sammi needham : cogitate

These guys give sammy stephens a run for his money.

I’ve been working a lot. Working at work and working at home on friend’s projects. It’s been nice to have some time this week to devote to working on these personal jobs, getting fit for March’s Triathlon and “playing” guitar. If anyone read my earlier post about the guitar thing it’ll be quite apparent that i’m no guitar player, but practice makes perfect, hey? I’ve been listening to the triple J ‘Like a version’ albums, they’re ace, and being mostly acoustic is really invigorating me to get back into it a bit more seriously.

It’s also been interesting to get into the Facebook scene. I’ve been using it mainly as a way to see how all my old school friends are fairing with their marriages and children and houses and adult life, but i’ve been using it much more as a serious communication tool lately. It’s funny how when you’re not such an active participant of a social media circle such as the facebook that people rarely contact you, as if they know that you’re unlikely to respond efficiently to communiqué. But as you get take a more active involvement and start showing behaviour that obviously says ‘i’m here more often’, people begin to reach out more often. It’s crazy how closely it mirrors real-world friend circles. I suppose that’s what it’s there for and is a bit of a no-brainer really. Social media really does follow standard social conventions, it’s just been interesting to observe first-hand how quickly you are accepted into the fray.

I’ve been avoiding being particularly active on other social platforms simply because i like to keep my communications focussed on a smaller collection of channels, but i’m sure there’s a way to connect Bright Kite / iPhone / Twitter / LinkedIn / Flickr / Facebook blah blah blah… in a much more automated way with one single interface for input and many distribution channels. Its always seemed a bit harder than it needed to be in the past, but i haven’t really looked that hard for a while. The new iLife suite seems to be better connected with these online spaces with standard interfaces built in to deal with geotagging, flickr & facebook uploads and back-to-base connections to your desktop library, and if standard desktop channels are going to be that connected then i’l likely to be much more active accross multiple channels.

Anyway, i’d better get back to work, i just wanted to get something down as i’m trying to pay a bit more attention to this blog again. It’s been a while.

My new Si Scott print. A Birthday present, much appreciated, and just perfect.

I’ve been working on the film a lot lately. I’m glad i’ve been able to allocate the time to do some good work on it. Xmas break was looking to be over all too soon, but in the last 3 days before work commenced we worked all day and stayed up late until it was all done. Now it looks ace. We’re getting the site built now and there should be a launch some time in the next week or so for all the new collateral. It’s an exciting time.

We haven’t had the best hi-res stills to work with for the poster assets so It’s been a bit of a struggle, but i’m working working with the 2K footage files that the film was edited with to get the concept done and approved. Then it’s going to be a process of going back through all of those same stills from the higher-resolution 4k footage and replacing assets. The poster artwork requires a fair bit of intricate photoshop work, so i’m really looking forward to getting some better assets to work with. As it stands the poster looks great, but won’t really stand up to high resolution reproduction. I can’t see a free weekend anytime in the next month.

After too-ing and fro-ing with a font for the film we have finally decided on a custom design that i have made up free hand, loosely based on . The process was slow, but necessary. We looked at a lot of fonts and then mocked up more designed versions of a bunch more fonts. Jonathan has always been a fan of the weathered look. I’ve always been a massive fan of hand-cut fonts, so those tastes are both very complimentary. A lot of the stuff that we went through became very horror film-esque after treating, which we were trying to stay well away from. The final font (or hopefully the final version of this font) is both elegant and rough and timely and compliments the feel of the film extremely well. It looks great on the poster, the website and the film. I’ll write a bit more of a breakdown of our process once all the artwork is finalised and has officially launched, but for now, enjoy a little taste…

I had Sushi for lunch today. Voluntarily. And i enjoyed it. Oh the times, they are a changin’.

You can’t eat this