Boots

Have I ever mentioned these Chippewa boots?

Yes, I must have.

Philadelphia Desert

Joe Chapman has been working on 2D comps of the background in the Philadelphia Desert. 
Wow, I remember back in the day when Montserrat Mendez came up with the idea of the Philadelphia Desert. I think I vaguely recall thinking "How the heck are we going to do that?".
Well it looks to me like we're in Camden and the nuclear blasts took out the Delaware and the lower half of Jersey. Which is very cool. Hmm... running some calculations in my head I bet this is just about where the spaceship would have crash landed in Planet of the Apes.
That's Robin Kurtz' hand in the forground with the Queen of Mars on the left and me on the right. These are temp comps with different ideas of shadowing and background.
+++++
Red Giant has a post on using their water-simulator in Final Cut Pro.

Chinese Horror

So I had this horrifying moment last week. Horrifying in that I felt like the life I'd led until now was useless and wasted.
I was at Ten Ren Tea getting my mango bubble tea and the lady behind the counter said "Thank you" in Mandarin to me. (No, I have no idea why she decided to say that in Mandarin. I think she just likes to do that even though she speaks English.)
And I had no idea how to say "You're welcome."
Two years of Chinese in High School and a semester in what I laughingly call my "college half-year" and I have no freakin' idea how to say "You're welcome" in Mandarin.
So I looked it up on the Interwebs and it's all "Bu" something-or-other but I don't think you really use it in the situation in a store because when a storekeeper hands you change and your bubble tea and says thank you I suppose (just like in English) you should really say "good evening" or, more to the point in Chinese, "see you tomorrow" (which is also more relevant to me considering my Bubble Tea addiction.)
Still: egads.

Do You Like Too Much Compression?

If you do then I have some too much compression for you. Everything is compressed right to the edge of distortion.
As an excuse I'm saying I'm playing with Samplitude's compression and built-in effects. And actually, I am learning more about those things. The effects that come with Samplitude are really quite good. They went to a lot of trouble engineering them. They have some compressors which (if applied more tastefully than I've done here) sound nice.
Now you should note that there is a guitar missing, and a Hammond keyboard solo, and possibly a grand piano solo.
But I have questions. Questions which need must be answered afore I can go on.

1. How many bars should this intro be?
2. Should I get rid of the "ringing" in the bass at the beginning of the song?
3. Is the vocal singing style right for this song?
4. Is the vocal effect right for this song (meaning the band-limited sound, the delay)?

Answer me these questions four.

Update: the questions have been answered thuswise:

1. However many bars that was was fine.

2. Yes, lose the ringing.  It's just my muting incompetence showing through (editor's note, this was Ethan saying this).

3. I think it's in the ballpark, although that might not be the final take, or overdubs might be in order.

4. I like the vocal effects for the verses, perhaps a dryer sound for the chorus?  Or just different effects?

More Russians

A couple times a year I record concerts for the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York. They are off-the-charts good. The musicality, the detail, the sheer emotion of the work is amazing. And look, you don't have to take my word for it, even the New Yorker calls them "splendid"*

And it's not just the musical brilliance of their maestro, Nikolai Kachanov, although that's a massive part of it.

The chorus also pull these tremendous accompanists out of their hats. For instance,  Mikhail Zeiger, a pianist and composer, plays with them frequently. And he's simply off-the-charts good. He's the sort of musician that, when you hear him play, you think: "Wait, he can't be as good as I think he is."

But he is.

Another impressive feat of the Russian Chamber Chorus is that they create a new program at least twice a year. Now I don't just mean they learn new music twice a year. No, the limitation of "Russian Chorus" is a limitation of over a thousand years of music. Ha! So they'll do early music, they'll do Romantic, they'll do modern music (much of their most beautiful and interesting material has been modern -- there's a 911 Mass which will bring tears to your eyes.) Sometimes they'll mix very different periods. But it's always brand new. And that makes things more adventurous for the singers and the audience.
*I can't actually find the link right now to the New Yorker blurb. Sue me.

How Does This Qualify As News?

Or Valerie Plame, where are you?

Wikileaks discovers money is flowing to terrorists from support money the US is giving to Middle Eastern countries.
And meddling by Iraq's neighbors adds to Iraq's woes.
I'm mean I'm just shocked. Amazed. Faint-hearted at the news. How could we have known those things were happening?
I mean, other than them being public knowledge.
And seriously, is there anyone who's complaining about Wikileaks being "treasonous" who also wants Dick Cheney prosecuted for, you know, actual treason?

Today is Kitten Squeezing Teddybear Day

Gotta Love Mechs

If you like mechs, and you do, you'll dig this guys page of miniatures.
I have promised a brand-new page-one rewrite of EarthWar by the end of next week. We also presumably need to deliver Day 2 by the end of this month. And at some point there's a whole bunch of work which needs to be done on Earthkiller (post production).
Maybe I should just work through Christmas.

Where is Leslie?

This article on Leslie simulators is really interesting. Make sure you to to the second page though, where he changes his mind completely (I really respect that.) The conclusion to the conclusion is that the Neo Instruments Ventilator actually sounds like a Leslie. They do cost $500.
Funny thing is you can get a Mahaffay Little Lanilei Rotary Speaker kit for only $400.  That's basically an unpowered 10" rotary speaker (well, it's powered in that there's electricity going to the motor, but you need an amp to feed it.) The Little Laneli Rotary is probably the cheapest of the real-sounding Leslie emulators. It sounds real because it's actually a whirling speaker. It's only $399 but you have to put it together as a kit. And that involves some drilling and such, so you have to be at least semi-competent with wood.
What I don't really get about these is how the "brake" sound works on the stomp-box emulators. Because ultimately the sound of the Leslie starting and stopping is the most amusing part of it to me.
And I'm not actually in the market for a Leslie simulator, I'm just sort of vaguely interested. And it's not like I actually have any money lying around for such adventures.

I Still Don't Understand

Why we have 7-day weeks. OK, I get it: the Bible. But why does the whole world do it that way? I guess it's because the Gregorian Calendar won the calendar wars.
Why we name our 7-day weeks the way we do.
Why all neo-cons are former Trotskyists.

Ooh, Nice Cut

I understand this jacket is from 1897 and is English. But I don't know anything more about it. And believe me, I've been looking...

Your Movie Has a 2.2% Chance at Getting Distribution

From the comments below, your movie is one out of 27,000 made each year. It has a 2.2% chance of ever being distributed.
Egads.
We've been extraordinarily lucky. Sure I could be a big sniff and say "It's not luck, it's hard work and perseverance my boy. Put your nose to the grindstone and you too can get your movie(s) distributed."
But it involved a lot of luck.
Talking about luck, however, isn't terribly interesting. So I'll talk about the perseverance part of it.
Actually, my first two movies didn't get any distribution at all. The second movie, Apostasy, didn't get into any film festivals at all (the first one, Hamlet, only got attention because who would actually make a Hamlet on a Pixelvision camera?)

And truthfully, my first two movies are unwatchable. I mean, unless you're really really high. But I learned a lot from making them. And I learned more from making those two features than I did from making any of the handful of shorts I've ever shot.
Making, and more importantly completing a feature is vastly different from making a short. And if I'd given up after those first two movies and just decided that there was no way I could get distribution, then I'd be in the 97.8% of the filmmakers who don't get distribution. Statistically that isn't really true because that's only films made this year, but you know what I mean.
So I guess my advice to people like me, who don't get distribution with their first features, is to keep making features. It takes practice.

Then There's This

Do you like your elephants loud? Do you like them on trampolines? Then you'll love this.

And seriously, is anybody surprised by any of the Wikileaks "revelations"? I mean, is there a single one where anything is released that we didn't already know? Ooh -- the US distrusts Putin! The Canadians feel "overlooked"!

Today I'm watching my computer crash over and over again.

Neue Script

So I avoided a disastrous fate and managed to get a new script finished before any autobots could zap me. But the script needs a lot of work. Indeed, it's a big ol' mess. Some of the mess is just that we have too many good ideas. Good ideas which belong in their own stories. So we're reducing those good ideas to the ones which are important to this story.
Luckily, I have a good set of notes from my collaborators. And man, if we didn't have Joe Chapman and Libby Csulik on our team we'd be lost.
This will be my third feature-length script in a year. Did I mention how much I hate writing screenplays? But the worst of it is over -- the brain vomit of that first draft. And that first draft is easier nowadays because of Save the Cat, and going over the screenplay to the Road Warrior (which is a brilliant freakin' screenplay.)

Joe sent me this inspirational artwork for the main evil dude.

If we make a two-legged mech, can Ian model a 3D version of it to flow seamlessly?

Must go fight mutant sorcerers now...