Crunch Time

When I started my day, I had ten things on my to-do list. By the end of the day, I had proudly finished these first ten things, but ... in the process of finalizing things, another ten items have been added, to be finished within the next 7.5 hours. Whee.

I'm glad I had time to grab lunch with Esther. It was so good to see her. She laughed as she tried to navigate through my to-do list: "It's a jungle!" Compared to her careful handwriting and organized note-taking, yes, my wayward chickenscratch is indeed something to wade through. At least it's organized to me. :)

See you in oh, 31 hours or so. :)

Funny E-maýl of the Day

Merhaba everyone!
my apologies for not getting in touch sooner...man this place is crazy! i tried writing an email earlýer but ýt was erased and ý was gettýng frustrated wýth thýs freakýn turkýsh keyboard. 

I'm confused by how there are intermittent "i"s throughout the e-mail, though they have mostly been replaced by "ý"s (I would imagine because of the keyboard layout).

I tried looking up the Turkish keyboard layout and couldn't really find much - there's this on the Microsoft website - must use IE to view - looked at both the Turkish F and Turkish Q layouts. Still confused as to why the "ý"s kept showing up.

The rest of the e-mail is funny to read, just because it's like going through someone's poorly typed message and your eyes are coping with the massive bludgeoning of the language. (You know it's hard to read something that has tiepose evvry uther werd or was typed in l337-ShOrThAnD-TeEn-ChAt-SpEakzZz? Sorta like that.)

Love ya, E. :)

More Wedding Media Madness

2 projects this time. One full-on slideshow, and one mini slideshow in karaoke "MV" style (in Taiwan, they call music videos "MVs"). (Well, they didn't ask for it, but I thought it would be SO cool to do it that way. Besides, both the bride and groom and karaoke fanatics.)

Here are a few excerpts from the wedding slideshow:

Splash screen for the karaoke MV:

Snippet of the karaoke MV:

The groom's mods to the lyrics were actually pretty sweet. The original song is called "Man Slave". If you watch the original MV, it looks as though Nokia perhaps played a big part in financing the video. Ah, blatant product placement. [ original MV @ YouTube ]

Some stats regarding the slideshow and beyond

Programs used: Adobe Premiere 6.5, Windows Movie Maker, Sonic MyDVD 4.5 (authoring)

Songs used:
1. Bride's section: 一起開始的旅程 (Our Journey Together) by S.H.E [ YouTube ]
2. Groom's section: custom mix of Good Times by Chic and Rapper's Delight by Sugarhill Gang [ mp3 download ] (they have the same bassline - never noticed / knew until I watched this)
3. Friends' section: Everything by Michael Bublé [ YouTube ]
4. Couple's section: When God Made You by Newsong [ sing along @ YouTube ]

Karaoke-making tutorial was provided here. I used Premiere 6.5 but only used Premiere's native titler, as mine did not seem to come with TitleDeko. It's simple enough but tedious. I wonder how the professional [English] karaoke bars get their karaoke songs ... ?

Challenges: working with Chinese input in Premiere and MyDVD; understanding the meaning of the Chinese song for the bride's section to better match photos with lyrics; audio editing / mixing right within Premiere to make songs shorter / longer.

All-nighters pulled: one

Warm Fuzzies:

The videographer complimented me, asked me for a copy to include in his final wedding video, and said that I'd saved the couple around $1000, since that's how much he charges for a slideshow like this one! Wow. Yay! 

It seemed to be a crowd-pleaser, and the parents of the bride thanked me profusely.

Thanks to the bride and groom for trusting my judgement. They never saw the final product until their big day! :)

Bridesmaids coordination: Thanks to a post at echeng.com, I decided to try Basecamp. It was probably a little too technodweeby at first, but everyone adapted quickly. I thought the to-do lists were really helpful, I liked the centralized messaging with e-mail notifications and personalized avatars beside comments, and the whiteboards were great brainstorming centers. After the wedding, I added the bride so she could see everything that went on behind the scenes for her wedding and for her bacheloretty party. :)

Number of pictures I took at the wedding: ZERO. Now THAT'S a new record!!!!!