I'm back at my hotel after an exciting After Effects meeting in New York. There was a great turnout of 300+ people primed for some After Effects tips. I'll share some more info about the meeting tomorrow for those who could not make it.

If you DID go to the meeting and would like to share some thoughts or even a photograph, I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy seeing what it was like. One of the best parts was getting to meet so many of you in person and I appreciate everyone that stopped by to say hi at the end.

I had a great time and goodnight from New York.

We shot mostly with RED and some Sony XDcam stuff. I decided to shoot hand-held to get a more intense feel. Of course running around with that thing on your shoulder is tough business. We stripped the camera down to just the essentials but the body itself can still give you the scoliosis. Lucky for me I already had some so it actually fixed me up.

We haven't really done any editing or effects yet but when we do maybe we can get rid of my 5 O'clock shadow. It was a long week :)

You can download high resolution images right here.

BTW, I added some grain and color correction; the original RED footage is actually very clean.

Here is a screenshot from a mini-movie we are making for Action Essentials HD. I'll be going to New York this week for AENY.org but I'll be working on this project more when I get back. Sam has finally landed a role that will last more than 15 seconds!

I'll try to post on the blog while I'm gone and let you know how it goes.

I've been meaning to share inspirational articles and video clips that I find and here is a great example. It is an article over at CgSociety.org on a new game called KillZone 2. I've never played the game and I don't even know if it out but the artwork is just amazing.

Check out the Article

In our earth-zoom tutorial from 2007, I jokingly suggested one method of capturing aerial photography was to send a video camera into space with a weather baloon. Well, someone finally took one of my jokes too far and sent a real camera into space. Admittedly this project was just a coincidence but the fact that it is possible is quite cool and yet somehow frightening...

Hats off to those guys for the uplifting experiment.

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Now if only I could find a clip from the simpsons where Bart launches a weather baloon in the meteor episode... oh well.