Make Film Work — I make videos. Sometimes I write about it.

Last week a small group of us headed out to Kennedy Space Center. Meagan and I wanted to see it one last time before we left for Salem at the end of the month, and Brian just hadn’t been in a while.

We were lucky enough to arrive on the same day as the launch of a new telescope called GLAST, which is going to be studying gamma rays. Pretty cool. We took some pictures which can be found on Flickr but I thought I’d post a couple here too.

You might even be interested in grabbing that picture of the engine as an iPhone or iPod touch background.

I realize it’s already been covered by more than just a couple of sources, but I thought it was worth mentioning (and celebrating) the release of Celtx, version 1.0

Celtx, of course, is your friendly (and free) script writing software available for just about every computer platform in existence. In short, it’s awesome. And it just got better. The Celtx website outlines all of the new features, and even includes a couple of helpful videos to send you off in the right (and hopefully creatively inspired) direction.

I’m a huge fan of the Consumerist, a website advocating consumer rights and sharing the terrifying ordeals that some companies put their customers through. It’s got a certain car-wreck shock value to it, I suppose.

It’s the kind of site where you hope you’re never the one writing in with your own tale of woe. Unfortunately, a recent shipping experience I had prompted me to write in with one such story.

You can head over to my post at the Consumerist’s website for all the bloody details, but the short of it is this:

I ordered a new Sennheiser G2 100 Wireless Mic set from B&H for an important last-minute shoot. I choose overnight shipping via UPS. Instead of the package arriving at my door as I had hoped (and expected), I was told I would have to drive out to a construction site where I could meet up with the driver as he helped another, already overloaded, UPS driver with some of his delivers. Ultimately my driver never showed up and I had to drive 30 minutes to the UPS distribution center later that night.

It wasn’t a good time. I was pretty miffed about the whole thing and asked for a refund on the $40+ I spent on shipping. I was told that somebody would be in touch. About a week went by and I hadn’t heard anything from UPS. I did get an email from somebody at B&H who expressed concern over my story, and said that they’d get in touch with their UPS people to straighten things out.

A few days went by and I got a phone call from “B&H’s UPS guy” who offered a really sincere apology as well as a $50 B&H gift card. Not too bad. He also assured me that nothing like this would ever happen again; not to me or anybody else.

I really appreciated the apology, and especially the personal phone call. Somebody (actually, his name was Lou) went out of their way that day to make sure I was being taken care of. You can’t over-appreciate something like that.

In the end, I don’t imagine this is something that happens very often. Nevertheless, it probably shouldn’t have happened in the first place. That being said, I’m really happy with how B&H (and ultimately) UPS handled everything. And I especially like that I should soon be getting a $50 gift card to B&H. A card that I intend to use on my first visit to the B&H store in New York later this summer. Can’t wait. No shipping required.

Rails Envy: 1 Controller Obesity from Jason Hawkins on Vimeo.

I shot another set of ads for the wonderful guys of Rails Envy recently, and the first four are now available as your nerdy entertainment for the week.

We shot the ads against a white wall in tiny apartment with surprisingly solid results. I was able to blow out the rear wall enough to cover up the textured paint, and later I dropped a green screen behind our Burt Reynolds look-a-like. Trying to do any kind of chroma keying with MiniDV footage is always going to be problematic, but since this was produced to be viewed (mostly) on the web, the lower quality of the key wasn’t a huge issue.

The software I used to pull the key is a handy little plugin called dvMatte Pro 3, which specializes in keying DV footage. I wrote more about this little gem here. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s become an indispensable tool for a lot of the work I’ve done recently. Really great stuff.

These ads are always a lot of fun to work on, and I thank the Envy guys for the opportunity to work on a project like this.

If you’ve already seen it, you probably know the story. The HPX-170 is one of Panasonic’s new P2 offerings, shedding it’s MiniDV baggage while checking off wish list features HVX users have been compiling.

The 170 is a solid state system. This is huge for me. I’m so sick of tape it’s not even funny. The idea of stock piling hard drives is much more appealing than hoarding boxes of tapes. It’s also much more eco-friendly, right? Embracing a completely tapeless workflow feels like the best move to make right now. It’s really exciting to see Panasonic biting the bullet with a camera aimed at DVX and HVX users.

The camera is said to feature all kinds of neat bells and whistles including an LCD flip mode for people using 35mm adapters, several persistent focus assist modes, including a waveform monitor and vector-scope. The focus ring will also be swapable with the iris dial at the flip of a switch. So many great improvements. I can’t wait.

FreshDV has a great video interview with Jan Livingston of Panasonic about the HPX-170 and the HVX-200a. The rest of their NAB 2008 coverage is fantastic as well. Definitely check it out.

Panasonic’s own coverage of NAB is surprisingly good too. Their NAB page features short videos from vendors they’ve partnered with. Companies like RedRockMicro, VariZoom, Steadicam, Avid and so many more.

There’s an ongoing discussion over at DVX user.

Here are some more pictures of the camera.

Fresh DV has even more pictures and the official press release.