Michael Verdi

Hello

I’m an artist making zines and video. Maybe games one day. Maybe all that together. Currently obsessed with creating an immersive film for Apple Vision Pro. I’m documenting it all here. I also publish a zine about what I’m making.

  • Back to Work

    Goat Rock Beach 2024

    I met my family in Guerneville after my week in Dublin for MozWeek. Unfortunately, I got Covid and spent the last couple of days pretty sick. Thankfully nobody else got it and I’m mostly better now.

  • All The Things

    Tomorrow I’m heading to Dublin for MozWeek (annual company-wide meeting). I have a handful of zines that I’m bringing to give to people but I thought I could make something to give to others that would take them to the online versions. I ordered some NFC tags and attached them to small cards to make them easier to handle. Since I now had a small card, I also put a QR code and the URL on the other side.

  • A Mind Forever Voyaging

    A Mind Forever Voyaging by Steve Meretzky – Released: September 1985 (Infocom)

    The other day I was talking with a friend about selling things on eBay. I mentioned selling some interactive fiction title that I’d found in Goodwill about 12 years ago. For some reason I thought it was A Mind Forever Voyaging but it turns out it was something else. I don’t know why this is what came to mind but when I searched for information about it, I discovered that it’s covered in 50 Years of Text Games (which I own). So today I read about it while eating lunch. One of the things I found interesting was that unlike most of what had come before, this game was not about solving puzzles. Instead you explored, observed, and reported. This is the kind of mechanic I want in the game portion of The Phantom Moon.

    Read the original version of the article, 1985: A Mind Forever Voyaging by Aaron A. Reed.

  • Dual Fisheye to Rectilinear 3D

    There’s not a lot of info on the web for transforming the fisheye images you get with the Canon Dual Fisheye lens to rectilinear images.

    Shot with Canon R5 C and the 5.2mm F2.8 Dual Fisheye lens

    I finally found this tutorial for Stereo Photo Maker but I was missing the options that I needed in the menu. Finally I realized that these were only available in the Windows version. Thankfully I have an old Windows laptop that I keep for things like this. So following the tutorial I produced this image.

    Rectilinear crop exported in B&W anaglyph

  • Zine Pals

    Fish I Have Loved #6 Awestruck by Vermicious Knid

    One of the cool things about sending zines out into the world is that sometimes people send zines to you. I got this one yesterday and it made my heart full.

  • Apple Vision Pro Persona

    I installed Persona Webcam so I could use my persona in zoom meetings on my Mac and realized I could also make a recording of it, so here it is.

  • Big Weekend

    We all met in Chicago because I was helping to put on Zine Camp and it turned into a packed weekend of fun.

  • Immersive Video Process Iteration

    Shooting and editing immersive video is not very straightforward. Thankfully, Hugh Hou has made a million tutorials on this subject. I’ve been experimenting with the techniques he’s outlined to try to find what works best for me. This week I tried Mistika VR again and I found that it doesn’t do a noticeably better job than other methods. It’s also really expensive. I’ll have to miss out on it’s ability to reframe 180 degree video into rectangular 16 x 9 video. The Canon VR utility is easy to use and does a decent job (though my copy refuses to recognize my purchase and limits me to 2 min exports – ugh).

    Today I used the Canon VR Utility to stitch my footage from the Canon R5C and export it to ProRes.

    I then took that ProRes file and added the Canon LUT and did noise reduction in Davinci Resolve.

    Then I exported left and right eye views and combined and compressed them with Mike Swanson’s Spatial Video Tool.

    Well, I did that whole workflow for a 10 second test clip. I’m now exporting 5 min clips which will take about 12 hours (!!!).

    I also recorded ambisonic audio for this but I don’t know what to do with it yet. I’ll have to work on that later.

    You can also skip the Canon VR Utility and do that part in Davinci Resolve using the Karta VR plugin. I’ve done that before and it works well but I’m unclear if I can export left and right views without first exporting a side-by-side video that then gets chopped into left and right. I guess that’ll be another experiment.

  • Bill Viola

    Bill Viola died today.
    The moment Steve Bailey saw the first video I made (35 years ago) he said, “you need to see Bill Viola’s work.” He’s been an inspiration for me ever since. My most recent encounter with his work was last year in Denver.

    Bill Viola, Eternal Return, 2000

  • Printed and Assembled

    Issue 4 is ready to go. Next, I have print mailing labels, write some notes, and stuff envelopes. I’m aiming to get these in the mail by Monday at the latest. I’ll also have a few copies with me at Zine Camp on the 21st.

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