Monthly Archive for February, 2009

How Does One Pronounce “Technorati”?

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 1:16 AM on February 26, 2009 in Commentary. 4 Comments Tags: , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/trn

Technorati, I love you so, but how do I pronounce you?

I figured it was “tek-NAH-ruh-tee”, but that kinda sounds like I’m making fun of a Japanese person saying “technology.” Unless that’s what I’m supposed to say, in which case, wtf.

    Why Do Animated Movies Have $180 Million Budgets?

    Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 4:13 PM on February 24, 2009 in Commentary. 86 Comments Tags: , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/KFE

    UPDATE FEB 8 2012: I guess this piece got high up in some common Google query, because I’ve had a lot of vicious comments on it over the years. So let me explain: This article is from 2009. I was nineteen when I wrote it. I also wrote this follow-up piece clarifying what I meant to say, which apparently isn’t as popular on the Googletubes. Anyway, this is a terrible post. I was trying to encourage people to innovate with low-cost animation, but the following is a completely ridiculous way of saying that. Please stop getting angry at me.
    UPDATE FEB 9 2012: Okay that didn’t work. You know what? Comments are closed. I’m getting tired of seeing this pop up in my inbox all the time.

    Perhaps I’m uneducated in the ancient Hollywood art of Unit Production Management, but it’s baffling to me that WALL-E had a budget of $180 million. Yes, it was a gigantic Hollywood production, but consider the fact that all of its visuals were made by pressing buttons and waiting for the images to appear. Well, it was more complicated than that sounds, but that’s basically what they did.

    So what exactly cost so much money? Without access to Pixar’s financial records, I’ll take a few guesses. But the short answer is that they’re spending way more money than they need to.
    Continue reading ‘Why Do Animated Movies Have $180 Million Budgets?’

      Nintendo R&D Meeting – A “Femto-Length” Film

      Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 3:26 AM on February 22, 2009 in Filmmakery. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/49u

      I decided that I wanted to experiment with making a movie with a complete three-act structure lasting somewhere around 15 seconds. In extremely technical terms, I definitely achieved that goal, but most people will just see this as random. That’s fine with me.

      Anyway, here’s a 15 second movie depicting Nintendo employees as people with D-Pads for heads:

      If you’d like to see it in HD without full-screening it or if you’re reading this on a “mobile device,” check it out on YouTube.

      I call this a “femto-length” film because it’s astronomically shorter than a “short film,” and the “femto-” prefix is smaller than both “nano-” and “pico-”. So yeah, that’s REALLY small. Not quite as small as “yocto-“, but this movie isn’t quite that pointlessly short.

      Maybe it’ll catch on. Maybe not. But if it doesn’t, I’ll cry.

        What The New Mac Mini Will REALLY Look Like

        Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 1:47 AM on February 21, 2009 in Commentary. 12 Comments Tags: , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/vsu

        There have been Photoshopped mock-ups of a new Mac Mini with ridiculous amounts of USB ports: First one with five, then thirteen, and finally another with seventeen of the things.

        You people are crazy. There is no way Apple would announce a new Mac Mini with that few USB ports.

        I happen to have gotten from an anonymous source today a leaked ad for the next Mac Mini. It appears to have a much more logical amount: 70 USB ports.

        Mac Mini Ad

        It’s a bit larger than the past generations, but at least you can finally connect a freaking keyboard and 69-pack of mice. Come on, that’s essential.

          Authors Guild Hates Children and Blind People, Demands That Amazon Kindle Not Read To Them

          Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 1:06 PM on February 11, 2009 in Commentary. 0 Comments Tags: , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/XIc

          CrunchGear just brought to my attention a recent WSJ article about how the Author’s Guild is making a frivolous attempt at making people realize that they exist. Oh, and something about how Amazon’s recently announced second-generation Kindle is infringing on copyrights because of its text-to-speech technology.

          The Guild’s executive director, Paul Aiken, says that “They [Amazon] don’t have the right to read a book out loud. That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.” In other words, if you purchase a copy of a book, in printed or electronic form, then under no circumstances may anyone or anything utter a single one of the words in it, be it your teacher, your mother, or your own mouth if you happen to unconsciously mutter the words to yourself like zillions of people do. Now, the Kindle doesn’t even go so far as to use accurate vocal inflections like any of those three would do, as no text-to-speech technology is that good. But nonetheless, it’s still a derivative work.

          I wasn’t aware of this, but now that the Author’s Guild has informed the public about it, I think it’s time we crack down on this sort of illegal behavior. I need to track down my kindergarten teacher and have her ass arrested — she illegally, without license or permission from the publisher, performed the copyrighted text of Where The Wild Things Are for an entire class of 20 children; I’d be surprised if she wasn’t continuing such criminal behavior to this day. And to think my own father, on more than 40 occasions between 1993 and 1996, committed the same offense with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.

          And let us not forget that every day, people who have impaired or no vision use this same illegal text-to-speech technology to browse the Internet, with entire copyrighted newspaper articles being infringed upon for an automatically-generated performance. If those sons of bitches can’t read the text, they should buy the damn audio version that trained actors worked so hard to produce, am I right?

          So, yes, the new Kindle’s text-to-speech technology is illegal, and clearly not a fair use of copyrighted material because its robotic and monotone performances of the text will have a very real and tangible impact on the sales of audiobooks sold by Amazon’s Audible service. Screw blind people, old people, and children who can’t read yet, we need to stop Amazon from stealing from themselves.