I’ve done SIFF for six years straight, if I am doing my math right. After tonight’s experience, though, this year may be my last. One of the things that has really been bothering me in recent years, particularly after getting my own home theater is how mediocre the presentation of films has become at SIFF. Tonight was a really, really bad experience on all levels.

I still go to a lot of movies in commercial theaters, especially for the opening nights of blockbusters. I love the soundtrack of a audience’s reactions that you don’t get watching a movie at home. I love the big screen and thumping bass that would annoy the neightbors. Theaters offer a whole host of intangibles that a home theater just can’t match. So to, do film festivals. I love sitting in a cafe after a film and discussing it with other festival attendees, picking up trivia and recommendations.

I don’t like running all over town trying to get from theater to theater. I don’t like standing in the rain for an hour before a film just to get a seat. I don’t like having to watch the same pre-film SIFF promotion for 20 straight movies and here the non-sensical, incoherent remarks of the programmers prior to the films. Mostly, I don’t like the disrespect that SIFF gives its audience.

Today, I showed up to watch Henry of Navarre at The Neptune. This is an epic scope and length film with lush presentation, big battle scenes, sweeping vistas, lots of detailed sets and costumes. In short, it is exactly the type of movie that I still like to see in a real theater. After driving into Seattle, paying for parking, buying overpriced hot dogs and drinks and sitting down, the programmer informed us that the distributor sent them a cut that wouldn’t work on the venue’s projection system, and that instead we would be watching a DVD version. They offered to provide a film voucher if in the first 20 minutes of the film you couldn’t stand the quality. What they ended up showing was a poorly cropped DVD screener with huge watermarks in both upper hand corners, muted colors and blocky compression artifacts and poorly translated subtitles. The video looked like something you might stream via Real Player circa 1995. Needless to say, I took the voucher. What pisses me off is they waited till everyone was seated and had already paid for food to even present this option. The offering of a voucher instead of a straight refund also pisses me off. I paid cash for my ticket, to say nothing of being out gas money, parking & concession costs. Offering a voucher doesn’t affect their bottom line at all.

I receive daily marketing emails from SIFF. This is exactly the kind of information that could be provided in advance via email, a twitter feed, etc. They do have the emails of a good percentage of people purchasing tickets and a simple database lookup would give them the emails of a lot of people who had purchased tickets. It would be nice if they had spent one iota of effort to save me some time and money.

For the last couple festivals, I’ve encountered inconsiderately handled issues such as this at two or more screenings. Last year, I was at a screening during which the audio kept breaking up every couple minutes for 10-20 seconds at time, during which you couldn’t hear the dialogue. I fought for and got a refund, as none was pro-actively offered. I later spoke to someone who went to a later screening of the same film and reported the same issue and lack of consideration.

I don’t know where they got the video, but I’ve already found superior copies of it available online. As everyone but those involved in the industry seem to have grasped, the real reason illegal downloads are flourishing isn’t the free vs cost issue, it is that piracy offers a superior experience than what can be had legally. I am earnestly considering just scrapping SIFF next year and spending more quality time with Netflix streaming, Hulu, the several independent film channels I have on my dish, etc. This little infographic from Making Light sums up the issue quite nicely:

Here is my schedule for SIFF 2010. If you would like to join me for a movie, let me know. I have spares available for some films.

Hollywood fails yet again…

The futility of even the most byzantine copy protection schemes has been proven once again. For several days now, copies of the movie Avatar derived from a retail (region 2) DVD source have been circulating online. DVD copy protection has long been broken, but Blueray has been slightly (and only slightly) more resistant. Now, it appears that Slysoft, maker of the AnyDVD software blueray video player have updated their software to decode the latest Blueray encryption scheme, which appears to only be in use on a single title – Avatar. It is likely that the same source that leaked the retail DVD also has copies of the Blueray version of the film and it is likely that Blueray rips of Avatar will start appearing online as soon as this evening.

I’ve seen this pattern time and time again. Retail DVD/Blueray derived copies of movies will start showing up online sometimes as much as 2-4 weeks in advance of official store release dates. This is an aweful failure on the part of the entertainment industry. The copy protection schemes have proven a minimal deterent, so the next best thing they could do IMO is to ensure just-in-time delivery and manufacturing of physical media and to better track physical media through manufacturing and distribution channels. The entertainment industry really needs to take a page from Amazon, Dell, etc. and learn how to do just in time manufacturing and delivery and look to the example set by NGO’s and various relief organizations on end to end tracking systems that help prevent physical theft/graft issues by pinpointing dishonest individuals in the chain of responsibility.

To have a major title like Avatar show up more than two weeks in advance of store release is pure negligence.

I’ve been reading books electronically in one form or another since 1996 (on a USR Pilot 5000). Since then, I’ve owned ~8 devices on which I regularly read ebooks. Several of those devices have been dedicated, purpose built devices, ostensibly for reading ebooks and little else.

I currently do most of my electronic reading on a Sony PRS-505 with a Sony front light wedge/leather case accessory. I’ve been enacting a boycott on purchasing Sony products since the Sony Rootkit Debacle, but received the reader as a gift. Since receiving the Sony reader, Sony has released 3-4 new readers.

This year, it seems like hardly a day has passed when the tech news sites haven’t covered the release of a new reader product from some company or another. In some cases, this latest batch of e-ink readers represent 3rd, 4th or even 5th generation products. One would expect a pretty fine degree of design refinement from a 5th generation product, especially one devoted to such a singular task. Yet, virtually all the readers, announced or on the market today, fail to address 3 fundamental user experience issues. I seldom see these issues brought up to any great degree in product reviews, either. Yet, for me, these issues are key to enjoying an electronic reading experience:

1. An ebook reader should be comfortable to hold in one’s hand (notice the singular there) for an extended period of time and without risk of slipping or dropping the device due to positional fatigue, accidental jarring, etc. Virtually all the readers on the market are thin, rectangular shaped devices and are often made of slick plastic or metal that provides for an actively slippery surface when combined with sweaty palms. Additionally, the above should apply in both horizontal and vertical orientations for both right and left handed individuals.
2. Regardless of screen orientation, the next page/previous page buttons should lie under one’s thumbs. Simple turning of the page is by far the most frequently accessed function on any ebook reader. It should just be there without need to reach or place the reader in a stressful/uncomfortable position. The next page button in particular should be over-sized. A D-pad is not an acceptable substitute.
3. This last is going to be somewhat controversial. The vast majority of day to day recreational reading (novels and the like) is done in the evening and at night, often times in less than ideal lighting conditions, especially for those who share their beds with a partner. Ebook readers need to incorporate some form of front or back lighting into their designs or offer well integrated official lighting accessories. This is a somewhat unpalatable task with the current crop of E-ink displays, where adding front lighting generally consists of placing an edge lit piece of clear plastic in front of the display. Adding another layer in front of the display diminishes the clarity and contrast of the display. And the high contrast, paper-like nature of E-ink displays are a good part of the reason that ebook readers use this sort of display in the first place instead of LCD, OLED and other display technologies.

The only reader I’ve owned which has come close to satisfying these requirement was the Nuvomedia Rocket eBook.

This was one of the first electronic book readers sold and yet in many fundamental ways it was more enjoyable to use than devices made over a decade later in a far more mature & technologically advanced marketplace. It had an ergonomic, curvy wedge shape that was easy to cradle in the palm of one’s hand. Later versions of the device included a rubberized backside to make it even easier to grasp. The page up/down buttons were over-sized and comfortable to actuate without moving one’s hands in the portrait orientation for both right and left handed users and weren’t too bad in the horizontal orientation, either. The screen resolution doesn’t really compare to modern readers, but it was a high contrast B&W LCD and had decent back-lighting for night reading. Astoundingly, 10+ years later, a variant of this original device is still being sold as the eBookwise 1150 for ~$100. My personal experience with the later revisions of the Rocket eBook (post Gemstart acquisition) is that they used much lower quality displays, but I would be interested in opinions from more recent users.

In conclusion, I would really like for Sony/Amazon/B&N or SOMEBODY to make a comfortable to use ebook reader.

I recently learned that Coraline was going to be released this month and I hoped for a true 3d release. Unfortunately, the only announced options were either conventional 2d or Anaglyphic 3D (those cheesy red/blue glasses that moviegoers rightfully consigned to history’s trash heap back in the 1950′s). I saw Coraline in 3D in a theater using the excellent RealD 3D projection system. I felt the presentation really added something to the experience and can’t imagine watching Coraline in anything other than true 3d. It may be a while till such an excellent 3d system as RealD becomes practical for home users with budgets less than several hundred thousand dollars, but there are plenty of excellent 3d home theater options available for under 5 grand.

Here is a listing of 3d projector options at stereo3d.com. The DepthQ series of projectors from Infocus for instance supports high framerates and can be found for as little as $2300 and uses commonly available active LCD shutter glasses to achieve its effect.

Samsung has a line of DLP based 3D capable HDTV sets that all support 3D via shutter glasses starting at as little as $1000.

There are numerous 3D LCD monitors (some even sold through big box retailers like Frys) capable of displaying true 3d video, some without even needing glasses.

I have a Headplay Personal Cinema Display, which is available for around $400, and can display 3d content from several different input sources.

In short, the technology for quality home 3d viewing is out there and available at modest cost. There are a ton of 3d movies coming out this year in theaters including Pixar’s UP and James Cameron’s much anticipated Avatar. 3D has already shown it can help make movies on the front end without increasing production costs greatly, but movies have lately made a large percentage of their revenues on the post theater DVD market and I doubt nearly as many people will want to purchase watered down 2d version of movies they first saw in 3d. While not a lot of home theaters are currently 3d equipped, the cost to do so is fairly minimal and the additional costs of releasing a frame sequential 3d DVD alongside the 2d and Anaglyphic releases are likely minimal as well. It costs the studios little to grow the market by releasing frame sequential titles and the only way they are ever going to solve this chicken and the egg problem is by doing so.

I wish I could travel back in time like Kyle Reese, cause then I could travel back in time to 4 hours ago and prevent myself from paying $10 to see this dreck. I thought the series couldn’t get much worse after Terminator 3, but of course I was wrong.

Wrongness:

- Bryce Dallas Howard looked far too “made up” in virtually every scene. I’m sure battlefield doctors in the post apocalyptic wasteland of the future have a lot of time to arrange their hair, tweeze their eyebrows and apply lots of makeup. Even Moon Bloodgood, whose look in the film was comparatively natural looked far too fresh faced.

-Apparently, 40 foot tall robots that shake the earth with every step can none-the-less sneak up on a 7-11 gas station in the middle of nowhere without being seen or making a sound.

-Did we really need the 40 foot tall transforminator (as it has already been branded online) in the first place? Shoots motorcycles? Come on! I’ll take the slow unstoppable rumble of the skull crushing treads of the hunter killer tanks from the first movie to this transformer wannabee anyday.

- Really obvious product placement (i.e. long camera cuts of 7-11 gas station making sure the logo is nicely framed and focused). Oh, surprise of surprises Chrysler proves itself fiscally and morally bankrupt after using taxpayer money to do in movie advertising.

- Pointless, overblown chase scenes

- Moon Bloodgood’s character very gratuitously bares her torso to inspect a wound. She later snuggles up close to Marcus, but its okay as she is just doing it to “share his body heat.”

- Moon Bloodgood’s character lights a big bonfire yet Kyle Reese previously warned against going out at night as the hunter-seeker vehicles see in infra-red and humans are easily seen and make for easy prey at night.

- Excruciatingly bad dialog throughout such as when the Marcus character tells his passengers to “hold on” and then follows that up with another “hold on” as his next witty line. John Connor makes a bunch of speeches over the radio whose sole point seems to be to provide clip material for the trailer.

- Apparently Skynet, which operates a large array of giant radio dishes and communicates worldwide via radio with its robot minions just hasn’t been able to seem to find John Connors oh so secret large, obvious resistance airbase (from which he broadcasts his inspirational message via AM/FM radio) or a resistance submarine which coordinates the resistance via radio. Yet at the end of the film, Skynet blows the submarine out of the water by homing in on a radio signal.

- Skynet’s defenses have thus far proven impenetrable, and they even point that out a bunch of times in different ways, but a bunch of Vietnam era helicopters are able to swoop in at the end of the movie and rescue everyone.

- Skynet’s legion of radio controlled robots apparently need Apple-ish white computer displays and tactile interfaces to interact with door mechanisms and the like. John Connor can hack the weakly godlike entity that is skynet by plugging in one of his several EMP proof Sony computers (yet more product placement) and type the word “overide”

- Marcus has a chip in the back of his head to control him, but is able to casually reach in and grab it in full view of Skynet without Skynet even attempting to invoke it. Said chip is apparently external to his metal skull, but interfaced deeply into his nervous system. Seems an obvious design defect to me. Ripping it out doesn’t seem to leave Marcus any the worse for wear.

- Just how many times can John Connor be thrown into metal industrial equipment (leaving dents) and over railings by the unsurprising cameo CG reincarnation of Arnold without dying? How many ribs can a human being break? Part of the scariness of the Terminators was that they were chromed death. If they managed to catch up to you and get a hand on you, you were dead, period. John Connor going 10 rounds with one of the things just saps all the scariness out of the things.

- How many times can JC survive a helicopter crash in one movie? I lost count.

- Lots and lots of other wrongness. Too much for me to express. I’m going to go puke now.

I sure hope Terminator Salvation proves to be forgettable with time. If it is remembered for nothing else, it at least brought us the now infamous Christian Bale Rant.

I got to the SIFF box office today and got my tickets for SIFF 2009. I will be seeing a record (for me) 23 movies as part of SIFF. I will probably also see the new Terminator movie right before my festival starts, making for one movie packed month. I am posting my schedule below for the benefit of any of my friends who would like to join me for films. You can find a synopsis and sometimes a trailer for each of the films and can purchase tickets online, at one of the festival box offices or at the theater on the day of screening. Additionally, I have a couple free tickets available for The Yes Men Fix the World, We Live in Public, Moon and Final Arrangements, so get in touch with me if you want one of the freebies.

One of the few real downsides to digital SLR cameras versus their film brethren is getting dust on the sensor. With a film camera, each new exposure yields a fresh “sensor,” but over time with a digital SLR, dust which gets into the camera frame during lens swaps can coat the sensor (technically the IR filter over the actual sensor). At larger lens apertures, dust on the sensor generally can’t be seen, but at small apertures against a fairly consistent bright background, you can really see it. I shoot a fair number of panoramas with my Nikon D80 and often see repeated spot patterns on the source images. One can clean these sorts of problems up in Photoshop, but it greatly increases the amount of time spent in post-processing.

For most cases of dust on the sensor, I have simply used the mirror lockup mode on my camera to reveal the sensor and then used an oversize rubber air bulb to blow the dust off the sensor. Mine is this one made by Giottos, but these are a dime a dozen. It does the job most of the time with a minimum expenditure of effort.

For more stubborn dust, I eventually added a sensor brush from Visible Dust and a SpeckGRABBER.

Recently, I encountered some dust that had “welded” itself to the sensor and wouldn’t come off with any of the above methods. Welded dust is probably usually the result of some sort of particle that is wet when it makes contact and dries hard to the sensor. To get it off, you need to use a “wet” cleaning method. The favored method seems to be a few drops of Methanol on a very fine cloth attached to the end of what amounts to a miniature squeegee the width of your particular cameras sensor. A number of companies sell wet cleaning kits. I got one from Photographic Solutions for $20 for 4 pre-wetted swabs. I was hoping that just one swab would be enough and I could keep the others in my camera bag for emergency in-the-field use. I ended up needing to use all four swabs in the kit to get the majority of welded dust off my sensor. Is this a good value? I would probably buy my swabs and Methanol separate in the future. On the other hand, the cheapest wet cleaning I found in the Seattle area was at Cameras West for ~$60

Here are some before and after pics to show the difference. The pictures were taken at f/16 and are of a relatively undifferentiated target (my projector’s screen).

Before cleaning:

After cleaning:

The TRC and I went to Atlanta for the FIRST Robotics International Championship Event. We didn’t win anything, but had fun. Here are the pictures. If you have TRC pictures from the event, let me know so I can add them to my TRC Media Archive.

I’ve had the chance to watch two movies in 3d recently using different projection technologies. The most recent was a showing of Monsters vs Aliens at the Imax at the Pacific Science Center using the older dual projector / linear polarization technique. The other was a showing of Coraline at a theater in Renton using the new single projector / circular polarization technique known as RealD.

The old linear polarization technique has a lot of problems associated with it. It relies on dual projectors that have to be kept in sync and carefully aligned on the screen. If you tilt your head at all during the movie the image blurs. It is quite difficult to keep one’s head perfectly still for the duration of a feature film and one develops a bit of a stiff neck in the attempt. Also, on occasion I would pick up a slight bit of a ghost double image. I am not sure if this was a result of sitting extremely off-axis at the Imax or what, but I found it distracting.

RealD, on the other hand, suffers from none of these problems. RealD uses a single, normal digital projector with a special LCD plate placed in front of the projector optics which circularly polarizes a frame with either a clockwise or counterclockwise twist depending on the eye a given image is meant to reach. Because this system relies on only a single projector, which most theaters are deploying for advertising purposes anyways, it is far more practical than two projector systems and as a result is being widely implemented. I did an informal survey and it appears that there are 6-7 theaters in the Seattle area which are 3d capable at this time.

I enjoyed watching both movies, but definitely found RealD to be the superior experience. I never found myself distracted by aspects of the projection technology with RealD and could just focus on enjoying the film. There are a ton of movies coming out in 3d this year. I am especially looking forward to James Cameron’s film Avatar. James Cameron has been behind some of the more notable special effects films of the last couple decades including Terminator 1 and 2, The Abyss and Titanic. The release of Avatar has been delayed till December at least in part to allow more time for theaters to get their RealD systems in place.

3D technologies for film have been around for literally generations at this point, but RealD is the first system that seems truly compelling and practical to implement. I hope we have finally seen the end of the old Red/Blue glasses!