Sunday 30 August 2015

The Votes Are In

So I went to a Summer festival a month ago, and managed to take a few pictures with a 35mm camera.  As you might expect there were duffers, but I think a fair number turned out alright.  Tell me what you think.


Don't ask what that powder is.


Of course it's been long established that no one likes black and white photographs, but I can't stop myself.  I really like them!


If these pictures were in colour you'd notice the kids drab clothes, but they're not so you don't.  These guys wouldn't stop staring at me (it was a really rural festival so I doubt they've seen many whiteys) so I decided to take a picture.  Unfortunately their mum made them do the 2 finger peace thing which is a shame because that universally ruins every photograph ever.


This dude was chillin' because it was rather hot.  I can imagine it being way worse at the top there, not being allowed to come down.


This festival appears to be about drinking a lot of alcohol then pushing bloody great one ton carts around town.  When they need to turn the thing they need to up and drag it around in a circle.  They have wooden wheels and no steering, so you end up with great pictures like this one.


There are tons of lamps around the place even during the day.  I think it's because they look cool.


Each shrine has a procession accompanying it, including the town old boys who chill out and drink at the back.


Each shrine has different patterns and designs, often but not always involving dragons.


This is my favourite photograph from the festival, and one of my favourites ever.  I wish I was as cool as him.


At night they take the shrines to a local town (pushed all the way of course) and spin it on the spot a dozen times.  It's hard work, especially after hefting the damn things around for 2 days.  After spinning they push them all the way back home.


This is one of the carts with nighttime adornments.  That's where all the lamps go when they're not being carried by hand.


On a different note, this is a duck.

This is another one of my all-time favourite photographs ever.  You'll have to guess where it was taken.  Two internet points if you get it right.  It's very orange but after colour correcting it didn't quite look right, so I put it back this way.  For some reason the colour is intrinsic to the feel of the image, kind of nostalgic perhaps?

Anyway, I went to another festival today but didn't have much time to take pictures so I probably didn't get anything worth uploading.  If, by some miracle they're not all blurred messes I'll put them up sometime in a couple of weeks.

Wednesday 26 August 2015

Another Video

So I had a lot of video from the Roppongi festival (the one populated with rude people) so I made another thingamajig.

I came to the realisation a while ago that I need a good microphone, a tripod and more lenses, but I've also found out that I need another few people with cameras and tripods and whatnot, to take footage of their own so I can smoosh it all together into these fun little videos.  One day when I'm a millionaire!

Anyway, enjoy!


Tuesday 25 August 2015

Drumming

So Roppongi is famous for being a really expensive shopping district that happens to hold a festival once a year.

You can really tell there's a lot of money in this area, everything is landscaped and pretty and there are even some green spaces to sit on, which is something you're not usually allowed to do in these densely urban areas.

The festival was pretty cool, but the people were terrible.  The thing you can usually count on in Japan is courtesy, but that was a commodity in short supply here.  I was surprised at how many people were being jerks for no real reason, pushing and jostling, cutting into lines, pushing in front of people to watch events like the one below:



Having spent a short amount of time with the public in a serving capacity the reason seems pretty clear to me, with the entitlement of money oozing from every dickhead in the crowd.  It was that or a weird cologne.

Having said that, it was pretty funny watching a dude in a brand new ferrari being stopped at a crossroad.  The other three ferrari's didn't even wait.  He was angry.

Anyway, on a positive note, the performances were quite good when it was possible to see anything, and the music was cool.  It's definitely worth checking out if you don't have much time in Japan, but keep in mind it's tiny and rather simple.  A lower tier festival, C+.

Wednesday 19 August 2015

Interstellar Gravity

This is being written on a phone so the Formatting won't allow me to see what I'm typing.  This will probably end horribly garbled but I might just leave it that way, forever a sign of how far we still have to go in terms of phone UI design.

Anyway, I watched 2 movies today, Interstellar and Gravity.

Both are surprisingly good films in their own way, but both suffered from not knowing how to end.  Either film could win worst ending oscar, should that become an award in the future.

So I watched Interstellar first, but let's start with Gravity.

From the way it is filmed I guessed it was a late 3D offering and upon post viewing research I was right.  There are a lot of shots of things flying towards the camera and objects careening past in the foreground, middle and background.  Every 3D film ever made has the same effects, and it's this chronic lack of imagination that caused the doom of 3D cinema.  Anyway, I remember the effects being heralded as revolutionary back when this came out.

They are.  But only in one sense.  For the past decade and a half filmmakers have been obsessed with Blair Witch style shaky cam, the vomit inducing action camera that's supposed to mimic the action of a real head reacting to the scene in front of him, or at the very least a camera down in the dirt where the real stuff is happening.

It's a stupid premise that doesn't work and always requires an even greater effort of suspension of disbelief because the accompanying motions aren't there (shaking seat, craning neck etc) and the screen isn't all encompassing, so only a part of your vision is experiencing the effect.  It is always stupid nd very rarely works.

Stop it.  Directors, stop it.

Anyway, this is an action film with very little shaky cam.  Maybe the tides are turning?  I fear it's just the space setting as there are dozens of shots where the view is as it would be were the viewer the actor (sandra bullock?  She looked familiar).

Also there is a warning at the beginning that sound does not travel in space which is so pathetic and. pandering it was almost a deal breaker.  I nearly turned it off at this point.  I wonder if my version was just the american releasd and all non-american versions did away with that part.

The galling, fucking ridiculous part was that after 5 minutes the debris i space WAS MAKING NOISE AS IT WHIPPED PAST.

For fucks sake the director is an idiot.

Also, 95pc of the film is CG, from the stations to the actors bodids whenever they're suited up.  After only 2 years it already looks bad.  One of the indoor scenes looked like they lifted it out of a demo for unreal engine 4.

The negatives aside , and don't get me wrong, those negatives are glaring whwn I write them down, it's still a good film worth watching.  The actors do their jobs, the pacing keeps motivation up and its incredible brevity mean nothing outstays any welcomes.  You can turn it off 10 minutes before the finish, end on a cliffhanger and actully give yourself a better overall experience.  When they remember their ow in universe rules the sound is superb, the visuals of earth as seen from space gave me the chills I get from NASA pictures and there are several scenes where insignificance comes into play like no other film.

Interstellar is a completely different fish.  It's a much better film and almost competes as a spectacle too.  The problems come when you look at the chronic lack of science that went into this thing.  And the ending.  For Christs sake the ending.

When you talk about a future where Earth is no longer habitable it's always somehow man-caused volcanoes or man-made ice ages but this film steers clear of that by suggesting massive desertification of the american corn belt, and by extension the food producing regions of the world.  Okay movie maker man, one point there because that's something that's demonstrably happening now.

They also cite virulent blights, presumably from intensive single strain farming.  Fine, disease is a constant threat in modern literature.

Then they describe all the major crops simply ceasing to grow.  Erm.

Okay?  If this is what gets us into space then fine.

But then over the course of 2 further hours and several tangents the dxplanations start rolling in.

And then minus 90 million billion minus points.  No.  Black holes do not work like that.  Fine, if you want a convenient device for doing things then have a hole in space, just don't invoke black hole.  Call it something else.  Anything else.  By the ending my brain was bleeding out of my ears from the stupidity.

Look, I get it.  This isn't actually a sciemce fiction film.  I understand that it's just a meditation on family, how relationships change awgrowes older and our responsibilities shaping who we are and become - but if that's your thinly veiled premise then don't dress something up in the realm of science when it's actually mysticism. When you have a population that needs reminding that there is no air in space then I wonder how much the science matters in the first place.  Make it batshit crazy with giant robots, or keep a grounding in reality.  This half and half, increasingly ridiculous universe is so contrived it's painful.

That aside, some surprisingly well acted child characters top off a great cast.  It's a top notch production in that regard.

The sound is superb.  The soundtrack is also excellent.

The effects are good, the space scenes echo gravity in a way that makes me think the director liked it.  There's a new bar for representing space, these films are currently top notch in that regard.

The secret show stealers are the robots.  They're horribly designed in a modern take on the old immobile droids from years past (think r2, or c3po, or even the daleks) but they have so much personality.  The human ability to ascribe meaning and emotion to objects is incredible, and the form of these guys plays into that brilliantly.  They are menacing, endearing, bold and subtle all at once.  And horribly ill conceived for actual spaceflight.

I love it when a director tinkers with expectations, and these droids provide all kinds of tension throughout.

The ending is inexcusable.  From the fake spiritualism (why change tone fully 5/6ths of the way in?) to the ridiculous and sappy ending.  Pathetic.

The symbolism of him forging his own path in the face of familial responsibilities, and him rediscovering himself and his meaning is cool I guess?

No, that's a lie .  The final 20 minutes or so are some of the worst in cinematic history.  The gulf between highs and lows are so monumental it boggles the mind to think that anyone let the final scenes out of the door.

Despite that I still recommend it.  Both of them in fact.  Go watch them!

My whole body hurts from typing this out on a phone.  I dare not go back and read it all.

Wednesday 12 August 2015

Disappointing Haul

Got the film back, not very many good pictures.

They were all too dark which isn't surprising considering the people pictures I took were at a late hour, but most disappointing were the fireworks pictures.  None of them turned out particularly well.  At least I know to do something like this all digital in the future.

Anyway, here are the ones I could salvage.


This is obviously too dark.  If I had some kind of flash, or a helper holding a reflector, maybe that would have helped.  It's a shame because the colours of their outfits were quite nice, hence the desire to take a picture in the first place.  Lesson learned!


The smoke in the foreground is alright, it takes up a little too much of the frame though.


Probably the best one of the analogue pictures, a nice gradation from top to the middle, fading towards black at the bottom.

All I need now is a nice scanner and a really nice printer, and then I can start getting high quality copies done!  No need for crappy jpg's on a DVD with that gear.

You can watch the highlights reel here, or see the digital pictures (which I much prefer on this occasion) here.

Wednesday 5 August 2015

More Fireworks

So while I was out taking photographs on my gangster cardboard bipod I also took a few videos.

You can watch the short version here:


The sound is pretty bad, but needless to say they were bloody loud.  Especially the ending.  Wow.


If you haven't seen the stills from this event, check them out here:

http://eastern-escapology.blogspot.jp/2015/08/goddamnit-and-incredible-fireworks.html

Monday 3 August 2015

Goddamnit, and Incredible Fireworks

So the Edogawa fireworks display is really big.  I don't know if it's the biggest in Japan, or whether it has any particular accolades in terms of size or variety, but just shy of a million and a half people view it yearly.  As such, it's a pretty big deal, and a large number of fireworks are thrown into the air for the occasion.

This year I wasn't in England and I had some time off from rugby so I decided to go along.

It's worth remembering that the Summer here is particularly warm, with the humidity also being a factor.

The result is that it gets unbearably hot during midday.

In order to secure a good spot to see the show it was necessary to go relatively early.  It began at 7.15, so we decided to head down around two o' clock, throw down a tarpaulin and sit under an umbrella.

Firstly, the place wasn't nearly as crowded as I was lead to believe it would be at this time.  With two people you could probably arrive around four thirty or five and still find space to sit down.  Whether it's always this easy is up for debate, but on the Chiba half of the river (the show is half paid for by the tokyo side of the river, and half by the chiba side) seating is a fairly simple affair.

The umbrella wasn't see-through, it was entirely opaque.  I still got burnt.  I have no idea how, but it happened.  It also wasn't big enough for my whole body (I need to get a fishing umbrella!) so I draped towels over my legs, making a kind of lean-to against the umbrella.

Long story short, it was hot.  It was too hot.  I do not recommend going before four P.M. for the simple fact that you will melt.  It was the hottest I have ever been while not playing sports, and it felt like I was going to die.  It was horrible.  Really, soul crushingly horrible.

As a caveat I'm the kind of person that would rather be too cold than too hot, so maybe it was just me.  There were a few intrepid locals sitting out in the sun, covered with only T-shirts, drinking beer.  Insane.  They weren't even sunburnt by the end of the day.  They must be made of radiators and zinc oxide.

Anyway, aside from nearly dying, I also fashioned a makeshift tripod.  Basically, there's no way to shoot long exposures without something to balance the camera on, that's why we have tripods.

None of my photographs are very good when you stop and look at them, but they hold up to a cursory glance for reasons that I'll explain later - but even getting these results took a bit of crafting.

I cut a slot into one big cardboard box and put a smaller one inside it at an angle, giving a fairly stable triangle.  I then taped it, cut wedges into the top, put towels over them and finally plopped the cameras on top.  It's good enough for video, the wobble is barely perceptible there, but for stills it's an entirely different story.

Before I get to the pictures, this boat sailed straight into this clearly marked area ignoring the obvious hazard, got caught up in some kind of net (dozens of fish made a bid for freedom when the propeller snagged) and burnt out their engine.  Seconds after this picture a big puff of black smoke emitted from the rear and lots of shouting happened.  I flitted between wanting to die from heat stroke and laughing at these idiots being hauled out of the net by a couple of other boats.  The women on the front did not move one iota the whole time.

When you're on the water, look out for buoys, people.

Anyway, onto the pictures.


It was a pretty day.  After my near death exposure experience there was a nice sunset.


There are only two pictures in landscape today, I learned something pretty quickly about which orientation suits fireworks the best.  Especially individual fireworks.


This is an odd one in that it's the only 100mm+ picture that wasn't a total mess.  Obviously the more zoomed in you are the more stable the platform needs to be, but I didn't realise quite how stable.  Cardboard doesn't cut it most of the time.


This is the other landscape.  It's also the only picture with more than one firework going off in the same frame.  If I had a tripod I could have taken a dozen pictures and overlayed them which can give a cool look with lots of simultaneous colours.


If you don't like this style of picture you can probably close the page now.



This is one of my favourites because it looks like a UFO.


This is another one of my favourites because it looks like a flower.


There was a lot of smoke in the air after only a few volleys which meant pictures often came out with the smoke effects you see here.  The top left of the flower at around 11 o' clock is hazy, residue from a past explosion.  There are also artifacts from reflected light lower down.  I could erase them but it's not really a true image then.

Not that 'true,' means anything in this digital age.


This is a bit earlier or later than the others, it shows the orange afterglow or initial explosion rather than the colours.


This is probably my favourite, just because of the mix of colours and the layers, central bright with a petal texture looking outwards.  Just like a flower.


 So if you enlarge any of these pictures and look at the lines of light, you'll notice that they wobble, they're not perfectly straight.  This is where a good base come in handy, it stops that tiny amount of shake and keeps every line looking pristine.  Or at least as it would look in real life.


I don't really like the colour of this one, but it's nice to have context in the form of some housing in the distance below.


The same with this one, the colours are bad but at least there is a wonky horizon, so the firework has a little more context.


 This is another of my favourites, it's super blurred (artistic effect, if anyone asks) but it's a nice colour.  If only all the pieces would come together every time!


 I like the colours here, I like how the horizon is almost straight, and I like the light pollution coming from the city.  It just doesn't grab me for some reason.  Taking 'dem pictures is hard.


This isn't a sharp picture, nor does it have interesting colours, but it's probably my favourite.  Have I already said that?  Either way, I'll probably make it my phone background at some point.


This last one I've chopped up to make it look like some strange sea creature.  Or a bizarre cell.  Or an artists rendition of a crazy quantum experiment.  Or one of those plasma balls.

I would also mention that the wind was in our faces, meaning we were absolutely pelted with the detritus from the explosions.  We were covered in soot, charred paper and big lumps of cardboard by the end of it.  It might be worth bringing something with a peak to cover your eyes, even if only a marginal improvement over your hands.  It definitely added excitement to proceedings because it's pitch black directly in front of you and it's hard to see when you're about to be clocked upside the head.

Hopefully some of that will show through in the video.

That's it.  I got quite a few shots I like, and one or two that will go into the 'keepers,' collection, which is a rare thing indeed for a single outing (for me at least)!

I also shot some video, it's taking a while to edit but I'll put it up here when it's done.

Oh, and some film too.  That'll be done in a month or so.  Exciting.