Saturday, November 28, 2009

Memento Redux

As you can see from my last post, I'm on drugs, and have lots of time on my hand (my other one is in a sling). So I decided to get to one of my projects: editing a movie difficult to enjoy -- Memento. The funny thing is, Redbox was briefly offering it, so I rented it. The movie comprises a series of color scenes displayed in reverse chronological order, seperated by black and white scenes that are in forward chronological order, which provide background information in to the main character Leonard Shelby, an ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories, as he attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. This cinematic presentation leaves the viewer feeling like Leonard does -- unable to form new memories, and therefore, unable to understand the story line.


04/06 Movie Trailer Project: Memento

Hoffman | MySpace Video


So, G-man has to save his sanity. Over the course of two days, I clipped out mpeg sections using avidemux. I had to set the frame rate to 24 fps, and change the sound to 2 channel stereo, using the lavc ac3 codec. I adjusted the audio skew for each clip, to ensure perfect synchronization. I then transcoded each mpeg clip using Mobile media converter (which uses an ffmpeg backend) to high quality avi. One clip in the beginning was flimed backwards (where Teddy gets shot in the head), so I used avidemux to seperate the audio from the video. I took the audio clip and converted it to wav format, then used Microsloth's sound recorder to reverse the playback. I filtered the video to reverse, then remuxed using avidemux, and coverted the merged clip to avi again. Then I appended each clip in chrono order, editing the transitions, and added the credits and title back. This melded into the completed movie.

If you would like to view it with me, come over and we can watch it over a bowl of popcorn. Or send me your email address in the comments, and I will work out an arrangement to satisfy the fair use provisions of the copyright law.

Best regards,

G-man

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Broken Shoulder

I broke my shoulder Labor Day weekend water skiing. It was much worse than they could see on MRI. I tore almost all the cartilage off the ball, tore the front and back of my labrum away from the bone, and frayed my bicep tendon too. They took out the chunks from my joint, reattached labrum (socket) and punctured my upper arm bone to help stimulate new cartilage growth.



It may be a long recovery -- I probably won't be back in to the office until Tuesday, December 1st.‬‪ Good thing I have health insurance and a job.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Health Insurance

Today, as I was not busy, I decided to see whether I should shop for private health insurance, or stick with the crappy insurance offered to me by my firm. I pay about a grand a month in premiums. So I found an article linked by the title of this article. Therein is a website mentioned in the article, which is like a priceline for health insurance.  The really interesting thing is changing your zipcode to other states, and seeing how expensive New York is.‬

I think I'm sticking with my firm's crappy group policy.