Incredible

(Image: William and cousin's on Tom Sukanen's ship)

I am starting to get back on track with my projects. I think it takes the completion of some important tasks for me to start feeling positive about what I'm doing. For example, today I had the music from yesterday under my belt and was able to start laying it out with the picture and suddenly I'm able to imagine finishing the project (Modern) rather than it being another albatross around my neck. As well, I think the long End of Life documentary is a step closer; I reviewed a work in progress today and it is able to go to it's next step (audio correction and sweetening). Next Tuesday we record again and I should also be able to get some incidental music for "Grain" recorded and be able to complete that film. On top of all that, I went out and had a wonderful time with William this evening, walking as he rode his bike. We dropped off William's old Dash (from the Incredibles) jacket for Gavin's son Jack. Jack burst into tears when confronted by me and his dad trying to put a jacket on him; completely inconsolable. I figure Jack must have thought the jacket was to correspond to leaving and that he didn't want to leave, especially with a stranger. Or perhaps he's just not as into the Incredibles as we'd be led to believe.

meetings

This afternoon the screening of the workshop video to the elders went well. I stopped at the Filmpool on my way home to review my notes with Gordon regarding the Filmpool five year plan as I couldn't attend the meeting this evening. I wanted to get William to sleep early so I had him in the shower at 6:15 when the Filmpool called, unable to get quarum for the Board, I conferenced called for 2 hours. Bed is now finally made after big milk spill in it this morning, so I think I'll use it.

it's not thursday unless...

Met with Mauricio this morning and we worked together to get some last minute changes to the End of Life workshop video before we show it to the elders next week. Half hour after Mauricio left town I noticed that one of the title we discussed was overlooked, so I'll have to get to that later. I showed Carl Bessai's Out of Orbit McLuhan documentary in class today. Interesting to see a slightly younger Elizabeth McLuhan in there; I'd not watched it in a couple of years - since before I'd met her. Was going to bake this evening but built Lego for first time in a month instead. Put two of the Mars Mission sets together that have been in pieces for about a year.

316

Eric and I set up to kinescope more Modern footage today. He's got some graphics work on the new Stephen King movie shooting in Regina now, so after the camera battery died I let him go and work on his road signs while I charged it up. Shot a 400' roll, that's another 11 minutes. It's made up mostly of new material, although it does have a couple minutes of stuff from a couple of years ago that I never included before including some with Tanya Dahms' microscopic surface images captured with a laser. I was amused by one video I created that has this image with descriptive text floating across the screen slowly enough that it takes on a deliberate video strobe/shift. While not really video, it is astoundingly video. This afternoon I worked on End of Life video stuff, starting to get really tough on it and trimming it to the bone. I'm getting braver and happier with it. I couldn't stay awake tonight and basically passed out between chapters while reading to William at 7:00.

261

Screened my new cut of the End of Life project, it went generally well although I feel strongly that it remains far too long (I cut it from 2.5 hours to 1.5 hours but think taking another 30 minutes will do it good). We also met with an artist who is going to do some interpretations of Elder Betty's dream that she feels is associated with this project; I think this will help us set the tone and separate the project from other informational films.
This evening I went to the Filmpool premier screening. Lots of good films, but I was certainly struck by both Surviving the Tribulation by Dylan Worts and Brent Braaten and Shuya Show, a gut bursting comedy done as if it were an eastern European film badly translated to English by Jason Shabatoski, David Stefanyshyn, and Jon Tewksbury. This last one I am looking forward to seeing the longer, 47 minute cut of, every scene hit. The only thing that bothered me about the screening was the lack of experimental films. It might just be the timing, but it also might be an affect of the shift to video screenings in some way. More thoughts on this later.

260

Today I got the new cut of the End of Life conference video authored to dvd. It is starting to look okay. John Hampton shot some great looking smoke for me. I had great shape although it was too fast. To make it seem more meditative, I've slowed it to half speed, it's almost impossible to tell. This is just used over the titles and intertitles, but it makes a difference. I'm scheduled to show it at our meeting with the elders tomorrow, so it's obviously been weighing on my mind.
While waiting for a render, I searched my office for the Golem of Socks again and finally found it. I was mistaken about having seen it recently, as it was in a box I've not opened in about a year. I shot a bit of animation with it, although at the end I realized I didn't have his flag stuffed into his head (how can one fly without a flag?). I'll be using him in some web videos later this year.

259

I got a message from Adam Budd today, he's a young filmmaker and performance artist as well as being the co-star of Mark Wihak's "River". He's out in Montreal now, trying to find his path I imagine. He's brave and bold, more than I was at his age or even now, so I'm certain he'll make his name known soon enough.
I spent time at the university today, preparing the edit for the End of Life screening/meeting/discussion on Wednesday. John delivered a tape of smoke (sans mirrors) to help give some style to the otherwise talking head piece. While the machines were doing their thing, I almost caught up with my filing. I have so many papers on my desk and in boxes on my office floor that I can hardly stand going there. It's taken me 8 months to file, and I'm not even generating any new paper there. I also spent more time trying to find the Golem of Socks doll/puppet. I know it is somewhere safe, but cannot find it to save my life. I search the house and decide it must be at the office, then search the office and decide I must have it at home. Grrrrr.
Margaret and I finished watching episode 9 of Torchwood season 2 tonight, dying to see more.
Based on something Paul told me about search engines only looking at sites that are updated, I've taken to going into my old blogs and adding new material. It's like a treasure hunt: I added a new piece of video to a previous blog this evening.

245

Chrystene was out shooting the last of her pick-ups for Sisu today. I wasn't able to join her, but the weather was good so I hope it went well. William was finally back to normal today, the tooth pulling thing threw him off a bit, and this being a five day weekend for him made it all a bit strange. As it is Saturday and there are colour comics, William went and drew his own. I try to "read" the images, but am invariably wrong. Then he told me the story so I ran and got the recorder and got him to repeat it (although many things changed in that 3 minutes between then). See video below.

I got into the edit room and finished my pass over the End of Life video. I have it down to 90 minutes, although I was hoping for 10-15 minutes off of that. Next step is to start making it look snazzier, some titles, graphics, 2nd unit images, etc. I also brought home the last of the web clips for my site, I now have all the content except new ideas that keep popping into my head, so all I need is my interface for indexing the film lists. Hopefully soon. Then I will be ready to put it on-line. I'm only days away!

We watched "The Mouse on the Moon" this evening. I've had it sitting on the hard drive for a couple of months, avoiding watching it since the disappointment of "The Mouse That Roared". These were both very funny when I was young, but Peter Sellers just seemed overdone and un-funny in the first of these films. The second does not have Sellers, but was directed by Richard Lester. He seemed to find humour in the script, rather than Sellers's posing, and in the end it was interesting for William (although he was upset that the rocket wouldn't go faster) and for us, as the political satire was nearly in tact.

240

Spent the entire day at the office today, mostly editing on the End of Life project. I need another half day to get the cut down to the right length, then some sound and graphics to make it presentable for our meeting in a couple of weeks. I've got an assistant who'll help with some of that work as well. I don't know where to buy sweetgrass anymore. You used to get it from Painted Buffalo on Dewdney but they closed a few years ago. There must be somewhere else but I can't guess where.
To break up the day, I worked a bit on the Flipbook computer, shooting a bit of animation with one of William's Bionicles. This is a software package that allows you to take single frames from a video camera into the computer and they'll be lined up as an animated film. I finally figured out how to shoot in colour (the trick being that the main layer that it defaults to will always be black and white and that you need to shoot onto the background channel, who knows why).
I also spent a while in my office finding missing elements for the website. I'll need to re-type a few things that I have lost the electronic copies of (I suspect a couple of them were typed elsewhere, perhaps the Filmpool).
William has been listening to a lot of books on tape before bed. Tonight I got him to record a Syd Hoff book (32 page Bernard On His Own) and have it on cd.
I am finally making use of my new 500gp drive. It has been sitting empty for a week. I have put all of my dvds into it (of my work, not my entire collection). I'll be able to burn copies of my work on the drop of a dime now (or about 30 cents actually).
I watched "Stardust" this evening. I've been really looking forward to it, it's based upon a Neil Gaiman novel that I listed to on tape last summer, amazing stuff. I was certainly not disappointed in the movie, but was disappointed that Margaret was feeling too sick and too tired to watch. We weren't sure if it was suitable for William (probably, but not on a school night, likely more for an early evening or a weekend afternoon due the occasional intense scene), so Margaret fell asleep and told me to watch without her. She'll love it, so I'll talk about it more after I see it again with her.

235

I was locked out of the editing room today, my key card didn't work even though it worked on other doors (thus it hadn't expired). They system administrator, Kalyn's card didn't work either. I was meeting my assistant about the End of Life project but couldn't look at it. It ends up that the battery on the door was dead. I never considered that such doors would need batteries but it makes sense. After I finally got in, I did get a bit of work done, as well as collecting some clips of my films for the web site in the other Avid (love having two edit stations in one room).


There was a lunar eclipse tonight. We got William out of bed and into a coat to take a look (temperature has been rising, it's nigh -20!!!). The moon has a reddish glow.

223

I spent the morning editing, partially End of Life trimming and changes, partially dance videos. I have two Avids in one room and I roll between them. This afternoon I came home and worked on my updated website, although I'm having so much trouble with the Dreamweaver design tools I might as well be laying it out with a typewriter and a jar of paste. I'm figuring out how to connect elements, but how to make things go onto the page where I want them completely eludes me. I missed the Gordon Monahan opening at the 5th Parallel at the university today but I saw his other opening at Neutral Ground, even though the temperature dropped from -7 to -42 between the two openings. Monahan is an artist in residence in our department and does some incredible audio installations using things like Theremins and modified pianos with new wires strung 50 feet out the back. The last time I saw him was in the summer, June and I sat in on one of his workshops at the sound symposium held here. We talked about Theremins and he's going to take a look at mine tomorrow to see if he can make the final adjustments so that the volume arm will work. We watched Ocean's Thirteen tonight, it was much better than the last one but I'm wondering why none of the female characters were in it and if that made it better or what? William went to school today even though he claimed he didn't like Bingo, which they play every Friday and is usually a strong lure to get him going. He changed his tune after he got his first black out today, the big winner.

221

I finally have my new video uploaded; "Madonna for Congress", the fifth chapter of my fictional "She Said" series. I don't know what was the problem with my videos over the past couple of days, I made them in the same way as before but the upload kept failing. This afternoon, as I sit here at home because William is sick from the antibiotic that his dentist gave him, I tried the Flash Video Encoder I got with my Adobe master collection and made a video one tenth the size of the AVI. In the end, it looks like a Youtube video, which is what I made it for. I'll need to make a proper video output of these, although I can't imagine looking at them on anything but a computer.
I got back to the edit room this morning, we moved the room so I needed to put all the external drives back on, and I was able to work on two avids back to back. I digitized the super-8 footage I got back a couple weeks ago, it has more promise that I initially thought, and I also started working on the dance footage I shot at the Secret Garden Tour last summer. I just want to make some quick cuts in that stuff, throw it back onto disc, and hand it over to New Dance Horizons. Primarily I got back onto the End of Life workshop editing, starting to work on the notes I got from our last meeting. We meet about it again next week.

221

I finally have my new video uploaded. I don't know what was the problem with my videos over the past couple of day, I made them in the same way as before but the upload kept failing. This afternoon, as I sit here at home because William is sick from the antibiotic that his dentist gave him, I tried the Flash Video Encoder I got with my Adobe master collection and made a video one tenth the size of the AVI. In the end, it looks like a Youtube video, which is what I made it for. I'll need to make a proper video output of these, although I can't imagine looking at them on anything but a computer.
I got back to the edit room this morning, we moved the room so I needed to put all the external drives back on, and I was able to work on two avids back to back. I digitized the super-8 footage I got back a couple weeks ago, it has more promise that I initially thought, and I also started working on the dance footage I shot at the Secret Garden Tour last summer. I just want to make some quick cuts in that stuff, throw it back onto disc, and hand it over to New Dance Horizons. Primarily I got back onto the End of Life workshop editing, starting to work on the notes I got from our last meeting. We meet about it again next week.

200

We had a meeting with Elder Ken and Elder Betty today and showed the work in progress of the conference video. It went very well. To be truthful, the amount of material is so overwhelming that it really is hard to digest it and comment, other than on the fact that it is overwhelming. The video is sitting at 2.5 hours of continuous talking with one relevant idea on the heals of the next. There is some repetition, which I will now try to cut out, but the real challenge will be to create a pacing that makes it watchable.
Margaret found me new cushions for the wooden chairs in the office, makes a world of difference. Due to the office move and the two computers on the same desk, the large office chair I've been using no longer fits.
I just noticed a number error on my posts that I have corrected. It seems that today is the 200th consecutive day I've posted on this. I began a few days before my sabbatical began because I assumed it would take a few days to figure out how this all works. It ended up being quite easy and I posted the first time on that very day, back in June. It's been a fun cross to bear.

152

I went to the office for the first time this week, it's really really cold. I'm sure glad I'm not one of the striking CUPE workers out there on the picket line. The strike has been funny, the CUPE reps don't seem to be getting quoted very much, all I see is clean, clear press release statements from the universities and passionate and/or annoyed comments from students. There were 3 articles in the newspaper today and only one cites a CUPE rep and in it he just comments on how their people do 80-100 per cent of the work towards getting final exams together. I think they've chosen their rep poorly as I'm certain that there are more pressing issues and more dire/realistic situations that our attention should be on than photocopying. So anyway, while I was at the university I was trying to get a dvd of the conference made but I starting getting a sample rate error, which means that something was wrong with the sound. However, I started to export the video in portions, as there are 6 sections that make up the 2.5 hours, and each section exported fine until the last. I was then able to export it one piece at a time until I found one shot that was corrupted. I wasn't able to solve it before I had to leave so I deleted it and I'll re-insert it on the next draft. This evening I installed all of my software in my new computer so I can start doing something with it tomorrow.

145

After some morning work on the End of Life conference (the final chapter on respect) I spent the afternoon and evening concentrating on the new computer. I've not opened the boxes yet, I'm still setting the stage. I had to clear more of the junk out of the current office, preparing for it to become William's bedroom. Since our new office will be William's old bedroom, a much smaller space, I've had to find new homes for much of the stuff we have. These homes include the attic (where I moved things and resorted the space yesterday) and the basement edit room which has been a dumping ground for a few years now. In the basement, I deposited the short filing cabinet and combined it with another cabinet and some discarded shelf boards to create a table onto which I could put the abundant boxes of Christmas decorations. The previous home of the decorations, a crummy bench with screw on legs, was disassembled to be put into William's fort (the area under his tree house) in the spring. Other similarly complicated moving followed including the reformatting of the hard drive of the computer I stopped using last year but has been sitting in my dumping ground since then but that I need to get rid of. Tomorrow I'll probably disassemble the old desk and build the new one, then I'll be close to opening those boxes.

144

I edited another section of the End of Life conference this morning, the end of the first cut in near. This afternoon we went to Agribition, which is a huge farm trade show with lots of machines, gadgets, and most importantly, livestock. The first thing we did there was sit down and watch timed sessions of sheep dogs navigating sheep into gates and corrals. There was also a small but interesting display set up by the UofS Agriculture department with a student rep and a person from the dean's office there showing a fiberglass covered sheep stomach and a microscope with example so fibres that could be used to replace plastics. I'm tired and feeling dizzy now, so will cut this short. Sleep, wonderful sleep.

137

Today I spent the day in the edit room, got an assembly of the first two parts of the End of Life conference (22 minutes and 30 minutes), then got a chance to look at some of Sisu with Chrystene. It looks very nice, the scenes of the ship frame that I missed in real life (late August I think it was) were hypnotic.
I read that it only requires the energy of light to reduce 4 particles of silver halide to silver for the entire crystal of the silver halide salt to become an exposed piece of the grain of a photo. The bigger the crystal, the greater the chance to be reduced, but also the bigger the grain. Ain't books wonderful?
I took a workshop on how to make Bernard Callebaut truffles this evening. It was unsatisfyingly easy as they had the materials prepared and all we had to do was roll the stuff into balls, but they gave us the instructions on how to prepare the base so I'll give it a try sometime. I stopped and bought a kilo of Callebaut dark and 390 grams of white chocolate, so it'll be party time at our place.

118

Brett arrived but didn't knock, sorry to miss you, thanks for dropping the XXXXXXXX in the mailbox.

So it seems impossible to have an entirely good day. Mine started pretty well. I got some progress on my End of Life video in the morning, a nice lunch at home with Margaret and William, more progress on the dance video with Tanya Dahms in the afternoon, then I recorded my One Take Super-8 soundtrack with William and edited it, then attended a couple of films at the MacKenzie Art Gallery curated by Phillippe Mather which, even though they were in French and not subtitled, where quite engaging. Back at home, Margaret borrowed "The Cotton Club" from the library and just before we started watching it, I made the mistake of looking at her email to discover that CJTR have officially canceled her radio show, citing "lack of remorse" for not following procedures, and for not meeting with Ketih, the station manager with an out of control anger issue. Who stands up for the volunteers over there? I think they expect the cancelled show hosts to just disappear without a sound. I think there is going to be some noise.

116

Margaret took care of lunch so I spent the whole day in the edit rooms, the morning working on End of Life, and the afternoon finally getting a start on a video of a dance performance by Tanya Dahms that June Madeley and I shot earlier this summer. I had the material all in the computer and started at the beginning. At 4:00 I had a really elegant opening 5 minutes when suddenly I lost half of the footage! The media went off line and I could not manage to relink it, so I'll have to re-capture that tape next time and hope that it goes back together without me having to redo all the work I did. This evening William and I watched "Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie". I think they were going for a bit of a Rankin and Bass sort of thing, complete with a friendly on-screen animated narrator (voiced by Christopher Lloyd), but it all seemed a bit rushed. It was slick, but all too uniform, the characters move through the scenes with a smooth precision akin to Mario Brothers within a game environment. There was nothing really bad, but there was also nothing really good, the characters and plot were properly assembled but certainly conventional. Neither William nor I were inclined to turn it off, but I'm not sure if/when it'll be replayed.