Like, Goo, Altitude

Watch David Ian Lee and Karen Sternberg's "Pinecone". Then click the "like" button. Heck, you don't even have to watch. Just click like. How to make white goo. I love this girl: The street outside my office is at about 28 feet.

Alas, the Alien Mind Redux

I've done some remixing and replaying and Marc Schmied has done some replaying and then there was some editing and now the songs The Ghost of Marius the Giraffe and Alas the Alien Mind have new mixes and I know there's still some clicks I haven't redrawn and overall it's just too compressed. My that's just what the Alien Mind tells me. Personally I have no idea.

Earlier today when I was listening and mixing I was not that super happy with the overall effect. I went a little too overboard with things. We may have gone too acid rock. I don't know. That Dm, Fm, Ab, E thing still blows me away. Did I make it too crazy? Maybe if I edit the 22-minute Marius down it'll be more sensible.
The guitars on their own don't sound too bad. I'm splitting them fairly equally between Lindell and Neve preamps. The bass is exclusively through a Lindell.

One thing which really makes a big difference is the Gallien Krueger (I refuse to look that up to learn to spell it correctly) VST amp emulator. Now some of the distorted basses are done with Marc's stompbox, but the "bass amp" sound is mostly the GK emulator. 
Yeah, now that I listen to it again, the noisy section goes on too long and too loud.
This is a strange album. Not one I would have expected. But then again, what do I expect?
I'm always surprised at how hard rock things get. I also love the built-in delays, flanges, and choruses in Samplitude. We'll see how this all pans out. Ha. See? I do a lot of autopanning...

Talk myself down

So we're going with the Blackmagic URSA camera on this next movie. With all the kit and kaboodle it'll be about $2400 for the movie.

This is the quote.

What are things that concern me? Well firstwise I worry that after all is said and done we're going to need to do some reshoots/additional photography. Hopefully we'll get everything we need and not have to but I've never seen that happen in the history of things that happen. So we're going to need to get a 4K camera eventually. Or something.

The other thing that concerns me is something which I actually have trouble uh, making clear with the verbal thing where you say the stuff and then other people understand what saying you are making with the sense.

In short I feel we need more sophisticated and elegant camera moves in our movies.

I think this solves a couple big problems, not only does it make the picture look bigger and more expensive, but also it serves for visual interest while we watch characters think for a while. We've noticed that our movies tend to go a quite a clip and that we tend to be a bit "breathless" as well as going under-time. We need a moment, to watch the android inside the derelict ship, as she decides whether to kill everyone aboard or not. It's these kinds of moments which we need to be able to sit on, to experience, to bring us closer to the characters in the story.

If we were to rent a Fisher 10 (or 11) with a dolly grip for a weekend it would be about $2000. Thing is that on our sets we don't have more than about... er... 10 feet(?) to go on those tracks. Not side-to-side anyway. We could go with one of those gimble stabilizers, but only if we were to do a smaller camera.

Well, that's a $600 difference in price. There's no quality hit that I know of when going from the Ursa to the Production 4K. But the 4K will be easier to bring to remote locations and such. Hmm...

I'm kinda talking myself out of the Ursa.

L'Horror

13 classic scenes that explain how horror movies work is interesting in that it shows some different techniques and counter examples to how they work.

Horror films are just too hard. I have no idea how to make them. So I don't.

On Reddit

On Reddit I am UnicornCommander.

Too Old to Play with Dollys

Everybody's been talking me out of a dolly. I would love a Fisher 10 or 11 and a full-time dolly grip. Then I got talked down to a Matthews doorway dolly, and now I've been talked down to a slider. Sigh.
One day. One day I'll have a Fisher with a jib and a dolly grip. One day.

Leviathan

This is a beautiful short, The Leviathan.

The Leviathan -- Teaser from Ruairi Robinson on Vimeo.

I may end up with a Matthews Doorway Dolly rather than a Fisher 10 dolly on our next movie. Sigh. I want the Fisher. The producer part of my brain is yelling at me. But the director part really wants a Fisher...

Red House (Live San Diego Sports Arena, May 25, 1969)

Just because, you know, Jimi. Red House.

памяти и куклы

памяти и куклы

That means "Memories And Puppets". Which, I think, is the Russian name of the shop in Android Masquerade where one gets one's android from.

Apparently I do not post this image often enough on this blog. 

Voles, Crimea

So we're just pricing some things around. Looks like two days of a Fisher jib and dolly grip will be about $2000. That's to be expected, right?
Dealing with insurance. About $600 for liability and another $400 for workman's comp? That's about right, no?

Crimean vole. Do we need a geared head? Or should we give up on all this whackadoo grip gear?
Also, in the future there's some kind of space knife. There are at least two in this movie. What kind of knife to people have in the future? Maybe I'll make one of those bondo switchblades out of a comb switchblade...

The Big Bucks

I made $9.11 through CDBaby this year. That's nine dollars, baby. The big ones. USD. I think this is all for Tyrannosaurus Mouse. You know what? The rest of the band is gonna have to sue me for their share! Ha! It's all coke parties and yachts for me from now on! I don't care who I step on on my way up 'cause I'm never comin' down!

I have a feeling that all the Spotify listens are just me listening to the record. But the other part of this experiment is paying ten bucks a month to promote the record through radioairplay.com. The possible "real money" (and by that I mean a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty bucks) will be through BMI.


$4.91 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through eMusic
$1.77 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody
$0.59 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through iTunes-Canada
$0.56 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody
$0.56 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through iTunes-Canada
$0.35 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody - Mechanical Royalties
$0.13 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody
$0.12 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody
$0.11 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody
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$0.08 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody
$0.07 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Deezer
$0.06 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Deezer
$0.06 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.06 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.05 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.05 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.04 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Muve Music
$0.04 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Muve Music
$0.04 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Deezer
$0.04 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.04 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.04 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody
$0.04 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody - Mechanical Royalties
$0.04 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody - Mechanical Royalties
$0.03 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through MediaNet
$0.03 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Deezer
$0.03 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody - Mechanical Royalties
$0.03 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through MediaNet
$0.03 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Muve Music
$0.03 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Muve Music
$0.03 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Google Music Store
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Google Music Store
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Simfy
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Beats Music
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody - Mechanical Royalties
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through MediaNet
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through MediaNet
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Google Music Store
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Google Music Store
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Omnifone
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through JB Hi-Fi
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through MediaNet
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rdio
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Beats Music
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through JB Hi-Fi
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rdio
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through JB Hi-Fi
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Muve Music
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Deezer
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through JB Hi-Fi
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Muve Music
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Beats Music
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through iTunes Match - Americas
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Google Music Store
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Deezer
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rdio

Because Everyone Needs to Chime In on the Robin Thicke Controversy

Joe Bennett discusses the case from a music and a legal perspective. Judith Finnell is a musicologist who did a report for the court.

Tabs Must Go!

Via Caitlin Cisek, a pretty thoughtful article on appropriation. The line between "appropriation" and, you know, just wearing a Canadian Mounty costume is kinda fuzzy.

Staying on the right side of the inspiration/appropriation divide requires individual awareness and attention to three S’s: significance (or sacredness), source and similarity.

The author is Susan Scafidi. She wrote a book called "Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law" which seems kinda interesting.

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HFSExplorer is a free program for reading HFS discs on a PC.

And for those of you playing along at home, Caitlin Cisek's Tumblr.

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My Final Girl

So the awesome Kristina Leath-Malin has completed her documentary My Final Girl.

MY FINAL GIRL Trailer from PUPPY LOVING ZOMBIES on Vimeo.

I'm looking forward to seeing it. There are a lot of awesome interviews.

More on Ursa

The awesome Libby Csulik turned us on to borrowlenses.com which is where it looks like we'll rent the Ursa camera.
Shane Hurlibut says the Ursa wants to shoot at an ISO of 400. He says that whackity-doo* things happen to the image at both 200 and 800 ISO.

The fact he has a football strapped to his kit is all kinds of awesome.

The trick is to use infrared resistant ND filters for out there in the sunshine. Whether we feel the infrared pollution on the image is a good or bad thing may be up for debate, but we're GOING to need some ND. This morning I measured an f45 out in the daylight at 400 ISO at 24fps and a 180 shutter (I still have my Sekonic light meter from Pandora Machine). That's right, an f 45.

Obviously that will have to be knocked down a couple stops. The IR ND filters are delightfully expensive. Delightful!

This is information I frequently need:

Neutral Density Factors

• 2x = ND.3 (exposure adjustment = 1 stop, reduces ISO 1/2)

• 4x = ND.6 (exposure adjustment = 2 stops, reduces ISO 1/4)

• 8x = ND.9 (exposure adjustment = 3 stops, reduces ISO 1/8)

*My words, not his.

Update: a complete explanation of f-stops!

Thinking Out Loud About Cameras

Our thinking nowadays is to rent the Blackmagic Production 4k camera.

We can rent the camera body for just under $900 for the shoot.
The Alphatron EVF is about another $325 for the month.
Add a shoulder-mount and an EVF thingy and we're staring down the throat of somewhere around $1500 for a month.
But that doesn't include lenses or batteries. I think we're okay with EF lenses, but our power needs are great. Perhaps two of the Switronix PowerBase batteries.  So think somewhere in the $1700 range for 30 days of 4K with global shutter.

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Remember folks, we'll be shooting at about a 200 ISO for the entire shoot.

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We'll need a decent SSD drive for the camera though. Adorama seems to have the best price. Although Ha! They don't have them in stock. So B&H it is. Think $500.
We will also need a reader. Think another hundred bucks.
So $2300 for a month with the Production 4k.

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But wait a minute.
If we were to go with a Blackmagic Ursa, two cards and a reader, and a couple batteries, it would be about $2,000. Now we wouldn't have an EVF with that, but we'd have a variety of taps onboard. The camera is about 20lbs but we don't need a shoulder mount (but for about a hundred bucks we could rent one).
Just to make life more difficult the AJA CION is another camera which is interesting. Although all I can find are PL-mount versions and we don't have access to PL-mount lenses. So there.

Click

So the last two recording sessions with Marc have resulted in a really irritating artifact. And by "irritating" I mean I should have known better. I freaking HEARD clicking while we were recording. I heard some strange broad-band noise too. Both sounds were intermittent. But I couldn't immediately trace either sound while we were recording and I had hoped it was just the monitor system.
It wasn't.
Intermittent clicks. And yup, they were there on playback too. I tried applying de-clicker plugins and they did nothing. Absolutely nothing. That was super unusual. So I found one of these clicks by ear and zoomed in on the wave. Normally a click indicates a huge spike which is easy to see. But these clicks weren't like that. So I went in to the sample level.
And hoo boy. There is was.

This wave bothers me.

That's what, maybe 9 samples long? Just complete dropout on the wave.
This is on the bass track. And there are scores of 'em. Through testing and comparisons I think I isolated the problem: my relatively new Countryman DI box. [UPDATE: it is not exclusive to the Countryman. It may indeed be an issue with the Lindell preamps or the Scarlett A/D converter. Although it seemed I could replicate the issue by swapping in and out the Countryman it now seems there are multiple clicks and noises which occur from different problems. That waveform above seems to come either from the Lindell or from the A/D converter. I won't know for several days.
But there are other sounds which clearly come from the Countryman, including some of the clicks. So there's more than one source for the mess.

Hoof. The Countryman 85 is the standard DI box. Reasonably priced. Been around for quite a while. Is it the finest sounding DI box? No. But for price/performance it's certainly a market leader. Something inside is blown. Maybe a cap? Sure. I don't have any idea but if say "I got a blown cap in the '85" with an authority in my voice it sure sounds like I know what I'm talking about, right?
So now I have to fess up to Marc that we need to do some re-recording. I'm sure he'll take it okay.
But with the Countryman out of the mix what do we do? Well the Neves have DI inputs. And so do the ART tube preamp channels.
Thing is, I've been liking the Lindells. I've been enjoying them on guitars and on bass. But there are no DI inputs on the Lindell preamps, hence the Countryman 85 DI.

For when you needed to balance a signal but only had a handful of cash and a Radio Shack. Even worse we used to use the in reverse. But hey, they worked.

Remember these things?  Radio Shack Hi-Z to Lo-Z balanced converters. "How do they sound on bass?" you ask. Compared to the Countryman? They sound... pretty good actually. The Countryman definitely sounds better (I mean, when it's not being noisy and then intermittently cutting out the signal) and has some prettier high end, seems more "airy" (and other malarkey audio buzzwords.) Would you be able to tell which DI was used when listening back to a recording? No. But if recording is the "accumulation of subtleties" then there will certainly be a bit of a quality boost with the Countryman. Not noticeable on its own but if you A/B'd between the Countryman and the cheapo Radio Shack DI you'd certainly notice.
But will it be better to record bass through a Lindell preamp using the Radio Shack DI or will it be better to go direct into in the DI input of the ART? I dunno. And it's kind of guesswork for me to play bass through one path and then play it through another to figure out which sound better. I mean, I might be able to do it but my bass playing skills are less than stellar and I can't really get the sound I want anyway. I mean, maybe I can get close. Who knows? We'll do some tests. Find out. Wish me luck.
Also I'll hit up Countryman and see what they can do.