EFR

Card-carrying member.

I got my EFR card. It means something very close to nothing at all. It means I said I understood the things I got wrong on my test. And it means I watched a video and beat up a CPR dummy. But it's kind of cool to have done it. Everyone should, really.

The best pictures of me are with Sky

Sky Chari, Andrew Bellware

I think her beauty somehow reflects onto me. That must be how it works.

Rouge

Moi. Et rouge.

A New Level of Dorkitude

The Caldwell E-Max low-profile hearing protection. They're twenty-five bucks. Which means they're cheap.

Pros: fit well. Seems to actually work. Does not look as fantastically dorky as one might expect.
I was surprised at some of the sounds which kicked above the 85dB threshold. A very squeaky metal door slamming, dude dropping his bicycle chain on the ground while I walked by. 

Cons: audio is band-limited. Outside traffic sounds like it's on the telephone. One's own voice still sounds muffled (like you're wearing headphones) unless you turn it up pretty loud. The overload protection is "all or nothing" so loud noises just cut off.
The stereo-ness of them is not quite as awesome as I'd hoped. I was figuring they'd be more binaural and the directivity of sounds would be better than I feel they are with these.
I wish they cut off at about 80dB. This would probably not be something which would be that useful out on the range or whatever, but in the subway it would be nicer. I wish I knew were unity-gain was on the volume knob.
Also, I wish they would function non-linearly. A compressor would work more and more until shut-off, keeping volumes similar. That might be awful for other people though.

Neither Pro nor Con: Lastly, they're warm. This is to be expected with over-ear headphones. And if you're out in the cold it's a good thing -- they're warmer than earmuffs. But it ain't been cold enough in New York for the last couple seasons to justify how warm they are. 

Last Con: Red LED on side is frequently used by androids to target biologics in the field. So be careful out there if you know there are synthetics in the area.

So my conclusion is that they do work but I'm not so sure of how much I'd wear them as opposed to regular passive earplugs. If I were shooting a firearm they'd be great. 

Portrait of the Artist as a Dragon Renderer

Loudness Part I

I have both a professional interest, and a Tyrannosaurus Mouse interest, in measures of loudness and dynamic range.
For the Pandora Machine we oftentimes struggle, or at least wonder, about the relative levels of signals and just how loud we should make our movies. Mostly this involves what level we should be setting the dialog at.
If I were to criticize my Pandora Machine mixes I'd say that I do mix them quite hot. I slam the dialog into limiters and then make the backgrounds too loud. I doubt I'm going to stop slamming the dialog into limiters -- after all dialog is king and making it absolutely the freaking clearest thing you've ever heard in your life is way in my best interest. But I could be a bit more delicate with backgrounds.

I'm trying to figure out if a blue strap is really appropriate.

For music my interest has a different direction. Ethan and I had talked about how we'd like this Tyrannosaurus Mouse album to sound like an older record -- have have an older record's "dynamic range".
We did a number of things to make the album sound more old-fashioned (meaning: late 60's/early 70's). We recorded 24-bit/44.1kHz in order to retain what we might call "depth" but with a bit of the graininess on the top end one might expect from recording in an analog format.
We also did not kittywhump the heck out of the 2-mix buss with a limiter. The mix went through some light SSL-style limiting and that was that.

• Now just remember that at first glance, or first listen, louder always sounds better. That's just a rule. The question is what happens when you've been listening for a while. 

[Let me sidetrack note for a bit. Early 70's were known for pretty dry drum sounds. I suspect that was a way to make the drums really loud because at the time it was perhaps a bit easier to make louder. This is just a theory of mine. It could be totally wrong. Honestly I'm more a fan of the wetter drum sounds like on Genesis' ABACAB or The Police or such.]

As it turns out, actually measuring "loudness" is a minefield of angry rattlesnakes. It's really freaking hard to do. This Sound on Sound article by Emmanuel Deruty explains much. And the conclusions are... interesting.
Now, we're all of the belief there has been a loudness war that went on in the 1990's and 2000's. Right? Brick wall limiters have been making popular music too loud. That's just a fact, right?
It turns out:

[C]ontrarily to what one can often read on the Internet, the loudness war did not cause any reduction in level variability. There is as much level variability now as there was in the ’70s or ’80s.

OK. So that's counter-intuitive. I mean, it doesn't sound right at all, does it?

In the end, it’s all about style. Reduced crest factor values bring a ‘compact’ aspect to the sound; Waves describe it as a “heavily in-your-face signal that rocks the house” on their MaxxBCL page. It may be suited to your kind of music, or it may not.

That article is very enlightening. And honestly I have to read it a number of more times to really understand what's going on. But that'll be next time. Maybe.

Electric Zoe Steals the Show

That's from some spam I just got. I don't know whether it's an album or a song. Probably both.
A plastic kit for a Logan's Run DS gun.
What do you call words that only have a negative? Widow words? Like a counter-example is "ruth" because you can melt with ruth, but anymore we just use the word "ruthless" and not "ruth". Anyway, apparently "combobulated" has apparently become slang.

You are low on pictures of me. Me me me. Whose blog is this? Me. Mine. Moi.

Drew. Through a camera darkly.

Although really that isn't the greatest picture of me. Certainly not for Facebook.
Hey, you know what's happening right now? The American Film Market.

This is Facebook then.

Testing the SG

Playing my SG today. The pickups are freaking loud. They're about as hot as the humbuckers in my Les Paul. I recorded a bit of things to be able to hear the difference between the neck and bridge pickup. I started out more happy with the bridge but eventually I learned a bit about rolling back the neck to make it sweeter. Yeah, the guitar goes wildly out of tune there in the middle.

The instrument plays really well. The amps I have respond very differently from the way they respond to other guitars. And that's just the truth of it.
I think it's interesting the way a particular instrument will lead you to play it in a particular way. Your feel and technique will change and adapt to (say) this particular guitar.
The clean stuff has a very nice chime to it. And it can certainly go into that hairy distortion of complete freak out.
I recorded into my Mutt with the 12" Celestion Alnico Blue. An AKG 460 microphone was a couple feet from the cabinet. I added some delay (you know, to be more like Live at Leeds) and some compression (but not much, most of that is just the sound of the whole thing). The volume pots are rolled back on the guitar (except for that one obvious place). And the Mutt was far from dimed -- it's at about 2 o'clock. Channels jumped.

Spam, Roosters, and Me

I finally gave in and donated $35 to the Obama campaign. Does this mean I'm going to get hit with even more Obamaspam? Oh I hope not.
Last night went with cousins to The Red Rooster. Up until now my favorite soul food place anywhere in the world was Soul Flavors. And I'm not saying The Red Rooster is better, but I am saying those two places are in the same league. It's really good.

Apparently I'm supposed to intersperse pictures of cute animals and naked people on this blog. The audience gets really agitated if I don't post correctly.
You know what there aren't enough of? Pictures of me on my blog(s).

 No, there just aren't.

Much better.

My Gibson SG

I got the SG. I have to wait 4 more hours to really be able to crank it up (there are other people in my office after all.)
It's light. The setup on it is excellent. Yup, it's a bit neck-heavy but honestly the way the guitar is made is that it's "center" is more toward the neck which makes it easier to play up high and also to avoid hitting the switch or volume pots with your right hand.

Cool.

Yes. The guitar rocks. It's probably the loudest electric I have (when played acoustically).

More the actual, goofy, me.

My man Josh Dillon at Sweetwater really set me up. This is the best guitar/money I've ever bought. I can't wait to play it with the band.

Picture Day

Today is picture day. Actually, today is "do the fourth version of Prometheus Trap" day but as we've already done three versions and are still working on notes, "Picture Day" is more interesting.
We'll start with some cats. My lovely sister sent me pictures of cats. And here I shall post them.

Pippin and Nikki.

Felidae Luxuranious.

 Pictures of cats power the Internet. They are what make our economy work. Job number one is to post pictures of cats.
But it's also a day to fly my Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 because I need more flight time on it. I'm flying it here with my iPod Touch. I took this still while Tom looked on.

Andrew Bellware and Tom Rowen seeming very close.

All About Me

So. Therefore. Here in the Pandora Machine we're doing paperwork on Android Insurrection and Earthkiller. Also, editing picture on Prometheus Trap and also creating visual effects for it.

Here is Drew Bellware with Rebecca Kush making bunny ears behind his head. Or trying to at least.

I'm a Secret Santa for Reddit Arbitrary Day 2012. I have a Reptar toy and a guitar tuner is on its way. And today one of our office mates (a catering company) got Mexican food catered and offered it to everyone. Yummy. See? All. About. Me.

The Journal of the Intellectual Elite

I'm totally going to start a newspaper and call it the "Journal of the Intellectual Elite". No really. And I wouldn't be the first one. Go ahead, translate that. I'll wait.

Speaking of the intellectual elite, here is my sister's dog.

I'm experimenting with these little bitty lights. It's going to be interesting to figure out what they do.

Self portrait with LED.

We're not going to shoot on Sunday 'cause of sick actor.
I've been concerned about these bands of noise I'm seeing occasionally on footage with the GH1. Here's a note from a forum on the GH1 by Steve Castle:

Banding usually occurs under certain conditions, its not just high-ISO, but rather a combination of the subject/environment you're taking relative to how much the noise is being amplified via a high-ISO setting. Banding noise is most noticeable in the shadows, or when an image has been superlatively brightened.

It's very hard to predict when the camera will be irksome like that. But it does seem to have to do with shooting under exposure.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can/should shoot with my Canon S.S.C. lenses on this movie. We could get nice shallow depth-of-field and we could shoot in very low light. Is it worth it? Should we do at least one take that way? I don't know. I know I'm shakier without the optical stabilization from the kit lens.
Also -- and maybe I'm just noticing this in my office -- but the strange color of the light is bugging me. The one other time I had that issue was on Day 2 when we shot outside and had funny light. But both times the light itself was indeed strange. I'll have to double-check with the kit lens.

Show Me Your Desktop

Hey. Are you wondering what they did with the old, intuitive, "show desktop" icon in Windows 7? They put it over here on the other side of the bottom right of the screen.

Where it's at.

There it is. Go ahead. Press it. Show the desktop. You're welcome.
Tom Rowen is doing QC on Android Insurrection. Final Cut Pro is being a royal pain in the neck. I think we have a workaround for the first of the two big problems we're having.
The audio pre-renders are rendering with dropouts. It seems that if we don't allow FCP to pre-render the audio tracks it'll export without dropouts. At least we haven't had any dropouts since we started forcing it to not pre-render.
The other thing is that in Act 6 there are these stock muzzle flashes which FCP keeps "losing" and creating a "Media Offline" composite. Not cool Final Cut Pro. Because we keep re-connecting the footage and FCP keeps losing it. Maybe I'll export that whole section and re-lay it on top of the rest of the sequence.
Speaking of Tom Rowen, his relatives made a fake Tumblr page for him.
He took this picture of me with his new iPhone using that newfangled app the kids are all using these days because we can't afford Polaroid cameras anymore.

Drew, smudgy.

Jezebel on watching Titanic in 3D.
[My notes: act 2 and 7, act 6 picture, bad TV top of act 9 over black.]

Foley Up

I'm re-mixing Earthkiller. Yeah, I'm adding some footsteps but a lot of what I'm doing is lowering the levels of, or eliminating, music. As the new studio is vastly quieter than Theatresource was it is admittedly easier to hear details in the mix which makes me do a better job on dialog too.
One thing I've discovered is that it's very hard to mix with a space helmet on. These are the kinds of things we learn as we get older. I'm not saying I don't mix with my space helmet on. I'm just saying it's more difficult.

Sounds we recorded last week with DeLisa M. White are up on Freesound under a Creative Commons license:
Gritty footsteps
http://www.freesound.org/people/pushkin/sounds/149306/
Talky servos
http://www.freesound.org/people/pushkin/sounds/149305/
Scrape
http://www.freesound.org/people/pushkin/sounds/149302/
DeLisa's rain tube (heavily modified)
http://www.freesound.org/people/pushkin/sounds/149301/

We also have some awesome robot "clicks" which are being uploaded.
I have to say I love the idea of Creative Commons. I mean, it's no skin off our backs to give away sound effects or computer models. That doesn't lose us any money. But it does make it easier for others (hopefully) to do more and better work. Certainly other people licensing their sound effects and models has made my life easier.

Internet Tough Guy

So yesterday I got the rest of the armor delivered. Here I am wearing it. For whatever reason I have a Delicate Cutter's T-shirt on underneath. Somehow it makes me seem more macho.
That being said the new plastic smell here in the studio is overpowering.

The Hero of the Internet.

(18) 01:08:08  -     01:08:52………...lack of foot sounds

Added footsteps, breathing, and some whispering in the BG. I put in some rolling sound of the Whirleydoomer.

(20) 01:12:08  -     01:12:10…..…….lack of voice

I think it just looks like he's saying something. He doesn't actually say anything there. I put more background crumpling of papers in instead.

(22) 01:16:27  -     01:16:30………...lack of woman’s screaming

I... hmm... nobody screams here. Perhaps I'm confused.

(28) 01:33:54  -     01:33:56…………overlap and echo voice / lack of voice

Ooh. I found the overlap. Yukky.

(30) 01:34:29  -     01:34:33…………blur voice

(31) 01:35:03  -     01:35:05…………volume down of voice

(37) 01:48:04  -     01:48:07…………lack of sound

(47) 02:06:16  -     02:06:18…………lack of sound

(49) 02:09:38  -     02:09:40…………lack of screaming

(50) 02:12:29  -     02:12:31…………lack of voice

(59) 01:47:30  -     01:47:31…………lack of voice

Look up "engine" on freesound.org -- there's some awesome work on there.
Also, this is the holy grail of bullet casings hitting a concrete floor:

Listing My Problems

I like the term "Imaginary Opera".

I'd like to start an imaginary opera company.
The "inverse square law" as it applies to lighting.
I need someone to run my opera company. And to run a record company with Tyrannosaurus Mouse.
Maybe I need some viral videos.
Yeah. That's the ticket.

That might work but I keep looking dorkier and dorkier all the time.
Plus I need a full-time animator and compositor. And I need money. A lot more money.
Where did I leave that Lotto ticket?

Computer convincerations

VideoGuys publish a DIY computer guide and they're up to their 9th machine which is based on the i7 chip.
I'm persuaded to go with a dual xenon hexa - core machine. And 24GB of RAM.

And even though the videoguys specifically advise against it, I figure a GTX570/580 card is right what I want.
And I want the computer to be in a rack-mount case. See that rack behind me? The one with the headphones and Purell? I want to put the computer in the bottom of that rack. That means wireless mouse/keyboard in likelihood I should think. And a 10-foot DVI cable.

It's Not Easy Being Me

After

The exposure from the webcam is actually pretty good for the chat noir Winston. And although he's very affectionate I don't think he likes being picked up so much. He pretty much weighs like a bowling ball.

Before

Dorqus McGillicutty

That's me, 4th from the left on top. Collar buttoned all the way up. The tall guy to my right is Todd, whom I have known since I was 4 years old. A classmate put this picture up on the Facebooks and I have stolen it. I'm guessing that I'm in 4th grade here and that it's the latter part of the year.