First Up

First day of principal photography of Steve Niles' The Prometheus Trap will be on April 15th.
We have what will be a relatively short day shooting in the small cockpit of the Venom.
The only character on that set will be Finn (Phoebus) — Michael Shattner.

1. He will have his radio and headset (That means we need at least two of the other radios for communications and recording — three radios in total.)
2. He will need his neck rig -- that's some sort of PORT on his skin with (maybe) an optical cable attached? 
3. We will need a blue or greenscreen. We will fret about how it is lit. It won't matter we'll have to rotoscope it heavily anyway.
4. We will shoot Michael in the hallway. The hallway will be something we're going to make out of Joe Chapman's pieces which will be very very cramped. Does it amuse us to try to do a gag where only Michael's eyes light up? Maybe. Briefly.

WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW THE MOVIE ENDS YET. Yes. I know. Blame the director. We will shoot a couple options which include Finn going to the Venom cockpit and remotely operating the Hercules gun (which is what we're calling the "Big Gun" or the "Earthkiller".) We don't know what the big gun looks like. We don't know where it is or where it will be.

We need to know if we should have another version of the costume Michael wears for when he is "hit". How do we show that? Is he just hit on the face? What do we do? Who has thoughts about this?

Ethan Rosenblatt

This is a list of all-time most popular search queries that have resulted in someone coming to this blog.

Blast Radius

Mac Rogers, who wrote the best play I've ever seen — Universal Robots — has a trilogy of plays, the second of which is now playing at the Secret Theater. It's called Blast Radius and The New York Times gave it a glowing review.

Mac also wrote our Angry Planet (which became Solar Vengeance). And you know what? I still think that movie is pretty brilliant. The script at least. ;-)

Solar Vengeance.

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.]

The Glamorous Life

People ask me: "Why do you make films?"
I tell them "It's the glamour."

It's the sexiness.

Size. It matters. Just not the way you think.

In today's theme-park world of The Pandora Machine we got some flashlights. These are perfect for us. They're cheap and they put out a lot of light (the top picture my front light is another one of those lights which you can just barely see. The bottom pic the second flashlight is just off-camera, you can see it reflected in my classes.)

There's no real reason to not get 30 more of them is there? Oh, and the big deal for us is that they can lock in the "on" position.

The Direction

I think Tyrannosaurus Mouse should be a cross between Britney Spears' Piece of Me and XX.

Dig the Arp 2600-like sound in Piece of Me. Of course, we're incapable of not going in a direction more like ELP rather than dance music.

Piece Of Me (Main Version)
I do wish the guitar sounds XX uses were a tad more interesting. They sound a bit like they're recorded into "virtual" amps. Digital modelling amps do indeed sound pretty good. I mean generally. The one thing I simply can't get out of a digital amp is a good clean sound. Seems ironic, don't it? But that huge thick Deluxe sound I just can't get from any modelling amps I've tried.

I'm perfectly cognizant of the fact that anything I say about how Tyrannosaurus Mouse is going to sound is completely fantasiacal. It'll sound like whatever it is that we do. After we figure out what that is.

Paper in Post

Today we had a table read of The Prometheus Trap. All the actors were there. Steve Niles was able to Skype in. It was all good times.
We don't usually do a table read. We don't typically have rehearsals before we get to the shooting stage. So it was fun to be able to do a read-through. Folks got to see the helmets and look at the radios and see costume pieces.

John and Craig talk about different color drafts and the naming conventions of scenes in locked scripts. These are all things we absolutely do not do. We don't change colors and we don't put letters in scene names.
The letters in scene names has always irritated me because shot names are typically lettered. So if you have scene 45, your first setup is 45 A. Dig? But if you end up putting a scene between 45 and 46 then you end up with scene 45A A. And that's gonna get ugly real fast. Craig, I believe, points out that sometimes that becomes scene A45 A -- not much better in terms of alphabetization and general confusion.

We do it the way people used to write programs in Basic. If you need to insert a scene between 45 and 46, the new scene becomes 45.5. It's clear. It alphabetizes correctly in the computer. Everybody understands it. And 45.5 A is the first setup.

Actually, we don't bother to slate takes with more than the audio take number. We start at 001 and we go to take (about) 600. The editor has to figure out what scene we're doing. It's not that hard to figure out usually.

On using the script vs the footage:

John: [...] Sometimes I get a little bit sad when I go into the editing room and I see, like, “Oh, they assembled the scene based on what was shot, but it is actually…” I don’t know. There is no recognition that, like, oh, it was actually…

And that's exactly why we don't bother taking very detailed notes on-set. First of all, we don't shoot enough footage to warrant extensive notes -- once you get to the edit stage the script itself can become somewhat useless. We try to shoot the whole damn movie but the only way you're going to be able to edit the picture is to sit and watch all the takes -- not read about the takes. You kinda have to make a movie out of what you've got.
The only place where I get a little yowley about wanting to have some documentation is when we do a wild sound take. We can usually find those because they'll be the big long take that has no in and out to picture that's numerically near the other takes in the scene. But it would be nice to have that in a book in the edit room. I mean if we had space on a table to put a whole script.

Art: Chad Michael Ward

It Could Be My Lack of Self Respect

We're having a table read of The Prometheus Trap tonight. We're going to Skype in Steve Niles, who wrote it.
I won't wear my new Jonathan E shirt because, you know, I don't want the sexiness to intimidate anyone.
So, so few people will get the joke.

Why doesn't anyone make hard sci-fi movies? Reddit has the answer.

The crackberry that took this picture obviously hates the orange color of the Houston Energy. It wants to make the color more yellow for some reason. Of course, when it does that the skin tones are more natural. Go figure.

ASIO

I don't understand ASIO. I don't understand VST. I get that they both make my life easier. I totally get that. I mean, until they crash at least.
One day I'm going to go to a whole lot of trouble to really "get" at least one of these things. I have to figure out hardware monitoring. Right now I seem to be both hardware and software monitoring because I get this delay on anything I record (in the monitors, not in the actual recording.)
Anyway, ASIO. It lowers the latency of recordings. It makes it easier to use software instruments.
I suspect that the relative lack of ease for ASIO making instant sense to everyone is that every software/hardware combination is completely different.
I'm using Samplitude (Sound on Sound review here) with a MOTU UltraLite interface (with an Apogee Mini-Me as the master clock and the analog inputs for the S/Pdif input on the UltraLite -- let me tell you, the Apogee clock on the UltraLite makes a very audible difference).

But I still don't really understand how to route things. And that may be as simple as me not really understanding my sound card (the UltraLite).
But one day. Oh yes one day. I will understand them.

Another Day on the Ground

The first time you bleed it's terrifying. You've seen guys get cut or just bite their lips when eating and it creeps you out. There was that dude everyone called Snowwhite who skinned his knee and he just kept looking down at the injury with his mouth dropped open like somehow wisdom was going to land on his lower jaw.
The bright green blood looks (and tastes) like antifreeze. Somehow they make your skin a color that isn't turned all verdant and neon even though your blood practically glows in the dark.
And you heal quickly, man. The Sergeant is yelling at somebody to get Snowwhite a nappy - wipe just to clean himself off because the green blood clots instantly with air contact. Then the antibiotics kick in -- all local stuff we're reassured by the med 'bots that check us over each day. We don't have to worry about coming down with some sort of exotic virus because our whole bodies are anti-virus hardware.
But in the field you don't care anymore. Not in II Corps at least. There's a slice through your skin and you curse silently as the wound heals itself. But some blood and maybe some bone splattered on the rock you were standing on. You do a quick calculation in your head of how many calories you'll need to consume to get back to strength.

And that's the whole trick. Food is heavy. Food is expensive. And food comes from very, very far away. This half-bit planet only got its Terraforming generators up and operational 6 months ago which means you can't even leave the valley you're in without a full void suit. There's air, sure. But nothing like water or food will be here for another eight years. Nothing you can actually eat or drink at least.
So you sit down and wait for your ride. The low hum of a armored deuce drops its gear and the hatch opens. The side-door gunner waves you in and you squeeze in next to him. The pilot is a Skinny -- full-on dude must be about 9 foot high and weigh half what you weigh. He waves to you in that goofy "I'm on your side, bud, don't shoot me!" smile as his eyes roll up into his head and you think do you want to be on this thing?
But the Skinny pilot is good -- that's why they have him after all.
The gunner tries to talk to you -- he sees that you've been hit -- but you're too tired and you can't hear him over the disrupter engine so your own eyes roll into your head probably just like the Skinny pilots and you Sleep with a capital S sleep for a couple days while your own body re-assembles the lower half of your left leg.

Planetary Naming

It looks like the two planetary names in competition to be the name of the homeworld of Captain Haskins are "Altair IV" and "Animus Prime".
Other options we've gotten from the cast include:


Caledan
Xerxes VII
Auriel Prime
Liatris IV
Collinsia

Animus - courage (this one got a couple votes)
Adoficio - to affect
Coerceco - surround, enclose
Duck - to lead
Fatum - doom

Adhara (“the virgins”)
Altair (“the eagle”)
Arcturus (“guardian of the bear”) (has a couple votes)
Canopus (untranslated proper name; in myth he was the pilot of the ship Argo)
Eltanin (“serpent”)
Meissa (“proudly marching one”)
Naos (“ship”)
Nashira (“fortunate one”)
Nodus I (“first knot or loop”)
Rana (unknown)
Rasalas (“northern part of the lion’s head”)
Regulus (“little king” – astronomical name is Alpha Leonis, also cool)

That's a lot of very cool names. I should have done this polling ages ago.

Ooh! And:
Delphi (where the oracle foretold everything)Delos, Attica, Argos, Megara.

Submit!

You are suspiciously conversant.

Clone Hunter is now on Gigaplex.

EstroGenius -- the short play festival -- has opened its submission window for plays. I have zero idea where they're going to be holding the festival, as Theatresource the theater is now closed. Interestingly there's now a submission fee of $10. I don't think we've ever had that before. I'm not entirely sure that getting into the submission fee business is that good an idea -- that's probably mostly from my experience with film festivals -- but the producing organization can very quickly get addicted to bringing in all that cash from suckers who enter their plays in the festival.

Hmm... from the FAQ:

Q: Why is there a charge this year?
A: Because EstroGenius is growing! The loss of our  space on MacDougal Street creates a unique opportunity for the festival to expand into a larger venue, but it also means we need more money up front to rent that space and produce your play in a bigger, more prestigious and versatile venue. Your submission fee helps make that possible. 

Well. A "unique opportunity"? Yeah. Not so much. If we had wanted to produce the festival at another theater, we certainly could have.  My distaste for this kind of corporate-speak is... well it makes me want to retch. Producing the festival without a venue in place is going to be one major league pain the in tuchus.

Here's a model of a dead dragon.

Clonehunter on Gigaplex

Gigaplex now carries Clonehunter.

I think I have said all these things.

I ain't never heard of Gigaplex before. But they seem to have a fairly clearly written business model* on their website.

Gigaplex uses Apps to screen movies - directly to a user’s device. Every App is a proprietary piece of software, developed by Gigaplex engineers. Our apps are accessible from a wide variety of App stores. They provide a superior experience to viewers versus traditional browser-based viewing. Our customers have demonstrated that they are willing to pay for exceptional content in an exceptional viewing environment if it is conveniently available on demand. When content owners partner with Gigaplex by contributing films and TV content to our growing library of feature-length films and television content, they get a chance to exhibit their content to hundreds of millions of potential viewers. Be assured that our customers will watch your film in the highest possible quality. Our built-in social media tools let content owners and fans of their films instantly share their experiences with people in their circles of influence. We regularly welcome new content owners – producers, distributors, studios and other content owners – to the Gigaplex global platform.

I'm one of those dorks who still uses a browser. I guess I'm just stuck in the 2000's.

They have a lot of Malayan and Hindi pictures.

One thing that's interesting about distribution in this day and age is that I actually got an email from the company:

We are pleased to inform you that we have secured rights to your movie “Clone Hunter” and is now a part of our ever growing Gigaplex film collection, available as Pay-Per-View or as a part of our subscription service. Unfortunately, I believe that many current and potential future fans are missing out because they are unaware that your film is offered through of our revolutionary method of distribution.

As a result, our team is making an effort to, first of all, make sure that you are aware that the film is being offered through Gigaplex. Secondly, we then want to make sure that the customers and your fans know that the film is available for streaming through Gigaplex.

Here’s the link to your movie on Gigaplex, which you are free to use as you feel would best promote your movie.

https://www.igigaplex.com/movie_info.php?name=Clone+Hunter 

I'm sure it's a form letter which goes out to any and all directors and producers they can find. But it's a smart form letter. The trend I'm seeing is that distributors are reaching out to filmmakers in order to get publicity for their pictures.

So when you want to know trends in modern motion picture distribution you just talk to me. Er. Actually, no, don't talk to me. Talk to a distributor. I'm still trying to figure things out.


*You'll note that "fairly clearly written" is never something you can actually say about my own blogs.

The Other Portlandia

Y'know, I pick on the show Grimm on occasion but I think it's a great show -- beautifully lit, well-acted, and a great idea. But I get the feeling it has to pick up the pace at some point. The regular non-supernatural cops just have to get clued in so that the stories can get a move on.
Because other than that I like the series. And did I mention it's beautiful? They get these interiors to have this amazing painterly look -- a brilliant combination of Art and G&E right there. Somebody on that show is paying attention.

Christopher Sharpe on getting views on YouTube.
Waves is having a big sale on 64-big plugins. That piece of information really belongs in the Tyrannosaurus Mouse blog, doesn't it?
Final Cut Pro is doing a really disturbing thing where the exports have actual errors. The errors seem to be incurred during the pre-render. So I've deleted all the prerenders and am starting again. That means we'll have another QC check of Android Insurrection tonight.