TXMPA and other supporters made history!
Tons of calls were made to legislators and Texas now has production incentives!
It was close and very late in the Texas Capitol when the film incentive grants bill passed. Now the $22 million bill must be signed into law by the governor and that looks positive! I wish to thank Hector Garcia, Texas Motion Picture Alliance -President, the legislature and all of the supporters of this bill.
The film business has been good for the economy and now Texas can be competitive with other states offering incentives.
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Dwight Cook – Only In Houston Chairman
also see – Production Incentives Passed for Texas!
professional or amateur. One of the most common requests made of sound editors is to “clean up” the dialogue. The process used to accomplish this depends on what issues the soundtrack has to overcome. While the removal of clicks and pops may be relatively easy, the more complex removal of background hum, noise and ambience may be required.
On location, TV and film projects utilize a shotgun microphone on a boom for long shots, while many close up shots use a microphone hidden on the subject. Both recording methods bring challenges to audio post production. The difference in sound quality between the close up shots and long shots must be matched as well as the varying backgrounds, unless the sound is recorded in a “controlled environment” like a sound stage. But even if the dialogue to be matched is from two different close up angles (like over the shoulder shots for a conversation), the general ambience differences may still be extreme. Hum, mouth noises and background noise should be removed or reduced.
be used, the re-recorded line will have little or no ambience compared to the replaced location line. But the previously-recorded location ambience can be added to the ADR sections resulting in a seamless-sounding dialogue track.
This enhancement challenge was to remove noise and increase intelligibility of a police officer’s two-way radio recording. Although taken from a digital logger, the noise at the scene had to be analyzed. We applied several restoration processes and were able to “scoop” the conversation away from the noise.
The second job was a recorded phone conversation for a civil case.
hours calculating song lengths vs. track-length on 8-track cartridge recorders, then “dubbing” from a turntable and hoping for the best. Even cassettes in the 80’s only made this act marginally more precocious. The introduction of the compact disc gave us no “key” to unlock the files it contained. However, with the introduction in the mid-90’s of the compression format “mp3” and a computer encoder’s ability to “rip” from a cd, the proverbial cat was out of the bag. For the first time, a medium’s content could easily escape its own media faster than “real time” – incredibly faster!
Well, all right then – We have a case and who could dispute the incident when you can hear it as it happened. So you ask the lady for the recording in order to educate yourself to the specifics of the incident… And that’s where the trouble starts. Sure, you can hear every word your client says but, unfortunately, not the supervisor who makes the offending statements. Well, “it’s a Digital recording isn’t it? – Why is it not perfect?”
Be Like James Bond
Published February 8, 2010 Software , commentary , legal , technology 2 CommentsTags: gadgets, James Bond, legal, Spy
Perhaps you always wanted to be like James Bond. I always loved the gadgets Q developed. Now you can obtain spy gadgets without being enrolled the secret service. These are not cheap and they can be used for evil purposes. Just knowing what is available makes me want to be more aware.
A Tracker
Recently some innovative Germans placed a GPS tracking device on the Google street view car http://bit.ly/d1Bvho. We have all seen Hollywood dramas where people are tracked with a GPS device. Thanks to Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) this is now easy to do. Just buy a small box, less than half the size of a cigarette box, then stick it on a anything using the built in magnets. Then you can monitor it’s position anywhere worldwide. Some GPS trackers can be found at this website.
Now you can own a security device with voice recognition, palm, hand and fingerprint scanning, iris and retina reading, hand vein imagery, facial 3d modeling verification, and DNA testing. These security devices are harder to buy as they require you personal information, what you need it for, and a price quote these high end security devices were too cool not to be included on my list.
Virtual Secret Surveillance
This is very scary … now you can know every single thing somebody does on a computer? And all their passwords? Well, this is now possible. Using simply a small plug-in device, the size of a nickel, between a person’s keyboard (even a wireless one) and their computer, you can see hundreds of pages of text that they type no matter what it is. You can even monitor every single button they press on their keyboard. No software is involved in this process; you simply set a password on the device and plug it in.
Once the information has been recorded – just take it out and plug it into your own computer and enter the password. You can see everything they’ve typed. Also if you do not want to retrieve the device, it can send the collected info to a website, email, or FTP server.
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