As you know I have been shooting a travel television show for world traveller and cruise ship critic Ralph Grizzle. (www.avidcruiser.com) Well, he was invited on board ‘The Silver Shadow’, an ultra luxury cruise ship with the line SilverSeas. From what he tells me, this is one of the nicest and top ships in the ENTIRE WORLD! Wow! 300 passengers, every stateroom gets a balcony, personal butler, all drinks free, gourmet food… You can bet I am going to take advantage of that! Whew! I am accompanying him on a 19 day all expenses paid cruise around NZ and AUS in exchange for shooting a promo spot for their fleet- not a bad trade off?

The itinerary is as follows:

Auckland, New Zealand
Napier, New Zealand
Wellington, New Zealand
Picton, New Zealand
Sydney, Australia
Melbourne, Australia
Adelaide, Australia
Port Lincoln, Australia
Albany, Australia
Fremantle (Perth), Australia

SilverSea looks like an amazing cruise line company and I am STOKED to go onboard. I will have much more to report once I get home!

Once the cruise is over it drops me off in Perth, Australia around Feb 24th. There, I am meeting up two old friends: one a former roommate/pro photographer named Ross Wallace (http://howeyeseerwp.wordpress.com/), and the other a bubbly and energetic cruise friend named Samantha Jane-Lewis. (met her when I worked for Princess Cruise Lines!) Ross is an incredible photographer (one of the best I know), and Sam is an outgoing and smiley world traveller with a magnetic personality. We will be staying in Perth for a few days before Sam and I (maybe we can get Ross to come too??) begin the second leg of this epic Aussie trip!

Ross Wallace! He’s a huge surfer!

Meet Samantha! If you stick with me you’ll get to know her well!

We are going to fly to Melbourne and rent a car, and then road trip up the East Coast to Cairns and The Great Barrier Reef! I will have my camera with me and be filming the entire trip. Sam and I have had the idea of creating a pilot season for the YouTube Travel Channel following our adventure around the world. I’ve had this idea for really long time; it’s sort of been a passion project for both of us. This will be the our chance to make it a reality! We will be filming, writing, and taking pictures the entire time and putting together a 12(?) episode YouTube series chronicling our adventure once we’re done. If we can find interest, this could spark a new long term show with many more destinations around the world! Time will tell!!!!

Regardless, I will be coming home mid March with a TON of footage and great content to share with you! I can’t wait to get out there and experience NZ and Australia!

Talk to you all soon!

- APS_Chris

All footage was shot on primarily my Sony EX1, with a couple shots on a Sony V1U as well as my GoPro Hero. Every shot you see was either handheld or on my sticks. Editing and colour correction were done in FCP7, and the opening title sequence was done in After Effects CS5.

Song is ‘We Can Make The World Stop’ by The Glitch Mob

Special thanks goes out to Jake Dunbar, Yuriy Rzhemovskiy, Sean Gallagher, and my family for their valuable feedback and support.

Please enjoy and thanks for watching!

- APS_Chris

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I’m back from a 2.5 week shoot in Europe for The Avid Cruiser Travel Television Series! (http://www.avidcruiser.com/) This is a new short form television series that will be played onboard Royal Caribbean Cruise Line ships showcasing attractions and cool things in various ports around the globe! It is meant to be entertaining and inspiring, and will hope to entice people to get off the ship and explore the beautiful locations for themselves. We are expecting a captive audience of 2.5 million people.

It was quite a shoot! The places we covered were:

1) Northern France – Normandy Region including the D-Day Beachs, Honfleur, and the Alabaster Coast (Etretat)

2) Paris, France (My first time! Incredible! Blew me away!)

3) Southern France – Toulon, Sanary Sur Mer, St. Tropez, and La Seyne (all part of Var Provence)

4) Venice, Italy! (One of my favourite ports in the entire world! Just so unique and unlike anything I’ve seen before!)

The trip was fantastic, we were wined and dined, and I’m very happy with how the footage turned out! I’ve put together a teaser trailer which you can check out below! Enjoy!

“A new travel show following ‘The Avid Cruiser’ Ralph Grizzle as he explores the various ports of the world.”
Shot by: Chris Stanley
Edited by: Chris Stanley
Edit Consulting: Jake Dunbar

Shot on a Sony EX1
Edited in FCP7

For more information visit www.avidcruiser.com

This looks like it might be the last travel of the year for me. (work related anyway) I am now heavy in post putting all of the Canadian East Coast footage and newly shot European footage together for broadcast! It’s a big task! There is a TON of footage! I am excited however for the final outcome. Next year will be a huge year for travel for me. I foresee myself being gone almost all year shooting abroad! Royal Caribbean has given us a wish list of 98 ports they want shot globally. WOW. That is easily 1-2 years of solid travel work! I am so excited!

Check back here often to follow my journey across the globe and see the images that I capture along the way!

- APS_Chris

Just bought a GoPro, thought I’d take it out for a spin. All footage is raw and uncolour corrected. I LOVE this camera. It’s fantastic for anything rough and tumble, as well as underwater.

Song: Bombay – El Guincho

9 Hours, 30km, one epic viewpoint later…

He recently just graduated from Emily Carr University so I bought him a little grad gift. Of course, I had to try it on first. I LOVE this shirt! Congratulations Yuriy!

- APS_Chris

You can check more of his work out here: http://www.yuriyr.com/

Enjoy!

- APS_Chris

- APS_Chris

My initial impressions from the articles, demonstrations, and reviewer impressions I’ve seen so far:

It seems like a slicker, newer, fresher version of FCP with a slight lean towards the amateur market and a step away from the Pro market. (At least for now) I do acknowledge and understand that there are a ton of amazing features in there (background rendering – YESSSS), but it just seems to share so much in common with it’s consumer little brother iMovie that it makes you wonder. Things I really like:

- Background rendering (WOW. Thank GOD! If I had a nickel for every minute I spent watching that cursed blue bar, I’d be rich. This is fabulous.)

- New redesigned interface (Looks clean and sleek- I like the new black look.)

- Built in audio controls (In my opinion the old FCP had utterly useless audio tools so it’s nice to see some attention put here. I may actually use these for once.)

- Optimized for speed to take advantage of the 64-bit processing (Great news. I just dropped 3 grand on a new Macbook Pro i7 so it’s about time a program takes advantage of all that muscle.)

So, that’s what I like right off the bat. That being said, there are definitely some glaring omissions that have not made very many editors happy as well:

- No multicam (Don’t care, never used)

- Cannot open FCP7 files (HUGE negative, but Apple has stated they working on fixing this; no doubt they will.)

- No OMF export. (REALLY? This is suppose to be Pro software. Come on. No doubt this will come eventually.)

- No XML export. (Again, massive omission. Apple has stated this will come.)

- Single Window interface (This sucks. I have a monster second monitor that is unused now.)

- Cannot export to tape (In my opinion, tape is dead. Good riddance. I hate you. However, I know that 99% of broadcasters still want their work mastered to HDCAM SR tape. Hmmm. FCPX needs to address this if they want to keep a huge portion of their professional market.)

- Colour wheel gone (Ok, I haven’t tried out the new one yet but I will miss this little wheel. It worked perfectly for it was made for.)

- Extremely limited export ‘share’ menu (From what I’ve seen, this looks REALLY cut down. I don’t want Apple’s preset crap, I want to be able to get in there and tweak and play around with everything. I like having all of those customizable codecs! We’re pros! Give us some control and save the preset stuff for iMovie!)

From what I’ve seen this program has a lot of potential and will undoubtably be huge after a couple of major updates.  It’s still in its infancy and won’t be ready for professional broadcast use for probably many more months. If you’re an indie editor or use it mainly for web content I could see this being a great tool right now. I have no doubt in my mind I will make the migration eventually as that’s primarily what I use it for right now, but I feel it’s still neglecting a large portion of its professional broadcast audience. Luckily, you can still have FCP7 and FCPX running on the same machine so it’s really not a big deal for the time being. I sincerely hope Apple appeases their pro audience. iMovie and FCPX are for different markets and Apple needs to realize this and not try to fuse them together. It’s annoying to see them always simplifying everything and ‘consumerizing’ all their products. Time will tell. But hey, for $300 and the ability to run it with FCP7 still installed, I feel it can only get better from here.

Here’s to FCPX and it’s future. Make me a happy editor Mr. Jobs!

- APS_Chris

Enjoy!

-APS_Chris