Bedroom London : New Show Reel …

Our New Autumn Winter Show Reel 2009 !!!

Keylight Green Screen Keyer for After Effects

Despite this plug-in being almost 2 years old now, we still gain great results from this fantastic keyer.

TIP 1 : Switch to screen matte view mode to reduce any stray pixels that the keyer left behind. This switches the view from RGB to a matte so pixels that the keyer missed show as white against a black background. In the screen matte editor boost the clip black to knock these out.

TiP 2 : If you attempting to key DV, HDV or HD, and you find that the keyer leaves a feint 1 pixel edge around your subject, apply a simple choker to contract the edge of the subject.

All in all, 2 thumbs up for Keylight!

Epic Mickey

 

Warren Spector has revealed that upcoming Wii title Epic Mickey was originally planned as a multi-format release.

According to the Official Nintendo Magazine, Spector said that the decision to make it a Wii exclusive meant that they could deliver the best possible game they could.

“The reality is that we started Wii development in 2008, but before that we were a PC, PS3, and 360 title.

“It’s burned in my brain – [Disney Interactive boss] Graham Hopper pulled me into my office one day and said ‘What does it take to deliver on the goals we have for this product? And I said, well, you need enough time and enough money to be competitive. And it’d be awfully nice if we could focus on one platform.

“At that time we were talking about a Wii port and I was begging people – no, we can’t just port to the Wii, it’s not going to work. It needs to be its own game. A lot of the design ideas just won’t work on the Wii, we need to give the Wii its dues. Graham looked at me and said ‘What do you think about a Wii exclusive?’ And I went ‘Holy cow – yeah!”

Epic Mickey sees players control Mickey Mouse as he attempts to restore harmony to a cartoon wasteland.

 

Google’s music search

 

Google launches music search US service will enable people to find songs by typing in lyrics and direct them to sites where they can buy music

Article history Google has launched a music search service for internet users in the United States that will provide information about artists and quick access to licensed music providers.

The new search feature on Google.com will allow people to find songs, even if they know only a few of the lyrics, by simply typing a line or two.

“People searching for an artist, song or album will get what they are looking for right at the top of their search results, with links to audio previews and the option to purchase music from Google’s music search partners MySpace and Lala,” Google said.

The internet company said the new feature was designed to help users find music and help artists, labels, songwriters and music publishers by driving traffic to licensed online music services. Google has not struck any revenue-sharing deals with labels as part of the new service. Instead it says the feature is merely a search function linking people up with existing legal music sites.

“Lots of people search for music through Google, so it made sense for us to find a way to get them to the content they’re looking for faster,” said Tom Stocky, Google’s director of product management. “The best answer to a query is frequently not a web page but a map, a video, an image or some other kind of content.

This launch makes search better by adding music to the list of things we can connect people to speedily, as well as providing a revenue source for artists, labels and others.”

Camden Walk Of Fame

Development is still on going for the creation of the Camden Walk Of Fame. Musical figures including Jarvis Cocker, Jazzie B and Robin Gibb from The Bee Gees are still backing the plans to create a Walk of Fame on the main streets of Camden Town.

The documentary Film is well in the mix now, with yours truly (Bedroom London Ltd) on board to do the in show graphics.

The idea to lay a heritage trail is largely the brainchild of club impresario Lee Bennett and would see a series of slabs dug into the pavements to credit the famous names who have passed through the legendary music venues in Camden Town – just like the “stars” that line Hollywood Boulevard.
Mr Gibb described Camden Town as an “epicentre” of talent, adding: “I think it’s something we should have had a long time ago in this country because we have such a wealth of musical talent. Historically and culturally it’s all come from this country in the past 40 years and its time we celebrated and honoured that culture.”

Film-maker Nick Mason has captured a series of celebrity endorsements on camera. S sneak preview of the film shows Soul II Soul star Jazzie B raving about Camden Town.

“It was the easiest place to kick a lock off a door so that was the place it all went down,” he said. “The Walk of Fame is an innovation.”
Other bands said the area became so synonymous with good music that there were sometimes more record company executives than fans in the crowds at clubs like the Dublin Castle, Barfly and the Electric Ballroom.

The Dub Pistols described Camden as an “A & R man’s dream” while The Cribs and the New Young Pony Club recalled how they were both signed after doing one gig in the area.

Others proved their fondness for heady party days by… not remembering them. Jarvis Cocker said: “I can’t exactly recall… Camden in the Britpop era… erm…”, before a five-second pause. He did remember a gig at the Underworld around 1992, when Suede supported his then-fledgling band Pulp.

“A week later they were massively more famous than us,” Mr Cocker added.
The film was made by production company Fasten Your Seatbelt last summer.

Mr Mason said: “In an ailing music industry live music is now more important than ever – Camden is responsible for launching countless music careers.”

Watch this space for updates and more information on this exciting project …

Kellogg’s CornFakes

It’s being put about by their PR team that Kellogg’s are to individually laser etch each of their cornflakes with the company logo. Is it too much to suggest that this might not be absolutely true?

Kellogg’s conflakes laser etched

We’ve all become used to ever more sophisticated and cynical advertising from the food industry as companies have cottoned on to the fact that tinkering with loved brands or unexpectedly removing favourite chocolate bars from the shelves has a desirable viral marketing effect which they can respond to by ‘bringing back’ the product. I blame Coca-Cola. All this trickery means that we tend to view most of the releases and announcements that come from our PR friends with an even healthier dose of suspicion than even our former jaded paranoia.

So what to make of this jaunty little announcement from Kellogg’s yesterday? “Now you’ll always be able to tell your Corn Flakes from your corn fakes!”

The story is, apparently, that the company has new laser technology ready to toast the tiny logo onto a zillion little flakes a day: “We’ve established that it is possible to apply a logo or image onto food, now we need to see if there is a way of repeating it on large quantities of our cereal. We’re looking into it,” the company’s food technologist, Helen Lyons is reported as saying. When we phoned for confirmation we were told that she’s “on holiday at the moment”. Hmm.

Shortly before throwing her Blackberry to the wind and hotfooting it out of Kellogg’s HQ to pack her holiday suitcase, Ms Lyons told the Metro, Mail and Telegraph that “giving our golden flakes of corn an official stamp of approval could be the answer”. At last technology has made it possible to confound the makers of all those damned inferior flakes that would masquerade as Kellogg’s.

Presumably the technology isn’t that ready at all, given it hasn’t been used in the photograph above, which is, instead, ahem, digitally manipulated.

So what do we think ? is it an important development in food branding technology?

How about they try doing it with Rice Krispies 

10:10 vow to fight climate change in stores….

10:10 Environmental Campaign launch at the Turbine Gallery at Tate Modern.

B&Q, Microsoft and Pret a Manger have become the latest household names to join the 10:10 climate change campaign, joining 25,000 individuals, 1000 businesses and hundreds of schools, hospitals and other organisations.

The 10:10 campaign, which the we here at Bedroom London definitely support, involves pledging to cut carbon emissions by 10% during 2010.

On signing up, B&Q announced a suite of measures it will use to meet the 10:10 target. These include making its 331 stores greener with better insulation and lighting systems, and rolling out a larger fleet of double-decker delivery trucks.

Matt Sexton, the company’s director of social responsibility, said: “Regardless of whether you have a commercial property or are looking at your own home, the process for lowering its carbon footprint is virtually the same.

“To begin, that means insulating well and maximising natural light so you’re not paying for energy that’s simply being wasted.”

“We also clock up a lot of transport miles. We introduced 60 double-decker lorries this year – a move already saving us 4,800 miles a day. “

Since the launch of 10:10 last month, it has attracted a broad range of support, from Gordon Brown and the entire government and shadow cabinets, to business giants like Royal Mail and Aviva, and personalities including Sara Cox, Ian McEwan and Kevin McCloud.

We really are trying aren’t we – so lets keep it up!

2010 Blockbusters ….

So summer blockbuster season is over …. but whats going to be big in 2010 ???

Any of these …. let us know if you know something we don’t

Iron Man 2
Kick-Ass
The A Team
The Wolfman
Robin Hood
The Expendables
Inception
Tron: Legacy
Toy Story 3
Predators

Royal Mail loses Amazon contract

Amazon has ended its contract with Royal Mail to deliver parcels weighing more than 500 grams.
Royal Mail has lost a crucial contract with its second largest customer, the online retailer Amazon, as a wave of strikes threaten parcel deliveries in the busy pre-Christmas sales period.

The news comes on the eve of a national strike announcement by the Communication Workers Union that is likely to bring the simmering industrial dispute to the boil and further disrupt deliveries across the country.

But a backlog of undelivered mail has worried customers, particularly small businesses and internet retailers who argue that the unpredictable nature of the strikes has led to a collapse in reliability. The loss of this business will be a severe blow to Royal Mail, which was relying on the growth of online shopping to compensate for the decline of its letters business due to rising email use.

Customers of eBay have already been particularly vociferous, claiming the strikes are causing damage to small businesses that suffer negative feedback and lose their online reliability ratings.

Amazon.co.uk has cancelled its long-term contract to use the Royal Mail for parcels over 500 grams and will use a rival service, Home Delivery Network (HDN), which also delivers for Tesco and Argos.

Two years ago Royal Mail lost a smaller Amazon contract worth £8m to deliver second class parcels during the last national strike, but fought hard to win the business back, claiming improved industrial relations. Losing the new, bigger contract will exacerbate the operator’s financial woes, which lay behind its need to cut staff, but more worryingly sends a dangerous signal to other suppliers about Amazon’s faith in the network during the crisis.

Royal Mail declined to comment.

Coca-Cola ads …. banned

Coca-Cola’s banned ads for its Glaceau Vitamin Water range

A series of ads for Coca-Cola’s Glaceau Vitamin Water range have been banned for making misleading health and nutrition claims, in part because the drinks are sugar-laden.

Coca-Cola, which made the very high-profile $4.1bn acquisition of Glaceau in 2007 to boost its nutritional product range, ran a series of three poster ads for different drinks in the range.

One poster, for the Power-C drink, ran with the line “More muscles than Brussels” with text including “Popeye had it easy …”; another had the headline “Keep perky when you are feeling murky” with a reference to using the drink to ward off illness and use work sick days to “just, erm, not go in”. A third poster made references to the benefits of vitamins and avoiding a trip to “the doctor’s waiting room”.

The Advertising Standards Authority received three complaints, which argued that the ads misleadingly implied that vitamins in the drinks conferred health benefits and made them equivalent, or even superior to, vegetables – and that the drinks made people resistant to illness. Two of the complainants argued that the advertising positioned the drinks as healthy when in fact they contained high levels of sugar.

Coke said the ads were “humorous and irreverent” and that the the products could actually be described as “low calorie” according to EU nutrition and health claims regulations.

The ASA upheld all the complaints against the three ads. The watchdog said Coca-Cola had not provided evidence to support the various claims made in the ads and had breached the advertising code.

It ruled the company should not run them again.

The ASA also said the drinks could not be considered to be “healthy” because each 500ml bottle contained 26% of the recommended daily allowance of sugar.

“Because we considered the ads made claims that were likely to be understood as referring to the nutritional and health benefits of the drinks, it was likely that, in conjunction with these claims, readers would infer that the range of drinks were ‘healthy’,” said the ASA. “Because the drinks contained a significant proportion of a consumer’s RDA for sugar we concluded the ads were likely to mislead.”

So many sugar riddled drinks out there … should we not just be chowing down on some good fruit and Veg and getting the water down us ?

Im sure that would be cost effective also ! Your thoughts please …