Welcome to Michael's blog. Michael Andrew, (aka Michael The Maven) is a freelance producer, photography instructor, tech innovator, and when needed, disaster aid specialist. Disclaimer: Michael is a participant in Bhphoto & Amazon affiliate programs that provides an advertising commission if you purchase through links on this website.
Its been a while- been focusing a lot on my new filters that are coming soon. I am very excited for them.
Movie Theaters opened in Maui recently, and I just found out yesterday, so you can imagine how excited I was to go. I think my last time in a theater was in March! I desperately wanted to see TENET.
I will watch any Chris Nolan film, because I feel he is one of the great filmmakers of our time. Ive heard mixed things about TENET, but if you like Chris Nolan films, you should see it.
TENET, for all of its amazing positives, has one overwhelming and critical achilles heel: It is very hard to follow, at least the first time through.
I am huge fan of these mind bending kinds of movies, and love the risks Nolan took here. It is a fresh concept, and really pushes the boundaries of creativity, but if someone like me, who craves these kinds of films struggled, its likely anyone who doesnt want to think too hard did as well.
Primer, one of my all time favorite movies of all time, was extremely confusing the first time I watched. I knew it was something great, but I didnt fully understand it. So I watched it over and over, 5 times total, in a row, and by the 3-4th time I was thrilled. The 5th time was the cherry on the cake. I believe this is what will be necessary to fully grasp everything that is going on in TENET.
I don't think the basic idea of it is hard to comprehend, it is to the point that suspension of disbelief is satisfied, in order to make it an enjoyable experience. There are elements of Dark Night, Inception, Prestige and other Nolan films going on. It is clear he spent a lot of time thinking about and planning this, but I also feel the result is a product of overthinking, but I easily forgive him for doing so because his films are so fantastic at stimulating thought.
There were also some parts where the dialogue was so fast, or competing with other sounds / too fast /too muffled (sound design) to fully understand what just changed in the plot. Felt like they were trying to edit it down and simplicity was lost along the way, or they were trying to do too much. I had the same sense from his 3rd Batman film, too many elements, trying to do too much.
If you go into it with an open mind and not expecting to understand it all the first time through, it was AMAZING to be back in a theater and I definitely enjoyed that. My plan is to read up on the spoilers online to fill in the gaps, and then Ill likely go back to watch it again, yes in theaters!
Hi Everyone! Ive just finished my free Tutorial on the Canon R5. I am making the assumption that the R6 will function and operate mostly the same with a few video feature and resolution differences. This is the primer for my advanced Crash Course on both cameras. If you are interested in the Canon R5 Crash Course, you can sign up to be notified here:
Be sure to join my Canon R5 / R6 Owners Group on Facebook So you can let me know what bugs you are seeing or which lessons you would like for me to make.
So I have been quite busy the last few months, I hope to be able to share some of them soon.
One thing I have been spending a lot of time on recently, is design, and I have finally had to pull the trigger to force myself to learn Fusion 360, which is basically Illustrator for CAD. CAD files are geometry and vector shapes, instead of stl files which are mostly just a bunch of triangles put together.
CAD files are the manufacturing design standard and allow for precision plans which can be converted into actual CNC routing for example. In the past, I have relied on an intermediary (a person) to go from my tinkercad designs to CAD, but I have so many projects Im working on, I would rather just learn CAD, and I believe the best program for that is Fusion 360.
Not very intuitive, but it is starting to make sense. I think Ill have the basics down in a few more weeks.
There is a significant learning curve, but tons of videos on Youtube to help.
If you intend to use it for personal use or a start up, there are some trials available and it sometimes goes on sale:
I found this one on Amazon Prime. Never heard of it before, no recognizable actors. It was surprisingly good! The one thing I didn't like was that most of it is subtitled. There is a surprising amount of violence and also more nudity than I am usually comfortable recommending in a movie, but being that there isn't anything to see in theaters, it was pretty entertaining.
Good news - we are starting to get some new decent movies coming to video on demand, in this case Apple+ My understanding is it was supposed to release into theaters and thanks to Covid, was purchased by Apple for a cool 70 million.
Greyhound stars Tom Hanks about a Mahan Destroyer class Captain who's responsible... wait a second, just watch the trailer! :)
I enjoyed it and being that I already subscribe to Apple TV it was great!
I must have read at least a dozen articles stating the Canon R5 had no heating problems for video recording. This was amazing to me. I thought they had figured something out like Panasonic did when they came out with the GH4. The first I heard of it was last night during Peter McKinnons review, then this morning Andrew Reid published the over heating specs straight from Canon. This is disappointing.
I get pretty upset when I feel like a manufacturer has played their customers. Transparency about a product truly matters, People deserve to know the limits and weaknesses before purchasing any camera,
I do a lot of video, so this could be a deal breaker for me, but as always, I will test it out and let you all know.
Im not sure about you all, but boy do I miss going to movie theaters! I really can't wait for them to be open here again. There are so many good ones that have been postponed, but we will have to be patient.
In the mean time, I caught "The Outpost" last night as a rental from Apple+.
This film deals with a battle that occurred in 2009 in the Nuristan provenance in Afghanistan. So many valuable strategic lessons learned. I wont ruin them for you, but it was a pretty well done movie that depicted what happened in this battle, of about 30-40 Allied forces against 300-400 Taliban. Definitely worth the rental!
We have suspended production on the Canon T8i Crash Course. We only had 5 people express interest in the course, and for the amount of time and money it costs to produce, it will be impossible.
