I woke up this morning and thought “I’ve got it! I know what the world needs! Another opinion on weather Photoshop is a good or bad thing...”

I know there’s a million and one opinions out there already and they are split fairly evenly down the middle, which is why it is such a hot debate. But it’s something that angers me a little every time I hear about it so I figured I’d vent a little with a bit of constructive “shut the hell up you morons” too. So just in case you haven’t already figured out which side of the fence I’m sitting on, it’s a very loud and clear PRO PHOTOSHOP and I have good reasons.

Last night I pulled an all-nighter processing photos. I hadn’t intended to but when I made a fairly bland photo look good, I got inspired to re-look at all the other photos in the folder that I had dismissed. So I did, and realised that there were a number of good shots waiting to be revealed. I doubt there are any photographers out there who can get a great shot every time. But great shots aren’t always evident right away. Sometimes you have to search for them, chip away the dirt and give them a good polishing before their greatness is revealed.

It reminds me of something that happened years ago. I was directing one of my music videos for a band. At lunch we had the radio on to clear our heads of the fifty billion times we’d just heard the bands song being played. I can’t remember what was playing but I made the comment of how I liked the song. Gees did I cop it. The band came at me all angry, saying how it was crap because the singer needed heaps of filters and effects to make them sound good, the keyboards were programmed in midi rather than played live and that they didn’t even have a drummer cause all the beats were from a drum machine.

I stood my ground and told them that none of that mattered because the song was good. It’s the same with everything for me. I don’t care how it’s made, it’s all about the end product. If I can listen to that music, watch that movie or take in that photograph, and feel something... It’s irrelevant how it was made.

Anyone who gets caught up in the whole technical aspect of art, is missing the point of the artwork (unless that is the point, and pointing it out is the right point to make).

For me, using Photoshop, or in fact any of the tools I use, is just a way to help express the story or emotion or message that I want to express. If I have to replace the sky in a shot, or change the colours, or print it out on a six foot wide canvas, tie it to the back of my car and drive 173Kph past three speed cameras to achieve that, well that’s what I’m going to do. For the audience, only one thing should matter; did they feel something, did they get the story, or did they understand the message.

If for one moment you stop and think "I can’t like this because it’s Photoshopped" you really do need to pull your head out of your arse, get off that crumbling pedestal and truly ask yourself why you bothered looking in the first place.

After all that, what are your views and where do you stand on the issue?

Last night while working on some images in Photoshop, I got the dreaded “Your scratch disc is nearly full” message pop up (something that happens way too often). The problem is, I wan everything on my internal hard drive so I have access wherever I am, whenever I want. But I digress.

I figured it was time I did some house cleaning, so started going through every folder on the drive to see what I could get rid of. Eventually I came to a folder containing the Google Chrome cache. I looked at the files and noticed that some of them were up to 30Mb in size. I double clicked on one to see what it was. It opened up in Text Editor but was just mumbo jumbo.

Then I wondered if anything would happen if I added a file extension. Figuring at that size it must be video of some kind, I added the .FLV extension. I could hardly believe it. It opened up in QuickTime and started playing. It was some video I had watched on YouTube a while back. I had finally discovered how to download YouTube videos to my Mac easily.

My brain started ticking over and I opened up the Google Chrome web browser and headed to YouTube. I clicked on the first video I came to and noticed a new file appear in the Cache folder. Once the video was completely downloaded I added the .FLV extension to the file. Again it opened and played the video. This was so much easier than any other ways I’ve tried to download YouTube videos to keep.

So here it is the simple step by step guide on how to download YouTube videos to your mac easily:

Pre Step. I guess I should point out that this technique is for Apple Mac computers running OSX. I have no idea how to do this on a PC running Windows or any other system.

1. You’ll need to be running the Google Chrome web browser. Personally I don’t really like it and only have it for testing web design stuff. But now I’ve figured this out, it just got a whole lot better. So open it up or download it from here.

2. Locate your Cache folder:

“YOUR HARD DRIVE”/Users/“YOUR USERNAME”/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache/

3. Once located you’ll see a whole bunch of files. The majority of them will be named like“f_00017db” or at least they’ll start with “f_” and then a number. These are the content files. At this stage all you need to do is view the folder in the “List View” and sort by “Date Created”

4. In Google Chrome, goto YouTube.com and play the video you want to save.

5. Head back to the Cache folder you have open in Finder, you’ll notice several new files have been created. One of them will start increasing in size. This is the one to keep an eye on. At this stage I’ll add a label colour to the file so it stands out clearly.

6. Wait for the file to download completely before trying to add any extensions or you'll wreck everything.

7. Once downloaded It’s probably safer to copy the file to a new location first. I’ll assume you know how to do that.

8. Now with the file in the new location, rename the file to anything you like but include “.FLV” extension on the end. This tells the system that it is a Flash Video file.

9. You can now open up the file in any program that plays Flash Video. I use QuickTime as I have the additional plugin required. This also allows me to export the video into any other format.

And that’s it. Simple!

I’ve also used the same trick to rip image files by adding the “.JPG” extension to the end. There is a bit of trial and error involved, which is why it’s best to copy the file to a new location first. I’ve also notice that it works with a lot of other Flash Video players too and not just YouTube.

There are some however that don’t work and, for now at least, I can’t figure them out. The files begin downloading and then for some reason the just disappear from the finder window all together.

Of course copying, ripping and stealing videos without the authors permission, is a bad thing and should not be done. But as a video post-production professional, I know there are many legitimate reasons why you would need to do this and up until now, many of the techniques are clunky, slow and produce inferior quality.

If anyone has any other easy techniques on how to download YouTube videos to a Mac, or knows if the same trick works on a Windows PC, please share them in the comments below, I’d love to hear your ideas.

I've been taking photos for as long as I can remember. I like to think I know my way around a camera enough to get good results and most of my work I'm pretty happy with. It's even been good enough that companies have hired me from time to time for commercial shoots. All of this is well and good but when a spectacular electrical storm passed overhead this evening, I thought it was time to tackle the one subject that has eluded me all these years. Lightning.

I've seen so much lightning photography that I hardly think the world needs any more. However I've always wanted to capture that micro-second explosion of light for myself. I was out for dinner at the time and thankfully I had the camera in the car with me. I set out to find a spot with a clear view of the approaching lightning storm. Good luck for me, that was actually behind the restaurant.

I set up the camera on the tripod with an 18mm wide angle lens and pointed it in the direction the lightning was flashing. I plugged in my remote switch so that I could operate the camera without touching it and possibly jogging the shot. I figured the best way to capture something that flashes in a nano-second is to have the camera set to bulb so that the shutter stays open until I released the button, which would be as soon as I saw a bolt. I played around with aperture settings until I found one that I could get at least a fifteen second exposure before I'd need to close the shutter and start a new shot.

And so it began.

Click... count to fifteen... Release... Nothing!
Click... count to fifteen... Release... Nothing!
Click... count to fifteen... Release... Nothing!
Click... count to fifteen... Release... Holy shit did I just get that?

I waited in anticipation for the shot to load onto the tiny camera LCD screen. I could hardly make it out, but there was a tiny whisp of something that looked like lightning. But what I had seen with my eye was way more impressive. Clearly my exposure was too dark. I had thought for sure that the brightness of the lightning would burn through. I opened it up a bit more and shortened my count to around ten.

Click... count to ten... Release... Nothing!
Click... count to ten... Release... Nothing!
Click... count to ten... Release... Nothing!
Click... count to ten... Release... Oh my God that was insane...

Again the anticipation... Waiting... Waiting... Holy crap, God-damn-it! A massive bolt of lightning flashed in what would have been the center of frame, only I was standing here waiting for the last shot to load. I made a decision. No more checking til I got home. Just click after click. I didn't want to miss another shot like that.

So off I went. Clicking shot after shot. I felt that I got a few good ones but refused to check. It was around this time a thought struck me. "I'm standing in a wide open space with very few trees or other tall structures in the middle of a particularly volatile lightning storm (it was pretty much constantly flashing all around) and I'm holding onto a metal tripod" Probably not the smartest thing I've done. But I knew it'd be worth it if I could just get that shot.

Eventually the storm moved on and the lightning disappeared behind some factories. I packed up the camera and headed home to see what I had got.

As soon as I got home, I eagerly plugged in the flash card and began downloading the hundred or so photos I had taken. I opened up Adobe Bridge and began to look though them. My excitement was soon replaced with disappointment.

Nothing!
Nothing!
Too dark!
Nothing!
Nothing!
Just out of frame!
Nothing!
Out of focus!

OUT OF FOCUS!!! How the hell?

I must have knocked it slightly without realising. Every shot from then on was out of focus too. So much for my not checking the shots idea. All up I got three shots with lightning that were sort of in focus. One of them was way in the distance and only just in frame. The other two were kind of small whispy bolts that stayed up in the clouds.

So there you go. A failed photo shoot. Adding Lightning photography to my portfolio will have to wait for another day, as this ever-elusive phenomena has evaded me once again. Maybe next time I'll master the art. Although something tells me that luck has a lot to do with getting that amazing shot.

A few weeks back while I was posting some tweets on twitter, I received an email stating that I had a new follower. I clicked on the link to see who it was and read some of their tweets. The follow was from Tim Beachum with a screen name of moviebizcoach.

Needless to say, being a filmmaker, I was curious. I clicked on the link to his website fully expecting to find some book or DVD set for sale at an enormous price. Not so. What I did get was a fairly standard sales pitch page stating some of the people Tim would be interviewing in the coming weeks. The difference was that all he is asking for in return is your name and email address and no money.

This seems to be one of the big things lately. To build an email list of people that you can market to later. Subscribing to these often results in useless crap and endless amounts of spam being sent to your email inbox. So I did what any sane person would do. I signed up. The site was fairly new, so it was a few weeks before I got an email to say the first interview was coming.

I was intrigued by how Tim was operating these interviews. He was recording them as a live conference call that anyone who had subscribed could call in to. This meant live questions and answers. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it. I got my time conversion between the US and Australia all wrong and well it just didn’t happen. Thankfully Tim placed the recording on his web site a few days later.

I have to admit that I was really impressed with the interview and quality of information that was being presented. Even though I’ve been working in the film industry for twelveish years now, I actually learned quite a bit.

A few weeks later and there was another interview. Once again I missed the conference call (I feel no need to point out my short-comings in regards to working out time zone differences a second time). I got to listen to the recording a few days later and was once again impressed and inspired by the information presented.

These are no short five minute podcasts either. These are half to hour long, in-depth interviews that are crammed with useful information. The information has been covering a lot of areas of the film biz but there is a leaning toward distribution and in particular self distribution. This is information for all of us indy filmmakers.

So if you have any interest in filmmaking or the film business, take a trip over to Tim’s web site http://www.moviebizcoach.com/, sign up to the newsletter and start working on your future of filmmaking. Maybe I’ll finally get my sense of time right and meet you in one of the conference calls. This is proof once and for all that even for antisocial folk like myself, this social networking stuff and in particular Twitter, can actually be worth while after all.

So often I’ll be watching a movie or a TV show and I’ll see a shot that jars against my viewing. Mostly I wont pick exactly what caused my reaction but I just knew something was wrong. Being the analytical person I am, usually I’ll hit the rewind button and then watch the offending shot a few more times to see if I can figure out what drew my attention to it.

Normally, with my trained eyes, I can figure out what is wrong on the second or third viewing and more often than not, it’s a physics thing. Or more to the point a lack off. Something doesn’t move quite right or sit in the frame right or the colours aren’t reacting properly or any number of things.

The human eye combined with the subconscious mind, is very good and noticing things that aren’t “right”, especially when we know what IS right. More and more these days, visual effects are being used to create real-world elements instead of the usual spaceships and dinosaurs. The problem is that we as an audience know, instinctively, how these things look and move and interact with our everyday environment.

As a visual effects artist and supervisor, I know how easy it is to get so absorbed in the work, that we rarely step foot away from our computer screens. I think this is one of our biggest failings. You see, by not going outside and observing the natural world around us, how could we possibly be expected to recreate it in the virtual world.

I remember a shot I was putting together on one of my first projects. It was creating a Sunset on a plain blue sky. I spent hours putting the shot together, adding a giant ball of orange light, lens flare shooting out over the scene, glistening sparkles in the water, and colouring the shot to match. At the time I was so caught up in creating the shot, that when the final render had been completed and I played it back, I thought it looked amazing.

Years later when I (excruciatingly) watched the film back, I noticed how bad this shot looked. I was stunned as my memory was tainted by the emotion of how good I thought it looked at the time I had created it. I watched the shot over and over but couldn’t figure out why it looked so bad. So, in my obsession I got in my car and drove half an hour to the beach, where I could watch a real life Sunset over the ocean. Now before you say anything, I had actually seen a Sunset over the ocean before but just hadn’t taken it in.

As I watched, I noticed how the light hit the water and reflected back to me. It hit me what I had done wrong. I had created the reflection of light tapering out from the source (being the Sun) to a point as it got closer to the camera. I recalled at the time I was putting the shot together how I had also tried the opposite of having it get wider as it moved toward the camera, but that really hadn’t felt right. As I looked I noticed that the column of reflected light appeared the same width all the way along. It showed no signs of perspective.

At the time, my logic had been right in expecting their to be some kind of perspective but that just isn’t the case when dealing with reflected light. The only way to ever know this is to observe it in real life.

From that point on I have always gotten out of the studio as often as possible and entered into the real world of nature. I observe everything in as much detail as possible. Looking to see how things move and interact with each other, how the colours and light react and mingle, how reflections and shadows are cast, etc.

By doing this regularly, not only has my work improved significantly and taken me from the realm of B grade effects to photorealistic creations, I have also witnessed many of the amazing and beautiful things around us that normally would go unnoticed. As a result I have gained a much deeper insight and respect for this world we are part of which in turn has enriched my life more that I could measure.

“But what about those spaceships and monsters? If that’s all I’m doing then it doesn’t matter. They don’t exist in the real world...”

You are correct in saying that they don’t exist in the real world (that we know of). But the key to creating a great shot is by getting the audience to suspend their disbelief. The best way to do that is to create things that are familiar to us and work in ways that we can understand. Understanding real-world physics can be interpreted into anything you are creating, real or not.

So shut down your computers and get outside. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining, You’ll have to create a rain shot one day I’m sure. Enjoy the natural world and appreciate the wonders it has to offer. Think of it as a free encyclopedia of references for visual art.

James Cole is a Director, Editor and Visual Effects Producer for Hysteria Productions and has worked on hundreds of projects from short films to feature films and music videos to commercials. You can find out more at http://www.hysteria.com.au

So we though it would be a good idea to use a remote control HPI Baja 5B car to exercise the dogs. It was working so well. Until... Disaster struck. One of the dogs caught the RC Car by the front wheel and attacked. Spinning it round and around, she flung it into the other dog.

Angered by the car, she would not stop chasing it. Fearful that she would destroy it, the driver (no names mentioned here) kept it one step ahead of her for another 20 minutes before the dog eventually tired to the point of exhaustion.

She laid down, unable to catch her breath, frothing at the mouth, trying to whimper. She died of a heart attack.

Thankfully the Baja survived to torment another day.

For anyone taking this too seriously, the dogs were fine and unharmed, just very very tired.

I stumbled upon this great montage video today that shows a whole bunch of shots from some of the top TV shows, that used green screen visual effects. The interesting thing about most of these shots, is that you would never know about them or pick them. They're just shots you'd think were filmed on location. Some are obviously digital, like the boat on fire from Greys Anatomy. But the only reason you'd know it was digital is because it's kind of obvious that it would cost way too much to actually have a real boat all smashed up and on fire. And of course the space walk on another planet had to be digital because, unless we've had some serious technological advancements in the last twelve months that I'm unaware of, I know we can't just pick up a camera and crew and head off to another world.

Have a look at this awesome video from Stargate Studios.

So why are they using digital compositing on green screen shots on what appear to be simple location shoots in the cities?

Well more often than not it comes down to two factors. Budget and time. Possibly the two biggest influencers of any film project, big or small. Quite often a TV show is not filmed in the city that it is set. It would take up way too much time to actually go and get those shots that take place out on the streets. Also the logistics involved in shooting on location in a city (or almost anywhere these days) is nightmarish. The endless red tape that needs to be sorted through, the officials that need bribing (Oops sorry, I meant location shooting fees that need to be paid...) and then if you have the time, money and patience to push through all of that, you then have to deal with keeping members of the public out of the frame and avoid showing trademarked logos and signs that you don't have permission to use...

Sometimes it's just easier, cheaper and quicker to build a small section of shop fronts, throw up a green screen, get a few extras, shoot the scene in a controlled environment, and then get some digital compositing whizz to throw it all together in post-production. Not to mention when done that way, you have complete control over weather, lighting conditions, the time of day and so on and so on.

So did you ever think that so much planning and work went into seemingly straight forward shots, or were you putting some dinner into your mouth at that moment and missed the shot all together?

Being a visual effects artist is an interesting job that plays havoc on our egos and emotions. At first, it's a great feeling to be a visual effects artist and have your work on display for everyone to see. But then if someone from the audience states "they were some great effects" and then comes up to congratulate us, we know that we've failed. An audience should never be aware that a  great effects shot has just happened right in front of them.

James Cole is a Director, Editor and Visual Effects Producer for Hysteria Productions and has worked on hundreds of projects from short films to feature films and music videos to commercials. You can find out more at http://www.hysteria.com.au