So this has been a busy week, not that that's a bad thing necessarily, but sometimes you have so much going on its hard to decide what to focus on and this past week has definitely been one of those:
So before we even get into the work week, last weekend Aeryn and I took a semi-last minute day trip up to San Antonio (a 4ish hour drive away from Houston for those who don't know Texas) and by the time you account for the drive, it was a little exhausting, and I slept most of Sunday, but we had fun. We spent the evening on the riverwalk and had dinner before driving back - and while we were waiting for our table, I took the opportunity to play with my iPhone in the low light of the riverwalk at night: I hope everyone had a safe and wonderful Holiday and New Year - now we're a few days into 2019 and life can start returning to normal. Lets see if I can find the time to get back into my personal projects - including this website and the blog - so lets get caught up on the last few months and dive right in: Wow, where did the last part of 2018 go? It's just been a bit of a blur, you see - the week after my last blog post (October 19th) I began working basically non-stop on Border Live on the Discovery Channel in the role of "Field Technical Supervisor". Actually we did a test run back in September, but then I shifted back to other projects until everything came together. In October they sent me out to one of the locations on a scouting run to make sure things would work, and then starting in November I was traveling down to the border basically once a week until we got up to the holidays. Unfortunately I can't go into much detail behind the scenes, but basically my role in the production was to make sure that the video from the field teams made it back to the main studio on the east coast in the highest quality possible. So I spent every show (including multiple full scale rehearsals) watching the action play out in little preview thumbnails accompanied by real time encoding data - bit rate, packet loss, latency, etc from each of the cameras. In a way it kind of felt like staring at the code for the Matrix, watching all these different things happen at once. Of course I had some remote control to jump in and make minor tweaks to settings to keep the video signals streaming well. (Or as well as can be expected given the cellular environment at the border.) All in all, it was a great experience and I learned a lot, but needless to say it was a lot of work and when I was back in Houston, I was basically catching up on sleep and supporting other projects at TPC. (With a tiny bit of theatre work thrown in at CCCT). I'm going to Las Vegas this weekend for NAB 2018!
If you don't know what NAB is, its the National Association of Broadcasters convention, and its held annually in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Its basically a big convention where all the newest toys in film and television are shown off, as well as serving as a major networking event where you can talk with the sales and tech people from different companies. You can get questions answered and put hands on some really awesome gear. (and there's a fair number of parties too!) All that aside, it also has a significant educational aspect to it.
Okay, so I was going to write about my time with the rented Sony 200mm lens for this post, but I didn't have time to get any post out, let alone finish editing the photos so I can really say what I think of the lens.
So as I said when I started this blog, most what I'll be writing about will be my own projects and what I'm working on. Behind the scenes, editing updates, etc. However, I also wanted to write about other things from time to time, such as what TV, movies, and other entertainment I'm currently enjoying, and anything else that comes to mind.
So, for this week's blog post, I'm going to be talking about what new shows I've been enjoying. I guess its kind of a review? I'm not sure I ever want to get into the "review business" but sometimes its worth talking about these things, right? So far from the new series that have premiered this season I've watched, Star Trek: Discovery, The Orville, Me Myself and I, and The Good Doctor. So before I go down the sci-fi rabbit hole (as many of you know, I am a huge fan of good scifi and can talk about it forever) lets look at The Good Doctor. (If you want to jump down to my thoughts on the scifi just keep scrolling, you won't miss it!) I've linked the websites for each show to their poster/graphic below if you want to check them out. |
AuthorThomas Meek is an independent filmmaker living and working in Houston, TX Archives
March 2021
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