May 31, 2005

In the Jungle


We had a good weekend on the movie... got everything done that needed doing, except for one scene on Saturday. But we got MORE done on Sunday, kind of making up for it.

I'm pretty much braindead by now. Had a good half day yesterday sitting by the pool hanging out at Michelle's, but then I came home and spent a couple of hours making fake rocks (17 so far, unspackled and unpainted).

Sunday we spent filming by the pond. It was a JUNGLE out there! The tweeting birds, spastic june-bugs (it's MAY dammit), mating dragonflies, frogs freaking out, fish in the background, airplanes circling over the goddamned set all day, a freaking PARADE of trains hooting their horns in the background, and the usual assholes drag-racing at 5:00pm, regular as clockwork.

Anyway, the post-production crew is going to have fun converting these day shots to night, and the sound crew will have a great thrill coping with the background sounds. I'm sure.

Other than nature, though, the scenes were great. Our actors rock.

Next weekend we have a handful of dead extras, we are throwing rocks at the house (See above), and we are SHOOTING PEOPLE! Woot! First camera test of the pneumatic squibs. Oh, and we are breaking out a window. If I can get the mold release. Which I should have had Friday. But I didn't. Ooh, it's 9 -- I can call them and see where my mold release is.

And I need to sculpt the leg for the climactic eating scene. And mold the organs that have been sitting there for the last few weeks. And...and....

/whoomp.

Sorry, my head just exploded. Gotta go now.

Posted by Edwin at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2005

AWESOME!


A delightful blend of humour and trauma.

It's hard to know quite what to say. On the one hand, I'm tempted to make comparisons -- the adventure and rebellious nature of the first Star Wars (but with a good script, good acting, good directing, and decades of special effects progress behind it) plus the tension and drama of the first Alien (but with dialog, humour, and complex characters). The people in this movie have depth unlike any science fiction movie I've seen, except maybe Blade Runner.

But comparisons do not do this movie justice. Joss Whedon excels at character and dialog. And, apparently, at plot, pacing, action, and drama. And his direction is intense. And, umm...

Words fail me here. I guess I make a terrible movie reviewer. Where are the details I don't like? The failures of plot or character? I'm sure they are there... this is a human endeavor made by humans (however talented). None of us have achieved perfection.

But I place this movie in my pantheon of great movies. I will own it and display it proudly in my collection.

The next step is for _you_ to beg, borrow, or steal (kidding!) the Firefly DVDs. Watch the show. Revel in the characters. Cry out in despair to discover that Fox (the drooling idiots that they and their viewers are) cancelled it after one season.

And then buy tickets early for Serenity, due out September 30, 2005. I got to see it in a sneak peek. You should have been so lucky!

It's the best movie I've seen in years. Many years.

http://www.serenitymovie.com/

Posted by Edwin at 07:22 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2005

Stress Levels


Stress comes from many things and in many forms. Good things cause stress, sometimes, like a move, a new job, getting married. Bad things, of course, bring stress, like losing a job, getting divorced, losing your home. And some things are just stressful even if they are just emotionally neutral; not having enough time, doing too many things at once, that kind of thing.

Right now I'm in the "doing too many things at once and I'm not sure if I have time to do them correctly and I'm beginning to forget things" phase. The "forget things" part I try to compensate for with my pocket brain (my PDA) and external brain support (Marla).

But I'm otherwise still more time-challenged than usual.

Stress levels, I think, can be named. There is the "slightly overworked". There is simply "stressed", meaning you are tense and concerned. But eventually we get up into "anxiety attack" and "panic attack" levels.

A few years back in Halloween, I reached "anxiety attack" levels because of some work that wasn't going as well as I liked, that I was getting well PAID for, for a local haunt. It mostly turned out okay.

But now I'm drifting in and out of "anxiety attack" levels of stress, simply from overwork and schedule concerns.

I'm hoping I don't pass through "anxiety" and reach "panic". That would suck.

Posted by Edwin at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2005

Progress on all fronts...


I thought that I had put up an entry Monday! But then, I was so tired Monday...

Saturday was the first big day of makeup for my crew, with about a dozen dead to paint. At 1.5 hours for primary dead, and not enough less for extras, that's a lot of work for a half-dozen workers. Most of whom are pretty new to this particular task.

Hmmm. You know, I *did* put in an entry this week. But it's not there. I must have submitted it wrong or something. Argh!

Saturday I got lost on the way to the site. I took a different route, driving off of my mental map, and ended up in Elgin instead of Lockhart. That started my day pre-stressed. By the time I was done, I could have been used as construction material. Ugh.

Go ahead and laugh. It may happen to you one day, too.

Actually, there is a character in Ranma 1/2 that could have been modelled on me. Hibiki Ryouga. Look him up.

Also on Saturday were some bullet-hit effects. I used a tube, compressed air, and dust in gelatin pill capsules to good effect. In one case, I carved off a chunk of bark and the director and I worked on the underlying wood to make it look like he wanted. Stick the bark back on and then shoot it off with the capsule. Puff of dust! Hole appears! Very keen.

Sunday went a bit smoother with the makeup, but the shoot in general has been a bit slow. We are working on that.

The combination of sun and stress and physical activity left me about three-quarters dead on Monday. I even got food and sleep!

At work I have pretty much all of my critical stuff done now, so we are trying to get it to work with all of the other critical stuff. It doesn't yet, but it will.

Marla has her school loan consolidation information now, so that will be in place soon. And this week I need to talk house loan. Our landlord is getting itchy. I don't know when we'll find the time, though.

I think that after the movie, I really will take some slowdown time. I say that at each project, but this time I may actually mean it.

Nobody had better offer me another movie job between now and then.

Posted by Edwin at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

Breather

The last unit of time (days? weeks? I lose track) have been heads-down focused effort at work. This tends to shut other considerations out of my brain, as well as reducing me to a limp (yet tense, go figure) assembly of meat at home. Which impairs other projects, like the movie, my TaiChi practice, dance, etc... but so be it.

Right now, I have a bit of a breather, a slight break in the rush. But only for another hour at best -- until my co-worker comes in and I discover he hasn't done the bit of work that he was working on that we need for today.

To help drive my own work effort I've started drinking more coffee. It is magic juice for my brain, improving my concentration and generally helping me stay awake and focused.

But it makes a mess of my muscles. It makes my breathing shallower (through tension, I assume), which makes doing TaiChi properly MUCH harder. The pacing of the form is tied to the breathing (or, perhaps, breathing is tied to your pace), but if I can't breath slowly and deeply, I can't move slowly. And we are now entering a phase of doing the form reallllyyy slooowwwlllyyyy, and exiting the fast-paced saber unit.

So I need to fix that.

Oh, and I suck at staying vertical, too. Yang style is upright. When I work low, I tend to tip over to protect my knees. Gotta keep the center of gravity right or my knees hurt. I don't yet know how to stay vertical, operate low, and not screw up my knees. I think that the lowness and verticality are tradeoffs; I get one but not both. I need to ask Sifu about that.

It's all a bit frustrating. Other than the above issues, though, I'm beginning to feel my grounding, and my hip-tucking is actually beginning to work, too. So I think I'm about to be doing the form at the next level of competence, which is great! So of course, right as I'm moving past my current plateua into a new level of goodness, my limitations become glaringly obvious.

It never ends.

But then, that's the beauty of it. One never perfects the your form, only improves it.

Oh, and this weekend is a really busy shoot for Deadbacks. Busy busy busy, and a bit panicked with over a dozen people to make up with a fresh and mostly inexperienced crew.

Posted by Edwin at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2005

In the Groove


Have you ever been in the groove while working on something? You, the project... working together as one. The Zen, the Tao... a connection to the work that transcends mere skill. Some days the work is joy.

This was not one of those days.

I suppose the mold pouring was a success. I tidied up the backside of the model, I sealed the edges and corners. I poured over fifty pounds of plaster dust plus water into the mold. That went well.

If you ignore, somehow, the half gallon (or more) of plaster that burst through the edge and leaked all over my table.

I'm trying to ignore it. Later, I'll be trying to chip if off the mold basebord, the table, the floor...

Dammit.

However, the airbrush makeup and final-seal tests went well. That's something.

Posted by Edwin at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2005

Anxiety

Woke up today with a hazy cloud of anxiety filling my brain. Ick. I still feel vaguely depressed and anxious. Maybe with more coffee... the panic, paranoia, and palpitation so of coffee overdose are slightly preferably to my current sense of floating doom.

Maybe.

My hand hurts today from all of the clay work yesterday. It's throwing my typing off a bit. And I worry about arthritis and other joint ailments. This is really the first undeniable indication of my encroaching age. Joint pain. It's frightening. I use my hands a lot. I make things, you know. And I want to start doing more sculpture...

Next weekend is a big one on the movie. Seven undead, four living, and a stack of undead extras. That's a lot of bodies to paint! I need to test the airbrush and the liquid makeup. I hope my helpers are up to this.

Heck, I hope that I am up to this.

Posted by Edwin at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2005

Little Nubbins

My little piddies are worn to little nubbins... I can barely type... but I have the first half of the plaster block mold poured onto the leg.

I also did a bunch of finish work on the knives... the paint I got, though, sucks badly. They are going to need some different finish. But the trick knife is tricky. I didn't mess with the stuck-on knife yet, but I intend to still. I don't know when this effect is scheduled yet, so I don't know what rush I'm in.

Leafing through next week's scene list I got a little shocker... they scheduled a severed hand appearance without mentioning it to me. And I didn't even HAVE the schedule in hand until the evening of the 11th. That is not much heads-up... so I complained.

They really need to keep me in the loop if they want stuff to get done on schedule. I'm actually beginning to get rather cranky about this.

My time log only shows nine hours for yesterday's work and eight for today's... a pittance compared to the 12 and 14 hours logged on site last weekend! But a busy pittance, wrapped around shopping and some of the other realities of life that are getting harder and harder to schedule.

Most of yesterday was spent heating up clay to cast. Two batches. That stuff takes *forever* to melt, since I really don't want to burn it.

In between stirs, I did cleanup and prep work on the knives.

That was pretty much Saturday. Much less than I had hoped for.

Today I extended the sculpture, cleaned away the bad texture (damn hair, made a mess of things), gave it new texture (who knew that water coolers have such cool texture?), set it in a mold box, laid in backing clay, and cast about 50lbs of plaster over it.

I also painted the knives, inhaled fumes, ate lunch, went shopping, and wrapped the handle of my Saber so it won't fly out of my weakened grip tomorrow during practice.

Oh, and I e-mailed Robert to get his hand molded on Tuesday, so I can cast it Thursday/Friday to use on Saturday. Or was it Sunday? Not that it matters...

I also need to flip the leg and cast the back half, prep the capsule gun (did I mention I made a pneumatic gelatin capsule gun? It's cool...), and do god knows what else for call on Saturday AM.

I'm almost but not quite regretting doing this. It would be okay if only the scheduling was prepared in advance. Or, if Sandra is correct and they HAD the hand schedule for over a week, if they would JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN SCHEDULE earlier.

Okay... chatted with Sandra a bit. Sounds like I'm getting info pretty close to real time. It's just that "real time" is kinda last minute still. We'll survive.

Posted by Edwin at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2005

Experiments

I'm experimenting with the comment settings... I'm going to try to close comments on older entries to minimize the footprint for the comment spam to hit.

Maybe I could track 'em down and sue them for defacing private property, or something. Bob Apthorpe could do it...

I'll be off to brew some coffee soon, and then it's work work work. Some finances (gotta see how much I spent and prove it to Aaron), the knife, the leg.

Right now I hear the grumbling of an evil thunderstorm off to the North. I really hope the rain is minimal so they get a lot of shooting done today.

Last weekend I was espousing my theory that the movie industry settled in California because it never rains there. There might be something to that.

Posted by Edwin at 08:13 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2005

Friday! Ahhh, friday...

I should spell-check or, at least, re-read my posts. I find dropped letters and stuff when I review 'em... but then again, I'm not sure how much I care.

I bet this thing has a spell-check option. Maybe I'll look for it later.

Hey, it's Friday! I don't think I have enough to do this weekend...

(kidding)

Yesterday I cleaned up the (a) real, (b) trick, and (c) spare knife blades for Deadbacks. The person who designed the trick knife, and who I took the knives from because I can't help medling, started disguise work on them by filling in some blade details. After all, we don't want them to be obviously one brand or another of knife on screen -- apparently people are picky about product placement.

Anyway, there was a sizable application of JB Weld to fill these holes. So I filed the bulk of THAT off and then used a course polishing wheel on the flexshaft to clean up the rest. I then laid a thin layer of metalic epoxy (I seemed to be out of JB weld; how could I let that happen!?) over it to fill in some bubbles and level the fill.

Today I get to gently file it flat (so it's not wobbly) and then polish and paint it all. With any luck, we'll have three identical blades that aren't brand-specific in their shape.

Then I re-assemble the "real" one.

I may re-mount the "fixed" one, that is supposed to be stabbed into Victoria's chest... the mounting it already has is good, but the metal is a bit thick and long for easy of hiding. But it may be fine.

Then I make the "trick" sliding one. The trick originator joined two pieces of acrylic into a sheath for this that I may use... but I think I need to reshape them so this is actually the same basic shape as the orignal knife. My hope, however, is to use my nifty workshop full of tools to make the knife blade actually slide in the actual knife body. This should be possible...

I'm thinking of milling one (or maybe two) tracks in each handle half and then putting matching protrusions on the blade that fit into these tracks. Then it's just like a sliding door in a track.

There are complications, of course, but I'll burn those bridges when I get to them.

I'm not sure why I have a third blade, but I'm not going to complain. It's handy... and it comes with the spare handle I need for my attempt at the trick knife.

Hmmm... Oh, and I will be making the bulk of the prosthetic leg molds this weekend. I'll be wearing my sculpting hat a lot.

Posted by Edwin at 09:20 AM | Comments (3)

May 12, 2005

Casting a Thigh

Last tuesday I spent my evening molding a thigh. Not the entire leg. Not the calf. But a thigh. I'll be creating skin and muscles based on this mold, to be wrapped around a skeleton, to be used as a vivisection of our poor actor.

This is the first time I cast a thigh, and the results are very good. Though there are quite a few "bubbles" in the mold (I used the thick silicon, applied in a bit of a hurry) I will sculpt these out of the clay positive I'm making this weekend.

I made the cast from just below the actor's knee to up into the short hairs at his hip.

Think about it carefully. Notice the delicate hairs on the inner thigh.

Sure, we lubed up his fur with the approved materials; he did an excellent job of that, far above average I thought.

Sure, silicon doesn't *stick* to anything. Sure.

It does get a good, firm, mechanical hold, though. I know this from personal experience. I have thick hair arm and I did test patches on myself when I got the stuff. It tugs a fair bit, but the hairs pull
free of the silicon.

For my thick, coarse hairs at least.

Mat, the actor, has fine hair.

Had.

There are apparently several factors involved in how much a mold sticks to the model's hair.

There is, of course, the fact of lubrication or lack thereof. I used petroleum jelly for the areas where plaster was applied, and a silicon release for the other spots.

There is the mold material. Alginate binds hairs, but it is weak and lets go easily enough. Silicon binds hairs and is stronger -- so a good greasing is necessary. Plaster really sticks good, and is totally inflexible, so you better be diligent there.

I'm thinking that a soft silicon detail layer (like a thinned slow-set Body Double) will release hairs better then the fairly hard and thick fast-set Body Double. I didn't do that this time.

All of the above factors I kept in mind. There was one more, however, that I didn't think about.

The type of hair itself.

Thick straight hair release easily.

Thin, fine, and (probably) curly hair is more likely to bind in the mold. In this case, you may be safest using alginate or a very soft silicon in a detail layer.

The problem with any hair in a mold is that it creates flaws in the mold. Your best bet may be to just shave the darn model and be done with it.

PS: I enabled comments, disabled comments, and just no re-enabled comments. I keep vacillating on this point -- user comments versus the annoyance of blog spam.

The scale has tipped, at least for now, towards allowing comments.

However, I also put a pox on all those who would put spam into personal blogs. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits; may all of their beverages be salty; may all of the dogs in their neighborhood crap on their lawn; may goats invade their yard and eat all of their bushes. So say I.

Posted by Edwin at 02:56 PM | Comments (2)

May 10, 2005

LiveJournal

Okay, I exist on LiveJournal two different ways now.

Matt (mhat) created the RSS feed I mentioned the other day. It is called "ewiserss". I have my own page, too, which I may or may not visit to see what my friends are doing... on LJ I'm known as "MadSpark".

Just FYI.

Posted by Edwin at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)

Rogue Brain


Sometimes my brain works fine -- I can be clear, coherent, clever. My spoken words make sense and are relevant to the topic at hand. My plans and internal dialogs progress along rational paths to reasonable conclusions.

Other times, though, I speak deep thoughts that turn out to have no relevance whatsoever because my brain jumped the wrong associative gap ("It is better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt"... a test I often fail).

Or I try to ask a question and my words come out in random order, making no sense or using terms and references that are just plain wrong. My thinking gets muddied, my plans become irrelevant, my conclusions are marred by confusion.

I hate this rogue brain. It whines, it's sullen, confused. The people around it probably don't like it much, either, and that bothers me. I mean, I grew up with the damn thing and I'm kind of used to it, but I really don't want to inflict it on the greater populace.

I want to people understand that this... other... isn't my brain. My brain is the bright, witty brain that solves problems and is diligent in its work. My brain is likeable. It's this *other* brain that is so unpleasant. Not mine.

But I doubt I could explain it to people. I would say that I have two brains - my good brain and my bad brain, evil twins in my head - and I would lose them. Their foreheads would wrinkle in thought, but my words would be the words of the evil brain, confused, unclear... and mis-understood.

Anyone need a brain? I have two...

Posted by Edwin at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2005

Loathing


So, Matt and Paul have sucked me into playing a silly little online adventure called Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com). It's goofy, and it limits your play each do to 40 "adventures", though you can boost this number through various means. It's fairly fun...

I still haven't looked at mirroring this in Live Journal, and as busy as I am, I don't know when I will.

This weekend was our first official shoot for Deadbacks (www.deadbacks.com). It was tiring and we only got about half of the footage in the can that we wanted (if that), but it was still good.

Saturday call was for 9:00am, but most folks didn't drag their sorry butts out there until 10:00 or 10:30. There was some fiddling around and setting up and then lunch at 11:00, which put a big pause in the festivities.

After lunch, I made up Kodie (the lovely female lead, pictured on the Haunt section off of the main page here), which took an hour and half easily... the face took an hour since I'm getting the feel for this, and then there was costuming, some hair work, and I had to do her hands.

So we started shooting about 2:30 or so. Then we wrapped at 6:30 or so... having put about three pages of script to bed.

Sunday was going to be an *early* start, with myself and Kodi getting to the site at 8:00am so the makeup could go on early, and the rest of the crew targetting 9:00 again.

Of course, the thunderstorms put a bit of a kink into that. There was some conferring and analyzing of weather data, and we decided to trust that the weather would blow over by 10:00 or 11:00 and we could get another scene filmed.

THAT didn't happen. But my makeup on Kodie is getting better. We found a base to put down on her eyelids to lock the eye shadow into place, and the powder went down over it very smoothly. I was quite happy.

Instead of filming by the pond, we set up in the "studio" (located in a giant quanset hut on the property) and prepared to film indoor scenes. Those actors were slated to show up at 3:00, and they made it on time.

The set wasn't quite ready, though... but everything converged to filming by about 4:30 and we got a couple scenes into the can by 9:00 or 9:30 or so. We didn't break for dinner, but ate on the run as we filmed...

Marla was doing fill-in cooking while our primary craft services person was out, and though she approached this job with great trepidation she did beautifully.

Our new camera person (actually, director of photography, or DP) is an experienced and capable guy who looks like he will do the movie with us. Which is amazing, since he is paid to fly all over the country to film stuff... he brings a welcome touch of experience and professionalism to the crew.

The actors continue to be great, too. I'm anxious to see some dailies to see how this all looks on film. It plays great on set at least.

Standing around all day is wearing, so there is a bunch of goofing off and joking on set between shots as we set up. But the moment the DP calls "ready" everyone clams up quickly, the actors drop into their character, and by "action" it all becomes very real. You can feel the tensions, the fears, the anxieties in the air... it's like flashbacks to my first divorce. It's amazing.

Then, "cut", and the joking and noise returns.

It's a good group. I bet we make a good film.

Posted by Edwin at 08:08 AM | Comments (2)

May 05, 2005

Go!


Marla got me some books on the game "go" for my birthday... okay, I bought some and she filled in the collection, but it counts.

Reading them has been fun, but now we need to play games! For now, it will be Marla, myself, and our trusty computers filling in the void. Too busy to go to game groups and stuff...

Fun.

I got Nikolas a ticket to visit, so that will be coming up in about six weeks. That's cool.

I need to hook up to the Taiji Legacy competition soon, too. Saber has been a lot of fun, and I look forward to kicking some competition butt with my saber form.

For a while now, my Journal has been mirrored through RSS on Live Journal through mhat's journal. I've avoided Live Journal for a while now, but everyone is on it. I guess I should make a shell account and RSS my journal into it, so I can get replies and stuff and interact with people.

Maybe I'll research that in the next week or so.

Posted by Edwin at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2005

Pretty Dead Girl


Well, I just couldn't get up the enthusiasm to practice my makeup application, so Saturday was my first day putting the pretty dead girl makeup on someone. It turned out pretty good, and everyone appeard to be happy! You can see the results under the Haunt section of this website...

Now I even have a street-makeup person, a licensed cosmetologist, to work with me on set, so that fills a gaping void we had.

Thursday and Friday of last week I was putting in a new motherboard (ASUS 8KN-E or something similar), CPU (Sempron 3100+), and nifty 80GB Seagate SATA HD.

My computer now zips along beautifully. Everthing is faster... booting, processing, shutting down, the Internet even. It's awesome. I think that the espresso machine even runs faster.

It even hibernates and comes out as cleanly as can be, which is a first for any of my machines.

I'm happy.

Posted by Edwin at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)