After being introduced to our next project (adding a new feature for a Flash “matching cards” game and storytelling about a company), all of the 4 classes of the multimedia design and communication programme went to the FilmByen centre in Aarhus to visit two companies.

The first company we visited was M2Film. The guys over there made us a nice tour of the company and we could see the working environment of a production company. They mostly deal with post-producing of commercials/movies/music videos so basically anything related to video editing. Our guide was the manager(owner?) of the company himself, Mads Munk . The company itself seemed pretty well organised and stable and the leisure area was extremely pleasing. As far as I could tell, they had some electronic drums and they can play Guitar Hero over there. I am curious though if they got this inspiration for relaxation from Google. I didn’t ask.. Relating to the working place itself, the video editors over there work on some huge Macs which are very powerful. I took a glance and I saw one video editor rendering a 30 seconds video in HD (1080i) in just 3 or 4 seconds. Their screens are huge and I think my TV in Romania is smaller (54cm if anyone asks). They were very proud (and for good reason!) of this commercial.

Next, we went to Shift Interactive, situated on the same level of the building. I don’t think the guys over there were expecting to see so many people so they were a little reluctant in showing us what exactly their work consists of. Unlike M2Film, they only showed us the product itself and not the way you actually get to that product.  Anyway, their activity mostly consists of creating Flash and Touchscreen soultions for different kind of companies/investors and we were shown one of their products(it works on a touchscreen in the customers headquarters): a 96cm wide touchscreen with GPS for all the ships that company has. This soultion seems very useful if we consider the recent happenings with the “Pirates” around the Eastern Coast of Africa so..

Well, all in all it was a great day and I finally got the chance to implement some features to this blog that I wanted to but I just didn’t have time to do it: Gravatars and a new comment styling. Hope you will enjoy it although most of you won’t even see the difference.

And a last personal advice for anyone who aspires for some spare time: DON’T INSTALL TRANSPORT TYCOON DELUXE! I have spent around 10 hours today and yesterday just to build the ultimate track layout for my trains and whatever you do, it will never be perfect and you will start all over again. Argh!