Do you like your music concrete?

Then you're gonna love Zambri!

Zambri : Glossolalia 11/8 Kanine Records (Long Version) from Johnny Woods on Vimeo.

Sund Sund Sundrical!

• I found myself cleaning the bathroom at Theatresource today. There can be only one explanation for this behavior -- I'm trying to avoid work. 

Well, that and the fact the sink was really gross.
But the cold hard reality is that I clean when I don't want to do stuff.
Today's stuff I don't want to do is finish a screenplay and get the deliverables of Earthkiller out the door.
The quality control check for the movie found a couple of "holes" in composites. We found an extraneous bit of dialog (for which we blame Nat Cassidy because... because it's my blog and I can blame him for whatever I want on my blog. Oh, by the way, his play The Eternal Husband is playing a the Fringe this year, you should come see it. It stars the exciting and vivacious Karen Sternberg who is in Battle: New York, Day 2 and is stage-managed by the Martian Queen).
In the meantime I'm waiting on renders.

• We have a new General Manager at Theatresource. Stop on my and meet Jill!
• Brian Schiavo is shooting a new picture. It stars our lovely (and yet monsterous!) Virginia Logan. Check out stills from the first weekend of shooting.

Family Video

We've learned that Battle: New York Day II will be available in Family Video stores. There are 735 Family Video stores. That's about half the size of Blockbuster inside the US. Blockbuster is owned by the Dish Network. And unfortunately it's much less "friendly" than it used to be to indy pictures though. Back in the day they would stock art-house pictures. I mean really! ;-)

But Family Video is tres cool. Unfortunately for me there isn't one within 175 miles of my house. But if you live near one you should GO CRAZY renting genre sci-fi from them.
The movie comes out on August 23rd. Rent, buy, run through the streets naked with a copy in each hand! I know I will...

So of Course

Today is Monday. I'm trying to get Earthkiller to the lab by Wednesday. And the computers are having a gay ol' time crashing.
Which is typical -- because just as you get to the end of the project, the computers are being forced to handle the entire show at once. And it tends to make them crashy.

And so that's the way things are.
I'm running a quality control on all the Music & Effects tracks. Basically I'm listening to make sure that there's no dialog in them. Because English-language dialog would be the most harmful thing possible in the M&E tracks. Even if a distributor found some issue with a sound effect that was on the English Mix of the movie that wasn't on the M&E Mix, they might tolerate it. But some English dialog in the dubbed version? That would be a disaster.
Which checking things I've discovered a couple... er... amusing things. Like, for instance, I'd been downmixing from 5.1 surround to, er, mono. Yeah. And I hadn't even noticed. So that happened.
Mono.
I've also discovered, as my audio computer has been slowing to a creaky death, that sometimes the computer just renders out sound files... funny. And when I say "funny" I mean the render insists on placing a momentary DC offset and muting the audio. Which, let me tell you, is hi-freakin'-larious.

My Three Things Today

My especially photogenic buddy Chance is interviewed in Birmingham Magazine.

My cousin is a chef at Stir NYC.
There's a multi-media book for the iPad called, simply, Music. Ooh! Look! The Classical Period is free!

Sharon Fogarty

Sharon Fogarty, whom I've secretly been in love with for 11 years, has her play "Speaking to the Dead" published by Indie Theater Now. Sharon has consistently made some of my favorite theater ever -- full of magic and a dark kind of beauty which will haunt you.

Ridiculous Biographies

Ethan Rosenblatt was an original touring member of the Living Theater's Apocalypse Now where he played  underwater bagpipes and a self-propelled didgeridoo backstage.

Lou Clark toured Western Cleveland with the Crumbling Plastic Pantsnickers (on electric percussion) and Narwhal Saints before joining Tyrannosaurus Mouse in '68. After Tyrannosaurus Mouse he toured briefly with Thin Lizzy.

Arie Unterlinde managed the art-rock club "Minstrel's Gallery" in Philadelphia in the early 60's before the club was busted by vice police for violating civil code 609-2J "Operating a Motion Picture Machine for Aesthetically Dubious Purposes", he eventually left the promotion business and played keys with the touring version of the Narwhal Saints before joining The Tyrannosaurus Mouse Sound System in '69.

Women of Tu Na House

My buddy Ernest Abuba is directing a show for the Fringe Festival at Manhattan Theatre Source this August. It's called The Women of Tu-Na House. I can't wait to see it.
+++++
This all means, of course, that Theatresource is a Fringe venue this year. This is the second time we've been a Fringe venue. Basically, we take a bath on being a Fringe venue because they don't nearly cover our rent and expenses. But it's very easy for us because the Fringe takes care of dealing with the production of all the shows.

Animation

Sometimes I post things for my sister to look at. The Cicada Princess, via Kid Schlocko.

Cicada Princess from Mauricio Baiocchi on Vimeo.

I wouldn't give 'em any money. But the work is kind of neat.

The Best Site on the Internet

What is the best site on the Internet? This one.

Fun Facts

You can log onto MySpace using Facebook login. This amuses me.
So this list of words most-looked-up from the New York Times is kinda awesome. But they didn't give the definitions in the article? Waaa!

Play the Pandora Machine

Pandora Machine's friends have four plays with nominations for IT Awards this year. Congratulations all!

Original Short Script
Vincent Marano, My Baby, Ingenius Short Play 
Vinnie is a great guy and he's been improving my taste in Whiskey. He's also a brilliant playwright. He plays an evil man in Clonehunter.

Solo Performance
Nat Cassidy, Things At The Doorstep: An Evening of Horror Based on the Works of H.P. Lovecraft, Manhattan Theatre Source, Greg Oliver Bodine, and Nat Cassidy

Nat Cassidy and Greg Bodine are both awesome. They've been in our last few movies.

Actress in a Featured Role
Lauren Roth, Billy Carver and the Children in Mind, OptiMystics

This was a Montserrat Mendez show. 'Twas great. Mozz wrote Earthkiller and starred in Clonehunter.

Our producer, the Queen of Mars, stage-managed this show:


Performance Art Production
(un)afraid, New York Neo-Futurists
Sound Design
Christopher Loar, (un)afraid, New York Neo-Futurists

In fact she stage-managed Things at the Doorstep and the "encore" version of "My Baby".

An another Pandora Machine regular:
Ensemble
Heather E. Cunningham, David Ian Lee, Matthew Semler and Kristen Vaughan, Benefactors Retro Productions

David Ian Lee has been in our last three pictures and he wrote (with Nat Cassidy) the movie Android Insurrection.

Do I take credit for all their nominations and fantastic work? Why yes, yes I do.

Slurring Through Quality Control

I gotta batch convert some screen grabs. A lot of screen grabs actually. Our rep wants 300dpi images at "8x5 / 9x6 horizontal or vertical.
A 1920x1080 image is indeed 6.4 inches wide. But graphics designers tend to hate 72dpi images. Apparently this is just a change of metadata but the only way I know of to do it is to change the "image size" in Photoshop.

I'm doing a quality control listen to the M&E tracks of Earthkiller. I'm making sure there is no dialog on the track 'cause that would suck. If there were, we'd have to re-do the movie and that would cost money.
Yesterday Maduka, Robin Kurtz, the Queen of Mars, and I did the commentary track for Earthkiller. I have no idea what happened to me but not having eaten beforehand and then drinking too much alcohol is not good for one's ability to speak clearly. Apparently. So I slur through the whole thing.

Neuro-Gen 6

Friend of the Pandora Machine Jeff Hippolito made a teaser for his animated TV-series, "Neuro-Gen 6". This is done all in Blender at Jeff's groovy mo-cap studio in Midtown.

If the above version doesn't work, try this one: