Groovy

Dig the latest episode from Ian Hubert:

Medea

Groovy!

Our own Virginia Logan is Medea in Medea.

Day, Uh, Something

I'm a little confused about what day of shooting this is. Because I labeled a day of shooting like four shots of an air intake building of the Holland Tunnel as "reel one" and so our actual principal photography began with "reel two" and really I should have labeled that first day as "B roll day 01" or something.

Leslie Ann Chastain getting some help from Tom Rowen putting mud on her face.

 We went to a lot of trouble to find a spot with no poison ivy to shoot this.

Leslie wears a Tyrannosaurus Mouse T-shirt.

I've shot 1000 stills with the Panasonic GH1 at this point. Or at least 1000 stills since the last time I reset the counter

No gang signs!

Tom Rowen gets ready to slate.

 It occurs to me that maybe this is the break of 2000 or 3000 stills. I don't actually know how to read the file numbers.

The non-creepy Tom Rowen menaces Annalisa Loeffler.

I'd like to point out that Tom actually wrote this scene with the hillbilly cannibals. And he wrote this part for himself. So you know, whatever he's trying to say here. Uh. Yeah.

You menace one lady, and this is what you get for your trouble.

Joe Chapman made us this great knife gag -- actually casting it from the Gerber hunting knife we're using. The hunting knife is comically difficult to remove from its scabbard.

It's not a good day to be a hillbilly cannibal in the Dismal Swamp. Tom Rowen (dead), Annalisa Loeffler (standing), Leslie Ann Chastain (dead), and Julia Rae Maldonado.

Coming upon a witch. That's actually Leslie Ann Chastain shemping for Rebecca Kush (who will be shot in closeup later.)

Today's CSI team will be played by Christopher "Cletus" Pope and John Dillon.

Producers demanded a photograph of the "Skunk Cabbage" sign.

 I think one of the trees with a bat box was knocked down by the hurricane. But mostly the swamp looks pretty good. Leaves are gone by now, of course.

I'm makin' art here. 

Today's Things for Today

File under Things that Crack Me Up: Typography for Lawyers. Specifically the one space after a period rule.

The brilliant Danny Thompson made this awesome Facebook wall picture.
I swear this is the first web series I've ever liked. High Maintenance is awesome. Could they center their dialog so that one character doesn't come out of the left and the other out of the right? Of course. But it's brilliant.
The absurdly - named Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 looks kind of cool.

Eventually I'll Get This Right

We rehearsed as a power trio (bass, drums, guitar) last night. This notion of rehearsing things as a power trio before we add in Arie on keys has some degree of merit in that we can get the rhythm section tight before adding keyboard parts.
If you're not actually in Tyrannosaurus Mouse you'll find the following very boring. But here's a link to the recordings from the rehearsal.

You really really do not want to listen to this. It really is just a raw rehearsal where we're trying to figure out what we're doing and playing 3-minute songs for 15 minutes. And listening to me try to figure out "Alphabet City" is right painful.
So, things we've agreed upon:
1. We're making an album called "Love Songs for the Apocalypse".
(I suppose it could be "Love Songs of the Apocalypse" if someone decides or wants.)
2. When we play louder, the three of us (Ethan, Lou, and I) play better. We each suffer from the same fault in that we spend a lot of effort listening to the other players in the band. I know, in most bands this wouldn't be a "fault" but rather "Thank goodness someone is actually listening." But the three of us do it so much that we tend to play tentatively if we're playing quietly.
If we play really loudly though we all play with more authority.
All of the material we played at this rehearsal was being made up on the spot. We had zero notion of what the structures were going to be for anything we played. We frequently had no idea what chords we were going to play. So seriously, sometimes Ethan or I would shout out chords to one another. Sometimes he and I would just guess correctly. Most of the time we guessed wrongly. But I'll tell ya, it's really hard to improvise a harmonic structure in an ensemble situation and ever get it right. So yay for us.

3. We can't rehearse in Greenpoint until the gas shortage is over because Ethan can't get fuel for his car.
4. My new SG sounds fantastic. Now, it is getting my Earvana nut on it (you'll notice I throw it way out of tune by the end of each song). Other than that it's a fantastic guitar. Fantastic. Even Ethan thought it had a great neck, and he's very persnickety about his guitars.
That's the SG through an MXR analog delay and a Vox AC30. The bass is Ethan's Music Man fretless. Lou is playing the Tama kit there in Room C.
5. I really like Looming rehearsal studios. Their place is about the best value in Brooklyn.

Z is for X-Ray

I think we're all more than happy that the Middlesex County Water Company has lifted its "boil water advisory." Because. Good grief. We're shooting in Middlesex County this coming weekend.

Yes, I am experimenting with mustaches.
Because.
Because I'm playing the role of Sebastian. And that's all there is to it. There will be no complaining.
I won't actually have the full walrus shown here though. It'll be more of a Tom Sellek.
It's going to be interesting to see if World War Z does well overseas.

Cavallo

Groove to my buddy Mike Kessell's band, Cavallo.

They're a heavy rock-instrumental outfit and I dig them. They recorded this album at Studio G in Brooklyn.
I ordered it on vinyl. Because vinyl is cool.

Thou rank unchin-snouted varlot

Or: Loudness Part II

Remember this Sound on Sound article about loudness?

Here's the "unofficial" dynamic range database. Note that "dynamic range" is exactly, er, not what the issue is.

Lou likes elephants.

The EBU measure of loudness range is a measure of the ‘three-second window, gated K-weighted RMS variability’ of audio content.

Keep that in mind.

At all times.

The really really weird thing is that applying a limiter can effectively increase the dynamic range of a signal. That is it'll increase the RMS dynamic range, not the peak dynamic range.
Which is a really interesting way to think about it.

Via.

Promotion

So then, when we release "TM01" (that's the code for the first Tyrannosaurus Mouse album), what shall we do with it? UPDATE: so far we have buy-in from half the band on the name "eponymouse" for our first album. I think our second album should be "disambiguation".
OK, so what do we do this this record?

We can do some radio promotion with it. I've done such things back in the early 90's. I spent quite a bit of cash on some albums that never quite charted on CMJ.
Peter Hay over at Twin Vision says that you have to think at least $1000 for a regional release and $2000 in order to promote a national release. I like Peter Hay. He's a real nice guy. Known for being honest. And although he never got any of my records to chart, they did get a buncha airplay.

Sonic Bids -- they cost $6.99/month. It's a... actually I have no idea what it is.

Oasis CD has a kind of cool thing where they have a sampler CD which goes out to radio stations. To get that though you have to replicate a CD. I estimate the cost of 300 CD's to be about $860 with jewel cases, barcodes, and their radio promotion program. (Note that replicating CD's with Oasis includes CDBaby which would otherwise cost $50/year.) Basically this would mean taking one song and putting it on their compilation CD. Nobody is directly "pushing" the song though, so it would be a matter of radio stations just wanting to play it (unlikely).

Bat Boxes

The water in Metuchen is not potable right now. It has to be boiled for consumption.
Yeah. So there is power though.

I got all Instagrammy with this picture I took today of the Dismal Swamp. Yep, all the turned leaves have fallen but otherwise it looks pretty nice. I hope the incoming storm doesn't make it unnecessarily swampy.
Then again, we are shooting in a place called the "Dismal Swamp".
Did you know there are "bat boxes" in the Dismal Swamp? You know, like boxes, for bats. I don't know where they are exactly.

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.

Pictures from Libby Day 3 III

Filmmaking is a fake bloody business.

Joe Chapman seeks solace in the olde gohds.

The scrum on the Middlesex Greenway.

Victory is ours Comerades! That's Julia Maldonado, the Queen of Mars, Joe Chapman, Andrew Bellware, Joe's dad (!), Annalisa Loeffler, and... er... Louis.

Annalisa with Louis.

The movie doesn't actually look this happy.

Louis likes a good time.

Three shot.

She's not bird watching, she's gnat watching. 

One day we'll figure out what we're doing here.

Two silver-backed gorillas fight for dominance.

This is the first time I've seen this script.

This might be a good time to put a wireless mic on.

Pilot hero Andrew "AJ" Bellware readys the quadrocopter.

I see a Facebook picture here.

Checking playback from the dragoncam.

Julia Maldonado hunted by the dragon.

Pictures from Libby Day 3 II

A very serious looking Joe Chapman prepares to slate whilst wearing a quite fashionable jacket.

Joe Chapman prepares to catch the arrow as it comes at me.

Annalisa Loeffler and Christopher Pope duke it out.

Andrew Bellware pretends to direct while Annalisa Loeffler actually does work.

Annalisa wonders what's going on while Drew takes an arrow for her. Chris rethinks this whole "shooting in Jersey" thing while the Queen of Mars considers using real blood.

I... can't actually explain what's going on here.

Chris Pope takes an arrow to the chest while Joe Chapman helps the Marsian Regina with blood.

What ever happened to the "There will be no scripts on the day"? We did end up using the shopping basket as a production stuff basket.

Andrew Bellware. After telling Libby to make me look thin.

Sexy Annalisa Loeffler lounging betwixt takes.

We look more organized here than I think we actually are.

Joe Chapman gets his tongue caught in the slate. I... wish I hadn't seen this.

The Dismal Swamp

Annalisa Loeffler and Chris Pope waiting. 

I'm an artist. You'll understand when you see the movie...

Like I said...

I went to a lot of trouble to get this shot. Note that Chris and I are wearing the same Tyrannosaurus Mouse shirts.

Illegal fun levels.