Computer Troubles

Well, it seems we've lost a directory on one of our hard drives. It's the directory called "bloodmask cgi renders for timeline". You can imagine how important that is. I made a backup of that directory last week, and we don't have to do any new rotoscoping -- we just have to render out a bunch of things we've done for the last week. Bleh.
This is a picture of Pushkin which I keep as the "wallpaper" of my telephone.

I don't usually. . .

... post links to other blogs. But I thought this was interesting, as our last movie was a direct-to-DVD release. It would be nice if we could find a way to only make one feature a year and get paid well enough to keep that going as a company. But the only companies I know who specialize in D2DVD make upwards of 20 movies a year, with very small budgets, on 35mm, with stars. Geez. . .
DISContent: The Tortoise & The Hare

No Images Today

Look! No images! We didn't take any stills today, but we grabbed a few inserts of Clare getting harassed by a robot. Maybe in the next few days I'll post screen captures of our fun little robot. . .

Two shoes

For some reason, Laura Schlachtmeyer decided to take a picture of my shoes (with me in them) today in our edit suite at Manhattan Theatre Source. I was very busy at the time, rendering out a spaceship landing on Altair IV. I'm not too sure what I think about publishing this picture, but what else am I going to do with it?

I will help out the collection by posting this other picture I took with my camera of a small dog on 9/11 last year.

You'll notice that Laura's camera phone takes better pictures than mine, even if it takes pictures of dumber stuff.

In any case, I'll start out with this picture from my second feature, Apostasy. This is my friend Ernest Abuba lookin' cool as the angel Asriel. That was way back in. . . well, the image properties would imply 1999, but I'm thinking the photo was actually taken in 1997. . . I could be confusing that with another movie though. . .

Mr. Cuteness

Somehow, half the pictures we take on set are of the cat. Tony: http://www.myspace.com/djtonyk23 alerted us to the excessive cuteness so we had to stop and get the still camera for this.

Here's my myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/pandoramachine

I made Laura join myspace so I could have more friends and not feel so pathetic. I had 5 page views last night. But since Tony and Catie and Laura became my "friends" -- I'm up to 12! (Catie's little sisters have like 6000. . .)

Robot fight day

Fighting with the robot is slow going, that's for sure! But we got some shots off, with just a few more robot pickups to go. Everyone was very tired today. And Claude had a knee injury, but Laura taped him up and he was back on the field to the delight of the crowd. Here he is about to take a bite out of our alien girl!

Ato on L&E "Conviction"

Ato delivered an amazing performance. The guy's a freakin' rock star (indeed, he plays a rapper in this episode). But of course, the kinds of people that we are, we focus on the 40 or so frames in the whole show which look like this.

The Internet doesn't work so well this morning. Kinda intermittent. Tonight presumably I'm recording "Sidd". We'll see how it goes.

Further inroads made with Bloodmask's edit and visual effects.

SIDD

SIDD

So, for the last month I haven't posted. But the reason I originally started this blog was to keep my thoughts regarding the sound design of this show. Now the show is up. It opened. It got the worst imaginable reviews. And now it's closing.

The show is very good. I've been with it since Andrew and Doug brought it to Manhattan Theatre Source 5 years ago, making recordings, listening, enjoying it.

Tony's been the production sound mixer on the gig. But as of next Sunday, we're outta the Dodgers Stages. It's too bad.



Here I am with Michael Bevins (compliments of broadway.com), the costume designer of Bloodmask, er, I mean Sidd. Yeah, he did the costumes for Sidd, too. This was the best design team -- Chris Dallos, Maruti Evans (even if he didn't build me a spaceship) and Michael. Can't say much good about the stage manager (in fact I'm on record with the AEA for having described her stupidity to her graphically) but the design team was super-fabulous.

Man, I don't look good in this picture. At least Clair took that one good picture of me on the last day of principal (see below).

In the meantime I have most of a "garbage" edit of Bloodmask.

Even More Desert

In all these pictures that's Clare Stevenson in costume, and Laura Schlachtmeyer helping her out.

More Desert

We were pretending we were in Star Wars.
1. Andrew Bellware (a terrible picture of me), Laura Schlachtmeyer, Clare Stevenson.
2. Andrew Bellware, Clare Stevenson (obscured), Laura Schlachtmeyer.
3. Clare Stevenson, Andrew Bellware (shemping for Ted Raimi.)
4. Laura Schlachtmeyer, Clare Stevenson, Andrew Bellware (again, shemping for Ted Raimi.)
5. Laura Schlachtmeyer and camera (note the still-camera tripod, not good for smooth starts and stops of pans.)

In the desert

David took these pictures. That's me shemping for Ted. Laura has the floppy hat. Clare's looking not out-of-place!
Clare Stevenson.
Clare Stevenson.
Andrew Bellware.
Andrew Bellware, Clare Stevenson, Laura Schlachtmeyer.
Laura Schlachtmeyer, Clare Stevenson, Andrew Bellware.

Last day of Principal

Laura and I are a bit sad -- this has been so much fun, and now we just have some "B" roll to get! Today we had a bunch of people, including some new characters.
We shot the Attis 19 space station.
The always wonderful Jeffrey Plunkett played Advisor Carrasco.
Christa Kimliko and Sarah Matthay are the androids Chloe and Klelland. They were super-great.
Clare's husband Al DelBene played the Terran Ambassador (or rather, his drone). He barely got a chance to say hello to her before he got whacked. Behind him is Kim Vasilakis as a Maria-Class android.
Christa Kimlicko-Jones, Clare Stevenson, and Sarah Matthay as Clare's about to whack her hubby.
The Maria-Class (Kim Vasilakis) is about to come to an untimely end by the newly - sentient Trelissa (Anna - Karin Eskilsson.)

A Beautiful Day

I feel these are the most beautiful images I've ever shot.
That's Christa Kimlicko as Chloe, first under wraps and in transit, then with Aurora (Clare Stevenson).
Aurora (Clare Stevenson) reaches a dead end!
Clare Stevenson took this picture of me (Andrew Bellware).

A Big Day!

Today was the longest of all of the days on Bloodmask. We went 13.5 hours. In a "real" movie we would have been considered to have gone into less than an hour of overtime (we always take a long lunch.) But for us -- whew!
Lucretia (Olja Hrustic, whom we wrapped today) kills the Neuronecromotron (Don Arrup), while Aurora (Clare Stevenson) looks on.
Anna Ekillsson as Trelisa.
Aurora (Clair Stevenson) and the Androids (Sara Matthay, Anna Ekillsson, Ben Thomas, and Christa Kimlicko-Jones).
Andrew Bellware, with the camera (taken by Clare Stevenson).
Ben Thomas is a dead Edwards.