About the Author
Welcome to the Digital Basin...A place where cinematic media is put through the rinse cycle of technology and technique, concept and construct. From Video Editing, to Machinima. From Screenwriting to Compositing. From Computer Games to Sound Mixing. From the Big Screen to the Phone Screen. Digital Basin will seek an holistic perspective on the unified, hybridized and infinitely diverse cinematic landscape.
About the Author - Mike Jones

Mike Jones' interest and expertise in cinematic media spans an enormous diversity of arenas, from Technical Production to Cinema Theory, from Writing to Education. What this broad palette brings to his work is a holistic perspective that informs theory from practice and teaching from making.
ProductionMike's media production knowledge and experience covers the breadth of forms and roles; camera, sound and direction through all areas of post-production and editing. His production work has taken in film, video, motion graphics, 3D and animation, broadcast, live-events and interactive media, in both fiction and documentary spheres, along with photography, radio and music.
Mike has served as cinematographer, editor, sound designer and technical director and now runs a small production entity called
BadDad with colleague Greg Dolgopolov which is focused on hybrid documentary and cinema theory put into practice. Mike's more recent productions have been seen in festivals such as
D-Art at the Sydney Opera House and the on-line documentary series exploring filmmaking itself;
Motion Sketches -
celtx.blip.tvWritingWith more than 250 published articles, essays and reviews in print Mike has been prolific in exploring a host of topics, issues and ideas related to media production in the digital age. He is senior writer for
AusCam magazine and feature columnist for
Digital Media Net on-line. Over the past 10 years he has written for a host of professional and consumer magazine titles on technology, video production and photography including T3, PixelMag, IF, Videocamera and DigitalCameraEssentials as well as monthly feature columns for the journals Metro and Australian ScreenEd. Between shorter articles Mike has penned 3 books including 'Viewfinder: an introduction to movies and visual media in the digital age' and 'Digital Grassroots: a practical guide to digital video'.
Away from cinema and technology Mike has written a number of published works of short fiction and poetry as well as essays covering topics as diverse as philosophy, politics and sociology. Mike is a produced and award winning playwright and former editor of Dialogue magazine for the Australian National Playwright's Centre.
TechnologyMike's work, in both practice and theoretical spheres, revolves around a central hub of the relationship between technology and media aesthetics. As a journalist and filmmaker he has used, reviewed and abused virtually every digital creation software tool on the market and, from a deep base of technical knowledge, written extensively about the conceptual and philosophical relationship between creative process and creative applications. Much of these writings and explorations can be read here on his professional DMN blog
digitalbasin.netMike has been involved in the development, beta testing and practical implementation of a range digital software tools including both in-house custom applications and commercial products. Most recently this has focused on the open-source
Celtx screenwriting and production management system.Much more interested in sharing ideas than keeping them to himself Mike also serves as forum host at the
DMN Forums and for several years hosted the Chip For Brains technology radio show for Sydney's most popular radio station.
Theory and ResearchFuelled by a comprehensive knowledge of technical processes involved in the production of moving image media, Mike has in recent years focused on developing a spectrum of theoretical frameworks to analyse and understand the aesthetic changes cinema is going through in the 21st century. This work has engaged with topics such as the impact of surround sound, video gaming, motion graphics, 3D animation, machinima, compositing and the virtual camera on how we see and perceive the cinema. Mike's research articles on these topics have been published in a number of journals and resources including
Animation, Metro and
BraintrustDV and on-going entries can be read on his
Concept Diary at luciferjones.org. Long a devotee of the screenwriters adage, 'Show DONT Tell', Mike has also created the on-line video channel
ThinkingCinemaic.blip.tv to present short hybrid documentary videos engaging new cinematic ideas. This includes the popular
GameProbe series that explore cinema aesthetics in contemporary computer and video games.
Mike holds an under-graduate degree in Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong and a Masters degree in
New Media from the University of NSW. Currently he is deep in the trenches of doctoral PhD research study, also at the University of NSW, exploring new paradigms of cinematic space and visual aesthetics.
Lectures and PresentationsThis diversity of work in production, writing, education and theory leads Mike to make regular appearances at conferences and seminars to present publicly on a range of topics. In recent years Mike has been invited to lecture and speak at conferences in the UK, US and Europe including the Virtuality conference in Turin, the Cinema and Technology conference in Lancaster and the Los Angeles Screenwriters conference. More locally Mike has presented on topics as diverse as gaming, cinema space and pre-production process at institutions such as the Australian Film TV and Radio School, the University of Technology, Sydney and Queensland University of Technology. A significant number of these talks and lectures can be downloaded as podcasts from
www.luciferjones.org/blog/podcastsTeaching and EducationFrom a base of producing and writing about cinema and media, Mike's key focus is on education and the teaching of cinematic process, craft and literacy. Mike has taught a wide variety of courses and subjects, both practical and theoretical, at institutions and schools such as the University of NSW and the
International Film School, Sydney. For more than five years Mike was manager of the
Vectorlab digital media studios at Australia's largest museum, the Powerhouse. Here he designed and implemented a vast array of courses and training programs on all facets of digital production; from music and sound to video, motion graphics, digital imaging and animation. Whilst in this role at the Powerhouse Mike was also involved in developing and contributing to major museum exhibitions on the history of popular music and television and was the co-ordinator of the highly successful Screenspeak seminar series on media studies presented in association with the NSW English teachers Association.
Mike has developed and contributed to a variety of education resources related to cinema and digital media including
Wireless to Web and Soundbyte.org which won the Eureka Science Prize for Outstanding Communications Technology. In 2004 Mike won the Malcolm Award for Professional Development and in 2007 the Professional Teachers Council of NSW Outstanding Service Award.
CurrentlyMike is now serving as Head of Technological Arts at the
International Film School, Sydney where he is attempting to teach and design new curriculum to inspire and engage student filmmakers focused on everything future cinema can be.
On-line Presencewww.luciferjones.orgwww.digitalbasin.netthinkingcinematic.blip.tvwww.baddadproductions.netwww.youtube.com/luciferjonesvideowww.ifss.edu.auwww.dmnforums.comwww.australasiancamcorder.infoOn-line ArticlesSo what is the Editors job?
Cross-Platform Production - Mac, Bootcamp, CineformSolid state done right? Sony EX1 part 1Solid state done right? Sony EX1 part 2Re-Thinking the Browser: Review of FlockGoing TapelessCinematic MetadataMachinima and the filmmaker's virtual immersionCeltx Pre-Production software part 1Celtx Pre-Production software part 2Your TV is lying to youThe Myth of Intuitive SoftwareHolistic Thinking - Integrated MakingScreenwriting Self-HelpDNG, Lightroom and getting in the RAWPoetry in MotionCreation, Re-Creation and EducationXena and SDI UncompressedLetting the digital pony have its headGetting intimate with Cineform intermediate part 1Getting intimate with Cineform intermediate part 2Under the hood of VegasValue service over softwareA Beginners guide to HDMechanical I: Camera Technology and Our Visual LanguageZero budget adventure in HDVIntegrated delivery - DivX and Stage6Small screen epic: video for the PSPMuseum as MediaFrom Game Player to Game Maker without a line of codePodcasts and Lectures(Vist
www.luciferjones.org/blog/podcasts/ to download or listen)
VANISHING POINT: SPATIAL COMPOSITION & THE VIRTUAL CAMERA
BLOGS, WIKIS AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER
YOUTH CULTURE & THE LANGUAGE OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
SOUND AND SPACE: CINEMA SOUND & THE MACRO MISE-EN-SCENE.
BEYOND PLAY: GAMING AND THE CINEMATIC LANGUAGE.
CONTEMPORARY COMMUNICATION AND REMIX CULTURE
Posted at 01:00AM Apr 11, 2007
by Mike Jones in general |
"SxS is significantly faster in transfer speed and built on a technology being widely implemented across the tech sector. P2 cards handle a data transfer speed of 1.2 gigabytes per second (gbps) to SxS 2.5gbps"
If you are not aware ( which I doubt )gbps stands for gigabits, not gigabytes. The difference? A gigabit is about 1/8 the size of a gigabyte, or 128mb.
1.2 gigabytes per second = about 153.6mb per second
2.5gbps = 320mb
However...
When spelled Gbps, short for Gigabits per second,
When spelled GBps, short for Gigabytes per second.
Wiki says of SxS - 800 Mbit/s and burst transfer rate of up to 2.5 Gbit/s
of P2 --Maximum datarate: 640 Mbit/s ( one might assume that the 1.2Gbit/s is max burst transfer rate here. )
G'day
Posted by Stephen Gerard on February 16, 2008 at 03:10 PM EST #
Posted by Mike Jones on February 17, 2008 at 09:55 AM EST #
Posted by Margaret Bullen on March 02, 2008 at 04:46 PM EST #
Its Not a case of a whether a director uses Mise en scene or not - all movies take place inside a frame and so ALL have a Mise en scene (translated as the act of putting into the scene - but rather simply HOW does a director uses it. Orson Wells for example uses lots of deep focus - deep depth of field camera lenses that allow for action to happen both in the near and far ground; a film like Citizen Kane has a Mise en scene that largely uses deep staging. Where as a film like the Fight Club is the opposite - lots of very shallow focus with blurred backgrounds and attention focused specific details isolated from the background. Thats a contrasting example of two different types of Mise en scene built around the way the camera makes the image through the lens.
If the task is to look at the respective Mise en scenes of two films/filmmakers (Jackson and Waititi) then its simply a case of identifying consistent elements - is there lots of closeups, lots of the colour red, lots of deep focus, lots of moving camera? Anything that is inside the frame is the mise en scene; it's how that mise en scene is exploited, controlled and populated that makes for a film Style.
The definitive work on Mise en scene is from the book 'Mise en Scene' by John Gibbs.
http://www.wallflowerpress.co.uk/publications/shortcuts/mise_en_scene.html
Or my own book 'Viewfinder: an introduction to movies and visual media" Its almost out of print bu you may be able to find a copy :)
Hope that helps
Mike
Posted by Mike Jones on March 03, 2008 at 10:42 PM EST #