To launch the high quality TV channel TNT in Belgium we placed a big red push button on an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town. A sign with the text “Push to add drama” invited people to use the button. And then we waited… Discover here what happened or visit http://www.tnt-tv.be for more info.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Emmy award-winning team at Brainstorm Digital has put together the before and after shots from season 2 of HBO’s hit series “Boardwalk Empire”. (courtesy of Home Box Office, Inc)

Links:
Video @ Vimeo.com
VFX by Brainstorm Digital

Like many viewers I rushed to different reviews on the net to see what others made of it all. About 100 comments in I became really angry and saddened, I felt that people wanted more, a REAL ending — answers! I have no real say in what viewers are supposed to feel or expect. The reason I wanted to hear what others had to say was really about seeing if others had come to the same conclusion as I’ve had:

WARNING! THE REST OF THIS POST MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS. WARNING!

I realized something on my way home to see the show today. Something about the title, Lost. I had this strange feeling all of a sudden — it might not be that the characters are missing in the sense of the word. Since English is my second language I had to check Dictionary.com for this one. OK, here goes: NOT “no longer to be found” BUT “having gone astray or missed the way”. Yeah, that’s it. They all needed to make things right in the sideward/purgatory afterlife-reality, learn from their past mistakes, forgive and let go. Jack didn’t have a son, just as Locke pointed out near the very end. No he didn’t, but he needed to see what kind of father he would have been if he ever had the chance — a father figure who’s vastly, if flawed, different from his own dad. Jin got to be a better husband, Claire found out she had a real, loving family and so on. You get the idea.

Polar bears, the Dharma Initiative, giant statues with four toes and electromagnetic fields. These things meant nothing. The plane did crash on the island, the survivors survived, strange things happened. In the end some had died, a handful managed to leave the place and some stayed behind on the island living out their lives. In the show — as in reality — everybody dies sooner or later. The characters who had the strongest, most meaningful relation to each other from the stay on the island met up in limbo after they died. This is my own conclusion and I think it’s pretty solid. When the characters meet up in the “limbo-church”, Kate tells Jack “I’ve waited so long”. Jack, Kate and the others (not THE Others) worked a few things out on their own after death in a sort of purgatory (even though J.J. Abrams said it’s not purgatory — but this was back in 2005 when he also said that the viewers of the show came up with better stuff than the writers) and in the end they were all at peace ready to move on into a glorious cliché of white light. What that light is no one knows. By the look of the stained glass windows in the church, they were in a supermultireligious, anything-goes happy place beyond the imagination of the living.

To be honest, THIS is the last frame of the final episode. It showed up for a few seconds during the credits. Different angles (moving images) of the wreck on the beach. I wonder why they (Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse) chose to include these shots. The plane is obviously there, there are footprints in the sand but the place is empty, completely void of people. I better stop, I’m afraid I’m going to start speculating again – I’VE GOT THIS ONE FIGURED OUT! I really do, I think.

UPDATE:

Turns out that last shot of the wreck on the beach was added by ABC as “visual aid to allow the viewer to decompress before heading into the news”. What a crappy move ABC, I’m guessing Lindelof and Cuse feel the same way.

I’ve been running Boxee on my mac for a while now and I love it. Boxee is a software media player that also incorporates a lot of content from the net. There are several alternatives to Boxee, XBMC and Plex (mac only). They are nice but I really like Boxee. All of the media players/streamers are capable of playing video without unpacking the archived files in your downloads folder — saves a lot of time. Boxee is currently in league with D-Link to produce a physical, real box that hooks up to your TV and it will ship with this awesome RF-remote.

The RF part (Radio Frequency) means that you can use the remote without pointing it at the TV and this fact makes it easier and more comfortable to use the QWERTY keyboard on the back of the remote. The Boxee interface is really good too.

It feels snappy and navigating is a breeze, even through my iPhone running the Boxee Remote app. The Boxee Box is expected to be released Q2 2010 and I cant wait. Expected retail price is $200 and that’s on par with the Xtreamer, a competitor with a huge following. So, Boxee, get this device on the shelves or I’m giving my money to your enemy!

UPDATE: New release date is November 2010.

Links:
Boxee
Boxee Remote app for iPhone
Plex
XBMC
Xtreamer

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve seen a bunch of behind the scenes stuff from movie productions and TV sets but the thing is — I had no clue the use of green screen was this prolific. It seems like every damn scene, no mater how bland or insignificant, is shot with the help of computers with 3D software. When I first saw the video I was kind of upset, I felt stupid for not realizing that what I’m watching isn’t… real. Amazing stuff none the less.

Stargate Studios, the company behind this modern day witchcraft is based in Pasadena CA. Some of the TV-shows they’ve been involved in includes; Eli Stone, Mad men, Grey’s Anatomy, Lipstick Jungle, Monk and The Office. The list goes on and on forever but the thing is — these are shows without special effects, right? You know what I mean, don’t you? Sure, there are tonnes of effects in Heroes and Stargate Studios is behind that too — but that’s a thing I can understand.

I just realized that Stargate Studios is also a Visual Effects company. Maybe that’s why my brain refused to accept the fact that these effects are everywhere. They are not special, they are visual, you don’t notice them and I guess that means they did a pretty good job. Haha!

The picture above is nothing special, it’s kind of a crappy shot I took from my balcony a few hours ago. What IS special about it is that it’s the first pic in my 365 Project. Starting today I will upload one photo every damn day for the rest of the year. I’ve created a Flickr set and here’s a link. It’s a starting point for kicking the new year into gear.

I thought long and hard about making various Best Of-lists for this post summing up what I liked in the year 2009 but I grew tired of list just researching what other people wrote about. Best and worst, who would rule in 2010 and who people wanted to completely disappear from the face of the earth in the year that we now live in. All of a sudden ranking stuff seemed so trivial and — well, unnecessary.

I’m already losing track of this post, what will it be about? I feel I have to go Ad Lib on this one. 2009 wasn’t that bad, I’ve seen worse. Some bad stuff happened, no denying that. My awesome moped was stolen, I had surgery and spent a few days at the hospital and just before the end of the year I got word that I have to move out of my apartment, the landlord is renting it to his cousin.

Good stuff happened too though. I fell in love with woodworking, I got a Macbook and the iPhone3GS. I will write a post about my experiences with it sometime in the near future. I set up this new blog and I’ve been updating it fairly regularly since the start, proud of it too.

DJing is picking up, it’s a great way to spend time in a bar/club setting when you don’t drink — I have something to do, something to keep me occupied and not missing the joy of grabbing a cold beer. My friends are amazing, I love them all — mostly for their flaws.

I still get more out of good TV compared to movies. I’ve started to appreciate good, reliable shows a lot more during 2009. A few comes to mind, The Colbert Report, Better Off Ted, Beautiful People, Star Wars The Clone Wars, The Office (US), Mythbusters, Glee, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Torchwood, Two and a Half Men and especially BBC’s Top Gear. The show where three middle age men talk about cars have actually brought me to tears in 2009. Jeremy Clarkson contemplating the demise of ridiculously expensive muscle cars set to a beautiful score combined with breathtaking photography actually made me cry. Not a single movie brought me to tears last year but a show about cars did. I’m currently following around 20 to 25 different shows on TV, I love it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cheers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The style used in the video have been around since the mid 1960s when Nikon introduced a lens providing shift movements for their 35 mm SLR cameras. It’s possible to fake the Tilt-Shift effect in Photoshop and you get the best result with pictures taken from a height. I decided to give it a go sometime around christmas last year. I took a photo from my balcony one dark and gloomy afternoon and followed a tutorial i found online – the result;

After a while my faking skills improved and I really wanted to post a better pic but this is the only one I could find – I guess they are on the HDD still inside the retired PC tucked away in a dark corner. The effect keeps popping up all over the place these days and can be seen in TV shows such as Firefly, Dollhouse and ITV’s Whiteshapel.

Links:
Wikipedia -Tilt-Shift Photography
tiltshiftmaker.com – Fake it yourself
Smashing Magazine – 50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography