The entire company of Zaia wishes you a Happy Chinese New Year. Kung Hei Fat Choy!

I had my noodles at the local Chinese restaurant and let off bottle rockets into the water of Macau. Happy to report no rockets hit me this year.

Yin Yang. They are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white, and they cannot exist without each other.

Highlights of Information from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

• the concept of yin yang is often referred to in the West as “yin and yang”
• Yin is the black side with the white dot on it and yang is the white side with the black dot on it.
• Yin yang are not opposing forces (dualities), but complementary opposites that interact within a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system.
• There is a perception (especially in the West) that yin and yang correspond to evil and good. However, Taoist philosophy generally discounts good/bad distinctions and other dichotomous moral judgments, in preference to the idea of balance.
• Yin and yang are always opposite and equal qualities
• It is impossible to talk about yin or yang without some reference to the opposite, since yin and yang are bound together as parts of a mutual whole (e.g. you cannot have the back of a hand without the front).

This is a music video about a Chinese love story. I’m sure I have bits of this story wrong but this is how I remember it being told to me:

In China there’s a very beautiful blind girl that works at a little flower shop. A Chinese boy who is fat and not so handsome always spends time with her and falls in love with her. They start to spend time together and she falls in love with him too.

One day they are out and he goes to get ice cream. While he’s getting the ice cream she gets hit by a car. He feels so guilty that he wasn’t present to look after her. He prays to God and says he will do anything if she will live. She lives and miraculously has her sight back.

But the price the boy pays is he is turned into a hamster (mouse). The girl falls in love with her doctor and the mouse (that’s really the ugly fat boy) is given to her as a gift. She feels the same feelings of love when she is with the mouse. But she marries the doctor. The rat is kept as a pet and she cherishes it.

Mmmmm…… this story is very disturbing. Ok, so maybe I get the bargain bit where the guy had to be turned into a mouse in return for her life. But then he has to sit as a rat and watch her fall in love with the doctor. And then day after day sit in his little cage and watch them be in love.

Maybe he likes it. Maybe there’s more to the story where he’s very happy to see her life fulfilled even if he isn’t part of it. That would be noble – but he has to be a rat too? If I was God (I’m not), I would have given her sight back and then told the fat boy to go on a diet. I think that’s the nicer thing to do. Of course, not a very interesting story that way. In fact, I probably would have made sure they had ice cream together and THEN told the boy to go on a diet. I’m a softie. I don’t think I’d make a very good God.

So is the girl a slut? I mean the minute she gets her sight back she goes for the doctor. Don’t doctors take oaths so they don’t get involved with patients? This is all very confusing to me.

When I first started working at the Venetian Macau in April of 2011, all the background music piped through the hallways and upper shopping canals was Vivaldi. I’m pretty sure it was all Vivaldi all the time; specifically the Four Seasons. At the time I commented how much I loved it. The recordings were great with fine string performances. A friend said “Just wait, after six months you’ll be sick of it and never want to hear it again.” But I didn’t find that was true. I loved the music when I first heard it and still loved it three years later.

Now I know the Venetian has opened the Four Seasons addition and maybe someone in marketing thought, “Hey, we shouldn’t play the Four Seasons music at the Venetian when we have the Four Seasons right next door”. Maybe they’re still playing the Four Seasons over AT the Four Seasons – not sure.

In any case, I noticed a few months ago that they started playing other classical music. It sounded like Italian early music to me but I’m not certain. But it definitely was not the long standing repetitions of Vivaldi. Then I thought I noticed it change from Italian early composers to other Renaissance type music.

But the bombshell was a few days ago when I walked into the Venetian to report from work and heard: JS Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto Number Three. Aha! The music has definitely changed. To me it was the official signal that our Vivaldi obsession has been given in to larger forces.

I don’t mind it – it’s a nice change. I am a JS Bach fanatic so no complaints from me. But I was a little sad that the Vivaldi days are a thing of the past. Someone in marketing will probably eventually run across this blog post and think it’s very funny that anyone even noticed. And do mainland Chinese know the difference between Vivaldi and JS Bach? I don’t know enough in that area to comment.

Long Live Venetian.

Oh c’mon, that’s just so darn cute. I asked them for clarification, “The bear lost to the cow?” and they said most certainly, “Yes!”

Here’s a video I made for a lens comparison on the Canon 5D Mark II using Final Cut Express, MPEG Streamclip and ProTools 9. Footage is automatic settings with tripod at 25 (23.98) frames per second. Lenses in the comparison are:

• Canon 24-105mm f/4L
• Canon 50mm f/1.4
• Canon 15mm Fisheye f/2.8
• Tamron 20mm f/1.8

For my comparison I chose the gondoliers up in the shopping arcade at the Venetian Casino in Macau, China. I enjoyed being able to see the slow approach of the gondola boats, spectators moving in the background and the detail of the nature water ripples.

I did have an Azden SGM-X microphone mounted but the gondoliers stopped singing on approach after I set up the conspicuous tripod rig. So I arranged some traditional Chinese music and sampled grooves in Pro Tools as a background soundtrack.

This video is around one and a half minutes. I had edited and composes music for an 8 minute version that included two more rounds of location lens comparisons, but when I rendered the final video it was not clear at all. So I did some research and re-rendered all the clips for this version which is much more clear. I think default view is 360p but you can also select to view it in 720p HD.

To convert the Canon 5D Mark II footage I used MPEG Streamclip. Settings were Apple Intermediate Codec, Quality 100%, 1920×1080 unscaled, Interlaced Scaling OFF, Sound: uncompressed, stereo, off.

My original render from Final Cut Express was almost 2 gigs! For a ninety second video! I found this video helped me a lot to prepare the HD video for YouTube (and worked for a Facebook upload too):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=230AOa-kBDY

For Final Cut express to export your finished movie I used these settings:

• Export > Using QuickTime Conversion
• Format: QuickTime Movie (default)
• Options > Video Settings > Compression Type: MPEG4 Video
• Options > Video Settings > Quality: Best
• Options > Video Size > HD 1280 x 720 16:9
• Sound Settings > Format: AAC
• Sound Settings > Rate: 44.1kHz
• Sound Settings > Show Advanced Settings > Quality: Better

I am new to creating videos and this is my first video using Final Cut Express. I do realize that a lens comparison on automatic settings is not a benchmark to judge the lenses. But it was a very good project for me because it allowed me to use all my lenses on location for the first time. And best of all, gave me a chance to score to video in ProTools which I haven’t done before.

What? I’ve never scored to video in ProTools? Yes, it’s true. I have a Digidesign Pro Tools TDM Mix Plus system that I used for years producing music in Southern California. But I never did any scoring direct to video. It’s hard to imagine that back around  2000 I paid over $20,000 USD for my Pro Tools rig. In March 2011 I just picked up Pro Tools 9 for $600 USD. Prices have dropped a lot! (Ok, so my old TDM system included 8 ins/outs 24 bit, etc).

MPEG Streamclip is free for video conversion. Pro Tools 9 is $600USD. Final Cut Express 4 is $200 USD. The Canon 5D Mark II with a high quality L-series 24-105mm f/4 lens is around $3,000 or less. So for $4,000 you have a pretty good rig for video editing. Or use whatever camera you have and invest less than $1000 to do video editing and custom music trax. I think that’s pretty exciting.

And part of all this is to prep for a larger project coming up that I’m very excited about. So check back to see some cool new videos (I hope they’re cool).

http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/28/getting-harassed-by-the-chinese-police/

Cirque Du Soleil artists from the ZAIA show did a live television promo up in Hunan, China in late January 2011. It featured the acts of Straps, Skate and Hand to Hand.

I don’t know how to embed that link because it’s from a Chinese website – but it’s there if you’d like to watch it. I’ve been told that the spot was seen by several million viewers in mainland China.

Kong Hei Fat Choi from Macau, China! 2011 is the year of the rabbit so that should be fun for all of us. Above is video and photos I shot in Macau on Chinese New Year’s Eve (February 2, 2011). Pictures of Senado Square, Macau Tower fireworks and my personal adventures purchasing rockets and explosives on the Macau waterfront. Good times.

And here is a very fun video from Mr. Kong Macau News. This was my third Chinese New Year living in Macau and this one was the best ever! I gave out my lucky red pocket lai cee cards to all the security guards and even received on myself at work.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAs9t96I3pM

The waiters singing Deck The Halls at the Chinese restaurant in the movie Christmas Story.

Now I know so many people that love this scene so much from that movie. I just showed this clip to a Chinese friend of mine and asked them if they thought it was funny. They said, “No, it’s normal”. They didn’t see the humor in it. They said “That’s what I would sound like if I sang the song”.

So I bet in China they must have some movie clips where Westerners are trying to sing Chinese or something like that. Anyways….I love this scene from the movie.

Merry Christmas 2010!