Whattup with the Whattup

Dan Harmon on what he tells new writers in his writer's room:

Please help me make this the best show it possibly can be. Please give everything you have to it. I promise when you bleed, it will mix with my blood. I can't guarantee you'll be directly rewarded for it by the system, but I promise you it's the right thing to do. And please come to Comic Con and stand in the audience and listen to what they do when the actors come on stage. That is our God, that is the thing for which we'll be suffering.

Brooklyn Bunny. Because, you know, Brooklyn Bunny.
Hey, remember how Finn blows the Hercules gun out of the airlock? How is there an atmosphere in the cargo bay for him to blow the gun out with? We go to a lot of trouble to establish that there's no atmosphere in there. But he's not even wearing his helmet. This is entirely my fault, not anybody else's.

My Office Environment

... is probably different from yours.

Drew Bellware, Tom Rowen, Rebecca Kush.

We have picture lock on acts 1 through 7. But 8 and 9 are "basically" locked. Act 10 lock will happen tomorrow (or it may have already happened) and act 11 (the penultimate act) may also happen tomorrow. Act 12 will be the end-title credits.
We still need to mix acts 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. That's one act per day, right? It's all good. Right?
It's time to make some more renders. This grape vodka Rebecca brought in is very nice.
I wish I didn't look quite so deranged in this picture. Because I was trying to be all happily smiling. Ahem...

More Giving Space Building Done

More than you could possibly want to know about the Open EXR format.
I'm giving up on all you people and we'll just get some windbreakers.
I've got four single-spaced pages of notes. About half of them are done. About half again more are to come.
My building is directly across from that huge Verizon brutalist architectural abomination in New York City and I can't get FiOS. Gimme a break.

Note that "lookout for spaceship ballet" actually means something to me.

I just noticed that should say mix act 5. Because act 5 is locked. The top note is confusing because that's not a "to do" but rather "this is already done".

It doesn't get less weird from here

Sometimes.
More rendering for me today. I gotta get back at it.

I've pointed out that I have a tumblr, right? It exists almost solely to reblog stuff my cousins put up.
Color correction basics from Adobe.
Via.

Baggit

Best lookin' laptop bag evah.

My sister finished her laptop tote. Before you ask, she won't make you one.

Option B

Here's the one-color version of the logo.

See? It's reversed. Just one color: white. If you see this on a white background it will be invisible.

Theatresource is still stupid

So, Drew, I've noticed you haven't gone on through the remaining stages of grief over the loss of Theatresource. You're stuck at anger.
That's because those asswipes who closed it piss me off.
Don't hold back, tell me how you really feel.
I wasn't as royally ticked off at first.
Then what happened?
I thought of B.
B? Who's B?
Well, you wouldn't know him although he was volunteering for a couple years. He came in more than once a week and he did a lot of work. He put in a whole bunch of work on those "cleanup days" where the Board lied and pretended we were cleaning up to make the landlord happier with us when really we were just doing it so they could get out of the lease.
Did the Board really know?
Well, it's not like new information had actually come to light which made those idiots come to the stupid decision to close the theater. That being said, Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.
Uh. OK. I guess we could go either way there. But what about B? What about that makes you so irked?
Those jerks just took a dump on him. He'd worked freakin' hard and did nothing but make time for Theatresource and the Board of Directors did nothing to try to stay open (they did not even inform their Advisory Board) and basically said "F you" to B.
So, seriously, that's why you're still pissed off? 
12 years of hard work and six morons who didn't even come into the place very much just closed it down. And they're either so phenomenally stupid that they didn't understand that financially Theatresource was actually in better shape than it had been in years, or so lazy they just didn't feel like running it anymore and were too arrogant to let anybody else come in and be a new Board, or they're just douche canoes. Probably some combination of those things.
Who the hell is on the Board of Directors? They're not even listed on the website anymore. And the comments are all spam.
Yeah. There you go.
At least you get to pay now to submit your plays to Estrogenius. 
I can tell you who the Board of Directors of the 501c(3) were at least. When they decided to close Theatresource at 177 MacDougal Street. Courtney Birnbaum, Andrew Frank, Eric Laufer, Matthew Quint, Melissa Riker, Doug Silver, and Jennifer Thatcher*.
So you're not really interested in working with those people anymore.
Why would I work with asses who destroyed my theater?
Ah. Good point. I'll have another beer then.
The grape vodka makes for very good shots.

*Although Jennifer Thatcher signed her name on some emails as being a member of the Board, she probably wasn't. And the Board hadn't filed their paperwork with the State so New York has no record of the then-current members of the Board.

Eleven Grips with Color and Tasks

The Eleven Rig is just a rigged cartoon dude.
Dollygrippery has an interesting complaint about Arri Alexa cameras and how they're only connected at one 3"x3" point to the head, which makes them wobble a bit more than film cameras. Which is... interesting.
Do you like budgets? Here's a budget for a $100,000 picture. (H/T to Kevin Kangas). No post-production expenses are included though...

I am digging this one-color version of our new logo. See? One color. The "white" is whatever the under-color is. Even if the under-color is black it would be cool. Barely legible but cool. Or, you know, it could be two color but the second color is white.
Here's a color-conversion tool that will calculate RGB and hex values and CMYK. Knock yourself out.
I'm experimenting with Do. It's a project management web application. We'll see how it works out.

Germanback

Joe Chapman turned me onto the back cover of the German DVD of Android Insurrection. Dig it.

You know that the whole idea that there's the "Philadelphia Desert" is Montserrat Mendez', right? And I've just stolen it and used it in other movies because I'm evil.
Kampfroboter!

Why I Am Cooler Than You

Is it because I'm so thin? No.
Is it because I'm richer than you? I measure my riches in friends and family so... er... no.
Is it because I have the new Delicate Cutters album on vinyl?
Yes. Yes it is.

Drew. Cooler than you. 

You can see the cool just drip off of me. Plus also too I got to experience the amazing sound of playing a vinyl album for its first time. The first time is always the best because they vinyl begins to degrade after the first play. But it does sound pretty good that first time.
My record is signed! By the whole band no less. And let's face it, the cover art is pretty awesome.

My innate coolness cannot even be defeated when I try to eat the record.

I hate to be that guy but boy, 12" vinyl is nice. Big artwork on the cover. The funny and persnickety way the needle drops down on the record. It's just fun to hold.

Spinnin' at 33 RPM.

I'm going to relax and listen to this record now. Because being this cool is just so tiring I need the break you know...

To Do Today

Fix up act 1 from the notes we have.
Clean up the dialog that Tom Rowen someone who shall remain nameless messed up by putting camera sound over an entire scene rather than the actual sound from the second system recorder.
Make the end title credits.
Try to figure out what our running time is. Right now we're at 76 minutes but we're missing some scenes and the end-title credits aren't built yet.

James Edward Becton looking a little bit like an elf, with Rebecca Kush in the foreground. 

Your Goings-On This Weekend

Dolf Veenvliet has a new project where you can design your own cross pendant online and have it made in sterling silver. It's called Shapewright.

Groove to Colors in Movie Posters Since 1914. Spoiler: there's a lot more blue now.

I'm incapable of not blogging with pictures of my sister's cat Pippin. Here he is overseeing my sister's work making a computer bag from batik fabric. Which will be awesome.

Pippin has his own collection of pens and pencils he keeps under your desk.

Noise Reduction for Dialog

There's a couple things you can do. One is to use a broadband noise reducer. This would be like the Waves Dynamic Noise Suppression. It helps eliminate fairly "steady state" noises like fans and traffic and rain and such. 

Another noise reducer is a Spectral noise reduction. I have one of these built into Samplitude. This is good for bumps, hits, and crackles (even footsteps). But it's a fairly tedious thing to use.

I actually cheat and I assign all of my dialog to a buss with (fairly heavy) noise reduction slapped across it. Then when things get really noisy I go in and add even more noise reduction to the passages which are a problem. Then I turn up the Foley or other background noise beds. 

Barriers to Somewhere You Don't Want To Be

I disagree with almost everything in the New York Times "Room For Debate" How Can Women Gain Influence in Hollywood.

To start with, as you might imagine my ideological bent considering what I do, I just don't care about "Hollywood". Like the old slogan for Film Threat: If you don't like movies, make your own.

So I certainly don't care about anybody gaining influence in Hollywood.

If you're waiting for someone to give you permission and a lot of money to make movies, then you aren't a filmmaker -- you're a waiter. Bring me my coffee.

I'm irritated. You're going to need this bunny.

There is something very close to zero barrier to entry to making a feature film. You can do it with an iPhone and a laptop (although, please, for the love of all that's holy, rent a nice microphone and a recorder if you're going to do that.)

"Leadership is required to recognize that “When Harry Met Sally,” "Bridesmaids" and "Lost in Translation" are not outliers, but clear indicators of vast communities of underserved audiences."

If that's true, why can't indys make those movies? Because I'll tell ya, those three movies were cheap to make. If someone could make a living drafting off of, sheesh, "Lost in Translation", believe me they would. The Asylum would be making "Bridal Party II" right now.

And, you know, for all intents and purposes and as far as you're concerned, I'm some sort of communist. I make fun of the theoretical existence of the "free market" all the time. But the fact is that every third Thursday of the month there's a massive free market experiment that happens where the actual video rental habits of Americans is used to determine what Americans want to see movie-wise.

That is, Blockbuster has to decide what videos it will buy.*

Now let's get real. They really don't care about the ideology of what sorts of genres they're selling. And yet still if they have a choice between buying some low-budget crappy romantic comedy and some low-budget zombie picture they will choose the one which people will rent more. And guess which one of those people will rent more? Think about which movie you'd rather see tonight. Take your time.

And "leadership is required"? You know what? No. Leadership is not required. If you can get off your ass and make a movie rather than whining that the big six studios aren't making the kinds of theatrically-released feature films you want to see then leadership is not required. You just have to make that movie. Without whining about it.

"Although women are more than 50 percent of the filmgoing public, predominantly male decision makers focus on making movies for boys and men, while systematically failing to support stories for women and girls."

What the hell are stories for women and girls? And why do we think that female filmmakers will make them?

"Hollywood is one of the only industries that does not take the female consumer seriously."

Well, I gotta say that if that's true it sounds like an opening for the 7th studio to come in and soak up all that money. See? There is actually a point to capitalist theory. If there's this great untapped market, I say you spend your money to finance the entity that will lose 100% of its investment take over the entire system.

Oh. But wait. You don't actually believe that enough to put up your own money.

"I am hopeful that the excess of leisure options will dictate that we all reduce our impulse buys and move toward informed choice of what we actually desire."

Oh I get it. I don't actually want to see the post-apocalyptic robot movie. I actually desire some other thing made by women but I just don't know what that thing is because I'm just sooooo impulsive.

Bite me.

And that's not even to say "Why can't women make post-apocalyptic robots movies?" Because they can. And do.

"Young women should believe successful directing careers are within their reach."

Wait, what? "Within their reach?" Do you have any idea how few directing job are out there? You know what careers are within your reach? Doctor. Financial Planner. Engineer.

Director? Not so much.

You're asking yourself "How few jobs are there out there as feature film directors?"

"According to the latest Celluloid Ceiling study, women accounted for only 18 percent of the directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films of 2011."

Wait. Seriously? You're talking about 250 gigs out there? We have a population of 300 million people in the US and you're worried about what might be a thousand jobs? Yeah. No.

"As a culture, we should embrace women in command. We should accept their eccentric behavior, and at times, the tantrums that come along with the extreme pressures of producing great work."

No. No we shouldn't. Tantrums come along with being an ass, not the "extreme pressures of producing great work".

I'm way not a fan of hierarchical structures (even though I'm at the head of one). But even where a hierarchy has practical advantages I'm way not a fan of ideologically celebrating them. They're stupid.

If you want to make a movie then make one. Stop not making a movie. It takes a phenomenal amount of work to make a movie -- get over it. And your first few movies will likely suck. So make some more until they don't suck anymore. (In my case that's "make a lot more until they don't suck anymore"). But just make 'em. Don't whine that someone else isn't hiring you. 

*Note that Blockbuster has hundreds of stores. They're still a decent sale.