Lunch with mom

 Lori and I took mom to "Ginger Garlic" for lunch. It is her anniversary, but she didn't want to talk about that since we'd not brought dad with us. Meal was excellent, as expected. It was Lori and mom's first time there. Great prices too. 

Drove out to Lumsden afterwards and saw Barbara Mader's house and studio and get some bones she'd found and doesn't figure she'll ever use for anything. William will find a home for them. 

Saskatoon day trip

After the screening, we jumped ino the car and drove to Saskatoon for an opening at the Remai. I had hoped to see more people that I know, but didn't. Margaret spoke with some but I don't recognize people easily enough I guess. The first thing (after Fudrukkers) was having beverages on the roof of the gallery. Nice view and beautiful day. The exhibition was wild. It featured numerous sculptures, mobiles, and videos by the French artist Laure Prouvost. They must have gone out of their way to get lots of kids in the gallery, many of whom were armed with flashlights to illuminate the work and create shadows. The mobiles are made from found trash and all of them move around on a rail through the gallery, pulled by a gallery facilitator.. A pretty nice (and much more quiet) artist talk followed. We stopped from Starbucks on the way out of town but due to a complicated order ahead of ours, the take out beverages we got took 30 minutes. Got home after midnight. 

 

Screening rough cut

 Showed (and watched) Gumshoe for the first time today. There were a dozen people there including all but one of the class as well as a few others who helped through voice or other. I was liking much of it but I see it with the knowledge of what is yet to happen and how one thing will eventually run into and fuse with things on either side of it. Comments I received primarily suggested that it is too long, too disconnected, and/or too confusing. Comments sent me into a pretty huge downward spiral, which is also likely due to having worked on it to exhaustion without break for 8 weeks. I know there is something here so I probably won't show it to anyone again until I know they can see what I see. 

Donovan

Donovan was over this evening to record a radio show with William. William I first met Donovan when he was teaching the first painting class I took in the fall of 2018 when William was still in high school. 
 

Rough cut of Gumshoe

 I picked up the pace today and managed to get to the end of the film. Tomorrow I'll try to do some colour correction and will need to export it to HD so that we can run it in the classroom. I'm going to need a proper license for the colour correction software for the BRAW because the limits are too great on the free version. 

Some rough effects into film

 

Editing on Gumshoe project has progressed with some difficulty but I've kept up my quota of 10 minutes of rough cut per day. In a few instances, I've been adding some rough effect in such as a spiral into the mouth of the monster. As a place holder, I drew this. I know it looks like a five year old did it, but I have trouble with spirals. 

Turkey

 Had coffee with mom and Lori. Lori had a turkey that she wasn't keen on so I roasted it today. It was supposed to go from frozen to table in 3 hours but that was a lie. Had sandwich for supper then carved it later. 

Gin party

Margaret was off at a work thing while William and I went to Richard and Gerda's gin party. Lots of conversations with Jo and Norm. Drank my usual monthly allotment of alcohol before sundown. 

 

Book sale

Big book sale was on again. Smaller though. Seemed more like the enhanced leftovers from the last sale. I went at supper time which is when the least number of people were there, so I took time and found a few things.  Later Margaret had an old high school friend over, visiting from Vancouver. William worked on a video until late at night. 

 

Geremy

Lunched with Geremy and William. Convinced (didn't take much effort) to bring the spring rolls in a multiple of 3 (namely 6) instead of the menu number of 5. Afterwards William and Geremy recorded for the "Sunday Funnies" radio show.

 

New try at Judy's sculpture

 This is a purposefully mis-shot version of this image with three (or 4?) ghost images of myself within the image. I was trying, without much success, to get sharper images of Judy's bells. 

Gumshoe problems

I discovered what the source of the problems with the Gumshoe footage is - we accidently had the HFR switch turned on. This is indicated by a small label which reads "50/24" instead of "24", but the result is that everything was shot at 50 frames per second. I'm not sure how I'll fix it yet, but there will be a way. 
 

Painting

 William found me this old 35 mm camera at the university someplace (something to do with Robert's studio I think) so I painted it today. Cheap plastic but lovely lines. Listened to In-a-godda-da-vida on vinyl that I found a couple months ago. 

Father's Day

 

Sharon is in town. Saw her last night at Lori's and again today over coffee. She brought dad along on an outing and was in a good (albeit quiet) mood. William and Margaret ordered a new vinyl lp from the singer of "Of Monsters and Men". and it arrived a couple days ago, just in time for today. 

Foul day?

Had a really nice visit with Mooky today. I dropped off a bed frame, discovered that her second floor has low ceilings, and then we retreated to the front yard with the chickens. The sick one seems to have made a good turn since yesterday and the two of them were in good spirits. A duckling was discovered by overly excited kids on the street so Mooky had to intervene and rescue it. She eventually rode her bike around the neighbourhood and found the mom. 

 

AGR event

 Art opening at the AGR. Most of the people attending were part of a conference about art on the prairies hosted at the university. Talked at length with Jeannie Mah, Kevin McKenzie, and a guy named Dick from Calgary. I didn't actually look at the art. There was a projector problem which had everyone sent to the courtyard to socialize. I eventually felt exhausted and headed home with William. 

Convocation

 Attended convocation. The gym looks all right for the job but the seats were particularly uncomfortable and I didn't see as many people in person because there was no designated reception area. 

Started logging footage, labeling all shots by the page numbers. Editing SHOULD be easy after this. 

Lunch with Andrea

 The department had lunch with Andrea today. I forgot the painting I did the other day but Margaret drove it over to the restaurant. Went back to work and started copying Gumshoe files onto a new 4Tb sata drive I purchased for the occasion. 

Normal life is as busy as production life

 Came to work intending to dive into Gumshoe but realized that none of the edit stations have 3.5 tb of open drive space for me to use. Not even close in fact. Sat down with Mike Garcia to figure out a plan and eventually bought an internal sata drive on my expense account to use for this. 

Meanwhile at home, William is going hard to get drawings done for his Japan course. Mike is in town and came by for an evening of ice cream and games. 

Auricon for Andrea

Andrea retired last week and we're having lunch with her on Wednesday. This huge Auricon camera sat above her desk for nearly 20 years so I made a small painting of it for her to remember us by. 
 

Gumshoe day 7 - wrapped

We got the film close to finished last night. One final push was needed and I made sure that Matt could come in as he has the best intuition with the puppet performances. When Matt arrived and I had him do the "belly of the beast" scene with each of the gang (full sized puppets) one at a time. When the others arrived, we did a dozen other pickups and wrapped the set and cleared the studio for the evening class who were scheduled to use it. Feature film in 7 days. 

Gumshoe day 6

I arrived a couple hours early for the final day of shooting and created finger puppet versions of the four goons (Silky Ray, Fleece, Clog, and Turf Dog). We shot for 5 hours in the afternoon then took a supper break and returned for a big push in the evening. Kyzen is back and Geremy came in the evening.

With a big pot of coffee, we'd likely have been able to finish but I released everyone at midnight. I ended the evening with a surprise death scene that I'd prepared almost forgotten about. 

Stories of Kyoto party

We had a very successful get together in our back yard today. At least a couple of dozen friends dropped by (not all at once). The garage acted as an excellent staging area for drinks. We kept it simple. William connected with some old and new friends. 

Gumshoe day 5

 Had a decent crew for the afternoon with Matt, Dev, and Princess puppeteering. We shot a lot of the gang and got the Kraken's Hole bar shot. It is starting to seem possible to finish this. We had to cut off early due to everyone involved having social activities today. William has been organizing a party at our house with a number of friends as well as some of his classmates from his Japan trip. I've been completely remiss in organizing due to this film project. 

Gumshoe day 4

 We shot for a few hours this afternoon, but with Kyzen away today and tomorrow it was a short day and over before supper. I've been trying to copy the video files to an external hard drive but they are literally taking days. This has me worried about when I'll be able to have a rough cut. I assembled the giant monster puppet/costume at home this evening, as well as a bar (see image above) at the Kraken's Hole, a seedy place by the harbour where the puppets drink. 

Gumshoe day 3

This is another class day, so for at least three hours the entire team was together. Made some progress in that time but also had last minute builds happening. Team thinned out after class. William joined us but after class and did some puppeteering, but then he broke the watch that was very dear to him (the one that was lost and found again at the Tokyo airport) and I needed to send him home. I started working on the project alone and his a low myself until Geremy arrived with some observers from his robot course. Combined with Kyzen, the three of us shot many pages in just two hours including a vomiting scene which will certainly become legendary. 

Gumshoe day 2

 Kyzen and I mostly drove the day two forward, shooting another 7 pages. We did some scenes requiring composing like this building will be part of - shooting with a window frame in the shot. 

Gumshoe day 1

 Day one took a while to get off the ground. We got the first shot at 1:30, two hours into our day and four hours after I had arrived. We went another 3-4 hours and got a total of 7 pages (of 70) in camera. 

Painted the car

 Painted this car (with a few flaws) for Doctor Tocsins in Gumshoe. See yesterday's post for comparison.

Another Barbie car

 Got a smaller Barbie car for my sock puppets today. It needs to be for the hypnotist who sees himself as very cool but is also a bit down and out.