This amuses me

To exactly the degree you would expect it to:

Via.

Today's Things - Limited Embracing and Kissing

Via Stu, free texture maps!
An interview with filmmaker David Campfield. David, Chance Shirley, and I have now all had movies released by Pop Cinema (the label has various names).
Our first review for Day 2! ;-)
Here's something... interesting. The Ontario Film Board's content advisory for Battle: New York, Day 2. Under "detailed observations":
- Occasional gory/grotesque images- Coarse language- Partial or full nudity in a brief sexual situation- Limited embracing and kissing- Implied sexual activity- Violent acts shown in clear, unequivocal and realistic detail with blood and tissue damage
"Limited embracing and kissing" is my favorite part.

Tyrannosaurus Mouse Mixing Day

We mixed from noon to 8pm on Sunday (including getting some delicious Mexican food) with the amazing Eric Rachel at Trax East Studios.
That's right, we mixed the entire album in one 8-hour day.
What did I learn from the experience? These things:

• We had the whole band present for the mix. Honestly, I'd never done that before. It was nice having other people's opinions on things. Plus, with our band it meant that we didn't take a lot of time discussing things, we just did them and by-and-large, agreed.
• I have been way over-exposed to the whole album for the past year. I have somewhere near no distance. I was thinking "just let Eric mix the record". Indeed, Eric did just mix a few songs. But you really can't tell which ones we all had hands on, and which he just did himself.
• Ethan had a fairly strong hand in mixing the record. This was awesome. Remember that he had come in at some point in the last few months in order to make selects and decisions regarding his bass tracks. This was relatively early in the process (after we'd recorded, but before mixing). But in the final mix he had a number of ideas with the levels and EQ of the drums (mostly snare and kick) and levels. 
• I was worried about too heavily "effecting" the guitars, vocals, and keyboards. Nobody complained about there being too much compression on any of them. And the effects on the guitars and vocals were very heavy. We added no additional compression to the vocals in the mix. I'm happy that my decisions did not result in egregious yukkityness once we got to mixing.
• Ethan has a strong "Ask the drummer what he thinks of the sound"-type ethos regarding the mix. This is counter to the way I usually think, which is to get a consensus about sounds from everyone or get the opinion of a neutral third party. I'm not saying that one way is better than the other, it's just interesting and informative. By and large, Ethan prevailed. For instance: if Arie hated a keyboard part, Ethan's attitude was "If Arie hates it, we should delete it."
• I made one big error. A huge section of the keyboard tracks for the Mouseverture was out of sync. But, in my defense, it was out of sync for about six months and nobody in the band noticed it. What we had to do is mix the song both with and without the keyboards. Then I went back and fixed the edit and re-exported just the keyboard track. I think I have fixed them to the band's liking. We'll find out. 
• We used very little in the way of outboard effects in the final mix. Which doesn't mean there aren't a lot of effects in the tracks But all of the delays and reverb on guitar, vocals, and keyboards were composited into the final mixing tracks from within Samplitude. This included a fair bit of compression.
• I hadn't pre-compressed the bass at all. But we did add software-based "1176"-type compression to the bass in the final mix. It was very light.
• The kick and the snare went through (what else?) a couple DBX 160's. I believe that no other specific compression was used for the drums. The rest of the drums just saw the master mix compressor(s).
• The guitars got a little bit of software 1176's. 
• We fired up Eric's Lexicon 480 -- mostly because I wanted to fire it up. A tiny bit of snare and sometimes keyboards went and got a bit wet with some reverb. 
• Eric has a great trick -- he rolls off two mixes simultaneously. One mix just has a SSL-clone compressor on it, the other mix has the SSL-clone and an analog PL2 peak limiter and a software multiband (Waves L3? maybe?) When we take the mix to mastering we just use the lesser-compressed mix. But for listening, of course, everyone likes the super-limited and compressed mix.

Here are the mixes with all the multitude of compressors. They aren't yet mastered, but honestly they sound pretty close to the way they will when mastered. 

Remember that you can't see the widgets in an RSS reader.
Mouseverture

Mercury

One Last Drink

Ice Maiden

Arabesque


Jabberwocky

Narwal Song

20 Lights

Over at Blood Sweat and Tedium they talk of many things. Specifically they talk of using upwards of 20 lights on a standard 3-wall swing set in TV.
20? Really?
Yeah.
Now, my background as a DP is without any doubt pretty weird. I mean, I started as a sound guy for crying out loud. And although I've done TV with some excellent Lighting Directors, I've never really done TV except as a sound mixer.
But this I know, and know quite well: television engineers are conservative. I don't mean politically. Politically the EIC's I've known have been all-the-freak over the place. But lighting-wise they're mighty conservative.
And either as a consequence of, or resulting from, people who make TV really like some brightly-lit, no shadows anywhere-type lighting.
That's arguably what makes sit-coms look like sit-coms. They're lit up the wazoo. With, like, you know, 20 lights on a 3-wall swing-set.

Robin Kurtz in Earthkiller.

I'm not entirely sure, but I'd be surprised if we ever had as many as a dozen lights on a set. Including practicals and lighting a blue screen. I do enjoy lighting entirely with practical lights -- but doing the kind of sci-fi we do that usually means we have these florescent tubes we've bought at Home Depot and are hanging them at eye level. That kind of lighting is gratuitous and amusing and ultimately vastly easier to do than lighting everything "flat" the way they tend to do in TV.
And you know when they talk about 20 instruments they're talking big, boss instruments. 1K's are considered "small" around those parts.
I forget whether we had a 1K in this shot of Robin Kurtz in Earthkiller. Whatever is whumping her face is an incandescent -- probably Brian's 1K but it could be a 500-watt we borrowed. That rim lighting on her is all practical florescents.
This is the kind of thing that drives many TV people insane. The luminance values on her face go from tippity-top over 100% clipping down to no-detail-blacks (in her hair.) There's a light source in the shot. There's a flare!
But hey, I like the way it looks. You may too.
The point is. Oh heck, I don't know what the point is. The point is I wish I had 20 big lights. ;-)

Clone Hunter Streaming

Angela Funk in Clonehunter.

Clone Hunter is available for streaming on both FlixFling and Big Star. Actually, it might not be on Big Star yet. But it will be soon.

"Cane is a former planetary cop who resigned in disgrace. He is a freelance clone hunter now, a glorified gun for hire. He and his junior partner, Angela, are hired by Montserrat, a brutal Oligarch, to track down a murderous clone that threatens the stability of Montserrat's private planet. The more Cane and Angela delve into the case the more corruption they discover, until they come face to face with their own darkest secrets and must decide which side they are on."

You know this is not entirely accurate -- for instance we never say that Cain was a former planetary cop although that is an awesome idea. Heck, maybe we should re-make the movie that way! ;-)
And, of course, "Montserrat" is the name of Montserrat Mendez (who acted in Clone Hunter and wrote Earthkiller.) The name of that character in Clone Hunter is actually "Gulliver" and is played by Vincent Marano.

My house is a mess

Won't somebody come clean it for me?

Anybody?

Standard Release

In order to make our distributor(s) and buyer(s) happy, we've drawn up this release/certificate of employment for anyone who gets a credit on one of our shows. The purpose of this is to be able to show a nice paperwork trail of the title and everyone or everything that could ever be copyrighted about the work. Weirdly, I have to sign the thing -- and more than once. I need to indemnify 'ganst my being a director, writer, cinematographer, and composer.
So there ya go.
Basically, in order to get credit, we have to have a signed contract. Otherwise our distributor will release a battalion of androids to come over and smack us.

Lobsterscope!

From Soma Magazine:

"One night, I got drunk with Chance [Shirley, the band’s drummer] and Brian [Moon, the band’s bass player] and started arguing about The Replacements. Chance said we should start a band and we did.”
+++++
So today Ethan, when I wrote to him about the psychedelic videos I'm making, casually mentioned Lobsterscope. Lobsterscope!

What could be more awesome than lobsterscope?

Classic Science Fiction

The Classic Science Fiction Channel.

The new Blogger interface has found drafts of things for me.

I may have already published duplicate copies.

I don't know. I may never know.

Mix like it's 66

I went to high school with Tim Brown. Now he's a DJ on Worldcast Radio. He's DJTEI1013.
MsTickle Arts -- burlesque!
++++
Today I am cleaning tracks for our big mixing session on Sunday. That's right we're going to mix the entire Tyrannosaurus Mouse album in one day. We're going to mix like it's 1966. Or, as Lou pointed out, "Mix like 66".
I just discovered a pretty egregious error in one of my guitar tracks. I'm glad I caught it. Obviously I was playing with compression on a sub-mix buss for the lead guitars and I'd squashed them into some fairly unpleasant distortion -- and ran the sub-mix of that guitar off as a finished, ready-to-be-mixed track. Egads!

Out Call

I get this email this morning from Amazon.com:

Hello,

We're writing about the order you placed on July 21 2011 (Order# 105-7624741-5920204). Unfortunately, we are unable to ship the item(s) as soon as we expected and need to provide you with a new estimate of when the item(s) may be delivered:
 Nat Cassidy, et al "Battle: New York - Day 2"   Estimated arrival date: September 19 2011 - September 29 2011
We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this delay.*****WHY WAS MY ORDER DELAYED?While we do our best to adhere to our delivery estimates, our inventory is constantly changing based on information we receive directly from our suppliers. Occasionally, unexpected fluctuations in supply, delays during shipping, or changes in release dates for new products will add time to our original delivery estimate.

I'm calling shenanigans on you, Mr. Amazon! You didn't have enough copies because you sold out! Sold out I say!
You should order a bunch more copies to keep 'em on hand. Really. You should.

Real Numbers

Kameron Hurley writes some real numbers regarding the advance and sales of her book.
The bugs are yukky but I dig her novels. Or at least the one I read. The second one ain't come out yet.
If this blog were a book it'd be 880 pages long. Or thereabouts. I mean, if it were laid out as a book-from-a-blog using BookSmart or some such.

Red Bleeds

I don't really know why, but on both video and film the color red tends to bleed and get smeary. And red it so much fun as a color. (Ironic that it "bleeds" no?) So I feel that red is under-represented on this blog.
Here you can see the smearing in the background and in the hanging thread. Still, it's a beautiful effect.

There are less-saturated reds one can get away with on video and film.

I love the eye makeup in this image.

From http://incredimazing.com/page/Amazing_Female_Body_Art

Did I publish this post a long time ago? It's been saved as a "draft" in my blogger.

Ninite. For Windows and Linux. It's a multi-installer for a whole batch of useful programs.

I've been reading some labor-law blogs. They're pretty much all universally anti-union. They seem anti-union even when... there's no reason to be.
Labor Board delivers a three-punch knockout for Unions.

• if an employer voluntarily recognizes a union as a collective bargaining representative for a particular unit of the workforce, then employees in that bargaining unit must wait at least six months to file a decertification petition.

I'm not sure how this is a knock-out punch for unions. On the face of it, this sounds like a good deal for employers. The employer can force employees into the union of the employer's choice -- for at least six months.

• an existing union will have at least six months after the parties' first bargaining session and no more than one year after the start of bargaining to bargain with the successor company.

I don't really see how this is that big a deal for an employer. If you buy another company, you are beholden to the contracts the company signed. So what? Were you hoping when you bought the company you could abrogate all the debts and contracts?

• this decision now clears the way for unions "to organize sub-units of an employer -- such as employees of one department -- as opposed to an entire facility." Imagine having to negotiate with ten different micro-bargaining units. Oy! 

Um. Don't you have to do that anyway? If you have a company that big, don't you have an HR department? I mean, really? Isn't negotiating pay your job?
It seems that a lot of management-oriented folks are knee-jerk anti-union. I don't really see the purpose to being anti-union just for the sake of being anti-union.