7_09_08

In One Hour

Today I had the following things blow up in the time frame of just one hour (just a prelude to how crazy life is sometimes).

On my advanced film project Dirt we discovered that we had the wrong takes put into the timeline of the film. Which meant the director Tim and I had to watch the whole film to look for more mistakes. We couldn’t do that because the server in which our film resides was not yet fully connected, so we had to put it on hold. Which also meant that the many hours we had set aside to do color correction was not going to happen today.

Once we decided this, we also tried to figure out what type of codec that we should have used to capture the footage. We thought “oh crap, we’re going to have to re-capture all of our footage!” but we eventually decided to stick with the resolution that our assistant editor captured the footage at. Unfortunately this meant that we had to re-capture those takes that were off. It also meant that we had to re-shoot one shot because it was lost…urm…by someone…

During this whole ordeal, the post-production supervisor for my other project Diantha’s Crossing, Andre was patiently waiting for me so we could meet.

Also, my stomach was aching way bad ‘cause I hadn’t eaten.

After all that, Andre and I worked a deal with a great color-correctionist who will be working on the film. That was interrupted with a conversation about starting a website for the sketch comedy show Adventure Time Theatre that I started with my friend Spencer.

Mind you, all of this time I am texting on my phone and checking my email (thank you iPhone!)

After that we were able to get some food and discuss the post-production on Diantha, which of course was all dependent on the two people that are not in town.

I guess we’ll wait. That’s fine; I have way too much to do!

Birthday Surprises

As I was getting ready to write my blog and finish various other projects, my wife asked me if we could go out to eat. I kind of thought that was peculiar because we are trying to stay away from doing that too much, but I was like “shoot, I don’t want to make dinner!”

So we hopped in the minivan and headed to Magleby’s Fresh (which was too crowded) then to Pita Pit. We each ate delicious and fat and sloppy pitas, and then we headed home.

Curiously, my brother’s car was in the driveway, which isn’t too weird because we’re living in my parent’s basement at the moment (leave me alone, its temporary).

I told my wife that I wanted to go up to my parent’s front door to check out what was going on; she wanted me to go to the side door. We went in and I looked toward my parent’s kitchen. On a table was laden a great deal of snacks and stuff. Oh yeah, and a big old cake with my name on it! I was so confused.

I wandered into the living room and there was a bunch of people there to greet me and wish me a happy surprise birthday! That was pretty rad. I had no idea that was going on. I apparently was supposed to go through the front door like I wanted to, but since I didn’t I kind of ruined the big surprise.

We hung out and talked movies and stuff, then we ate cake and played Scene-It, which is way too fun to play with film people by the way. Whenever I try and play with other friends or family they usually refuse because they think I’m going to kick their butt. Well people, I got schooled by my friends so what do you think about that?!

CLOSAT

C- A large man walking down the sidewalk (marriage fat, not trans fat) with a cute little toddler sitting on his shoulders. (The toddler almost fell off because he was fascinated with looking at me!)

L- A stall of the men’s bathroom on the second floor of the HFAC.

O- A hard drive that has a ridiculous terabyte of storage capacity (oh yeah, but there are like 40 of them in the Cave).

S- Not being aware of a secret underground party in your honor.

A- Backing up into a tight parking spot because your van has the turning radius of the Queen Mary.

T- Staying up way too late working on things that are pretty much unnecessary when there are more important things to get done.

Producing Tips

Producing Tip #2: The second cardinal rule – Do! Actually get out there and do it. There are a lot of jobs that you are not going to want to do, but you just need to get out there and do it. Who cares if you haven’t done it before! Chances are no one’s done what you are trying to do. If they have, they probably hated it so much that they want you to suffer through doing it yourself like they did (I know a lot of producer-types that feel this way about contacts and resources. I say give them out carefully, but don’t be stingy.) So get out there and do it (and as someone once said, “do it right.”)

Album of the Day:
Viva La Vida – Coldplay

Board Game of the Day:
Scategories (brand new for my birthday)

Last Movie seen on DVD:

Vantage Point

You know, I kind of like it. It had a great deal of fun action sequences and they were able to build up quite the suspense. The cool vignette style of the film was both aggravating and delicious because I was so intrigued by what they were not showing us (they stopped each vignette right up to but not at the reveal, I got so sucked in!)

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any real story arc or theme to the film. All that I took away from the film was that the Secret Service is a useless organization when it comes to protecting the President. Oh and also that the world’s terrorists are totally pissed for almost no reason and they are too smart for the US Government.

The film didn’t really pay off; there were so many unanswered questions. They didn’t bother paying off the setups that they painstakingly explored in the first hour of the film.

SPOILER ALERT: Most of all this film taught me that all it takes to bring down a super-smart terrorist organization is a crying child who is old enough to know better than to stand in the middle of the street.

I rate this film three out of five handguns waving in the air –

Cell Phone Picture of the Day!

My lovely wife scooping the remains of her pita up after it exploded.

(this Post brought to you by the color "white")