I think secretly, deep down, everybody wants a microblogging service. Lets face it, Twitter is awesome or have you forgotten about this bad boy. So now, I’ll stop plugging my blog in order to plug my brand new microblog: Travis Fantina Ramblings.
It all began reading over last month’s Dreamhost newsletter. They mentioned a wonderful new microblogging software called status.net. Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License. So I looked up Dreamhost’s own Pet Status It’s basically Twitter for your server which got me excited because as I stated earlier everybody wants their own microblogging service.
So I’m pleased to introduce Travis Fantina Ramblings a brand new microblogging service that’s free to join and offers ten more characters per post then Twitter! It’s a counter part to this Ramblings blog, now instead of only me EVERYBODY gets to ramble. It’s not very useful, but it’s on my server now and I’m probably too lazy to ever remove it check it out, join up and start microblogging who knows we might even have the next Twitter on our hands (but I doubt it). It’s a fun little experiment and a way for me to waste more time.

Now you may be wondering, Travis, where the heck have you been? No hide nor hair of a blog post since December. The answer is simple, I’ve been fairly busy and the majority of my ‘public thoughts’ (those are thoughts that I deem worthy to post online) are not long enough to blog about. You’ll notice that my Twitter account is regularly Tweeting and my new Ramblings account will soon begin rambling regularly. If anybody finds a plugin that allows me to merge these accounts I would love you forever.

Seriously, I do miss blogging regularly. I missed the ‘Avatar’ craze (but if your wondering I liked it a lot), and there are several other reviews I meant to post but just never did: let me just say go see ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘The Lovely Bones’ RIGHT NOW! Anyway I’m probably going to see both ‘Green Zone’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ this week I’ll try to post a review. I promise I’ll get back to regular blog updates (for those of you still not tweeting with the twits).

For now, check out Ramblings: The Microblog

written by Travis \\ tags: blog, fantina, Microblogging, Ramblings, Reviews, Status.net, travis, Twitter

I recently watched Jaws, and one shot, the same shot that strikes me every time I see it struck me again. It happens right before the second attack when Brody is sitting on the beach looking out at the swimmers when someone yells “Shark!” there is an amazing shot where the camera comes up to Roy Scheider’s face and the background seems to melt away…

That is a classic example of a dolly zoom, sometimes called a ‘Vertigo shot’. The effect was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock and has sense been used by many other great filmmakers, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Peter Jackson, just to name a few.

It’s a very effective technique because it does such a good job of messing it viewer’s perception; the background is becoming larger in the frame indicating a dolly or zoom in and yet the foreground remains the same, this creates a sense of fear or urgency while simotaniously focusing the viewer’s attention on the only subject in the foreground.

I decided to try my hand at this awesome effect, sorry if the result is a little bumpy and not as fluid as in the movies I will explain the shakiness below;

So how did I do this? Lacking a actor and dolly, I decided to go with a clay model I made a while back. I made the dolly out of Legos® which explains the shakiness (don’t expect to get a steady shot when you place a 4 lbs. camera on two sets of tiny Lego® wheels). Obviously you can do this with anything that rolls smoothly but for this experiment I used what I could find quickly.

The technique is really quite simple but it requires a good deal patience to get something that looks half decent. Start the shot as far from the subject as you wish but remain zoomed in. Now dolly in and simultaneously zoom out. As the camera approaches the object you compensate for the change by zooming out this keeps the subject in relatively the same location within the frame but the background is changing position. The hardest part of the effect is making sure that your dollying and zooming line up, you must dolly and zoom at the same speed. If you dolly to slow and zoom to fast the effect won’t work and visa versa. Good luck!

Thanks for reading, if you have any comments or suggestions post em’ below or email me!

written by Travis \\ tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Dolly, Dolly Zoom, Jaws, Lego, Vertigo, Zoom