All Trussed Up and Nowhere To Go

After many hours I finally discovered that as my Martin D-28 is a pre-1985 guitar (1980, specifically), it has no adjustable truss rod. I did everything, I even dropped my cell phone down inside with a flashlight to take video. It was like looking at video of the Titanic or some sort of verite horror movie. Anyway, no available truss rod.


That is a video demonstrating the lack of available truss rod. Could be from a horror movie, I don't know. Warren Ellison is a luthier in Vermont.

All These Things Shall Come to Pass

I have to finish Carbon Copy. I am so close. If the computer would stop crashing (and if the antibiotics I'm on would let me focus) it would be done today. I just need some ricochets and some good action music.
The novel. I await the Queen of Mars' redline.
The opera has been stalled for months. I have the texts up on the computer. I need to make a decision about the opening aria -- is it about the bombs that fell during the war? Or is it about our man Felix?
The dragon movie -- needs a new last act. It's about 30 minutes long and animated.
Oblivion -- needs ADR and many more visual effects. O! That the visual effects could be done by the end of next month.
Alien Sky -- needs an actual screenplay.

Helping the Internet

The original

My fixed version

Iona's sprouts

Brine brussels sprouts in 1/2 cup kosher salt to 6 cups water for one hour.   Drain but do not rinse sprouts and put in baking dish.  Add 1/4 cup olive oil and roast at 350 till done.  I dunno know, anywhere from 3/4 to one hour.
Meanwhile toast 1/2 black mustard seeds in a dry skillet till they pop and toast.  Remove from heat and crush perhaps with the bottom of a glass tumbler.  Mix with 1/4 tsp kosher salt and sprinkle on top of sprouts and enjoy.

Premiere Grumpifly

Section 1: Premiere 2017
Section 2: Premiere 2015
Section 3: Premiere 2015

Yeah. Adobe Premiere really muffed up the update of Premiere and After Effects. The LUT's in Lumetri are totally bonked. And when you roll back to 2015 the links to After Effects are all messed up and you also need to roll back After Effects and bleh.

Although the required update to the NVidea 970 card finally fixes the thing where I couldn't see what hadn't been clicked on in Facebook on my big monitor because it didn't understand the gamma requirements.

Aren't you glad you read this blog?

My to-do list

The Russian word for "alert" or "warning" is Предупреждение apparently.

I'm working on the following projects:

1. Carbon Copy -- after three sets of reshoots we hopefully have the final movie in the can. It has to be done by the 24th. 
2. Oblivion (many vfx still need to be created)
3. Dragon Movie (animated)
4. Novel -- The Man Who Destroyed The Earth (being edited now)
5. Opera (The Imaginary Opera)
6. Alien Sky (our next movie which does not have a script)

That's pretty much the order of those projects. But I have other co-requisite projects which need to be done for my own well-being.

A handbook of how we make movies. Like a real and actual book.
A web-series about how we make movies.

A Baritone electric guitar (honestly I thought I might be done today but I won't be.)
A Telecaster-style electric guitar with a Bigsby-style tremolo.
A Telecaster-style electric guitar with P-90's (maybe?) and a hard tail. Semi-hollow-body

A ribbon microphone with a wooden body
A U47-style microphone with a wooden body

There's an exotic wood place over on the other side of Journal Square. I had no idea.

Multichannel audio output in Premiere Pro

This is relevant to my interests.
RedGiant's Denoiser seems to actually work. It can make stuff seem a tad "plastic-y" but that's what you get when you shoot in low-light at 1600 ISO. 

The Art Factory in fabulous Paterson, NJ is simply amazing.

Detonation Films has some dust storms. I'm still trying to get some good sand coming up off of dunes that are far away. Lots of detail. Keyed. Still looking.

I'd like a decent video transmitter for tap. One does need an FCC license for that.
If I'm going to do that I should get an FCC license for wireless microphones. 
Heck, I may as well get an FAA exemption while I'm at it.

Pearl Studios

Pearl Studios is a rehearsal studio surprisingly close to where I live.

Lifeform Trailer

Oh and here's the trailer for Lifeform

LIFEFORM Feature Film Trailer from Strangewerks Films on Vimeo.

Lifeform

Brian Schiavo's latest feature, Lifeform, is complete. It has Kate Britton and Virginia Logan in it!

Floot is Oot

I tried to repair a cheap flute by putting new pads on it. This did not work.
It did, however, make an aesthetically pleasing mess.

Problems included the screws for the swivel-rods that connect the keys being so old they fell apart while unscrewing, and a need to shave down the cork which I was unwilling to do because of how frustrating that is.

3rd Reshoots

Karin Rosnizek and BJ Burbidge.

 We shot more than 15 pages today. We recorded just over an hour-and-a-half of footage. Today.

The new hotness is the ArtFactory in amazing Paterson, NJ. A hundred bucks a day/person on set. And like what, 100,000 square feet of stages?

Center is Pilar Gonzalez.

Ashlee Mundy with the repo agents.

ADR in Premiere

There is some limited auto-align functionality in Premiere Pro. This is relevant to my interests as I have a bunch of ADR I have to do for the Oblivion movie we shot way too long ago.


I have three movies in post-production right now. I used to be able to finish movies so much faster. No more.

The back of the jumpsuit for the character "Boots."

Closed Captions in Premiere

It turns out that creating Closed Captions is not that hard in Premiere. I mean, it's a pain because you have to make them, but it can totally be done.

That's a big ol' shoutout to Brian Schiavo for turning me onto that.