This is a follow up from my last post, “What’s in a name…” – Quick re-cap, EVERYTHING!  I’ve been using twitter.com using the name @big_b_rad for a while now, but I’ve grown tired of trying to explain how to spell it, where to put the underscores etc. so I set out to change my name, and did so in the exact way that no one should ever attempt to do such.  I pray that my pain in learning will equip you in what NOT to ever attempt!

Step One

If you are going to change your name, don’t register the new account using a different email address.  This was my first main mistake thinking that I’d have my 3800 followers happly jump ship with me!  There’s a handy dandy little tool in your settings panel of twitter that allows you to check to see if a name is available – if it is, then you can change it and leave ALL of your followers in tact, along with all of your @reply’s, DM’s and Favorites…  What I did was the first stupid step in 48 hours of true pain.

Step Two

Never tell your followers that they should follow your new account, and then un-follow your old one…  Man, What the Heck was I thinking on that one!

Step Three

Beg forgiveness – and move on…

After some long hard thinking and frustration of hitting the Twitter limit and being dark on twitter for nearly 48 hours… (which sucked BTW) I decided to delete the @bradparler account on twitter – and change the old (@big_b_rad) account to @brad_parler until I can grab up @bradparler. If you are going to change your account – do so in the settings panel of twitter – and then go back and grab up the old one to point to the new one… I discovered that someone could have registered @big_b_rad only hours after my change… So “I” got it and pointed it to the new account.

Photos used in post:

twitter icon (for Fluid) by seyDoggy

Hey – it’s been a wild month!  I’ve been so super busy – but I had to tell you about some things that have been developing, kind of quickly.  First let me back up and tell you about my love for After Effects – I’ve used compositing applications for well over 15 years now, from the dark days of Borris on an *edit box – later to combustion, and now on After Effects (AE CS3).  I love AE!!!  But I’ve found that most editors have no idea what to do within this robust application and use it more for a glorified filter box that they pass video clips to their editor (my friend who’s know for this shall remain nameless!)

I see AE as much more – and this didn’t really come about until I finished reading “The DV Rebel’s Guide” by Stu, that’s when this application became less of a motion graphics world (which I’m still growing as an Mographer) and more of a real ON LINE space, that you can composite in 2.5D.  I feel that if editors could really get beyond their fear of the interface – and dig in to the app as that kind of space, then their productions would really have the shine that they deserve!

So – I’m taking Powered along with me in this journey to help users get to know AE, and get existing users of AE involved in a community so that we can share our knowledge and open doors for more people to become better at using this all important application. Because I live in the Houston area – I have been looking for an AE user group, to find that not only is there no AE group, but there’s no Adobe group for Video / Production users either!  I’m taking small steps to correct this – I’ve started a FreindFeed Room for Adobe After Effects. And I’m planning on attending the Dallas (DFW AEUG) in September to see what happens at an existing group.  I’d also like to make it clear that I don’t really want to be the Head of this group, but I will be until we can assemble some kind of structure and body.

I’m totally open to suggestions regarding locations and times and what kind of topics that you’d like to talk about or see spoken about at a group like this!  Please email me (bradparler @ gmail . com) or follow me on twitter ( @big_b_rad ) and DM me with your suggestion – Please also include your zip code so that I can start mapping intrest in this group and find locations central to people attending…

Thank,
bp

There are just some people who’s work goes beyond the norm and just captures my attention in ways I just can’t explain; J.J. Abrams is one of those for me. I guess I became aware of it when on a Saturday afternoon ABC ran an all day marathon of Alias season one on one to serve as a catch-up for the soon to premiere season two the following week. I sat all day long as the mysteries of SD6 and the lives of these characters unfolded before me. After that, I was hooked! I started following anything that J.J. did, well I guess that’s not exactly true. I wasn’t a fan of Lost, until this year – when my wife Amanda started watching it…

I didn’t really realize what it was the had me glued to Abrams’ work – until I saw this piece of web history from TED.com!

It’s amazing to me the profound expressions of mystery – and if you’ve seen Lost then you understand that it’s an ever unfolding universe of questions some without obvious answers leaving the viewer to ponder and engage more and more. But the more amazing thing that I take away from this is the power of democratizing moving making! At one time I had started to collect videos on YouTube that I called “Any Kid with a Camcorder!” that I hoped to showcase the works of normal individuals making great work with off the shelf hardware. (I’m now inspired to re-start that again… So stay tuned for more info!)

We live in the most incredible time of media creation, it’s kind of like what the printing press did for books and the desktop publishing revolution did for computers. The down side of this is that the market will soon be flooded with mediocre videos (the vast majority of YouTube – come on, how many times if getting hit in the crotch funny?) but in the end the cream raises to the top!  There’s a vast landscape of top notch work hosted on vimeo.com (which is quickly becoming my favorite video site) that shows the skills of this upcoming generation of storytellers and media masters!

So here’s my new mission – or a sub-mission for this site: I’m not an expert in movie making, I’m not going to pretend to be one! I’m not a post-production guru, or a visual effects genius (don’t get me wrong, I’m good at what I do – but I’m no guru), but what I do believe in and what drives me to post more here, is an urgency to “Democratize Movie Making” so as I can I’m going to show you how and why I do the things that I do.

On the re-cut of the “I Won’t Mind” project I’m going to host screen casts live on Ustream.tv so you can watch me work and interact with me while I work on the project – so If you want to know when I’m doing those sessions Follow Me On Twitter.

I also would love your feedback on what I’m doing here!  If you have an idea – or if you have found a great video that you want to show me, just leave it here in the comments.
Until then, go out and create something!