About

Awkward Kiss

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Here is a video that I made for Awkward Moments. I it is a real life awkward first kiss

Jeremy and Katie Webb

Thursday, May 10, 2012

After a month of work I am done with the new wedding video for Jeremy and Katie Webb. This is by far the best wedding video that I have made and I enjoyed every minute of making it. The most challenging part of this video was editing it. I finally decided to upgrade to Final Cut X from Final Cut Pro 7. About an hour into editing it all I had was the footage imported. It took me a lot longer than normal but towards the end I started to understand how the software works.

Harry Potter on a new muggle device

Monday, April 2, 2012

When I first got my Kindle Fire the first books I tried to buy were the Harry Potter series. Before facebook, twitter, and youtube - Harry Potter dominated my life. However they were never released on Kindle.

But now they are.

J.K. Rowling is doing it a little differently though. Instead of buying them off of the amazon website you have to buy the books off of her new site, Pottermore.

This is good news for consumers though. If I were to buy it off of Amazon and then get a different device than the Kindle I would have to re buy the book. On the Pottermore website when you buy the Harry Potter series you get access to it for any device you have.

Amazon must be pretty upset about this but consumers seem to be pretty happy.

Sony's new FS700

It seems just a while ago the new Sony FS-100 was being announced. This was a great new camera for DSLR shooters because it had the benefits of shooting on a DSLR without the problems they have. Now Sony is announcing the Sony NEX-FS700.

What makes me so excited is that it is going to be able to shoot 4K in the future, shoots ultra slow motion (120 and 240 fps) at 1080p and even more intense slow motion (480 and 960 fps) at a lower resoultion.

Oh - and it only costs $8,000. Compared to the $15,000 Canon C300 - it seems like the FS700 will be better in almost every aspect. The one thing that I would want to know before buying it would be the low light capabilities. I shoot a lot of concerts and weddings (which their receptions are notorious for bad lighting). The C300 has already proven to be an amazing low light camera - being able to film at ISO 12,000 and still be presentable. I think if the Sony FS700 has low light capabilities just as good they will have effectively killed any chance the C300 had as being a popular camera.

Wedding Videos


Jeremy and Kaite Webb - Same Day Edit from Egbert Media on Vimeo.

Well this past week has been busy. It involved me flying to L.A. and filming my friends wedding. I started at 7 am and didn't finish until 1:00 am that next morning. Overall it was really really fun and I am so happy for them.

I learned something very interesting about everything though. This video I shot and edited in the same day so that it was playing at their reception by 6:30 PM. It was a hard task and with L.A. traffic I didn't have a lot of time to do it. I think I spent about an hour and a half editing the video - but because I have training in quick deadline news stories I was able to make it look the best I could with the time I had.

However when I did show it people were utterly amazed at the end product. They were just amazed at how I was able to get it done and showing at the reception.

It made me realize that future media professionals don't just have to be able to produce good content, they have to be able to produce it faster than everybody else at a high quality. I was able to do that by writing down what shots I wanted to use for the beginning middle and end. However those who can't do this will probably be out preformed by those who can. 

Niche TV

This last weekend I flew to Los Angeles to film my friend's wedding video. I got to the airport pretty early so I waited in the terminal for my plane to arrive. While waiting I started to watch CNN on one of the many TVs in the area.

After a few news stories an advertisement for CNN came up promoting what I thought was a new station. It turned out it was the one I was currently watching.

CNN has created a news channel specifically for airports. This channel plays in big airports and has news that would be important to travelers. This would be weather, flight delays, and an equal balance between hard and soft news.

I also noticed that the ads playing between news segments were different than normal ones. They advertised airline companies and higher end products. I think that the reason why they played a lot of commercials about higher end products is that the majority of people who fly are business men and people who can afford to fly which means they have higher income and would be able to afford these higher end products.

Pintrest Irregularities

So I have a pretty cool sister-in-law who has this pretty cool (that is if you are a crafty mother) blog called Freshly Completed. She has been blogging pretty avidly since last August and has created a decent following since then just on her blog. In recent months she has branched out to a facebook page and using pintrest.

She started using pintrest because she noticed how many people started pinning her blog posts and then others repinning them. So she signed up and she even got her husband (my older brother) to sign up. They started pinning her blog posts (as did I - even though it took the manliness of my pintrest down a notch or two).

The crazy thing was the respins she received from pinning. And it wasn't from her pinning - it was from her husband. It all started with this blog post about the Perfect Lemonade. She pinned it and got a few people to repin it. Then my brother (who only uses pintrest to pin his wife's blog posts) pinned it and it shot to 100 repins by the end of the night.

I was talking with them and for some reason my sister in law who uses pintrest for everything got only 10 pins. My brother who never uses it got over 90 - in one night. They asked me (as they do with most social media questions) why that was. In fact - I have no idea. I tried to formulate ideas why that would be.

Then to make things crazy my brother (who once again only pins his wife's blog posts) is gettingmore followers than her.

Social media is so cool, but sometimes I can't understand it. The only thing I can do is go with it and try my best to understand it.    

Youtube and Google Adsense

For my youtube series Awkward Moments In Life I am fortunate enough to have google adsense enabled on my videos. What does that mean? It means that for the ads that appear on my youtube videos I am able to earn a portion of the money that these companies pay google to be on these videos.

A lot of times people ask me how I did it and how they are able to get signed up for google adsense for their youtube videos. Well here is what I did.

When I started making my videos I would put in their descriptions, "On this episode of Awkward Moments In Life we see..." I think that Google would see that and notice that this isn't just a funny video I posted once but something that I plan on making on a regular basis.

Next I would always post links to the facebook page and twitter account. Google would see this and see that I was dedicated to using a wide range of social media.

The final thing was that all of my videos started with a title slate that branded them as part of my series.

These were the things that I did in the beginning and a few were by accident. However if I was to start another youtube series I would still do all of these so that I could start getting my youtube videos monetized as fast as I can.

Facebook/Twitter Competitions

This past month I was running contests on both my facebook and twitter accounts for my youtube series Awkward Moments In Life.

After researching how to properly do them I learned a lot about not only social media contests but social media.

Facebook Contest
The first thing I learned about facebook contests is that I couldn't just post on my wall "Share this link to my contest and you are entered in to win a $50 amazon gift card." All contests had to be separated from facebook. In order to do this I had to run an app on my facebook page. I decided to go with North Social because of the free 14 day trial plus the low cost to run it afterwards. Although I really liked their app I found that their services are more directed at companies that would have a fully integrated social media platform instead of me who just needs a contest.

Twitter Contest
The twitter rules were less strict. I just had to tweet something and ask people to retweet it. It was pretty simple but I only had 10 people enter - so it ended up not being that effective.

All in all my facebook likes went from aroun 50 to 230 at the end of the contest. I plan on running the facebook contest again in the future and here is what I plan on doing differently:

  • Use a service that makes it so people share that they entered the contest on their facebook wall
  • Create a facebook event with all of the information on the site
  • Use different means of entering. Maybe an awkward photo contest or let people vote on who has the most awkward contest

Seattle Part 7 - Banyan Branch

Out last visit of our second day was to Banyan Branch. Overall this was the coolest place that we visited.

Banyan Branch is an integrated Social Media Agency. They have been around for only a few years but have already established themselves as leaders in Social Media Marketing.

In the back of their offices they have a wall that holds about 20 large TV's that are displaying trends, topics, graphs, tweets - and it is all in real time. Not only that but their software tracks everything that is being said and how it relates to their clients. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they found this blog post about them. If so and they are reading this I would like to say, "Thanks for the visit."

What I got out of visiting them is how they were able to make money off of social media and how they were able to help companies use it not so much as another way to make money but as a tool to interact with their customers.

Seattle Part 6 - Weggner Edstrom

For the sixth part of our visit in Seattle we visited Weggner Edstrom - a PR firm in Bellevue who does a lot of the PR for Microsoft.

The most interesting thing about this company to me was their special task force they had to deal with online customer complaints. There was a division of people who tracked the internet and social media to find out what people where saying. When something did arise they would go out their to the blogs, facebook, twitter and other social media and start blogging, sharing and tweeting to resolve the problems that were presented.

It kind of sounded like guerrilla PR - and it sounded awesome.  

Klout

Monday, March 26, 2012

Ever wondered how influential you are with social media. Ever wonder if what you say actually gets through to people. Ever wonder if you are more popular than your friends?

Well Klout can help you out with all of those, well except the last one. Klout is a website that measures your influence on social media by giving you a klout score (mine is staying around a 54).

So big deal - why does it matter? For companies looking to broaden their reach they can see three different things:
  1. True Reach
  2. Amplification
  3. Network
With these you get real numbers about how many people you reach on average, how likely it is that it will get re posted and how many people are in your solid network.

The other perk to using Klout is it's perks. Companies go to Klout in search of people who are influential about certain topics to help spread the word about their product. Early screenings of movies, free products, trips to Seattle. The key is that you have to be influential. Right now I am just below the Klout score needed to get something good but I have gotten Axe hair gel (worked great but I prefer pomade), access to websites like www.wahooley.com and gift cards to new online stores.

If you are using social media in anyway outside of connecting with friends you should sign up for Klout.

Tweet Adder

Ethics Statement: Tweet Adder is not paying me nor did they ask me to write this blog post.

As many may already know, I run a youtube series and blog called Awkward Moments In Life. Recently I have been trying to increase my social media footprint on Facebook and Twitter. For me Facebook was something easy for me to do. I set up a page and invited my friends and saw my page likes go up.

However twitter was something completely new to me. I had my own twitter but at the time didn't use it that much. The other problem I had is that most people in my social network didn't (and still don't) use twitter.

While trying to figure out what to do I talked with a friend of mine who is the video director and social media manager for the band Waking Jordan.

He told me how he was able to get so many followers on the band's twitter page through a service called Tweet Adder.

Tweet Adder is a software that you can buy from their website for around $50. This software can control all of your twitter functions. But how well does it work?

Well in the past two months I went from 300 followers to over 1,500.

The best part about the service is that there is no catch, hidden charges, or spamming. The idea is pretty simple.

What I did to get those 300 followers was follow about 1,000 people. One third of those people followed me back because they felt that I had something that they would want to stay up to date with. This took a lot of my time and I am not a big fan of following people all day. Also the people that I followed were across the board of interests and not the kind of people who would engage in my theme of awkward moments.

With tweet adder I can search specific topics - #awkwardmoments, #funnyvideo #anythingreally. From there I can follow people who search for those topics and if they feel like I offer good content they will follow me back.

The other best part is the automated tweeting. I never kept up with my tweets and would go a week in between tweeting something. Now what I do is spend about an hour a week coming up with tweets associated with my theme of awkward moments and type them into tweet adder. I then turn on the automation on and Tweet Adder sends out one of these tweets that I wrote every four to six hours.

The biggest thing that I learned from this is that although I am having a machine do a lot of my automation I still have to interact on a personal level. I still have to respond to direct messages, mentions, and tweet on relevant topics of the day.

Overall though - Tweet Adder is a great tool that helps me be more social at a larger level.

Seattle Part 5 - Creature

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Photo from Dennis Archer


This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.


The next place that I visited on my trip to Seattle was to Creature, the most creative advertising agency we went to in Seattle. We met with Pat Horn, one of the creative directors at Creature.
He explained to us the process that Creature goes through when working with a client. It goes like this:

  1. Make a client briefe
  2. Bring the brief to client services
  3. Take it to both the strategy and creative departments
  4. They make a one page creative brief 
  5. The produce the media
Overall I learned a lot from creature. The major thing was to think outside of the box for advertising. My favorite campaign they did was  the Starbucks red cup campaign. This consisted of magnet Starbucks cups they would put on the top of the roof of taxis. When people would see these taxis drivin around with this cup of coffee on the roof and stop them they would get a $5 giftcard. 

My favorite part of the meeting was seeing a commercial they were working on. Creature focuses on creating creative but strategically power advertising.

Key points I learned
  • Your portfolio should be filled with what you like not what your teacher's like
  • Healthy tension never hurt anybody
  • Everybody needs to be creative
  • Ideas need to infiltrate pop culture

Seattle Part 4 - Digital Kitchen

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.


Photo courtesy of Martin Cathrae
For almost all of the companies that I visited with in Seattle I went with about 15 other communication students from BYU-Idaho. These companies are great - but none of them were related to digital filmmaking. So I looked around on the internet for companies to visit that related to that. A month before I left a friend showed me the demo reel made by Digital Kitchen.
After seeing it I wanted to meet with them and fortunately was able to set up a time to meet with them while I was in Seattle.
When I showed up to their office I instantly stuck out. My school asked that while on the trip we would dress in a suit and tie. Everybody there dressed in a way those who normally wear suits to work would describe as "casual." I would describe it as the way I would like to go to work.
That aside - DK was a very great opportunity to get to see how an interactive digital agency works. Like every agency their are art and creative directors along with people in charge of the finances and I.T.
I asked them what skills they were looking for in candidates. I was thinking they would say After Effects or Cinema 4D. In fact they aren't looking for someone with specific skills in any certain program. They are looking for people who are first and foremost creative. After that they said that it is important to be skilled with video editing platforms and motion graphics software - but they put the emphasis on people who are creative and can bring good ideas to the table.
Key points I learned from Digital Kitchen

  • Creativity is first and foremost
  • You need to have a wide variety of skills
  • If you are creative and have skills - every company in Seattle will talk about you (like every company I went to did)  

Seattle Part 3 - Wong Doody

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.


Photo courtesy of Sheldon Photography
Wong Doody was the first advertising agency that we went to on the trip. I knew they meant business when we walked in their conference room and saw a table filled with trophies. I made sure to pay attention to what they had to say.


One of the creative directors came in and began to explain how Wong Doody does advertising. The first thing he told us that we needed to know about advertising and design was:

*"Mess it up or get out of the way"

He explained what he meant by that. He showed us a campaign that Wong Doody did for the Seattle Sonics.


They decided to make a campaign based on old 80's "fire sales." Instead of making sure it looked good they decided to make it look as bad as they could. This included getting old software and computers in order to get the graphics they wanted. When you look at it you can understand what he meant by mess it up.


Another campaign they did was for WGU Washington. For this campaign they wanted to make sure that everybody knew that WGN Washington was Washington's only state-endorsed all online non profit school. For that they wanted to show an ad that explained that and also focused that they didn't spend a lot of their students money on advertising. So they put up a billboard in the middle of the state and and filmed it for 30 seconds and said exactly that. This was their example of getting out of the way.


Overall Wong Doody was a great place to visit and I was able to learn about advertising and design.


Key Points I learned from Wong Doody

  • Don't get your hand prints on the advertising
  • Run away from your comfort zone
  • Whichever way you go - commit to it
  • Think strategically and with a different perspective than everybody else
  • Our job is to make the client uncomfortable with our crazy idea and then make a bridge so they come over and join our ideas
  • *Mess it up or get out of the way
*The actual phrase was f*** it up or get the f*** out of the way but was changed on this blog.

Seattle Part 2 - Twin Star Credit Union

Saturday, March 10, 2012

This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.


A photo taken from my hotel room of the REI building in Seattle
After going to High Street Advertising our university group headed on over to the main offices of Twin Star Credit Union. Twin Star is a large credit union in Washington that has their own internal marketing team.

It was interesting to see how an agency works with advertising and then see how a company does it on their own. The biggest difference that I saw was the time. When they needed something done they have one of their designers do it instead of in an agency where they not only have to meet with someone, discuss the project, and then have the agency balance them between their other clients.

The other thing that I liked was how they talked about their use of social media. They used it as a tool for transparncey and also customer service instead of an advertising tool. I agree with using social media that way. A lot of companies look at social media as a megaphone when it really is a two way conversation.

Key points I learned from Twin Star
  • Social media should be used for transparency
  • Marketing should be done with a mix of traditional and new media
  • Internal marketing teams can be faster than outside agencies 

Seattle Part 1 - Highstreet Advertising

Sunday, March 4, 2012

This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.

Highstreet Advertising was the first company that we went to. Located south of Seattle in a town called Puyallup it is a small advertising agency. It was run by two people with the help of an intern (who is one of my good friends). What amazed me most about this company was the amount of work that they were able to get done as such a small operation. Their latest project – 22 videos of kids talking about their school. As someone who does video I was impressed. Oh – and the videos were in Chinese so I was even more impressed. The two people who worked their and the intern all wore many different hats and seemed to work well together.

Key Points I learned about advertising
-Teamwork is a must
-Team size doesn’t matter
-Know everything –but make sure you specialize in something

Superbowl Ads

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The Super Bowl happened about a week ago and I still can't stop thinking about a few of their ads. Here were my three favorite ads played at this years super bowl.

1. Chrysler's Half Time Comercial


Chrysler took a big risk running this ad. Most commercials are 30 or 60 seconds, but this commercial was two minutes long. Even though it was two times longer than commercials it was very very well done and impressed me.

2. Chevy Sonic

Who does not like to see a car do a kickflip, bungee jump, make a music video, or parachute? I know I do. The thing that I like so much about this commercial is that it is in my opinion the best multi media ad campaign. Not only was it aired on TV but the TV ad sent you to watch more online. The commercial almost was more promoting you watch the videos online than it was the Chevy Sonic. How effective were the videos online? The music video that OK GO did while driving the Sonic has over 13 millon views after being online for 10 days - not to bad.

3. Budlight/Shazam/Half Time Show

When I first saw this ad I was confused on what I was trying to be sold. Like I said a while ago about joint advertising - this was a good example. It was a bud light commercial with Shazzam telling you about the half time show with LMFAO - or maybe it was a commercial by LMFAO telling you to watch the half time show and shazzam it at the same time. Or maybe it was a shazzam commercial with LMFAO and they were obligated to mention bud light? Who knows - but there were three things advertised in only the space of 30 seconds.

Sundnace 2012 - Part 2

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

So Sundance was a pretty awesome experience, I can't wait to go next year. The best part about the event was that everyone was involved in making it a great experience for everybody. It wasn't just a festival for film making, it was a festival for the arts. There were a lot of art galleries, photo galleries, and other creative outlets at Park City that added to the atmosphere of the event. I was able to find two original Andy Warhol paintings for sale (about $75,000 each).

The night I saw this was also the same night that I saw California Solo. This was a film about an ex brit-pop star who now works on an organic farm in California. Because of a DUI he faces deportation.

Afterwards I was able to talk to the director about the way that they filmed the entire film. The big thing that I noticed was the consistent shallow depth of field in the film. I was amazed because the focus puller did a good job keeping everything in focus.

What the director told me was that he wanted the film to be from the main characters perspective the whole time. He didn't want to go the route of other directors and shoot from over his shoulder. So he decided to stay with keeping him in focus and everything around him out of focus.

The other thing we talked about was filming on the RED M1 instead of film. He told me that he chose to shoot digital instead of film because of budget reasons. However he explained that he has worked with film before on his last film and would not go back to using film unless he has a 100 million dollar budget.

I feel like that is going to be the attitude of film making in the future, an increased pull towards shooing digital and not on film. Digital is a lot cheaper than film and with new cameras like the RED Epic, Arri Alexa, and Canon C300 digital quality is getting to look pretty good.

Sundance 2012 - Part 1

Friday, February 3, 2012

Last weekend I was able to do something that I have always wanted to do - attend the Sundance Film Festival. It was a really interesting experience and I had a good time going there and being surrounded by so many other people there that loved filmmaking as much as me, or probably even more so.

My favorite part about the experience was the Q & A with the directors about their films. The first film that I saw was the preimier for the movie Predisposed. I kind of liked it and gave it a 6.8 out of 10, but I'm not here to review the movie. I am here to talk about the Q & A session with the writer and Director of the film.

The question that I asked was how they filmed the argument scenes (which there were a lot of and usually involved three or more people). They explained that although it was scripted out they allowed for the actors to improvise and say their own words based on what concept needed to be said. I think that shows how great the actors are because it is a difficult task to improvise an argument, especially when it involves five people in a car.

Another thing I learned was the process this movie took to become made. Before it was a feature film it was a short film made in 2008. Twelve years before it premiered it became an idea of the writer and director of the film. A long time indeed for a film to be made.

The Future of Advertising?



I just saw this posted on a friend's facebook. What starts out as a commercial for bounce dryer sheets turns into a repeat of Old Spice's notorious ads. Funny as always Old Spice did do something new - an advertisement within an advertisement. Even though it was used as a joke may be the future of advertisement.

Collaboration is something I see all the time on blogs and YouTube channels so it wouldn't surprise me if more people went the way of Old Spice and worked with other companies with their advertisements. The path of going with interrupting peoples ads might only have Old Spice walking down it but I can see other ways that people use collaborated advertising:

1. Cereal Commercials
You need to use milk in that ad - will a milk company pay to be the milk used?

2. Any commercial filmed in a kitchen
Whenever a mom opens a cupboard to take out a paper towel to clean the mess a kid made who would pay to be the food in that cupboard.

3. Cell Phones
If you are a cell phone company why not pay to have your new cell phone be the one used by the actors in the commercial

4. Retail stores and Credit Cards
Credit Card companies are always showing people buy things at stores. How about Old Navy fronts part of the advertising cost to have them use the credit card at their store.

5. Beverages of any sort
I have this commercial where people are going on vacation to advertise online hotel deals. Guess what they drink during the entire commercial of their vacation. Your product!

These are just some examples and I am sure that more and more can be done.
So why do I think that this is going to happen? Well the average commercial used to be a minute. Then it got cut down to 30 seconds. Now we are seeing 15 second commercials. We might be able to get a commercial down to seven seconds.

The more and more media is competing for our attention shorter commercials become impractical. However adding spots in commercials allows for us to see the brand more and more without it being forced at us.

With the Super Bowl coming soon maybe we will see more ads like these. If not - I am going to watch the Old Spice commercials again.

Getting started as a blogger - Part 1

Everybody out there with a blog wants to drive more traffic to it. Some have the money to pay for it through advertising, others are able to do it through their vast array of social networks, and others can do it because they have been doing it forever.
For those starting out (and primarily with blogs) these are all imposible because:

1. We don't have money to spend on advertising besides the $75 credit we got for free from google adwords
2. Our social media circle consists of our friends, co-workers, and that random 60-year-old guy from Italy who is following us on Twitter
3.We have just started and barely have any content

So what are begging bloggers to do?

Find your niche
The purpose of finding a niche is to find viewers who want to and will come back to your site. Lets say that you have a blog on everything and anything. I get linked there because I am looking fora great peanut butter cheesecake recipe that you posted. I get the recipe and take a look around your site for a second. You have posts about arts and crafts, the recent Republican debate, and weather patterns in Nigeria. I'm only going to come back if I loose the recipe.
If however you are more focused on just food (like Our Best Bites does) I will be coming back to look for more recipes and keeping up to date with your new posts.
Your niche can be as specific as only soup recipes or a little bit broader as a thing like new technology, social media, and film making (like me)
Their are advantages and disadvantages to specific niches and broad niches.
For the soup blogger they will only get people specifically looking for soup recipes. However because that is all they do they are more likely to be found by people looking for soup recipes than if they did all sorts of cooking.
For someone like me I will get a wide array of people coming here because of the wider range of topics. Usually people interested in film making will be interested in new technology and media trends. However people looking to follow filmmakers will probably choose to follow Philip Bloom closer than me (and I don't blame them).
So - choose your niche and market towards them. Remember - it is better that your blog is read entirely by 10,000 people than briefly seen by 1,000,000 people.

Canon's new camera - C300

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Photo Courtesy of: Lan Bui http://lanbui.com/
Canon made their big announcement of their new camera, the C300, back in November. Like most camera nerds, I was online all day watching what features it had and what it's competitor (the RED scarlet) had to offer.

Canon has set the release date for the C300 for January 30th. It is available on pre-order right now from B&H. The price right now is $15,999 for just the body - which means that it will most likely rival the Sony PMW-F3 which costs $13,960.

B&H released an in depth hands on review on the C300 and can be seen here. It does get pretty technical but it also shows some of the great new features of the C300, especially it's low light filming and 12 stops of dynamic range.

As much as I would love to get the C300 - it is definitely not in my price range. I hope that just like the Sony F3 has a little brother (the FS100) Canon will come out with a large chip camera that is closer towards the price range of $4,000 - $6,000. Instead of that they might just come out with the replacement to the 5D mk II.

What ever happens, it seems like Canon has secured their foot in the cinema world for a bit longer with their C300 and their line of DSLRs.

Here is another video I saw showing off the features of the C300. This one is a bit more comical but still shows the great features the C300 has in low lighting conditions and how it will help independent filmmakers. 

The New Kindle Fire

Monday, January 16, 2012

Photo courtesy of: Courtney Boyd Meyers
I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas and absolutely love it. A lot of Apple apologists (which usually I am) discredit it and remain steadfast in their belief that the iPad is far superior to the Kindle Fire.

The thing that they usually fail to note is the price difference - about $300.

Because of that price difference the Kindle Fire is obviously not going to be as good as the iPad in most aspects. Sure, the iPad has more internal memory (the Fire having 8gb and the iPad starting at 16gb), better selection of apps from itunes, camera and camcorder, and is bigger.
Despite all of these advantages the Fire has some great features that the iPad doesn't have.

1. Books
Ok, I know that you can read books on the iPad but the Kindle Fire is an eReader first and foremost. It is a great eReader just like its predecessor the Kindle. Not only that but you get access to the kindle store which has a large selection of books. Also, the iPad is so big that it is bulky and is like reading a text book. The Fire sits well in your hand and is just like any normal book.

2. Amazon Prime
This is to me the best part about the Fire. As a student I got amazon prime for free - but because of the services they offer will buy it as soon as my free trial runs out. If you have prime with your fire you can:
-Stream select movies and tv sereis. Free.
-Access the Kindle Library (download a free book - like an electronic e-library)

3. Cloud Access
Ok I know that the iPad has access to the cloud and so does most tablets. The Fire's cloud access is just really easy to navigate. The reason why I love it is that if you have to much books, movies, apps, or what have you on your fire you can easily remove them from your device but still have access to them on the cloud. Above each page you can either select the cloud (which has everything you put there) or device (which is just what you have on the 8gb of memory). If I ever fill my fire up I am going to start removing all of my apps that I already need an internet connection for.

When given the price difference between the iPad and the Fire I would much rather have the Fire. It preforms great and has so many features with it that make it an amazing tablet. Now I am not saying that the iPad is not a good tablet - in fact I think that it is amazing. All I am saying is that Amazon found a way to give people a tablet that preforms almost as well with the same versatility - at $300 cheaper.

Should Apple be afraid of the Fire though? I think just a little bit. Fire might take away a bit of their business but I feel that Amazon is reaching a different market. Take me for example - as a college student who already bought a MacBook Pro - I don't want to nor am I able to afford an iPad. Like me there are many people who would like to have a tablet but don't have the money for it. At a price of $200 the Fire starts to look more reasonable and persuaded me to get it.

Overall the Kindle Fire is an amazing tablet that combines great functionality with an even better price tag.

 
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