high school grad

I was really tired yesterday and couldn't even summarize my project. It went pretty well. Somehow I managed to fit all of the gear into my Mazda (with its new clutch, boy can it go now), there were three lighting kits (including one new large one that contained 5 lights) plus three cameras (each in a large case) and a video projector, 3 tripods, mic stands, 2 large grip stands, wireless mics, and bags of cables and other gak. I got the perfect spot in front of the hotel, you know the one that you never get, and unloaded. I missed plugging the meter a couple of times but never got a ticket. I forgot a couple of minor things but they proved inconsequential until I realized that the boxes of tapes I brought contain 5 each, rather than the 6 I had imagined, so we would likely run out. The lunch time was a rush as we had to set up lights for interviews in the space were lunch was served, so we couldn't do that until lunch was over, and at the same time set up lights for a third camera in a hotel room upstairs (it was the first time I've ever been in one of the Hotel Sask rooms, you know how it is that you are never in hotels in your own city unless you... well, I'm never in hotels in my own city). After the set up was complete and shooting recommenced, I drove off to get more tapes, leaving the dream spot behind. When I returned 25 minutes later, the spot was still open! The end of the day came soon enough, the student assistants did all the shooting and I mainly just observed and advised. The big work is really ahead of me, to try to weave all of this footage together into something focused and concise and useful to watch. I'll keep you updated.

Had coffee with Kevin at the Bay today. More lucky parking, got the spot right across from the front door of the store with nearly an hour credit still on the meter. The cafe there in the store does a nice cappuccino and they bake their own pies and biscotti. I had the lemon meringue, yum.

This afternoon I paid bills, bought a terabyte drive for the above project, and put together my triceratops stikfas and made an animated film with it using my intel webcam. My friend June was in town a couple of months ago and she was looking for these and thought they might work well animated, Wikapedia says they can as well, but no one seemed to have them but the other day I saw them in a comic store at half price so I picked up a couple. I thought that one was a samurai, but it was a hockey player - that gives you an indication of the degree of detail they have. They remind me of the old Kinder surprises, Pink Panther era, when the pieces had extra plastic to hold them together that you had to punch them out from before building. John Porter saved all of the extra plastic, I wonder if he still has it (who am I kidding, of course he does). So aside from the low resolution, the lack of focus, and the overall badness of this, I think it turned out well.



Got a message from Dawn Henderson this evening out of the blue. We worked on a project, "Angst", back in the late eighties. I still think about those times, the shooting of a film that required darkness and carefully controlled light but we only had a studio with huge windows so we shot only at night for half the summer, it really bent the way we were thinking and had a profound affect on the final film. Great to hear from old friends.