work comes home

This morning I developed the colour 35mm that Erik and I exposed over the past few weeks; a total of 10 strips of 8 feet each. They turned out extremely well. I kept running into the counters in the dark room, either because I am off kilter today or because there is a new glowing clock there that was installed two feet away from where the old one was. I was short on time and had to bring the film home and dry it in the back yard.This evening Derek Olsen came over for supper. He's been in town all week doing some experiments with HD compression and blue ray discs through the NMSL. His feature is set to rendering last night but will take over 100 hours so it will need to be mailed to him.

actually going to work

Today was the first day I'm back at work and not on a holiday. It really wasn't much different that last week except that I was prompter about answering my email. I went to the university and did some kinescoping (alone) until my battery died. I had to pack up and get home at lunch time so that Margaret could use the car - she's training someone this week so has put in a few extra hours. I worked on putting a compilation of "How to be an experimental filmmaker" together - removing titles and creating a graphic transition between each section. Carving the titles off brings the set of 13 down to below 9 minutes. William had two play dates over, Daniel and Rowan, and they played fairly well, although right now he is pouting because I've told him he has to have a bath instead of watching more cartoons (we finished the Justice League series after supper). Gavin DeLint dropped in with discs I lent him and to pick up discs he lent me. I was going to drop in on him after the cartoons but decided that William would expect to watch whatever we borrowed right away, and that wouldn't work out well. (William got over his grouchy time after 30 minutes and is now reading a Magic Tree House book in bed).
A couple of days ago a stack of discs arrived from Deric Olsen with, what the two of believe to be, a video that Fazail created with me based upon a 3D scan of my face. However, the disc won't play in either his nor my computers. It was my last hope for finding this lost video. Now I'll have to find my notes on how the 3D scanner works and start from scratch (of course the entire thing probably took 4 hours to make and I've spent 20 trying to find the files).

358

Through some miscommunication, Eric and I didn't connect up until close to noon and I spent my morning close to comatose, cleaning my office and having it (relatively) clutter free for the first time ever. We eased into our work schedule, gathering stuff slowly and making our way to the classroom to go some more Ray-o-gram tests, on 35mm colour film this time. I exposed about 33 feet (perhaps 25 seconds) and have plans to do a large portion of the project once I have these tests developed. It will be about five minutes in total, featuring a lot of grain laid on top of raw film stock. Once this test was done, we shot more video footage of the Melies influenced "Professor Delusia the Nocturnalist", which should allow me to complete a 13 part cycle of them. Eric had an idea for music and we recorded it on the grand piano in the recording studio. I might run those as my next set of Youtube videos instead of the Golem of Socks story, "Sock-vile". Speaking of Sock-vlle, I finished typing up the script for it today. I'd written it a few weeks ago but had been carrying it around hand written since then, constantly afraid of losing it as there was no back up anywhere. I always like to have a back up, although somehow I gave Deric Olsen the only copy of a video Fazail made for me based around a 3D scan of my face. Deric moved on Montana a year ago and is now in the middle of moving to Lethbridge again and has just found a disc which might be the one in question. Therefore, I might have that animation again: my hope was to use it as an intro to some of my dvds with a loud noise.

215

I spent the day trying to complete my annual information forms for work (a summary of my activities, screenings, committees, classes, and other stuff I did last year) but instead I fussed around with my two computers. I finally got them to both access the internet via the wireless router, and the laptop will also have access. With Paul's help, we also got them both to be able to access the printer. I imagine we'll be able to send things from the laptop as well, although that isn't set up yet. Anyways, finally at the end of the day i got back to my forms and got them mostly done, but for the information I forgot at the office. I can easily finish it up tomorrow since I'm not being reviewed this year and a day more or less won't kill anyone (the paperwork is looked at only by the department head and put on file until peer review next year).
I talked with Deric for a while, he called out of the blue just to chat. He's teaching down in Montana now, things are going well. We mostly talked about the kids. He's won an award at a festival in Calgary so he'll be going up to receive that next week.
I saw the thinnest icicle I've ever seen today. It looked like a strand of glass hanging off the edge of the deck railing. When the deck was touched, it shimmered and vibrated like a tuning fork. It was sublime.

There's no better kinds

We were off to Moose Jaw again today, observing the production of "Sisu" at the Sukanen Village just south of there. We've never figured out how to communicate with William that when he is supposed to be quiet, that means NO talking, not just whispering. He loves to fill the silence, which is absolutely adorable except when you are on a film set. Anyway, the space was big so even though I could hear him, the odds are that he would be drowned out by the other abundant background noises such as distant (and not so distant) traffic and wind (it was really windy today). Today we watched as they shot a key friendship scene between Tom Sukanen (the main character) and Vic (another local farmer and Tom's only friend). Tom tells a joke which is as unexpected as it is not funny. The delivery was very well done by star the picture Don Wood. It is obvious how much Don has put into practicing the accent an mannerisms that make up this character. His body language, pacing, and delivery are extraordinary, he comes across as someone who seems to be struggling to speak and saying very little, not because he is unintelligent but because he has so much going on in his head that he cannot decide what words to pour out. In the image above is Don and Brian Dueck. I also had an nice conversation with Gerry Coulter who plays Tom's boss from Finland in a flashback to Tom's early life there. Gerry also played a roll in Deric Olsen's espionage film "The Phoenix Agenda" that was created as a graduate thesis film a couple of years ago. He might become a permanent fixture in my grad students' films if this goes on.