Hey everyone, so here’s a post about what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days, as well as my first impressions of both Halo 3 and my new iPod! So without further ado, let’s get right into it!

I thought I’d start off with filmmaking. There’s been some serious studies the last week so I havn’t really been able to do a whole bunch of writing, although I have been continuing on sketching on some ideas for “Derby”. I bought some older soundtracks a few days ago from the iTunes store and I think I really have the tune which I will set the story and script after now. I won’t say which song it is, since I think it’ll be quite easy to figure out the kind of twist I’m giving the story just by listening to it. But basically, the ending might not be as happy as you might have predicted (although of course this can still change). I’m aiming to get my script done sometime during our next vacation in school, which is at the end of October. One of my friends, who is pretty closely involved with the story of the film, is coming over to Malmö tomorrow so I think I’ll talk with that person then and hopefully also get some feedback on some ideas I had. During the upcoming weekend and week I am also going to contact various friends I know and approach them with different ideas, and see if they would be interested to participate and help. This includes, but is not limited to graphic design, acting, location scouting and photography. I think I’ve figured out most of the story by now with ideas and concepts, now it’s just a matter of putting it on paper and then I guess the film is on it’s way for real!

So in school we had two tests the last week, Math and English. I think they both went quite good, even if I on Monday was a bit nervous when I learned how much we needed to know about Shakespeare in the English test. This actually later turned out to be much, much less then I had predicted; but I guess, it’s always good to be on the safe side!

So, after seeing it both online and in real life I decided to order a 160gb iPod Classic on Wednesday, two weeks ago. The shipping actually went a lot faster than both me and Apple had predicted, and it actually arrived two days later, on Friday. Unfortunantly it turned out that the shipping company (TNT) delievered it at our house at around noon, which of course meant that no-one was home. So my dad (being the great guy he is) decided for us to go get it at the postal office, about 15 minutes drive from home. We contacted TNT to make sure they had left it at the postal office, and drove there. Now comes the pretty fun/weird part of the story! When we arrived at the postal office the manager could not find our package anywhere, so he called up the shipping company. Turns out they hadn’t shipped it to the postal office, but to their own office. Which was located at the Malmö Sturup Airport. We drove there, and after having to go through a series of really over-the-top security controls (involving taking photocopies of ID cards and much, much more) we arrived at the TNT office, and picked up the iPod. I’ve been using it for pretty much exactly two weeks now, and it has worked great so far. I have about 20gb of music on it, and about 60gb of films. I found a pretty cool piece of software that allows you to rip your own DVD films to the iPod format pretty fast, around 1 hour for a 2 hour 20 minutes movie. So I used it on all my Star Wars films, all of the extended Lord of the Rings movies, the whole Saw trilogy, and much more. The picture quality is actually very much beyond what I had expected, and the battery life is pretty awesome (over 40 hours for music, and I would say, around 7-8 hours for films). The only downside that I’ve found with it so far is that it sometimes takes a little too much time to go from one menu to another, or to for example, quit one movie and start another one. I guess this is based around the fact that it uses a harddrive with moving parts instead of the flash disk my old iPod Nano uses. Anyway, I really have got to recommend this product, it’s a great piece of technology, if you can stand the anxiety of watching your clean iPod be turned into a scratched-up monster on the back of it in a matter of minutes, which will happen, trust me. As Fredrik put it brilliantly a few days ago: “You could even put it straight down on a table and leave it there for a couple of days, and when you picked it up, it would still be all scratched”. I decided to take some pictures of the iPod, links are right here:

Image 1 | Image 2 | Image 3 | Image 4 | Image 5

I guess no-one with an Xbox could possibly have missed that Halo 3 launched earlier this week (on the 25th in the US, and on the 26th in Europe and everywhere else). I had my doubts for the game at first, but after reviews started popping up everywhere stating how awesome the game was, I just couldn’t keep myself from laying out my hard-earned cash on it last Wednesday. And what can I say about it? It’s awesome! The first thing that right from the get-go stunned me is the value you get right from the box. There’s singleplayer, multiplayer (including ability to create your own maps and game modes), a great file sharing ability and also something called the “theatre”. The singleplayer is pretty much what you would expect: you battle it out against terribly unfair odds and save the world. The story is actually quite gripping though, and even though I hadn’t played the two prequals, I could quickly find my way around in the story, and was highly compelled by it. The multiplayer is awesome, and the ability to create your own maps and game modes is great. I’ve tried to create a map and it has worked pretty good so far, but unfortuantly it’s a bit hard to create your own game modes (i.e. I havn’t figured out how you do that yet). I had some friends over earlier today when we had a longer period of time off from school (no biology class today) so we went home to my place and played some 4-player multiplayer. We continued to talk about it, and now they’re all coming –plus some other friends– tomorrow as well to play a bit more multiplayer (which was, without doubt, extremely fun). I will probably post some pictures here on on my various other picture posting websites on Sunday with pictures from the “event”. Halo 3 has actually made me think about my PS3. I mean, pretty much every single game is available for both consoles, and the majority of my friends own 360s. Maybe it’s better to use the 360 as my primary gaming console for now, instead of the PS3. I mean, honestly, the only thing I do nowadays on the PS3 is watch movies. I still think it’s a fantastic system, but if there’s nothing to buy for it, the entire concept of it is a bit lost. I will of course keep you posted about this! I included some screenshots I took myself from the game (using the awesome theatre mode, which allows you to go back and check out what you’ve done earlier in the game, take screenshots and/or record clips and save them to the internet):

Image 1 | Image 2 | Image 3

So, as I said in my small update I did yesterday in the last news post, I also have a small “announcement” or a piece of news, which I found pretty exciting. I’ve been in talks with two of my friends to one day try to record a podcast about various news in films, games, gadgets and just talk about random stuff. I myself listen to a lot of different podcasts, including my good friend Andreas Petersen’s own one called “TaunTaun Burgers”. I guess I’ve become somewhat inspired by both their and a couple of other podcasts, that I think it would be cool to get hold of a few friends, and record a podcast of our own and make it publically available. It would be in swedish and I think it would be pretty cool if we had some kind of group of around 3 people that were the main hosts, with one co-host every week to keep things fun for both us, the co-host and the listener. This is still in the planning stage, but I promise I will post if we decide to make it someday and post it in the iTunes podcasts database.

That’s all I can think about telling you today actually, and I really need to finish with quoting 1up.com concerning Halo 3: “If you have a 360, buy this game. If you don’t, buy a 360 and buy this game.” And so far I agree. It really is that awesome!

I will probably be able to write again in a couple of days, but until then, have fun and take care!

Hey everyone! After weeks of intense homework and tests in school I finally have a few days without any massive homework I have to do, or any real need to study intensly for tests in various subjects. To be honest, it’s quite late right now so I’ll keep it very short. The last week or two in school has been really, really hectic and it’s been really hard to keep up with other things like watching movies, playing video-games or just hanging out with friends and on FXhome.com. I will probably be able to do all of these things a lot more the upcoming two or three days (before school cracks down on me again :P). So you can look forward to a longer article tomorrow when I’ll be giving you my impressions of my first two weeks with my 160gb iPod Classic, as well as Halo 3, which I bought today after school and have played a bit.

So I’ll see you all right here tomorrow hopefully, until then, take care everyone!

UPDATE: News post on Friday instead, I didn’t really have any time to write it today Images from 160gb iPod as well as Halo 3 screenshots will be included, as well as a pretty cool announcement I’ve been working on for some time now!

Hey everyone! So what have I been doing the last couple of days in filmmmaking, gaming, school and more? Just thought I’d write a news post about upcoming and current projects!

So a few days ago I started talking to one of my friends who has some pretty good and cool ideas for plot twists and more, and we started to map out the story for “Derby”. Not much is currently done, but the project is moving forward all the time! Planning to shoot some footage next week to use for some kind of behind-the-scenes documentary. Note that this will probably not be some kind of video blog, just a major documentary I’ll try to make and upload after the film is released. I’ve also talked to Martin Emson, another good friend of mine, about some future projects and some work I might be able to do for a pretty big company. Can’t really say more than that at the moment, since the deal is not secure or even confirmed. It’s been pretty hard to actually work with filmmaking the last couple of weeks. School has been absolutely crazy, with loads of tests and exams. These are of course far from done, since we pretty much have a test every single week, but at least for this weekend it seems to be a bit more calm and relaxed.

There’s been some pretty cool things going on in the gaming world. Tokyo Game Show is currently underway and there seems to be loads of interesting and cool announcements. Sony finally announced the vibrating PS3 controller, which I think will add some cool “new” way to immerse yourself in the games. I bought NHL 08 just days ago, on Thursday. I’ve been playing it a bit and it’s pretty awesome. As with all these sports games, they are a lot more fun and interesting when you’re playing against other human opponents. It seems like a cool game though, and I will play it more the upcoming weeks. There’s a pretty major release in the form of Halo 3 for the 360 next week, but I’m not sure if I’m going to get it. I havn’t played the previous two, so I think I’ll just wait for the reviews to start pouring in before making any final desicions.

I had a pretty major Biology test in school yesterday, which I’ve had to study for pretty much every single hour of every single day last week. I think it went pretty well, but you never know, right? Some other upcoming school stuff is an English test on Tuesday and another (!) math test on Wednesday. Not sure what to think about the English test. It’s about Shakespeare, and while I understand how important he was to theater and british litterature, I’m not sure how this is connected to learning the English language. We’ve had to choose 70 words to study, but again, it feels kinda weird and hard to try and find words you don’t know or can’t translate Not a lot of weeks now until my vacation in early November/late October when I’m going to London! I havn’t been there for quite some time now, and it’s going to be interesting to just walk around the city looking at all the shops and extremely big electronics stores. Another fun thing is on Sunday, when I’ll be going to a party my school has organized! Probably going to be a lot of fun. I was there last year, and since that was a lot of fun, and a lot more people from class are now going as well, I bet it will be even more cool.

That’s pretty much everything I have for you right now, but keep checking back and I’ll talk to you when I’ll talk to you, which is probably soon! Take care everyone!

Hey everyone! I realised I havn’t posted anything here for almost a week now, so I figured I’ll have to tell you some pretty cool news. I started thinking about and outlining the plot of “Derby” today with a friend. It’s going pretty well so far, but unfortunantly this crazy school I go to is, in lack of better words, pretty damn crazy. We’ve now had several tests in two weeks with little to no time to do anything else than study for pretty much all of our free time.

Got my 160gb iPod last Friday, and it’s been working great so far. I’ve loaded it up with about 15gb of music, and unsurprinsingly around 40gb of movies. ;D I have to get back to studying for the big test in biology I have in school on Friday now, but I will be able to post a much longer news post concerning what I’ve been doing the last week, and what I will be doing the upcoming week! I will hopefully also be able to work a lot more on the story and general plot outline for “Derby” in the weekend and get a 1st plot draft done as soon as I can.

But more on all this and more in a couple of days! Look for the news post either on Friday or on Saturday, and until then, take care everyone!

Hey everyone, just thought I’d write a little news post (and yeah, this one won’t be THAT long, since it’s pretty late while I’m writing this ) on filmmaking and some gadgets I’ve been checking out.

As I said yesterday, I bought the new version of Sony Vegas. I’ve tried it a bit the last day (but since I had a test on chemistry in school today, I had to study a lot) and it looks great so far. All the rendering stuff I had problems with earlier seems to be working fine now, and there’s now also a setting to work in a 32-bit colour environment. Basically, this allows me to grade and change colours in my films with pretty much no quality loss from the original master. I’ve regraded a few scenes from the original “16″ tapes, and it works great so far! Hopefully I’ll be able to render “16″ in full quality 1080p HD quality some day now, so I can finally get up the version I want you to see, with better quality and sharpness. More on that once I’ve actually done something about that, thought I’d talk a bit about the new film “Derby”. I havn’t really got around to start and seriously work on the script, but I have been using my special film notebook and been writing down ideas when I get them. Can’t say for sure when I’ll start with proper pre-production, but it shouldn’t be too long now. I’ve also been listening a lot to certain new soundtracks and film scores the last week or so and I’ve got inspiration to create a short film/test which will basically be an editing and cinematography test. Will have to remember to bring my camera next time I go to the countryside and film that scene (shouldn’t be longer than a minute or so), and I can show what I’m talking about to all of you!

I’ve been having some minor problems with my main computer the last couple of days actually. I’ve been getting about one or two bsod (blue screen of death) every afternoon saying something with ntfs.sys and DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. At first I thought it had something to do with the graphics drivers, but after doing some research I’m pretty sure it’s RAM-related. Going to do some diagnostic tests on the computer this weekend, and if it’s a faulty RAM stick, I’ll have to take it out and either try to repair it or order a new part. More on this as I get more infomation about it!

Lastly today I’d thought I’d write something about the new iPods Apple announced pretty much exactly one week ago today. They announced some new colours for their cheapest and tiniest model, the Shuffle. This really wasn’t very interesting, but some other product announcements were! Firstly, they announced the new iPod Nano, with a slightly larger screen and video playback. The big iPod was renamed the iPod Classic and featured some new design features, as well as increased memory space (there’s now an 80 and a 160gb version!). They also announced the iPod touch, which is pretty much an iPhone with that nifty multi-touch display, without the phone. Shame it’s only available in a maximum capacity of 16gb. Me and Johannes (who’s never been an Apple fan) went to Apple yesterday to see if the new iPods had arrived. The new iPod classic in the 80gb size had arrived, so we got to try it out and it sure is really cool. The screen seems to be slightly brighter too, but they didn’t mention this in the press conference last week. Johannes ordered an 80gb model and actually got it today from the store, so I went with him to pick it up. I still havn’t got any pictures on Johannes’ new iPod, but I think I’ll be able to get some tomorrow and post them in this news post. I was more interested in the 160gb model, so I’ve asked the Apple people pretty much every day if they know when they’ll get it in store, but they’ve pretty much said that they don’t have a clue when they’ll get it. So to be on the safe said and pretty much be guaranteed an iPod by at least next Friday, I ordered a black 160gb iPod Classic from the swedish online Apple store today. The website says it’s going to arrive either on next Tuesday or Wednesday, so hopefully that’ll be true. Anyway, I’ll post a full review on that when I’ve used it for a week or so. Hopefully Johannes will post his review on his new iPod on his own website soon, but considering he just got it today, it might take a little longer

I don’t really have much to write about gaming this week. I havn’t had enough time to sit down and play some games the last couple of days, due to the classic, old-fashioned massive school overkill! (will have to create some kind of acronym for that..)

In school I’ve been doing all sorts of things. Last Friday I had a presentation with a friend in Biology class, and just today we had a test in chemistry. I’ve also been doing some homework each day in the other subjects, to stay on scheadule. Up next is another Biology test on Monday, and another Biology test the following Friday! But fortunantly it seems like it shouldn’t be too much of a problem, unless we get some other crazy homework thing to do while studying for the tests. A pretty fun thing connected to school is that I’ve been writing a small essay on analyzing one of my favorite movies, “Reservoir Dogs”. I started writing today, and hopefully it should be done by tomorrow evening. It’s basically a text analyzing the different characters, locations and cinematography throughout the film, which is supposed to be finished next Thursday. But it’s too damn fun to write about movies!

Check back tomorrow in this news post for some pictures of Johannes’ new iPod, and I’ll talk to you when I talk to you, which will probably be in a couple of days! Until then, take care everybody and remember to watch as much movies as you can (without going mental of course)!

/Nils C

Hey, first of all I havn’t been able to update the website in a couple of days because of the classical massive school overkill (chemistry test tomorrow and homework to be done for next week) but I’ll try to post a small thingy here right now (actually, I will have much more time to write a longer article tomorrow, so I’ll probably do that). Just wanted to let you know that I upgraded my editing software to Sony Vegas 8 Pro (from Vegas 7). This version has Vista support and it works great so far! Will let you know more tomorrow about my first impressions of using it, and what is now possible that I couldn’t do before on the main computer. I also tried out the new iPod Classic today which looks really cool. Johannes is going out to buy a 80gb model tomorrow after school (will have to go with him and take some pictures) and I ordered my 160gb (yeah, mental size) today too. Actually, I really don’t have that much time to talk to you all this evening, but expect a larger news post tomorrow sometime in the evening!

Also, going to see “The Bourne Ultimatum” soon! I seriously can’t wait! Cya all tomorrow, take care!