There Is A Warm Feeling Here

One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite comedy directors.

Albert Brooks plays a man attempting to convince a casino manager to give back the life savings that his wife has lost at the casino.

Lost In America

Would You Please Tell Me To Stop Lollygagging And Get To Work On My Goddamn Movie Already?

Thanks for any assistance.

Some Inspired McCain Stencils

Courtesy of Bubs, some nice variations on the McCain stencil.

Unconnected Tuesdays

Geode

Beer

Bare-Assed Editing

A quick update of my progress with the short film, Streaking for the Shy.

All footage from the weekend of 08/01-08/03 has now been captured to my incredibly sexy 1 TB external HD, and I have begun the editing process.

I have spliced together the first several minutes of the movie, including the first of a series of scenes of bare-assedness. So far, it's going well.

I have a little bit of shooting left to do, which I'm planning on completing on September 6th -- I need the opening shot, a shot of some woo-woo girls, and some cutaways of the location at 37th and Loomis.

E.Y.E. Hurricane

Albert Brooks - E.Y.E. Hurricane

That McCain Sticker

Oh, you know that McCain sticker on a NO TURN ON RED sign I referred to in a previous post?

This morning, I peeled it off and threw it away.

Inimitable Stupefaction

Hi, please find enclosed more sound files pronouncing some of my favorite words.

01. diphthong
02. stupefaction
03. gargle
04. groat
05. nymph
06. oscillate
07. ad infinitum
08. crackle
09. hepcat
10. debouch
11. debouch (alt. pronunciation)
12. inimitable
13. frumpy
14. onomatopoeia
15. burgle
16. treacle
17. ninny
18. pillow
19. whomp
20. lanolin

Previously...

An Incitement To Negative Graffiti

Last week, my mom sent me this nice little article from the LA Times about pro-Obama street-art. She had sent it to me because she was wondering if some graffiti in Chicago referred to in passing was the same graffiti I had blogged about last November (I think it was).

This article got me thinking about the cumulative effect of pro-Obama graffiti. Personally, I think it's really positive, but I don't know if it's enough. I think that anti-McCain graffiti might be a necessary step for graffiti artists who hope to see Obama win the 2008 Presidency.

I don't really discuss my political leanings too much (well, apart from that Go Away, Bush thingie on my right sidebar), but I do not want John McCain to win.

I feel kinda weird about writing a post that attempts to inspire others to attack another person. Well, I'm not so much asking people to attack McCain, but discuss his policies, and why he would be a terrible President. Still, maybe I shouldn't? Am I just being a wishy-washy liberal (yeah, probably)? I just wanted to say that in this incitement for negative graffiti, I *have* thought about it, and after thinking about it I still think negative graffiti is required to defeat John McCain, and that its use is appropriate.

Earlier this year, I found a post on Bold Lentil, following a linkback from my Obama post.

The author had created a John McCain stencil as a tool for any interested parties in spreading McCain "fever", and said people were free to reuse, change the text, etc. He was essentially doing what I'm trying to do now, but wasn't being emphatic about it.

Okay. This is the emphatic part.

Graffiti artists. Street artists. People who just like slapping stickers on shit in public spaces. LISTEN TO ME. YOU NEED TO GET GOING. YOU NEED TO TELL PEOPLE ABOUT JOHN MCCAIN. For every pro-Obama sticker you put up, put up an anti-McCain sticker. Get it?

Regarding the stencil above, I personally don't think the "BEAT IRAQ" message would be terribly effective. I'm thinking "PRO-WAR" -- "PRO-RICH" -- feel free to add your own succinct slogan in the comments.

As I was walking to work from the train today, I saw a somber, black oval sticker on a NO TURN ON RED sign. It had small white letters that read "John McCain '08". Any doubt I had about this incitement to negative graffiti immediately evaporated.

So what are you waiting for? GET GOING.

And Now, Breakdancing

Just because it's my goddamn blog, and I feel like it, a video of breakdancing from the 1984 show Graffiti Rock.

I am pretty sure that the breakdancers in this video got each of their names from an erotic lubricant (although I think I'll do without the Lil Lep, thank you very much).

Phew

Thanks to everyone and their thoughts, well-wishes, prayers to the FSM, etc.

I sat down last night and recaptured the footage that had gone all wonkily blocky with my initial capture. This time around everything worked!

I only have a few more scenes to capture, then everything will be in my cozy little external HD.

Onward and upward,


Splotchy

Embrace The Comix

Hi kids.

I have a neat idea. I have already contacted a few people privately about this, but thought, what the heck, it wouldn't hurt to put it all "out there" for any interested parties.

I am planning on doing a Comix Week at I, Splotchy later this year. As of now I am thinking of doing it during the first week of November, 2008.

What Comix Week is this -- during that week, the only blog posts I do will be in comics form. Any text in the post will have to be part of a cartoon.

I am the first to admit I am pretty awful at drawing stuff. I thought it would be neat if I could get contributions from a variety of people.

There are some stipulations to participating in Comix Week. Either the comics will be created based on something I write, or created as a result of my direct collaboration with the artist. What I'm trying to say is that I want to be some kind of creative force in any of the comics posted on the blog. All the comics posted during the week will be assembled into a digital comic book and made available for free download.

I'm announcing Comix Week with lots of lead time because I know it's not easy making the fancy drawings.

So, let me know if you are interested!

Oh, Snurf

I diligently logged and captured footage on the rest of Tape 1 and all of Tape 2 last night.

I connected my new 1 TB(!) external HD to my laptop via a FireWire 800 cable.

Next, I connected the camera to the laptop via a special cable. I haven't really done any footage-dumping to a computer, so it's a neat experience for me. I actually control the camera from the editing software I am using.

Anyways, the process of logging and capturing begins with logging the shots. Logging consists of marking start and end points of a shot, and giving it some sort of name. At this point your editing software stores the endpoints' digital timecode (there is timecode on all the footage).

After you have logged some shots, you can then capture them. Basically, you're giving the software a set of endpoints, and it will take these endpoints, find the relevant timecode on the tape, and capture the footage into a digital file.

Everything was working great, until my last capture session. I had logged about fifty clips and kicked off the batch capture process. The capture process has to be done in real time. In other words, if you have a ten minute clip to capture, it will take ten minutes to capture the clip. So, I let my computer chug for a while and came back to it around midnight.

Something is wonky with the last batch of footage I captured. Any motion on the screen goes blocky, mosaicy. The original footage does not look like this. I can't use shots with this blockiness. It looks horrible.

I am relatively confident that my footage is okay, and there's something else at play. Maybe I tried to capture too much footage at the same time, maybe my computer couldn't handle it. I talked to Lance, who told me, based on my description of the blockiness-in-motion, that it might be a compression problem.

I'm going to review the footage again tonight, and recapture it if it still looks crappy, but do smaller batches of clips per capture.

Wish me luck, okay?

Unconnected Tuesdays

Bannister

Marshmallow

There Is A Movie On My Computer!

So, I went over to my friend Lance's house last night. He showed me how to capture video footage to my computer, and also gave me some helpful editing tips.

Over the next couple days, I am planning on transferring the footage to my laptop. Shortly after, editing will commence. I still have a few more things which I need to film, and I need to do this sooner than later, but 98% of the movie is shot.

While we were messing around with the editing software, I took two of the shots, trimmed them and spliced them together. I played it back and behold! The juxtaposition of images! The magic of storytelling! The thrill of a conversation in a car!

It is absolutely pure joy seeing this movie start to come together.

Editing really suits my personality -- intense concentration, attention to detail, etc. I am looking forward to assembling this movie. It will take time, but I hope to enjoy every minute of it.

I still can't believe I'm making a movie.

Yeehaw, man. Yeehaw.