Freyburg

Here’s the demo reel for my video production company, Freyburg Media. Just a sampler of the stuff I’ve worked on and the skills I can bring to a corporate video, podcast, or broadcast television segment.

Freyburg Media 2008 Demo Reel from Warren Frey on Vimeo.

Just doing a test of blogging from my Iphone. Which, until Apple allows me to cut and paste and include links, is of limited use.

RED, the company created by Oakley founder Jim Hannard, has sent the SCARLET back to the woodshed. Why? Apparently the emergence of DSLR cameras like the Nikon D90 and the Canon 5D MkII that can shoot in HD (though in the case of the 5D, at the indie-unfriendly frame rate of 30p) has forced RED to rethink what they’re trying to accomplish in the prosumer video space.

Honestly, it’s about time all camera manufacturers took a step back and figured out how to merge SLR and HD video in a package that serves both filmmakers and photographers. There’s no reason, with the emergence of fast and plentiful hard drive space, huge memory cards for on-camera storage, and lens adapters that already graft SLR lenses onto HD camcorders, that a new class of camera shouldn’t emerge that doesn’t follow the old paradigms of tape-based shooting. The 5D and D90 are an important first step, and RED’s backtracking looks to be the next step in a saga that I’ll be very interested to see come to fruition.

After the utter crappines of Jeff Green leaving 1UP last week (though you can check in on him on Jeff’s new blog), it was inevitable that the rest of the Brodeo would eventually follow suit, and it looks like Shawn Elliot, one of the smartest guys in games journalism, is following Jeff’s lead and moving from reporting to game development. While I wish both of them luck, I loved the irreverence, profanity and keen insight of GFW Radio, and it’ll be sad to not have it on my podcast playlist for a mid-week laugh. Listen to their last show and tip your hat to a fine bunch of fellas.

Update: The whole thing might be a hoax. Phew! And yuck, this egg on my face is sticky.

Further update: Or maybe it isn’t. About an hour into the GFW podcast, Elliot says he’s going o 2K Boston. There’s two more hours to go, so he may very well change his tune three times for all I know.

An interesting breakdown of the content, people and weirdness of YouTube. Haven’t watched all of it yet, but I hope the lecturer gets into the rank stupidity of most of the commenters.

After checking out the english version of Al Jazeera has some decent viewing in the form of podcasts of its more popular shows, like Listening Post and Riz Khan. I’ve noticed that a bunch of the on-air talent are former BBC (and other British media) staffers, and their programming is generally as thorough as the Beeb’s better news shows (and of course way better than most American news programs.) Worth checking out, fellow news addicts.

Something’s been bugging me for the last little while about the amatuerization of media. While you probably won’t find a bigger proponent of the democratization of tools for creating media and distribution methods than myself, and while there’s never been a better time for someone with an idea and a camcorder to go out and make media, it’s pretty disappointing to me that what catches on with the general public isn’t thoughtful or unique creations but gossip and nonsense. Witness the rise of Perez Hilton, chronicled in the latest issue of Wired. Hilton’s blogging consists of mindless gossip wrapped in an infantile bow of terrible writing, and yet his site makes on the order of 50k a day in advertising. And Julia Allison’s Nonsociety is about…what, exactly? Nothing but navel-gazing and the craven pursuit of fame for fame’s sake.

But we can’t blame vain, shallow people for being who they are. It’s our own damn fault for falling prey to the same craven impulses they wallow in and enabling them. For further spite and bile, check out this Huffington Post article about female New York bloggers, and how they’re cheating themselves by writing about superficial nonsense and staring at their own reflection.

Well, what they really did was take a different poll about web microcelebrity and turn it around to focus on the negative results. Unsurprisingly, attention sponge Julia Allison ranked first, with her former boyfriend Jacob Lodwick close behind. I’d agree with the placement of most of the other people on the list, including Scoble and iJustine, though I dunno what Veronica Belmont ever did to anyone to raise such ire. Ditto for Tron Guy; I’ve heard that anyone who’s met him in person comes away amazed at how pleasant he is…despite the wacky outfit.

Digg, along with its scrappy competitor Reddit, is an interesting idea that has one fundamental flaw; it’s driven by idiots. The whole idea behind Digg is that the users vote on what news is important. That’s fine in theory, but in practice you get a lot of dumb links to dumb things, such as the endless Ron Paul links that festooned Digg’s front page months ago, despite Paul not having a chance in hell of securing the Republican nomination.

Polymeme aims to avoid that trap. The service tracks buzz, but shapes the result into something somewhat more intellectually pleasing than Digg. I’m intrigued, and I’ll keep checking it out for now.

This one’s more ranting about the proposed Canadian DMCA. Also, on a technical note, it looks like video hosting sites don’t ike something about the end credits, so I guess I’ll have to tweak that for further episodes.