Video

Hello Tokyo's had a facelift, new voiceovers and some updated details. I ended up doing the voiceovers for the transportation section while I was still stuffy. I did my best, but my voice sounds a little strange.

If you'd like to see it, all 11 minutes are available now for free via Google Video:

Despite a few remaining flaws, I premiered it to an audience of 48 newcomers at Tokyo Here and Now this morning, followed by a presentation about some other basic Tokyo bits and bobs, and a long Q & A session. The fun thing about presenting such a general topic is that I always learn something. Did you know that there's a dog taxi service in Tokyo? It's called Angel Buggy

Or that the subway wickets marked with the bright pink labels will accept two Passnet cards at once? I thought they were only for commuter passes + Passnet, but I was wrong. They let you use up the spare change on your Passnet cards, or you can insert a regular ticket and a Passnet card so you don't have to fare adjust. It works great; I tried it this afternoon.

So now I have even more updates to do on Hello Tokyo. Watch for a new version in...2009?

On location at Narita

I'm involved in a film project but this time in front of the camera instead of behind the scenes. It's really difficult not to compose the shots in my head and think about how everything will be edited together. But all I have to do in this film is act like a bossy big sister--and it's shockingly easy.

Our most recent shoot was at Narita airport. While the director did some paperwork, I grabbed the camera and went outside to try to film planes landing. She came out to see what I was up to and I chased her around the observation deck. She snapped this picture as she tried to hide.

I think the "making of" clips might be more fun than the actual film.

This week I've been reworking Hello Tokyo for a presentation that I'm giving later this month at Tokyo Here and Now, the twice-a-year orientation program hosted by the Tokyo American Club. It was high time for a Hello Tokyo update as a few things have changed since the original version.

And now that I've got a few more years of Final Cut Pro experience under my belt (Hello Tokyo was my first project after I switched from Premiere to FCP) , I can fix some of the problems that thwarted me. But one thing I can't do is reshoot the footage. So I decided to re-record sections of the audio in the studio and see if I can't improve it that way.

Have you ever tried to lip synch to yourself? It's harder than it looks. Not only it is a challenge to watch your lips move and say the same thing again, but after you're recorded the dialogue in the studio, you lose all the background sounds. No more noisy traffic, wind, or restaurant plate-clattering. The result sounds a little thin.

So I have to do some foley work to put back the sounds I got rid of and to make the voice fit into its setting. At least this time, I can control the background noises and make them quieter than in the original shot.

So that you can see and hear what I mean about synching and foley, here is a short clip showing three uncompleted versions of the same segment of Hello Tokyo.

ADR & Foley Example 2.7 MB 25" MP4

In preparation for next week's recipe--a Japanese winter stew--here's a video to show you how to do some of the decorative cuts that make nabe as lovely to look at as it is delicious to eat.

Simple Japanese Decorative Cutting 3.7 MB 1'41" MP4

A slideshow with audio captured on a brief visit to the shore of Lake Michigan in Evanston, IL.

Evanston Lakeshore 2.5 MB 24" MP4

I'm working on a film project now that represents the entire world's population - 1 pixel per person - in just under 10 and a half minutes.

To fill the time and make the pixels more interesting, I'm creating brief mini-features of facts on world population, growth, development, density and other things. It's not as dull as it sounds...

Here's a sample from the film. It compares ten seconds of the film (about 103 million people) to various groups. I was surprised at the facts I dug up. Did you know there are more AIDS orphans than there are Mexican citizens? That the number of coffee drinkers in America is equal to the number of people with Herpes worldwide?

Have a look for yourself. This is a draft version--the narration has a glaring error and will be re-recorded later. And the footage is still under review. Comments and suggestions welcome, but please be kind.

Ten Second Facts 7.5 MB 1'10" MP4

Pretty flakes all morning long. It's such a rare event that I ran around filming it and set it to music. The snow is still falling--if it keeps this up we may see a centimeter or two on the ground by nighttime. I'll have to go out to shoot snow at night.

Tokyo Snow - small 711 K 0'49" MP4

Tokyo Snow - medium 1.7 MB 0'49" MP4

Tokyo Snow - large 4.8 MB 0'49" MP4

Last week's Gingerbread CPU post was noticed by popgadget, then engadget then Boing Boing. It's funny how these things get passed around. I even made the Daypop Top 40:

Then it got translated by a number of non-English website in Japan, Iceland, Hungary and Sweden. The number of visits increased to more than 5 times my usual daily rate. I was having a lot of fun looking at my stats, though a bit disappointed that I wasn't being recognized for something I'd done myself. Such is the trouble with reporting on things.

By Day 3, [H]ard|OCP and Blue's News picked it up and traffic went up further. I was seeing more than 10 times my usual traffic.

On December 23rd, five days into this increase in popularity, Slashdot noticed what was going on. Tod & I had just returned from stocking up on cookie-making ingredients. While the butter was softening, I checked my mail to discover a comment from the blog: "Haha! You're getting Slashdotted!"

Hahahah! Wow!

Oh, hell! This was going to be trouble. We host my website on a server here at home.

Our server was doing OK. Tod's built a robust machine—it was found in the trash and sits at the end of a home-use 8 megabit DSL line. At the time of the slashdotting, the server had been up for 54 days continuously and it had no trouble keeping up on the CPU and memory side of things.

But our bandwidth was another story entirely. Pegged for a little while, then so flooded it was dropping packets or something because traffic was reduced to about a third of our usual 1.5 megabit upstream pipe. Uh-oh.

Tod used our little remaining bandwidth to chat with his friends on IRC's perl channel.

"Holy shit, my home webserver is slashdotted!" he wrote.
"Why?"
"EXPLAIN"
"Devin, what’s the URL?" came the instant, insistent, and not entirely useful replies.

But on a more helpful note, Mugwump saved the day by mirroring the gingerbread image for us. Thank you very much, you kind stranger from New Zealand and your council-sponsored fibre optic LAN.

About 20 minutes later, Mugwump asked if we could split the mirroring between his server and another one. It was a lot more than he expected--about 10 requests/second. So I tinkered the post and the header on my website and it make a huge difference for everyone.

Things calmed down quickly after we moved the images offsite and it wasn't long before I was able to surf for cookie recipes even while we were being slashdotted.

At about 6:30 pm, Jim called. He'd just seen it; did we know we were slashdotted? It's nice to have friend who are paying attention. He had a brilliant suggestion--I video’d a bit of the action.

The Slashdot Effect 1'06" 1.8 MB MP4

"You're famous now, what will it be like when America wakes up in 6 hours?" cautioned MoSH, one of Tod's colleagues in Switzerland. I bit my nails a bit.

Sure enough, after dinner as we started baking the cookies we'd mixed up, traffic started to increase. America was waking up. It was 11:30 pm in Tokyo. I expected a long night of watching and waiting.

"I have never seen an access logfile scroll so fast," Tod declared. "…in all my years staring at log files, which is a lot."

We were back up to 10 requests/second. The bandwidth was getting strained again. The traffic was only getting heavier. The east coast of the US was awake. And Chicago. But we seemed to ride the crest of it and by the time we woke up the next morning, things had settled down and the peak was over.

We're so lucky we don't pay by bandwidth used.

Rhythm Train 0'18" (2.3 MB MP4)

I shot this froma Tokaido line train heading towards Tokyo. I love the syncopation of the windows, doors and travellers' heads going past. I attempted to score it in Soundtrack, but didn't get the effect that I wanted--creating music is yet another area for improvement.

Shonan Hiratsuka Tanabata festival 2'20" (14.1 MB MP4)

Altair and Vega get together in the Milky Way and I catch it all on video. OK, maybe not, but I did document the matsuri in Kanagawa.

Let's Make Ume Shu 4'38" (28.7 MB MP4)

...starring Tracey Northcott as the barkeep...

As promised, here's a how to video with everything you need to know to make ume shu (Japanese plum wine). Learn how to choose plums, wash and dry them, sterilse the bottles, layer the fruit with sugar and fill. It's surprisingly easy.

For your shopping and kitchen convenience, here's a recipe to print out.

Ume Shu

1 kg green ume (Japanese plums)
1 kg rock sugar
1.8 liters white liquor (35% alcohol)

Sterilise a 4 liter glass jar by filling it with boiling water, rinsing and drying carefully. Wash the ume, culling any fruit with bruises or broken skins. Dry the ume and remove the waxy bit in the stem end. Dry the fruit again. Layer ume and sugar in the jar, pour in the liquor. Seal tightly. Upend theh jar once a month until the sugar is completely dissolved. The ume shu is drinkable after 6 months, and fully mature at the end of a year.

The ume shu video is taking longer than I expected, but to tide you over, here's a set of out-takes featuring Tracey's cat, Tutu.

Tutu 0'33" (3.4 MB MP4)

I walked to Shinjuku to buy a book and brought my video camera along for the first time in quite a while. I condensed 90 minutes of travel into a 2 minute short. Not my most inspired work ever, but there are a few interesting things to see along the way and a personal note from me...

Kasuga to Shinjuku 2'05" (13.2 MB MP4)

For those of you who missed last Friday's Marshmallow Spike gig (that would be everyone except me and J-ster), here's a first glimpse at MJ, Yoshi and their new drummer, Kei-san doing Stolen Umbrella, an original with lyrics by MJ, music by Yoshi.

The camerawork is crap, I know. I had forgotten I promised to film and wasn't prepared for anything other than basically static handheld. Next time, I'm taking a steadicam and doing it right.

Stolen Umbrella. Small, mono version. 3'25" (2.6 MB MP4)

Stolen Umbrella. Large, stereo version. 3'25" (22 MB MP4)

Traffic. 0'40" (4 MB MP4)

Shot last night with my lo-res Fuji Finepix 4500 digital still camera from the window of Tampooya restaurant in Ueno. Cars, pedestrians, and a pink-coated night worker, too.

Fish Story. 0'21" (2.3 MB MP4)

Another super-short. This one features many pretty fish and one wet child. I shot it at the Itabashi Freshwater Fish Museum, a municipal aquarium, on January 18th. Music courtesy of Freeplay Music.

I created a super-short short yesterday and submitted it to WeeklyDV. You may recognize the footage from Hello Tokyo and the music from the Toilet Paper Inspirations last March--this is DKM Redux.

Scramble. 0'31" (3.2 MB MP4)

I was inspired by WeeklyDV.com, which posts a topic and a deadline and invites you to submit short DV films. The quality of submissions ranges all over the place. To me, that doesn't matter. I'm more interested doing something that about doing it exactly right or doing it in good company. It's a fun challenge that gives you a reason to experiment. Doesn't that tie in perfectly with my plan to do more creative things this year?

Life can be confusing as a functional illiterate; let me help you figure things out fast. Puzzles of Daily Life is a 14 minute video shot on location in train stations, shops, and on the streets--the perfect thing to give you a glimpse of sights and sounds of real-life Tokyo.

Clips from Hello Tokyo

In less than 15 minutes, you'll discover how to:

• summon a waiter
• apologise for running into someone
• say a simple thank you
• choose and use a phrasebook
• deciper Italian, French, other western menus
• take advantage of plastic food displays
• prepare quick meals with instant food and deli items
• read 6 key kanji on food packages
• save money by buying Japanese goods
• puzzle out cleaning products
• shop for American and European foods
• satisfy your midnight-snack cravings
• pay your utility bills
• combine shopping and entertainment at a 100 yen store
• see four movies for the price of 1
• tell whether a movie is subtitled or dubbed in Japanese
• find English language books and magazines
• love your train station
• buy a train or subway ticket
• use a Passnet card to transfer from subways to trains
• what to do when the wicket chimes
• read a Tokyo address
• ...and more

Order Hello Tokyo

Region-free NTSC DVD-R media* in jewel case packaging. Prices include shipping via regular mail and tax. Pay with PayPal by clicking below.

To order the DVD in a tall case or to place large orders for resale, please e-mail kristen@mediatinker.com for more information. *DVD-R media may not work in all players; please consult your owner's manual.

Appearances & Media
Design Festa vol 18 interview
Design Festa 18 video interview

Tokyo Visitor's Survival Guide

Just visiting? Here's some general information on how to navigate Tokyo's restaurants and attractions.

• getting from here to there
• buying tickets
• shoes and other mysteries
• eating out
• Kristen's favorite attractions
• surviving illiteracy

Interesting places to visit in Tokyo.

Hello Tokyo Resources

Design Festa vol 18. 0'50" (5.4 MB MP4)

The weekend was exhausting but exhilarating, too. I sold 3 DVDs, was interviewed three times, and met a lot of people, including a handful of filmmakers and a bunch of new supporters with great marketing ideas and connections.

I learned how to explain my film in one sentence in Japanese: Nihongo wo hanasenai hito no Tokyo no setsumei bideo desu (It's a video that explains Tokyo to people who don't speak Japanese.) But my pitch is a little bit different in English, "This video gives advice on living in Tokyo to newcomers who don't read or speak Japanese." If I continue beyond that, I find myself quoting lines from the video; it's sort of funny.

Thanks to all the friends who stopped by my booth: Julianne, Gregman, Tracey (who watched the booth while I ran off to buy a hat!), Jo, Lisa, Kate, Greg & Yasu, who was so inspired that he's planning a booth for his photography at the next Design Festa. UltraBob gets big credit for burning my DVDs and lending an ear when I needed to vent. Tod deserves a tasty carrot for being my favorite pack mule.

Hello Tokyo's audio is the stuff of nightmares. It's a mix of narration recorded in my more-or-less quiet apartment and shots taken on the streets of Tokyo with all the usual traffic and background noises and in restaurants and shops with BGM and chatting customers. I spent days banging my head against my desk trying to make the hiss and hum disappear while keeping my voice intact. No matter what I tried, I ended up sounding like I was at the bottom of a well or in a large metal room.

MJ came over for half a day and got it sorted out for me. MJ is my hero.

She focussed intently on eliminating hiss, blips and imperfections. And it worked; the production is much better off now. She's offered to come over again to help out with mixing the levels and easing remaining sore points.

It's good to have a friend who's trained as an audio engineer, especially when she accepts cookies and lasagne in payment for her services. I think this is the iitomo rate; better ask her real rate if you want her help.

Have a peek at the video's first 2'44" - the title sequence and introduction as re-created in Final Cut and engineered by MJ. The full video will be premiered at Design Festa on November 15th & 16th; I'll post more details soon, but I hope you'll come to the event and say hello.

Hello Tokyo title sequence & introduction. 2'44" (6.8 MB MP4)

Well, I've managed to recreate the title sequence in Final Cut.

Hello Tokyo title sequence. 0'46" (4.2 MB QT)

In terms of fancy editing, this is certainly the most challenging of the seven segments. It incorporates superimpose edits with image masks, super track fades, scrolling text and some other trickery. This version isn't exactly the same as the first one (check it out if you missed it) but it's acceptably similar.

Now I'm stuck into the next sequence, Phrases, and it's going relatively smoothly. One good thing about redoing the entire project is that I get to review and rethink my original edits. I'm paying closer attention to the audio sweetening this time. Tomorrow morning I will be creating a loop of "street noise" to play behind some of the voice overs.

Output
Two minutes after Tod walked out the door towards Zurich, I was at my computer working on Hello Tokyo. The first task at hand was to review what I've done so far. There are 8 sections in the video:

1. Title Sequence - Complete
2. Phrases - rough edits
3. Food - rough edits
4. Shopping - rough edits
5. Entertainment - rough edits
6. Getting Around - rough edits
7. Conclusion - shot, unedited
8. Credits - nothing done

So I'll work on the sections one at a time until I get them all done. I made good progress today, pretty much completing "Phrases."

- Recorded, captured and finessed voiceovers for Phrases
- Shot, captured and edited 3 bits of B-roll for Phrases
- Added in new voiceovers and B-roll
- Brought edits and transitions into line with Title Sequence styles
- Added music to Phrases

I need to let it sit for a day or two then review it carefully before I can really declare it done. No doubt there are a few jaggy edges to fiddle with, but it's 97% there now.

Input
And for the benefit of my sweetheart, who worries that I eat poorly when he's not around, I'll be lisiting my daily food input. Today's menu: 3 cups of coffee; slice of toast and cherry yogurt; 4 glasses of water; romaine and tomato salad; cold chili con carne with saltines.

Bonus Video
This is a rather graphic, creepy-crawly video I shot this afternoon at home. An army of ants battles a 3 cm long green beetle. (no noodle eating poodles in sight, though) The beetle, which seems to be a Scarabaeidae Anomala from Okinawa, retreated safely after 6 or seven minutes.

Beetle Battle 0'41" (4.4 MB MPEG 4)

Here's a first edit of the "getting around" section of Hello Tokyo. It conveys information and tells the story, but it's not yet elegant...or even close to being finished. I've taken the clips and put them into order--story-boarding with the video instead of paper. It's missing the overlays, music, transitions and voiceovers. Those will come later

Getting Around 3'24" (2.5 MB MPEG 4)

I will be putting Hello Tokyo on hiatus (again) while I make the switch from Adobe Premiere to Final Cut Pro. Unfortunately, I can't import my Premiere files to FCP, so I'll be starting over from scratch on the project.

It's not such a bad thing. I wanted to redo most of the editing to match the new music and the visual theme of the title sequence. I'll have a tailor-made reason to learn FCP inside out. I'm itching to get Hello Tokyo finished!

Apple's offering a $500 rebate if I buy before September 20th and mail them my Premiere install CD. That's an offer I can't refuse. Adobe's stopped making Premiere for the Mac, so I'll have to switch eventually. May as well do it now while it's not so expensive.

Summer fireworks festivals are a tradition dating back hundreds of years. Originally for the powerful elite, there were public fireworks along the banks of Sumidagawa in 1733.

These days summer fireworks are an excuse for everyone to get dressed up in their yukata and spend some time outdoors. Over the last 50 years, the weeks spanning mid-July and mid-August have become an increasingly loud and colorful time of year.

Last night, we picnicked on the embankment of Edogawa and watched competing fireworks companies shoot off 14,000 fireworks in 75 minutes. It was splendid. This video doesn't really capture the jaw-dropping majesty of the event, but it gives a taste of three moments during the spectacle.

Edogawa Hanabi 0'50" (2.8MB Quicktime)

At long last, another edition of Video Saturday.

This time, I've got the title sequence. The plan with Hello Tokyo is that it will be a series of videos on different aspects of life in Japan so this sequence will be reused in several videos. Getting the right pace and tone was important and not a little intimidating. But I'm very happy with the results.

The music is composed by Jeff, a Tokyo-based musician and producer, especially for Hello Tokyo. I love the bouncy guitar--the tune gets somewhat more complex as the piece goes on and I'll feature sections of as the video progresses.

Now that I have the title done, I can rethink the look of the rest of the video. I hope to incorporate the circles into section transitions and make the whole thing fresher and more fun.

Go on, take a peek...

Hello Tokyo title sequence. 0'46" (4.8 MB MP4)

OK, it's back to tasks completed on the Hello Tokyo project. This week, I've added in those missing fruit and convenience store bits from the previous edition of Video Saturday and I've added short segments on department stores and my favorite goofy shopping venue--the 100 yen shop.

This is still a rough edit, but it is coming along. Next week, I'm aiming to have another segment slapped together--entertainment.

For this download, I'm trying out a different compression program and format. Please tell me if you have any trouble with this MPEG-4 file.

Shopping. 3'30" (5.3 MB MP4)

It's very much a work in progress this week but "in progress" is better than nothing. I think Video Saturday deadlines will get this project done. Thanks for all the nice comments and support. You've renewed my enthusiasm that this video is worthwhile.

I managed to drop four minutes of video onto the timeline this week and I recorded placeholder voiceovers while sitting at my desk one morning. I don't think you can hear the trains rumbling past but I really need to be more careful of my aspirated Ps.

There's footage still to be shot (you'll see two blank sections), filters to apply to some of the clips, and timing adjustments all over the place! You're getting to see a scant three minutes, because I ran out of time to get the last 70 seconds presentable. So stay tuned for next week's edition...

For now, it's Shopping, Part 1. Quicktime, 1.9 MB. 2'49"

Since I can't really have a pajama party to finish Hello, Tokyo, I will resort to method number 2 (take that as you will) for getting this project finished: fear of public humiliation.

From now until it's done, you can expect to see a clip of work in progress every Saturday. To start off Video Saturdays, here's a rough cut of the restaurants portion of the Food segment.

Restaurants. (720K Quicktime)

Cartesian Coordinates. hi-bandwidth (5 MB Quicktime)

Cartesian Coordinates. lo-bandwidth (1.2 MB Quicktime)

Cartesian Coordinates is four minute film class project I shot and edited in 1997 on 8mm.

But 8mm projectors were as uncommon then as now, so I transferred it to VHS by projecting it onto a translucent screen and taping from behind. I flipped the reversed image in Premiere and sent it out to tape.

When the old tape arrived in the box this week, I recorded it into the DV camera, then captured it to my computer and compressed it. The result is extremely high-contrast and grainy, but still more-or-less watchable. Stay for the credits!

Dan stars as a tired worker putting away one last overhead projector before going home. What happens late at night in the halls of the building?

The weekend we shot this project, friends drove in from out of state and half of my university staff came to help wrangle carts for the animated sections. We didn't get a lot of sleep, the campus police kept us on our toes (even though I did have permission to be there,) and despite my careful preparations and measurements in the building, we had a few glitches with camera angles.

But in the end the film did well in class though my instructor thought I should have directed Dan to move faster. He didn't know that wouldn't have worked; I couldn't keep up with the camera! I guess now I could speed things up a bit digitally and add some sound...stay tuned.

I love a nice bridge.

Bounce. 56K version (190 KB Quicktime)

Bounce. Broadband version (742 KB Quicktime)

Donna Burke. (Quicktime. 3.9 MB)

Music is in the air. Today I edited together a short medley of live concert footage for a friend-of-a-friend.

Unfortunately, the footage was shot by (choose one)

A) an amateur
B) an epileptic
C) a drunken monkey
D) all of the above

That's not very charitable, I know, and if the videographer reads my blog I'm sure I've just hurt his or her feelings. But I will take this moment to strongly suggest to all videographers: USE A TRIPOD.