GIS and Motion Graphics in The Unforeseen
A question repeatedly asked at screenings is “How were all the map-related motion graphics created for The Unforeseen?” The short answer is, we used a tool called Avenza MAPublisher to get GIS data into Adobe Illustrator.
For the unitiated, GIS is the general term for data formats describing geospatial data. This usually means infrastructure. Phone Lines, Railroad Tracks, Sewage Pipes, Street Names, etc. are often available in various GIS format.
MAPublisher plugs into Adobe Illustrator. Once installed, users can import vector map data directly into Illustrator. It takes some getting used but once you get the hang of it, it’s easy.
Thankfully, Austin maintains one of the best GIS repositories around. What makes it great? It not only has common civic features like Zip Codes, Voting Precincts, Railroad Lines and the like, it even has Historical Landmarks, Trees in Downtown and even the location of all Austin’s Moonlight Towers.
In the film’s most complex sequence, the following GIS elements were incorporated:
- Austin Street Names
- Austin “Center lines” or Street Lines
- Austin Water Lines
- Austin Sewer Lines
- TxDOT’s Major Highways File
Additionally, we needed before and after Aerial Photos so that the pre-developed and developed lands could be shown. They also were available from the City.
As for how each piece was animated, revealed and “flown over” that is a much longer story. Working in motion graphics? Looking for a new sidearm? Bite the bullet, spend the $1200 for the plugin and be BLOWN AWAY. An entire new genre of infrastructure-accurate motion design is waiting to be born.
NOW Available
NOW’s 30 minute feature on The Unforeseen is streaming on their website.
“Don’t Buy that House…”
Ready for the American Dream? Forbes would like to have a word with you…
The dream of owning your own home is as American as apple pie–and (supposedly) better for you. Over and over, we are told that homeownership will make you happier, healthier and wealthier. Heck, it’s even supposed to make you a better citizen.
Of course, there are times when, depending on your age, your savings and your income, buying a home can be a smart decision and an excellent way to build wealth. But is buying a home really such a universally good idea?
That’s just the beginning… Read on!
Then hop on over to the Telegraph for this article…
In a thinly-veiled rebuke to the US Federal Reserve, the BIS said central banks were starting to doubt the wisdom of letting asset bubbles build up on the assumption that they could safely be “cleaned up” afterwards - which was more or less the strategy pursued by former Fed chief Alan Greenspan after the dotcom bust.
It said this approach had failed in the US in 1930 and in Japan in 1991 because excess debt and investment built up in the boom years had suffocating effects.
While cutting interest rates in such a crisis may help, it has the effect of transferring wealth from creditors to debtors and “sowing the seeds for more serious problems further ahead.”
P.S. Spotted on the road back from Hana…
You have to love the marketing copy from their site….
- For the rare individual in whom success and social conscience combine, Pe‘ahi Farms offers an exceptional opportunity to do good by living well—in a home whose ocean views extend unbroken to the horizon, a community whose vision encompasses a greener, sustainable future for this irreplaceable island.
- And you think—not for the first time—that as surely as you have chosen Maui, Maui has chosen you.
What a voice, eh? In fact, it seems eerily familiar… Apparently this development has its own water/aquifer problems.
These Guys know how to Watch Movies…
So the Maui Film Festival screens film outside after the sun sets. Here are two of their best venues.
Maui Skydome
On top of the Marriott Resort Terrace in Wailea. They screened The Unforeseen and other video/HD films in this 300 seat venue. Though difficult to detect in this photo, the Pacific Ocean is barely past the movie screen.
Celestial Cinema
The Big Kahuna. Celestial Cinema takes place under the stars on a resort golf course. It seats over 2000 people. They showed some pre-release first run theatrical films like Evan Almighty and Surf’s Up on this screen. We attended Fox Searchlight’s Waitress but Jasper melted down after 20 minutes so we split. But not before seeing a massive shooting star break up across the southern sky.
How many other festivals can you say that for?
We were very grateful to Barry and Stella Rivers for the invitation. Also, we managed to get ourselves quoted in the local newspaper. Oops!
(BTW, the soundtrack to the entire trip is available here.)
Stamford CT Screening at the Avon Theater
The Film almost didn’t play here. The equipment rental company delivered an HDV deck instead of an HDCAM deck. Had Laura not been carrying a DVD copy it would’ve not happened.
First time visitors and NOW Viewers, follow these instructions…
Many people want to know if The Unforeseen is coming soon to a theater near them. The short answer is, we hope so. To make sure you’re notified about theatrical release of the film, add yourself to our email list by clicking the Sign up for our Email List link on the right…
A new website for the film launches in a few weeks.
NOW adds an interview with Robert Redford
Robert Redford, one of The Unforeseen’s executive producers, recently talked with NOW about the film, Barton Springs, development and more. You can listen to it here.
Maui Film Fest and more from Village Voice…
After 12 hours of surprisingly-painless travel, we landed at 8PM in Maui. First, a snapshot of their awesome festival badges:
At breakfast, when engaging our friendly waiter, we learned of his days as an Austinite — in fact, he once lived 5 minutes from Barton Springs! He came to Maui for its breathtaking natural beauty and unpretentious attitude. Willie Nelson could afford to live on the Moon if he wanted but instead splits his time between Austin and Maui. So go figure. We were glad to give him two comp tickets for Sunday’s screening of “The Unforeseen” since we don’t really know anyone else here…
Second, we just saw that the Village Voice has again mentioned The Unforeseen in “How are they not on our payroll?” terms. Here’s a brief excerpt:
The Whole World in Our Hands
Activist fest takes on global warming, suburban sprawl and, as if war weren’t enough, AIDS in Iraq
by Nathan Lee
The 2007 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival unearths hope and horror from the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague, Israeli prisons, Eastern Congo, the slums of Guatemala, the racist South, Pinochet’s Chile, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Darfur, Belarus, Afghanistan, and (surprise, surprise) Iraq. But it is in Austin, Texas, that this fiercely committed festival locates its imaginative epicenter. {:-O}
Water flows from a 100-million-year-old limestone aquifer into the city of Austin, where it collects in the Barton Springs Pool, a recreational reservoir enjoyed by a population of unusually progressive Texans. Their efforts to save the springs from suburban development provide an initial strata of information in The Unforeseen, an ingeniously scaled, unusually resonant documentary by Laura Dunn.
The entire article here.
PBS’s NOW to feature “The Unforeseen”
PBS’s highly-reputable news weekly program NOW will feature an interview with me (director Laura Dunn) and several clips from “The Unforeseen” this Friday June 15. We are very grateful for this opportunity. Click here to learn more.
Become the Sky
(2002, Documentary, running time: 53 minutes)
An ecological map of power and energy in Texas. Student Academy Award® nominee.
SUBTEXT chronicles two years in labor relations at Yale through the director’s point of view. Dunn, a junior at Yale when the conflict ensues, interviews workers, administrators, students and professors in an effort to make sense of the dissonance on campus. The film opens with Freshman invocation intercut with a custodian cleaning a dorm bathroom. A quote from a documentary textbook introduces the title:
Beneath the visible and audible surface,
which we might call the text of the situation,
lies the subtext, or hidden meaning,
something we are always seeking…
(Michael Rabiger).
This tension, between the serene, prestigious experience of the students and the hostile, humiliating experience of the workers, defines Dunn’s Yale education and thus the film. Structured like an academic paper, the chronology of events unfolds through five different chapters. In the first chapter, entitled FACTS, the film intercuts interviews with administrators and union officials hashing out the issues on the table. In sum, Yale has unprecedented financial gains yet aims to introduce subcontracting into the work force. Perhaps a common market trend, Yale workers, most of whom live in New Haven (the fourth poorest major city in America), embrace a long hard fight to maintain their wages and benefits. In subsequent chapters, union members visit and protest a meeting of the Yale Corporation, strike for two months, and march with national leaders such as Jesse Jackson and AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. As the chronology builds, Dunn interviews professors and graduate students about the ethics of higher education. The main thesis of the piece is revealed through these interviews: corporate influences on higher education are rendering a generation apathetic to the plight of poor people. The film culminates with Yale’s 295th Commencement. As graduates march in cap and gown, Jesse Jackson marches in protest with the unions and 5,000 supporters from around the country.
The epilogue conveys that although Dunn receives her education, the unions face setbacks as subcontracting is introduced into the work force.[video http://www.twobirdsfilm.com/quicktime/sky_q_hi.mov nolink]