Anaara Media LLC » Post Production

A new level of Bokeh in film/video…nice application of the Canon 5D MkII

Fuad Kamal — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:30:10 +0000

When I first started watching this video, my immediate thought on seeing the head shots of the little girl were,

‘what lens is that?!? It looks like the 50mm 1.2 L series on my 5D, only this is video I’m watching!’ (I might be wrong about the lens, but yeah, that is seriously what went through my head)

Hannah & Leonard

Sure enough, on the right margin of the web page, it says ‘production tools: Canon 5D MkII, Adobe After Effects’

This has GOT to change the playing field in the flim industry.

Flasher Magazine issue #1

Fuad Kamal — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:20:57 +0000

Lee Brimelow released the first issue of Flasher Magazine, a video magazine focused on the Flash Platform. Interviews include Ryan Stewart on Flash Catalyst and a ‘making of’ with tips on making your on video tutorials at the end. Check it out online or download it to your iPhone for your commute…

Adobe MAX ’08 Sneak Peaks on Flickr

Fuad Kamal — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 16:31:48 +0000

I just posted my photos of the Sneak Peeks session from San Francisco to Flickr from Lightroom 2 using Jeffrey Friedl’s plug-in again (how useful it is!). The sneak peeks (and other general sessions) opened with a video DJ performance by Mike Relm. While the news of the massive layoffs at Adobe after MAX Milan may seem on the surface as bad news, the fact is that the RIA market and the potential for the Flash platform is stronger than ever. I am sure that most of the folks leaving Adobe will have exciting ventures to move on to, while Adobe itself will be leaner, meaner, and more primed to deliver some of the most exciting technology to the world.

Adobe MAX Awards on Flickr

Fuad Kamal — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:01:53 +0000

I used Jeffrey Friedl’s plugin for Adobe Lightroom 2 to export my photos of the MAX Awards to Flickr rather than outputting yet another Lightroom web gallery. While the metadata is included in the images, I don’t have time to link and/or comment each image to the appropriate descriptions which I am sure lots of folks have already written. So hopefully by using flickr not only will they be searchable but also perhaps folks can annotate them. In case anyone is curious these were shot with a Canon 5D with a EF35mm f/1.4 fixed length lens. I should be posting the photos from the Sneak Peeks presentation shortly.

Macromedia Man

Fuad Kamal — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:36:27 +0000

A week since Adobe MAX NA ’08 closed with its last sessions, and yet I am nowhere near caught up with work, email, leads, etc. I was just doing the post on my pics from the MAX Awards / Sneak Peeks session when, like one of those darkroom scenes in an old detective movie, guess who popped up in the foreground a couple of rows in front of me? It was Macromedia Man! I saw this guy from the back everywhere at MAX – across the lunch room, in my sessions, in the hall, at the party…and now in Adobe Lightroom. Who are you, Macromedia Man? Catchy shirt.

MAX Sneak Peeks

Fuad Kamal — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:21:27 +0000

Check my twitter (@abunur) for up to minute updates on the Sneak Peeks. I will post the images here later.

AjmalPictures.com goes live

Fuad Kamal — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 04:46:13 +0000

A new version of AjmalPictures.com has gone live. Many thanks to everyone on the Anaara team who helped make it happen. It is a Flex 3 application using Cairngorm. Custom components developed for this application include a menu control which we may be making available for download on the Adobe Exchange in the near future, and a custom video player.

A Letter to Colleen – Flash & Hi-8 live/animated film

Fuad Kamal — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:16:21 +0000

Check out this article from Studio Daily about a film shot in Hi-8 and then rotoscoped in Flash
frame by frame to create a disturbing graphic novelesque film by London Squared Productions.

They used Final Cut Pro for editing the footage and After Effects and Photoshop for post.

sony ericsson s500i flash lite, leopard, After Effects

Fuad Kamal — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 03:41:50 +0000

OK, I just got a Sony Ericsson s500i yesterday, I got it because it seemed like a really decent phone, had no idea it’s OS was Flash Lite until I just happened to see Scott Janosek’s blog post on MXNA, about Mark Doherty’s post on the phone. As far as I can tell, the UI is identical to the UI on my 790a, which as far as I know is NOT Flash Lite. Also the two games that came on the phone are Java applications, not Flash Lite apps. Mark’s post was interesting, though, especially since he mentioned that Sony is making the phone open to third party developers. Hmm…I was never too enthusiastic about developing flash lite apps, because there weren’t many phones in the U.S. supporting it, on top of that, the main vendor, Verizon (Chocolate phone, which doesn’t even come close to the s500i) apparently has made it such a headache to get applications published that doesn’t really seem worth the effort. In the face of that all the hype a while back on Adobe’s site about “make money – build mobile apps for Verizon” seemed like just that – hype. But hey, if in theory I could publish a flash lite app and just load it onto the phone…that does seem interesting, even if just for tinkering.

Which is yet another reason in my list of reasons NOT to get an iPhone…no Flash support (yet). How can you make a phone that can run Safari but doesn’t support the Flash plug in? Completely kills the whole ‘it’s just like a regular web browser on your phone!’ theme in my eyes. What is the web without the flash platform? Gasp-!

There was also a lot of hype and excitement over the release of Leopard, as everyone knows, but I recommend developers and post production people download and read through the PDF Adobe has released on compatibility with Leopard before upgrading. I use Acrobat 8 but honestly could live without it for a few months until the update is released (one of the awesome things I realized when I switched to Mac was how easy it was to create PDFs without Acrobat) but After Effects won’t be updated until December and that could put a stint in my post production workflow potentially. Hm…guess I won’t be upgrading my main work Mac for a while nor the Mac that the s500i syncs with…

ah, yeah, turns out the s500i isn’t natively supported by iSync on the Mac. That was a momentary bummer as a prior Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung user, I had been ecstatic at the performance of my 790a and also how well it sync’d with my Mac. Moments (and $6) later though that issue was in the past, with a plug-in from feisar.com. However another cool feature I had no idea about previously – apparently you can dial numbers on the phone straight from Address Book – won’t work with Leopard since Apple has disabled that feature in the latest Mac OS release. Not that I would likely ever use the feature, but just the thought of it…

Ah, and apparently Lightroom is not certified to work with Leopard, either – photographers beware! btw anyone know how to move folders of images around and keep the Lightroom develop settings with the images? In Bridge there’s an option to keep the Bridge settings in the same folder as the images. I didn’t find something similiar in Lightroom. Kind of a major pain since I don’t always lug around my external drive where I keep my images long-term; on a shoot I store and develop on the laptop local drive and then move them over later. I also would really like to see more integration between Lightroom and Bridge…

Photos from Adobe MAX Day Zero

Fuad Kamal — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:36:43 +0000

I’ve uploaded my pics from Day Zero. They include the training session,
Unlocking Cross-Media Workflows,
Welcome Reception & O’Reilly Ignite!, and the AIR bus.