Category: Life

I’ve decided to try to get one last interview. There’s a pro-DRM stance that has been ignored in my film, and for the sake of balance I want it included.

I’ve sent out three phone interview requests to parties that would be involved in such a stance. They haven’t replied yet, and I’ll be calling them Friday to get updates. This is how interviews are had people: you call, call, and call again.

Apart from that, the film remains unchanged and uncensored. I’ve cleaned up alot of the audio, have a solid soundtrack setup, and am in the midst of adding animations to the film to help less tech-oriented people in understanding the concepts at hand.

Sooo my plan was to replace the soundtrack with Royalty Free music. So I bought a CD of decent royalty free music, which cost $100. With or without donations I was going to do it.

And guess what – as it turns out, the CD might not be royalty free in *Canada*. So I called up RoyaltyFreeMusic’s support line. I had sent them an email beforehand, saying I hadn’t yet purchased the music as I didn’t want to pressure them into a defensive “no refund” stance, as that wasn’t what I was after. I just wanted to know what was up with royalties.

Well, as it turns out, I’m good. They have all rights on their music, and agencies such as the CMRRA are not supposed to collect royalties or funds on their behalf. CMRRA also returned me an email; and apparently they don’t have the songs in their database. So I’m good. Thank god. I was very close to just giving up entirely.

I received a call today from the president of the association in Canada in charge of reproductive rights on music. The final track on the documentary – “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, was still under copyright. I obtained the song from a public domain database, but as I was informed, things aren’t so simple. I thank the person very much for informing me of this, esp. in the kind fashion he did.

In any case I’m pulling down all links to the documentary from my site until the issue is resolved. I’ve also deleted the video from my uploads section on Google; and I’m pulling all the links I’ve given to the communities I discussed it with. Finally, I’m sending a letter to ThePirateBay asking that they take down the torrent.

This is not the end of the documentary. All that that means is that I have to remove the final track, which is not a problem. However, since it takes about 24 hours of supervised work/rendering to apply such changes, I’ll implement these with the final rendition of the film, due out in a week. Until then, I’ll make sure to remove all references to the infringing copy.

I offer my sincerest apologies to all those that were affected.

I’ve been starting to watch the press conferences for E3.

The Nintendo E3 presentation was excellent. However, Nintendo is really treading on thin ice, as the *only* thing it seems to be relying on for its success is the gaming experience brought forth by its new controller. The graphics on the Revolution are not spectacular, but nonetheless workable. Equivalent to 2003-2004 PC graphics.

They showed their controller in action as a baton managing an orchestra, as a sword in a fight, as a gun in an FPS, and as a quasi-racing wheel. I’m completely in love with the concept, but nonetheless this overreliance on the controller is foolish. With the exception of a game where you conducted an orchestra, there was really nothing innovative on the gaming front by nintendo.

I also saw the Sony PS3 presentation. I was quite dissapointed. Unlike Nintendo, who displayed alot in terms of gameplay footage, all Sony had was “Gran Turismo HD.” It’s essentially GT4, but in HD resolution. And they talked about the resolution on and on. They also showed trailers for a few games, such as MGS4 and Gundam Mobile Suit. Things that we already saw to some extent or weren’t impressed much with.

They had nothing to really show off the graphics capabilities of the PS3, which I found quite dissapointing. And much of the 2 hour presentation was actually quite worthless – they had videos of people saying why they liked the PS2, they explained the online model for far too long, and the main host of the presentation simply talked his BS for too long. The whole presentation should have been 1 hour long – not 2.

Apart from that, I watched the Halo3 and Gundam Trailers. Halo3 was a cinematic, no gameplay footage. Think Halo2 trailer. And the Gundam game? Looked like a fairly poor game.

Leave to work from home @ 8:30AM, get back home from work at 8:30PM.

Plus I have to work 7 days straight this week, it looks like. With days like that, its pretty much near impossible to do any editing. Things should ease off soon though (maybe in a week.)