be that weirdo who laughs too early or too late.)

Hm, I guess there are not many good reasons to leave the comfortable setup of your own living room.
However, after our home 3D-movie-viewing fiasco a few months ago (we didn’t get quite the same effect by buying the 3D version of Polar Express with the included glasses), we return to the outside world to watch three, 3D movies on a slow Monday.

First up: Wild Ocean 3D

This was the main reason for going to the IMAX theatre in Canada place, because the last showing was on April 9th, 2009.

I think there were about less than a dozen people at this 3PM showing of Wild Ocean 3D.
I loved how they told the story of Man VS Nature.
Well, the focus seemed to be more on the sardines off the coast of Southern Africa.
So I guess it was Sardines VS Every-other-animal-in-the-food-chain VS Man.

It was so cool to see the crazy sardine run, with people running from the shore with crates and crates of sardines, and under water with all the creatures hunting to eat the sardines.

The ugliest creature I have ever seen move under water- Cape Gannets. The most ungraceful creature underwater, yet when they’re diving from the air, it’s such an astonishing site and such a strange sound experience. It felt like I was watching a war movie, with water animals.

Next: IMAX Under the Sea 3D

Do you think Walt Disney has brainwashed me completely?
Every time I hear the words “Under the Sea”, I picture that crab orchestrating sea creatures playing “Under the sea, under the sea…”

Anyways, quick break and we went back into IMAX to watch another 3D flick, this time narrated by Jim Carrey. (Sorry ladies, this edition was not narrated by heart-throb Johnny Depp.)

Travis and I were glad to have seen Wild Ocean 3D first, Under the Sea was so much more bright and colourful. For the promo, he yelled “Holy F*ck” when one of featured creatures snapped out and grabbed lunch. Just remember, there are likely going to be children with their families around, especially with summer break coming really soon….

For some odd reason, we thought perhaps they “layered” and retouched Under the Sea for 3D viewing differently. A lot of elements seemed to pop out at us more.

Before the movie, I viewed sea turtles to be such gentle and slow creatures…
I was such in shock to see one eat a jelly fish ever so slowly.
Ow, that poor jelly fish.

Last: Monsters VS Aliens

(warning: make sure your system sound is down low when you visit the site)

Yay!
We squeezed three 3D movies in one day.
Technically, two viewings in the afternoon, a walk around downtown, and raced to Richmond to view the last showing of Monsters VS Aliens in 3D around 10PM.

We watched the “behind the scenes” promo on TV about a couple weeks ago, so I was so stoked to go see Monsters VS Aliens.  

Okay, maybe it was also because of the star power behind it.
Who doesn’t want to go see a movie featuring the voices of Reese Witherspoon (tooooo many movies to mention… sadly Legally Blonde is the first that comes to mind), Seth Rogen (Knocked Up and others), Hugh Laurie (House), Will Arnett (Arrested Development), Kiefer Sutherland (24), Rainn Wilson (The Office), Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report), and Paul Rudd (I Love you, Man).

Could you tell I liked it?
I broke the rule of not giggling out loud… too hard.

Travis rolled his eyes when we left the movie.
Gee- I’m just THAT INTO puns.
: )

Luckily there were just a few people, like around ten of us in the theatre.
We thought there would be more people, who knows whether there were more people in the other “viewing” areas: regular, digital, IMAX, and Digital projection 3D.

For those wondering what were the differences between the types of viewings:

Regular viewing: costs regular ($11.95), looks regular. Sometimes I’d rather wait to see movies on DVDs so I can see extra behind the scenes stuff.
Digital viewing: costs a little more… depending. Again, I’d rather wait.
IMAX VS Digital Projection for 3D: Apparently, IMAX is a much larger screen in height so you would feel like you’re IN the movie, and Digital projection offers the viewer a much more crisper experience. It’s about a couple dollars difference (IMAX was around $14, where Digital 3d).

I like watching all three of the movies.
The way the promo hyped up the Monsters VS Aliens movie made us expect the 3D viewing to be such a mind blowing experience.

Travis summed up what we both thought about Monsters VS Aliens:
“Maybe we shouldn’t have gone to watch the real-life showings of animals in 3D first.
MVA was good, but I couldn’t really buy into the whole experience because this is an animated flick.”

Until consumers have the ability to install and setup their own quality 3D home theatre experiences, in the meanwhile it’s fun to go out once in awhile to check out the latest in the theatres.

Apr 10, 2009 | Concerts & Fun | 7 Comments »

Convergence at MoMoVan 02-09-2009

Tonight was a gathering of various individuals and professionals of the local web 2.0 and mobile community.

Cathy and I thanked Kurt Shuster, of Noomii.com, for letting us come along with him to MomoVan Mobile  Monday Vancouver tonight at Workspace in Gastown.

Being aware of Vancouver’s many content and technology industries, Kurt was very surprised to learn that I am interested local web development community because he first met me as tester for Noomii.com

Yes, the majority of my work is digital video editing and image retouching.
However, I am familiar with various industries and their operations.

For many years as I was independently editing videos, I was always for other creative professional opportunities. I talked to many professionals that worked amongst the gaming, animation, and television industries over that period of time, and currently still do today.

I took part-time television production courses, because I wanted to go through the full-time television production program at BCIT a few years ago. At the time, I was finding that there were (and probably still are) more graduates than jobs available in television production. I became more attracted to the independent, creative and collaborative vibe of the web development community, thus I switched over to study full-time with New Media Design and Development program.

A panel discussion touched upon how different our major content and technology industries are in Vancouver. There are web design and development, film and television, animation, gaming and mobile industries that make up the the content and technology sectors of business in the Vancouver area.

There was a comment made about why it’s so difficult to have all these communities come together by using the latest social web and mobile technology to connect.

Why is it so hard?

I agreed with Rochelle Grayson, of Work at Play, who said that it’s because the people involved in the other industries can be “intimidated” by new social and web technology. The idea of giving away content (IP, or as known as Intellectual property) away for free does not settle well with many. Businesses in TV, film, and animation industries do not like the fact that there has not been a new monetizing business model for the web that generates a lot of revenue that “really works” at this moment in time.

Plus, being involved within a particular industry means one is comfortable with its language or as I call it, industry jargon.

At times, some clients approach her with a great idea for an application, game, or campaign for the mobile phone. When she asks, “Which mobile device do you want us to develop it for?”
Most of the clients reply, “What do you mean?”

We all laughed, because in truth there are thousands of different phones on the market and of course, are not built the same way. Which means to develop a product for the Blackberry, it won’t work on an iPhone, or any other device because it will have to be developed for that particular phone.

When I was younger, I always got the look and comments of disbelief from elder Asian strangers when I did not respond to their comments in Chinese. At times, I did feel shameful that I did not speak Mandarin or Cantonese fluently as my family did. I tried to learn “proper” Mandarin during after-school classes in elementary school. How can anyone really expect someone to pick up a language if there is no immediate need, yearning or positive reinforcement to learn the language?

The majority of the business world communicates in English.
Today, I have mastered (or at least understand) the non-traditional “languages” amongst the web development, television, film production, digital video, and animation industries.

Back to our goodbye to Kurt Shuster-
Kurt wished that “back when he was our age” that he knew about these different opportunities and be able to go out to different networking events such as tonight’s MoMoVan. I said it’s probably the fact that information these days is very accessible so anyone could find almost information on anything they wanted compared to a few years ago.

After we said goodbye, I thought about an acquaintance, who was in her early 30s, who I chatted with at our friend’s birthday party last year. She asked me what did I do for a living, and I said “mostly video editing but I also do image retouching and some web design.”

“Wow, you do so much and you’re so young! I wish I was like that when I was younger…
It’s funny how my mother was doing office work for 25 years, and right now she’s basically doing similar things like you. She’s 54 now, and she has been coding websites for the past couple years.  She picked up on that real fast.”

I believe why let age be an excuse?
If you set your mind to it, there’s no stopping you from accomplishing anything you want.

Feb 10, 2009 | Events, Work, business | Leave A Comment »

Helvetica the Film on iTunes

Helvetica may seem just “plain” to the regular eye.

But this typeface is applied in many different situations and places.

Celebrated its 50th anniversary, “Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.”

If you missed the documentary screenings in Vancouver back in August last year (they were quickly sold out), now you have a chance to have it on your iPod and your iTunes library.

Well… unfortunately just for US iTunes users as noted on the graphic link on their site.
Sigh, wasn’t Helvetica screened internationally?

Will they make the digital download available in iTunes in all countries?
Just like the iPhone, looks like us Canadians have to wait.

Jul 17, 2008 | Events | Leave A Comment »