Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The "It" Factor

Continuing on the thread of the last post, it looks like the six-week graphic design course I have been eyeing is ON! I'm very excited-- I have been wanting to take a course on the subject again for some time (I had started college focusing on this and illustration, but moved away from it). In some ways I feel like graphic design has been a missing element needed to advance my work.

Of course another thing that would be helpful is a new camera. We had a TV crew stop by the Museum yesterday to work on an upcoming Christmas special, and the cinematographer (JP Lipa) was using one of the famed Red cameras. I was envious... not only of the work, but the equipment. There are a number of options for shooting high definition video nowadays, with using a Digital SLR camera being one of the more interesting. I have started doing some research, but it's going to take some money. I do think it would be wise to upgrade soon though, as I have been getting several inquiries about helping out on various projects in the coming months.

One of the higher profile works that Lipa had been involved with was shooting rehearsal footage for Michael Jackson's This Is It. Cool for me to hear about his experience, being the music obsessive and documentarian that I am (although my preference for the artist is concentrated from the Jackson Five to Thriller days). Sounds like MJ was quite interested in learning about more about the camera equipment being used. Lipa also told me about how in the weeks leading up to the musician's death, Jackson seemed extremely frail offstage, but could still "bring it" once he took the stage (he said that MJ weighed like 85 pounds during filming-- is that possible?). Some of this rehearsal footage made it into the final movie, which shows the process of Jackson rehearsing for the tour he never had a chance to complete. I'm not sure how intimate of a portrayal it could be (knowing how reclusive Jackson was), but I bet it is interesting. That reminds me... I still need to learn these moves:



Zombies... now that's interesting (and hip)!

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