My weekend!

I spent the weekend as Media at Shadowloo Showdown, and wrote on my experience there. Check it out on my other blog! I found the idea of a scale free network operated within the event environment interestingly enough; the way the venue was setup didn’t create one central hub of activity, rather people were spread out and formed their own little networks within the network. This is rather unique to most other gaming type events where you usually have one big stage that demands everyone’s attention.

The first piece of content we’ve produced is also online, check that piece out here! I worked with friend and Journalism student Joshua Clark who did the write up while I focused on filming and taking photographs. I’ll be working on a video over the week from the footage I have, and hopefully have it up by Saturday.

Doing that meant I didn’t have any time to work on Uni assignments over the weekend so prepare to have a handful of blog posts put up this week.

Experimental Portraits

Mack ‘Petraeus’ Smith, Team Frenetic Array

This is a little set of photographs from a promotional event in Sydney I helped out with last weekend. I spent most of it capturing footage so my photographs are limited, but these four shots are each of the four featured professional players who played at the event. The lighting was poor so a lot of the images had noticeable grain, but with a bit of experimentation I found they added a nice gritty texture. I have a preference for underexposure (something I do in software post-event) to try and centre the focus on the subject. Click the image above for the rest of the photographs!

Striking Melbourne Architecture

There’s something almost political about this image; a dated building, worn and covered in graffiti being intimidated by the bland, almost camouflaged skyscraper. In itself it tells the story of two different characters from two different ages: the gothic era old boy, decrepit but still staying alive, being beaten and taunted by the cowardly, homogenised facade of the modern world.

Walking through Melbourne it’s like the buildings are all vying for dominance in the same way. There’s so many contrasts in old and new architecture it’s sometimes hard to tell whether you’re in 2013 or the 1900’s, perhaps even in some collision of two dimensions. It’s brilliant.

Another quiet week…

…but I have an excuse this time! Work attachment stuff with a competitive gaming organisation based in Sydney – formerly known as Australian Pro League, now known as Oceanic eSports – got me making a brief promotional video as well as a press release for any media! The video is embedded below, and I would love any feedback on it. I worked on a very tight deadline (claimed I could put one together for the sake of publicity over the weekend) of 2 days plus part of Monday where I tweaked the font.

The real kicker for this announcement was that a world famous Starcraft 2 player (Jung Jong Hyun, from Korea) will be going head to head with 3 of Australia’s top players, which should make for some really fun viewing. I’ll be heading up to Sydney’s UNSW for 4 days in September to help film material before and during the event (which should ideally cover the 50 hours of required work attachment!) so I’m super pumped about that too! I’ll get to meet a legend of Starcraft 2 and film him!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xHZM0XoJPk

So yeah that’s the main reason my week has been so quiet, not realising an essay was due this Friday plus working on said stuff I have had very little time to do much else this week. Come the weekend I’ll have to reconcile this.