This, That, The Other Thing

Anti-e-cig rebuttals.

A deeply wack 1968 comic-book style manual for the Army's M16. It is shockingly racist. I mean, like WWII racist.

If you can't fathom how NPR could possibly get more smug, just check out their story on literary fiction. You know, as opposed to "books you actually want to read."

Force Fins. Funny-looking fins. Expensive. Supposed to be very nice though.

Outliving us

Today I saw a private screening of They Will Outlive Us All. It's an impressive indy picture and a horror comedy. Those are two things I just can't do.
It's a really well written movie and really, Nat Cassidy is almost naked for a substantial portion of the movie. And Jessi Gotti is totally a movie star.
There's really only one other horror zombie comedy from the "real indy" world of low-budget filmmaking that's any good. And that's Chance Shirley's Hide and Creep.

They did a stunning job on the audio post on They Will Outlive Us All. I was filled with envy. I mean I'm supposed to be the guy who can do that. I can't. They totally can. Dialog edit was fantastic.

I think there were three sets. And one zombie bug puppet. It was amazing.

They Will Outlive Us All is to Evil Dead II what Hide and Creep is to Dr. Strangelove.

Delightfully Unhinged

So. On Wednesday we didn't have Lou or Ethan. And Lily decided she wanted to play drums. Which said to me I should play bass.

We only had a single Shure 58 on the drums (going through a Neve 1272 preamp). And another Neve was used with a Rode NT1 hanging over a Fender Twin Reverb (with Lily's Schecter). Greg's guitar was recorded like it normally is, except that I used a Neve on him too.
We tried a bunch of things. Somehow we ended up recording this completely unhinged version of Wipeout.

The drums are smashed with compression -- 1176 and LA2 emulations. And the whole thing was very noisy (there is quite a bit of emulated single-ended Dolby noise reduction too.) But I'm extremely amused by this wacky recording. I think it may almost be in mono.

SCUBA

Apparently I've already annoyed all my friends talking about how awesome SCUBA is.
SCUBA is awesome. Now when I tell a friend how awesome SCUBA is they say "Hey, I heard you can breathe underwater" to me.
But, Dude, I say, you can breathe underwater.

Seriously that's the most amazing thing.
So far I've only done like 9 dives and they've all been at Dutch Springs, a quarry in Pennsylvania. And I know that a lot of the old hat divers are all like "you have to go to Belize" or whatever -- but I just don't care. I will dive in your swimming pool. I would dive in a bathtub if it's big enough. Seeing groovy fish is cool but so is being in a very silty environment. I love seeing the beams of light coming up off of other divers when it's so dark and silted up you can't see more than a few feet away.
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Right up at the very beginning of SCUBA training (with PADI) I had the option of going with the Imperial or Metric units of measurement. Normally I'd simply default to Metric because calculations are typically easier.
But the way they teach safe ascents is that you should ascend at 1 foot per second or one meter in four seconds.
I decided that since the ascent rate was one of the most important numbers I'd have to keep a hold of in my mind during a potentially stressful situation. So therefore I'd do one foot a second. So I'm using Imperial for everything.
Incidentally, my computer prefers one foot every two seconds (a meter every 8 seconds) as the ascent rate. Still that's either 18 meters per minute or 9 meters per minute, versus 60 feet per minute or 30 feet per minute. The Imperial is just easier to count. 
And yeah, I know the numbers don't work out. That's just the standards they use so at least they come out to even numbers of feet or meters.
So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Until we finally alter our time system so it is decimal or we alter our numbering system so it is dozenal or duodecimal. Because I'm totally down with that.


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Any math errors I may have made above I totally reserve the right to correct and then pretend they were never there in the first place.

Computer Badge

I dunno. Should I get a super-powerful laptop computer so I can do 3D rendering at home?
I just don't know things. I've been spending a lot of time out at my parents recently and having a computer that can directly handle some of that 3D work could be really helpful.
MacBook Pro -- although it would allow me to edit in Final Cut Pro -- is $2500. Good grief. Well, the $2500 one is actually fairly fancy-pants. There are cheaper ones.
Sigh. It's actually the dang video card which makes all the difference, isn't it?

Apparently many NYC police officers wear fake badges. I want a fake badge too, something very Warhammer-y though. For our next movie. You can design a custom badge here.

I want this floor. And wall. And thing.

Ian Hubert is working on this game.

Todaythings

You might think you don't need a $15 pair of nail clippers. But let me tell you. You do. You so do.


Totally worth it.
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Fun fact: in New York State pharmacists cannot give you a tetanus vaccination. But in New Jersey they can.
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I was thinking this might be fashion in the future. You know. How I think things.

I don't know much about biomechanics, Roy, I wish I did.

Grumpies

This was the costume we'd originally wanted Michael Shattner to wear in Prometheus Trap.

Who's This? : The Grumpies EP12 from GrumpyFILMS inc on Vimeo.
That boa would have gone great with a space helmet.

Spinning

So this Dead Residents movie opens inside a spinner. Yeah, I know, the script doesn't explicitly say the police car is a spinner, but we all know better don't we?
The script, again a brilliant screenplay by Steven J. Niles, is written as a POV tale of woe and hardship as a police officer and her Robocop-esque partner try to track down a terrorist who unleashes a zombie virus in an apartment building. Which is as awesome as it sounds.
In fact, the idea is that the movie is told in flashbacks from the robot's onboard camera. Which is a stunning idea. And sometimes stunningly difficult to figure out how we're going to shoot (we see the robot looking at himself in a mirror... I'm still working on that.)

But remember, we just need to see a POV from the front passenger seat. We need a mirror outside of the car and we need some kind of panel on the dashboard. Most of the complex details in the interior of the Blade Runner spinner are on the side panels and in the center console.

The big piece of the actual car that we see in Blade Runner is the flatscreen display on Adama's side of the car. That center monitor is interestingly situated such that the driver and passenger can't actually see it, but it photographs great doesn't it?
And interestingly real police cars have a computer typically mounted in the center console nowadays (but, you know, made so that the people in the front can swing it around to look at.)
In any case, the vehicle is stationary for the entire shot inside it. And I was going to have someone stand there with a hose so the "rain" obscures the visibility through the windshield but some gianormous light would punch through and make some interesting patterns on the face in the car.
So what we're staring down the throat of here is to shoot in a car or van with a hose or two on the windows and maybe our blue police light flashing. Uh. Anybody know where our blue police light is?
And so that means we want to put a flat screen monitor on the dash with some sort of display running on it. The display would be what the vehicle would see when it's stopped. Could we put the display on in post? Well yeah but I really don't want to motion-track a handheld shot with camera which has a rolling shutter and I super don't want to have to rotoscope the image if anyone should pass in front of it.

Amazonian Mouse

The new Tyrannosaurus Mouse Album is available now on Amazon:
 
It's also on CreateSpace. I don't know how much the record is. The price does change around a bit.

Bite Celtx Mouse

Makeup FX: bite marks.

You know what I wish Celtx would do?

• Merge characters (because you frequently get "duplicates" of characters, some of whom show up in some scenes and not others)
• Print a day's sides based on the schedule (because, you know, that would make life easier).

Right now we are in fact using Celtx to schedule feature films. I'm sure we're the only ones out there doing that. We scheduled our last movie (and I think we didn't miss any scenes) and we're scheduling our next picture too. We. Shall. See.

New York Sea Gypsies, not the world's most politically-correct name for a dive organization, do dives through the winter off of New Jersey.

Are you aware that the Tyrannosaurus Mouse album is out now? You'll be able to buy it on Amazon.


Wait, no. You can buy it on Amazon now.

Tyrannosaurus Mouse Album Released

Listen on Spotify
 
Or buy yourself a hard copy.

Soon to be available on Amazon too.

We Are What We Are

Jim Mickle's new movie, We Are What We Are, is doing a theatrical release in NYC and LA.
It's a beautiful film. Yes, I get to brag that I saw an early version of it at a private screening.

New Armor

Our armor from Nightmare Armor Studios is ready.

We get two helmets with the armor.

I'm curious as to whether we'll put lights inside the eye-pieces.

There are a couple shots where the robot turns and looks in a mirror. Yeah. I know. I'm hoping we can fit a camera inside the helmet and puppet the thing.

We've been running with the "cyberpunk C3PO" idea for a while. But this is actually a standard suit of armor from Nightmare.