DAS

    You may be thinking about now....."Why film a Duck Orgy and then post it to YouTube?"  Well, before you go and start thinking that I am off my rocker, let me explain.........

   Being a creative professional that has spent the last few years trying to share my creations with the world,  I have sadly found my biggest competition to be from mind numbing insanity.  As an artist and musician, I have worked hard to create things that I have been proud to share with the world.  But no matter how hard I have tried, I always get beat out by the Viral nonsense that spreads around YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

   I made a conscious decision to leave most social networking sites last year, with the exception of YouTube and Google+.  I only kept them to share my music and nature videos on YouTube and because when I deleted my Google+ profile, I seemingly no longer had a channel on YouTube for whatever reason.  To this day, I have been happier every day that I left the all the social madness behind me and in turn I went out and rediscovered the real world once again.

  So, back to this Duck Orgy video.....
Think of it as an experiment to find out what the current, average, everyday internet and mobile users are doing with their time.  I am using myself and other Indie Artists as a control group and comparing the results of the interest in what we do in contrast with what the general public would rather watch.

Basically it is Good Serious Art versus Mind Numbing Stupidity!

   Those of you who read this post will most likely have their own opinion and I am not trying to force mine on anyone....I simply would like to ask you to stop and think about why one thing is more popular than another.  You can compare PBS to The Kardashians  or The Discovery Channel to FOX or you could think about Really Talking to Friends and Family compared to Texting, Facebook and Twitter.  Whatever you choose to focus on, at least take the time to really think and ask why one is more popular than the other.

   So with my thoughts visibly on my sleeve for the world to see, I present you with two choices and ask that you decide for yourself which one you would choose over the other and why...........

   It all started when my eldest son gave me a little red Nikon Coolpix L22 camera last year.  I had never owned a really good digital camera and had relied on web cam self portraits and a few HD shots from my el cheapo Vivitar 620HD Camcorder.  Suddenly I had a camera that would do really good macro shots and pretty excellent nature shots so I started practicing around the house.

   As an independent singer/songwriter, I have to do it all.  Even my publicity pics have been taken by myself as well as all of my cover art pics for albums.  Having better equipment to do this with was certainly going to  come in handy and I was suddenly finding myself to be a true photo bug.  I ran out and hit the woods with my new passion and started taking shots of wildlife and macro shots of insects and flowers.  I was amazed at the quality I was getting as I continued to hone my new craft.  In the process I was also getting a much needed break from all the headaches that came with stretching myself so thin as a DIY indie artist.

   I began to make videos with my Nikon and started sharing them with the idea of making a web series that I had named "A Glimpse of Nature".  After a few episodes that I shared on YouTube, I was finding the video quality lacking if I did anything other than macro.  This is the time of HD and as much as I tried to re-size my videos to fit this format, my Nikon just would not give me the results I was looking for.

   Then I got lucky and got myself a real HD Camcorder that does true 1080p video.  I picked it up at a local pawn shop for 130 bucks even, it's a Toshiba Camileo X416.  I really got a good deal on it and after bringing it home I discovered that it was the top of the line HD Camcorder that Toshiba had out at the time of my purchase.  Now I could really do some serious filming and so I headed out again to a National Park to see what this new camera would do.

   Ever since I had gotten the Nikon and had been out photographing nature, I had kept running into Deer and other more elusive wildlife like Wild Turkeys.  I was eager to see how close I could get to my wild friends so that I could capture the experience on film.  This is when the idea for my movie, Dances With Deer, began to take shape.  Now I have been in the process of filming and writing the movie since mid-summer and I am still hard at work at it in October.

   I have traveled many miles out into the wild and on my own to capture just the right scenes to fit my script.    From Chickamauga Battlefield in Fort Oglethorpe, Ga to Cloudland Canyon on Lookout Mountain in Georgia to the Hiwassee River in Tennessee and North Chickamauga Creek Wilderness in Soddy Daisy, TN.  Each location has yielded some amazing footage and is bringing my story to life in a way that I could have never imagined.  I'm a man on a mission these days with a renewed spirit of creativity that is also overflowing into the music I am writing for the movie and for my new album.

   Dances With Deer is not a nature documentary, it's a real full length feature film that has a very intriguing  story behind it.  I am not releasing any tidbits of the plot at this time but you can find a few simple teaser trailers on my website.  With filming still taking place and a lot of work ahead of me before I finish this film, the release date is still not set but I can promise you that it's going to be great!.

   Below are a few select "On The Set" shots that I have chosen to share with this article.  Stay tuned to www.davidallenslater.com for more news and updates concerning Dances With Deer and my upcoming album, New Perspective.

www.davidallenslater.com

   A few months ago I upgraded my computer's video card to help with my Graphics and Video Work.  The one I bought is made by NVIDIA and it came with a 3D feature that turns my whole computer into a 3D Experience.  The problem for me was, I didn't own one of the 3 types of 3D Glasses that it supported.

   One kind of 3D required an expensive piece of external hardware that came with it's own kind of glasses.  This type is more closely related to the new 3D TVs and Blueray Players that are on the market today.  The second kind of 3D I could do required a pair of USB Wired 3D Glasses that are sold by NVIDIA to work with their Video Cards.  This option was less expensive than the first but still ran around 40 bucks and you have to order them online.  The third type of 3D that my new video card supported was the old school Red and Cyan Anaglyph 3D Glasses that you used to get at 3D movies you went to see at the theater.  NVIDIA sells those too but you have to buy a pack of 10 for 10 bucks to get them or look for them on eBay to get just one pair.  I tried looking in stores around town but they were not available anywhere that I could find.

   I really wanted to try out my new 3D setup but without the glasses or the more expensive hardware I was out of luck.  I am a picky shopper and so before I ran out and purchased anything online, I wanted to see if the promise of 3D on my computer would be worth it so I decided to try and make my own.

   As with anything that you want to learn these days, there are videos and tutorials online to help you for free.  I got busy and searched the net on how to make my own working pair of Red and Cyan 3D Glasses.  What I found was basically the same advice everywhere, get some old glasses or safety glasses and color them yourself with permanent markers.  This sounded easy enough so I went out to buy some permanent markers that were the right color for the Red and Cyan and while I was at it I picked up a cheap pair clear safety glasses.  I still spent the same as I would have if I had just ordered them online from NVIDIA but I was determined to make my own.  After all, if I could make one pair then I could make tons more for my friends and family and come out cheaper in the long run than buying them.   Sadly my attempt at this did not work too well.  Either the Red was not the correct shade or the Blue/Cyan gave me the same issue.  To top it all off, once you colored on the glasses, they would cloud up from the marker ink drying on them and become useless to see through.  I tried both Sharpie and Bic and still could not manage to make it work like the videos I had watched on YouTube.  With this lesson learned and even though I was still in the frame of mind to figure out another way, I decided to just buy some on eBay.

  I got my new 3D glasses in the mail a few days later and discovered that unlike the picture, that looked like hard plastic frames, they were instead just cut out poster board with flimsy Red and Cyan lenses.  They were cheap so I was just happy to have them and got busy trying out my new 3D features for my computer.  I was amazed at how cool things looked and even though I know it could be better with the more expensive stuff, I was satisfied.

  Now I wanted to make my own 3D Pictures and Videos and add another notch on my creativity belt.  I figured I would start with the old style Anaglyph Red and Cyan type of content first and eventually move my way up the ladder.  Amazingly I was able to learn how to do this with much success in just one day by using Sony Vegas which is one of the better Video Production Tools that I own.  I went from making a few of my pics in 3D with a GIMP Tutorial to working on my first 3D Video Promo which I have now uploaded to YouTube and placed on my website for those with Red and Cyan 3D Glasses to check out.


   The moral of this story is that if you really want to learn something, you can!  All you have to do is take the proper time and give the subject your full attention.  You may make a few mistakes along the way but that is all a part of the learning experience.  The reward comes from the knowledge that you gain in the end and the new possibilities that are now available to you because you simply took the time to figure it out.

   That being said, I am still gonna figure out the best way to make my own Red and Cyan 3D Glasses just because I hate to give up on something that I start.  Until I do, I have my nice shiny cardboard ones that work just fine!