It’s my day off and I didn’t have anything planned so I decided to take a trip to Cupertino, CA to visit the Apple Campus. There are a few spots of the campus that are open to the public including a few restaurants nearby and the Apple Company Store (a gift shop with Apple branded goodies).
The campus isn’t as big as you would think, although I’m sure that the buildings surrounding the main campus are also Apple owned as well. Rumor has it that Steve Jobs was back at work today, too, now having recovered from a liver transplant in Tennessee. Though, of course, my visit to Apple was uneventful and I didn’t see anyone walking around in a black turtleneck and jeans.
Proof that I'll buy anything if it has an Apple logo on it.
Today was the official start of Summer. To celebrate, a local radio station here in San Francisco threw a free concert in Golden Gate Park called “Summerthing” I caught wind of the free concert action early last week and made plans to go. The lineup for the afternoon was Parachute, Sugar Ray, Matt Nathanson & Gavin Rossdale! Oh, and did I mention the concert was FREE?
I’ve already had such an amazing time out here for the past month, but to have my Summer officially kicked off by seeing Gavin Rossdale perform live from what was essentially the front row, will be something that I will never forget, and something that I will probably never be able to top. Bush was (and still is) my #1 all-time favorite band, and the CD’s Sixteen Stone & Razorblade Suitcase are still my favorite albums of all time. But what made this concert extra special is that, even though Bush is history, Gavin Rossdale’s new touring group knows exactly what the audience wants.
Gavin walked out on stage to the heavily vocoded song, This Place Is On Fire from his solo CD “Wanderlust, playing over the speakers, but then interrupted it with the screaming opening riff from Machinehead! Wow! I had expected him to play a few old school Bush songs, but as the concert continued, he mixed in songs from his solo CD, his side-project band Institute, and several more Bush songs that I have always wanted to see him perform live.
The set list (as best I can remember it):
This Place Is On Fire Machine Head (Bush) Boom Box (Institute) Front Line The Chemicals Between Us (Bush) Everything Zen (Bush) The Trouble I’m In Landslide (Fleetwood Mac Cover) This Is Happiness Love Remains The Same The People That We Love (Bush) Comedown (Bush)
All in all, hands down the best concert experience I’ve ever had. I’m still trying to process it, really. I never thought I’d get to see “Bush” perform live, and honestly this was close enough. To me, Gavin Rossdale is Bush, and I’ve been a fan of everything he’s done since.
Be sure to check out a few more of my pics from “Summerthing” below in the Flickr Slideshow. Be sure to full screen it for the best quality!
The Adobe video that’s currently rolling at the end of most Revision3 shows was a project of mine that I’m pretty proud of. Adobe didn’t give much guidance, they just want to promote the launch of their new Flash platform and they decided to use Revision3 to spread the word. Rev3 went to the Adobe Flash Camp Launch event and interviewed developers and senior Adobe staff members. My task was to edit everything together into a 90 second video that would air at the end of Revision3’s shows for a specific period of time.
Here’s the finished video:
I spent two days assembling the video, creating the motion assets and polishing it up as much as possible. When we sent the finished video to Adobe it came back with only a few notes and a special comment calling the video “Awesome,” which was pretty gratifying. The video is now airing at the end of Diggnation, The Totally Rad Show and other Revision3 shows as part of the Adobe Flash Platform campaign. What do you think?
Another drive video that I did about a week ago, but forgot to post here. This one is from Emeryville, CA (home of Pixar) to my apartment in San Francisco, and includes a nice little trip over the Bay Bridge.
Song: Fischerspooner – Infidels of the World Unite
Through a completely random sequence of events I was able to find a behind the scenes “Making Of” video for the jaw-dropping Toyota Prius commercial that I posted on earlier. Best of all… they used Apple’s Final Cut Studio to make the spot!
Did the Netflix ad for this week’s episode of Scam School. This week’s movie pick was “The Prestige” (Love that movie!) I thought the ad spot turned out pretty good, what do you think? (Watch the whole episode here.)
Had to use my Netflix account to get the screen grabs of the movie page and I just noticed today that my name is at the top of some of the Netflix screen grabs, haha.
I’ve been seeing this new Toyota Prius commercial on and off for the past couple of days, and I must say it blows me away every time I see it, but what got my attention the most was the music playing behind it. After some research I found out that the artist behind the song is Petra Haden an “all acapella” artist who has (lately) done a few great acapella covers of hit songs. A quick google/youtube search also produces some pretty awesome examples of her incredibly talented work!
