It gives me great pleasure to announce the third major release of Radiance. Let’s get to what’s been fixed, and what’s been added. First, I’m going to use emojis to mark different parts of it like this:
💔 marks an incompatible API / binary change
😻 marks new features
🤷♀️ marks bug fixes and general improvements
Substance
- 😻 New skins – Nebula Amethyst, Night Shade and Graphite Sunset
- 🤷♀️ Fix for disappearing internal frame title pane buttons
- 🤷♀️ Fix for crash during initialization
- 🤷♀️ Fix for
OutOfMemoryError on sliders with large model ranges
- 🤷♀️ Fix for slider tracks under dark skins
- 💔 Fix for incorrect tracking of state-based alpha values in color scheme bundles
- 🤷♀️ Fix for drop shadows under some skins
- 🤷♀️ Fix for contrast ratio of highlighted content under Sahara skin
- 🤷♀️ Fix for antialiased rendering of pasted text content
Flamingo
Trident
Photon
The first Radiance release focused on bringing all the different Swing open-source projects that I’ve been working on since 2005 under one roof. The second Radiance release was about making them work much better together. And this one (code-named Coral) is about covering major functionality gaps that were missing up until now.
There’s still a long road ahead to continue exploring the never-ending depths of what it takes to write elegant and high-performing desktop applications in Swing. If you’re in the business of writing just such apps, I’d love for you to take this third Radiance release for a spin. Click here to get the instructions on how to add Radiance to your Gradle / Maven / Ivy / Leiningen / Bazel builds. And don’t forget that all of the modules require Java 9 to build and run.
Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Gonzalo Amat. In this interview he talks about technology changes in the field of cinematography, set dynamics and collaboration through communication, finding the balance between technical and artistic aspects of storytelling, and the world of episodic productions . Around these topics and more, Gonzalo dives deep into his work on “The Man in the High Castle”, alternate history of post-World War II where the Axis powers have divided the United States and assimilated the citizens into different cultures.
Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.
Gonzalo: I watched a lot of films since I was little, but I didn’t really ever think about working on film as I didn’t know you could have that as a career. But I did have a still camera throughout my school years, and I would take photos everywhere. As I was getting closer to college age, I started getting interested in literature and storytelling in general.
When I was in college, I started out studying communications, and didn’t get to film until later. It slowly came together, as you take novels as narrative, and add visuals through photography to make a film. I started working in productions as a production assistant, and when I was sure that it was what I wanted, I went to the London film school. After that I moved back to Los Angeles where I studied in the American Film Institute, and I’ve been shooting since – everything from documentaries to art films, from short movies to TV and streaming.
Kirill: Looking back at your early days in the industry, was there anything particularly surprising or unexpected for you?
Gonzalo: A set is always such a weird place to be on. I’ve been there for half my life already, but I still think it’s a very strange place. Everyone is always running around, and then suddenly everyone stops and it’s complete silence, and then everyone runs again. It’s this kind of mix of energy that’s interesting and focused. There’s really nothing like it.
It’s so special to see all these people, each one doing their own job, and everyone comes together. Then, when you roll camera, everyone quiets down and you have all this energy concentrated into one small space that goes through the camera. The energy on the set still surprises me to this day.
Behind the scenes on the sets of “The Man in the High Castle”. Courtesy of Gonzalo Amat and Amazon Studios.
Kirill: Now that you’re working in the industry, how does that affect you as a viewer? Do you catch yourself analyzing how they made a particular shot, or do you get to enjoy the story itself?
Gonzalo: In a way, yes. When I’m in the middle of a project and I’m watching something, all I can see is how they did it – so I don’t really enjoy it. But if I’m able to disconnect, then I’m able to enjoy the story even more. If you don’t get pulled in, then you see the strings behind it and it’s not that enjoyable. But if it’s well done, if it’s powerful and it just sweeps you away, you admire it more than the average viewer. You know how much effort went into it.
I like watching movies, because I’m looking forward to see if it’s going to sweep me off my feet, or if I’ll end up thinking about how many days it took to shoot the scene.
Kirill: You mentioned “when you roll camera”, but that’s almost obsolete now that digital has taken over. If you look at these first 20 years of your career, how different is it today compared to when you started?
Gonzalo: It’s pretty different. When I started, there was just video assist. You could see what the camera was doing, but there was no way of telling how it would look until it got developed. There was a little bit of a magic element to what we did as cinematographers. Some people complain that it’s lost and that the magic is gone. But I don’t see it like that.
I see it as another way of communicating with someone. You communicate with the director, and you both see something that is quite close to what the final image is going to be. You can discuss if it should be darker or cooler or warmer. You’re still the cinematographer. You are telling the vision of the director and not only your own vision. The more tools you have to communicate, the better it is, especially on subjective things like color or brightness.
Technology has also changed the way we do color correction in post-production, and the way we work with lights on set. You can program lights and change light during a scene. It can be programmed to change color during the scene, and you have other nice storytelling tools like that. Nowadays we can be shooting an exterior scene, and program lights to simulate a cloud passing by. You make the backing light a bit darker for 30 seconds, and then bring the brightness back up. It’s subtle. It gives you a sense of realism, even if the viewer doesn’t notice it on its own.
Behind the scenes on the sets of “The Man in the High Castle”. Courtesy of Gonzalo Amat and Amazon Studios.
Kirill: Is it time-consuming to keep track of all these changes in technology?
Gonzalo: Quite so. When you’re shooting, you can’t dedicate the time to anything else. So every time I have a break, I have to brush up on what came out and stay up to date. You have new cameras, new lenses, new lights coming out all the time. It’s hard to keep up. But it’s also part of the job. I like to test new things every once in a while. It’s nice to use new technologies and not get too used to the old ones.
Kirill: Between the technical and the artistically parts of it, is one more important than the other?
Gonzalo: You have to have a good balance between the two, even if sometimes you end up paying more attention to one. When you read the script, you start with the artistic part to get ideas. Then you translate that to the technical side – what lights do we need, what cameras we are going to use, how do we shoot it. And then, when you’re on the set, you go back to the artistic part. It’s kind of a full circle, and you constantly have to go back and forth between the two.
My approach is to keep it more on the artistic side until I get to talk to the director. I take it from Conrad Hall who would discuss the idea with his crew, before executing it. If you know the crew, the technical part of it is known to them. They know what to do. So I prefer to keep it on the artistic side, even though the technical side is important for completing the production.
Behind the scenes on the sets of “The Man in the High Castle”. Courtesy of Gonzalo Amat and Amazon Studios.
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Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Malchus Janocko. In this interview he talks about changes in the world of episodic TV productions in the last decade, crafting the worlds for contemporary dramas, maintaining visual consistency across a season arc, getting attached to the sets, and what keeps him going in the field. Around these topics and more, Malchus goes back to his work on “Gossip Girl”, and dives deep into the last four seasons of Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” and various aspects of the production design of the show.
On the sets of “Orange is the New Black”. Left – Lee Malecki, set decorator. Center – Malchus Janocko, production designer. Right – Geoffrey Ehrlich, art director.
Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.
Malchus: My father took me to see “Alien” at an ungodly early age, and that’s how I started [laughs]. My father’s a physicist and my mother’s an art teacher. I always thought that I would want to go into art or architecture, and somehow I found myself heading into this, after a whole string of events. I have an undergraduate degree in fine art painting from Rochester Institute of Technology, and after that I applied to Carnegie Mellon as a scenic artist, thinking I could go to school to paint scenery for theater. I had done a lot of theater in high school and some during college.
I applied on a whim and I was accepted, but they accepted me as a designer – and I didn’t know that until I got there. I thought that I had been accepted as a painter [laughs] and I had to make a decision at the time, and decided to stay. I finished that program, moved to New York after graduate school, and I worked for a firm doing corporate theater, exhibitry, events, car shows, corporate meetings etc. We did a series of ice sculpted shows for Opryland hotels and all kinds of things. I worked there for 7 years, then I worked at an events company for a year as their design director, and then I had an opportunity to move into the scripted field.
I’ve worked with Loren Weeks for many years, and he asked me to come on to a straight-to-video Wesley Snipes movie that was shooting in Providence, Rhode Island. And I’ve been in narrative and scripted world ever since, which has been fantastic. I think that all of your experience leads you to where you want to be. I used all of that event experience on “Gossip Girl” during the 5 years that I’ve worked on it as the art director for Loren Weeks. I worked on “I Am Legend” for almost a year as an assistant art director. In between seasons of “Gossip Girl” and “Orange is the New Black”, I was able to work on “The Amazing Spider-man 2” and some of the Marvel “Defenders” for Netflix.
When “Gossip Girl” season 6 happened, my boss moved on and I was able to start production design on it. I’ve done lots of art direction, and I’ve been production designing for the last 6 or so years.
On the sets of “Orange is the New Black”. Courtesy Malchus Janocko. See notes at the end for full credits.
Kirill: If you look back at this span of the last decade in your career, do you feel that the productions demand more these days?
Malchus: Absolutely. I feel like the quality has gone at the same time as the amount of content we have out there. It’s not that the quality is going down as there is more content, at least as far as art direction, scenery and set decoration goes. Everybody wants higher quality work, or people just won’t watch. The quality of writing has also increased greatly. We have so many amazing things to watch now.
Kirill: Is that only on the technical side, as the cameras are getting better, or also on the artistic side to support the depth of the story lines?
Malchus: You can look at soap operas versus HBO, and how quickly they do lighting on soap operas. When we started “Gossip Girl” we had to move so quickly that we didn’t do full ceilings. We would leave the ceilings open and light through the ceilings, and it allowed the shooting crew to move more quickly. That was also good for the ability to light those actresses well, which wasn’t the same as how lighting in a grittier show might be done.
The high-resolution cameras made a big difference. I used to call it the HBO thing where you have these low angles where you see all of the ceilings. If you look back on older TV productions, you wouldn’t see a lot of low angles because there were no ceilings. Then things started to shift. My big shift was on “The Leftovers” – money-wise, budget-wise and look-wise. That was indicative of how everything has gone in that direction. There have always been really beautiful shows, particularly on HBO. I worked as an assistant art director for Bob Shaw on “Mad Men”, and that was a big influence on me.
Kirill: Is it hard nowadays to do a 22-episode season when it’s competing against shows that have between 8 and 13 episodes?
Malchus: I’ll be able to answer that at the end of this season. I’m doing the second season of “FBI”, and the last time I did a full 20+ episode season was on “The Mysteries of Laura”. It’s off to a good start and it feels just as rich, even if our shooting schedule is more abbreviated. On season 7 of “Orange is the New Black” we had 10 shooting days per episode, and on “FBI” we have 8 – even when you’re filling the same amount of time. Does it get the same amount of attention? It’s hard [laughs].
The other thing is whether or not every episode has the same scale. You may have one episode that’s up, and one episode that’s slightly smaller in scale, but the story should remain the same quality.
Set renderings for “Orange is the New Black”. Courtesy Malchus Janocko. See notes at the end for full credits.
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