Sperts

The Ludlow Amante.

I read Guillermo DelToro and Chuck Hogan's The Strain. Parts of it I really liked, I thought the opening was excellent and the whole thing was overall a good idea. But nothing drives me nuts faster than the lead character simply refusing to believe stuff just so that his stupidity can further the plot. You fight off a creature from beyond the grave and then someone starts talking about vampires and you're all "No, no, no. I'm a man of science. I cannot believe that." Blah blah blah. Shut up and get with the program. I really hate it when stupid is a plot device. Anyway, other than that, the play was fine Mrs. Lincoln.

Although I've known all along that the real judgement of our movies is aimed at the special effects, I think that up until recently I've been thinking "Yeah, but just a little bit of money will solve all that." Well I've kind of realized that indeed, that's not something we can wait upon. We just have to do that ourselves, with free help from others. It's kind of sad just how many people one has to exploit in order to make a cost-effective feature film.

No matter how large an army of alien robots one amasses, it still behooves one to be expert in the field. Which means that really I have to be a visual effects expert. I'm kind of a very low-level journeyman, or an advanced apprentice at this point. Heck, maybe even a mid-level apprentice. The problem is that there are just so many freakin' fields of expertise in visual effects: modeling, lighting, rendering, animating, texturing, compositing, etc., etc. But I suspect that I simply have to push myself deeper into the field.

And of course, I have to do this while at the same time becoming something of a story expert. Hmm, I'll be OK when I have 10,000 hours in both fields? OK, I'll get right on it.