French Friday continues

This morning I recorded Eric Hill's voice to complete my soundtrack for "Rockem', Sockem, Canister", my one take super-8 film which will premiere next week in Saskatoon. It amuses me to blur the line between the two Eric/ks, with Sirke playing Canister's on-screen nemesis and Hill playing the same character's voice.

Gerald Saul in Canister helmet performing lines for Erik Sirke film.

While I have suggested that Fridays this summer be changed to "Foreign Friday" where William and I would watch an non-English language film, the past two weeks have continued to be French. Last week we watched "Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia" with Gerard Depardieu. Today was William's pick. He passed over a lurid Italian comedy for "Les Enfants Terribles", written by Jean Cocteau. I think William was shocked by the seemingly unmotivated, inexplicable actions of the characters; lying to their friends and causing each other crisis after crisis. It was a fun way to spend a hot early afternoon. 

90 Gigs of "Grain"

My 2k transfer of my new 35mm film "Grain: Seeds" came back today. The only flaw is that the drive they sent was reformatted as a Mac drive and won't mount on my computer. I had to take it to work to check to make sure it is there. It seems to be. The files are stored as individual frames (about 7000 of them) amounting to about 90 gigabytes. I couldn't copy them all, having not brought a large enough backup, but will get it all sorted out soon. I'll be able to use these images to construct multiple aspect ration versions of this film including the original 1.33 to wide screen options. To my surprise, I can also include the optical sound stripe as part of the image (see above). 

One Take Super-8 event a success

One Take Super 8 in Regina, 2013, photo by Christine Ramsay

Tonight's 11th One Take Super-8 Event, hosted by Alex Rogalski, was great. I would have to say that it was a good batch of films, both technically and aesthetically, with a nice mix of experimentation, comedy, camp, and thoughtfulness. One of the highlights was Geremy and Erik's film, recreating Tampopo as paper folding instead of soup, and subtitled. I'm told that their subtitling was better than mine (we both used my overhead projector). Their's was certainly funnier and garnered way more applause. Well done. 

colour film by the book and improv with the boy

Couple of meetings today but managed to get into the darkroom and develop some colour film. I'm running out of C41 chemistry but found one last small kit of it at Don's Photo (they can't get any more after this, so will need to figure out a different deal). There is limited space to dry film at the University during the session (the studio, for example, is being used so I can't hang things there), so I just threw it in a bucket with a lid and brought it home to dry on the deck. It was rainy today but very very windy, so the film generally dried faster than it got re-wet (final drying before winding it up was on top of the pumpkins in the tv room).

 This evening William really wanted to go to the Combat Improv at the Artesian on 13th. It started off a bit slow but the second half was quite funny. William liked it all. Sat beside Jason Cawood for the first half and had a great chat. Jasonwas feeling old in this crowd. I decided that since it was William's choice to come, that I could average our ages to fit in. Eric Hill was running the lights and was stationed just over our heads. Even so, it was difficult to talk with him at any length.

Eric Hill

hot day in the city

Final meeting of summer with grad students this morning (a one day break from vacation). The house was full of kids again; the weather turned hot and I got back too late to take them to a movie so they watched Simpsons most of the afternoon. I met with Erik Sirke (who is now a projectionist at the Imax) in the evening to discuss a new film project. The only big outing was the "Living Pictures" exhibition in the park, held by the Dunlop. Above is Eric Hill taking the missing position in a reenactment of The Breakfast Club.

Filmpool premiere screening 2

Last day of Film 412 today. This evening was a Filmpool screening and Christmas party. Attendance a bit low but had some good chats with Eric Hill, Chrystene Ells, Berny Hi, Adrian Dean, Janine Windolph, and others.

worlds colide

This evening I went to Brian Stockton's "My Dinner with Generation X" which premiered at the MacKenzie Art Gallery and will be on SCN on Sunday night. Definitely worth watching. While I didn't participate in the conversations, I pointed the two Eric/ks toward each other so they met for the first time. A couple of weeks ago Eric suggested that it might be impossible for the two of them to be in the same place at the same time.

Mr. Saul

I'm not Mr. Saul, but I play him in the movies. My most recent, and likely last, installment of my "Mr. Saul" film series screened this evening with an assortment of other films at the RPL as part of the Filmpool spring premier. We also screened "Bonnie's Indescribable Predicament" with Eric Hill playing a live score on a keyboard. We had a question and answer thing afterward, no one asked me anything.

Batmobile lost a wheel...

Mystery solved! Eric Hill sent the Batmobile with a missing wheel! I'd thought of him as a possibility but given up the thought for some reason. Very cool surprise. Eric missed the Daniel Barrow performance at the Dunlop tonight because, ironically, he lost a wheel of his own (or it went flat anyway). The performance involved live movement of transparencies on an overhead projector, incredibly well planned and conceived.

I had a real vacation day today, I hung with William, watched Jonny Quest cartoons from 1964 (he loves them, as I hoped he would - they are adventure stories full of science and bits of magic and a great deal of suspending disbelief, akin to Tintin). I also sat for a few hours in front of my computer trying to work the footage Eric and I shot this summer to mimic some of Norman McLaren's optical printer films. Here are two new videos I posted: 1 + 2.

Last day for assistants

Today Eric and I spent the morning searching for prints of Jean Oser films at the Filmpool for a screening I'm curating this fall in Winnipeg. They have not been well labeled so some of the prints have found their way into odd nooks and crannies around the space. I found all but one of the important films, but I didn't get around to searching the storage room downstairs. This was Eric's last day being paid by me, although I'm certain we'll still work together in the future.
It was also the last day that Trudy is working on the End of Life series, although she says she'll be coming in next week to finish a couple of details.
I'll be missing working with them both.

William goes to school

William started grade 2 today with a new teacher to the school. He enjoyed his day.
I shot a few hundred feet of grasshoppers with a macro lens on the way to work then Eric and I solarized the footage, although much of it messed up. This is done by turning on some light mid way through the processing stage of the film. The last roll I did, I covered the wet will film grains of wheat before flashing it. I think this had some interesting affects. I've not watched any of it yet since I had to rush to a meeting as soon as the film was dry, then home to see how William's school day was.
I posted a new Delusia video, although admittedly this one was much better in colour.

got some sleep and developed some film

Felt pretty good today, got a whole 8 hours sleep last night somehow (not all in a row of course) and we developed a 100'roll of 35mm film using new colour developer and new colour bleach/fix, it turned out okay although not very colourful. The other colour rolls I did looked generally dim and brown, but I made up for it with 3 rolls of perfect black and white. I had a Filmpool planning session at 5:30 so we cut out early. Planning was good. William and finished his Ferrari Lego when we got home, I'll be posting a video on his blog later tonight.

less inspired today

I think all week I've been feeling uninspired. I've met with Eric three times and we've not done anything, I just think up reasons that we cannot proceed on a project and we go for coffee and talk about less practical things like a new superhero film. Perhaps I do need a vacation, but I've got too many things to do and only two weeks left. Getting stressed.
I wonder if it shows. Today, for the second day in a row, the cashier at Safeway has asked me if I need help taking my groceries to the car. Today I had two bags that I effortlessly carried with one arm. Why would they ask this?
George left town today. Before they left, the girls were over watersliding in our back yard. We then bar-be-qued some bison and Margaret's parent's house, took George and the girls to the airport, then went for second supper with my parents, who found William two new Bionicles at a garage sale that are older and no longer available. William also got to swim in their next door neighbor's pool.
I put up a new Professor Delusia video.
Margaret got stung by a wasp and her leg is all swollen, she's lounging and I should join her.

Apples and pie but not apple pie.

Day began with the George's girls waking up and me jumping out of bed to feed them, but not myself. I zoomed off to get some blood work done to test my tri-glycerides again (remember my liver tests six months ago). I've kept with my near-pop-free diet for 4.5 months so we'll see how that worked. My new hard drive finished formatting at about 8 am, about 10 hours. At work I met with Janine (who couldn't make it Tuesday). Gave her a copy of Marian McMahon's article "Nursing History" which may be important to Janine's thesis project which involves studying her family history using photographs as her guide. Email was down all day at the university, making it a calmer environment. Met with Eric for a while and primarily talked about a superhero idea we initiated yesterday. It's based on an idea he pitched years ago to Incredible Story Studio and was accepted but then never made for reasons unknown. Of course our version will be a bit more twisted, but he's been doing the most work on it. Went home early, stopping at Safeway. Why do people try to back up into diagonal parking spots? They constrict the lane as they do it, then when they leave (supposedly easier) they are facing the wrong way down the row so are idiots twice with that one action. Is it that hard to back out of a spot? At home I moved all the dvds into my new shelf. Finally back in order (alphabetized by director except box sets and animation/superhero). I picked all the apples from our tree in time for my parents, Margaret's parents, George and the girls back from the farm, and Paul and Mike to arrive for desert. Margaret made pies. After everyone left, I processed all the apples and made apple sauce.

Eric rocks 'em

After a somewhat fruitless day of going to work but forgetting just enough details to prevent me from finishing anything, I came home and was asked where the propane I bought this morning was and I realized I'd bought it and forgot to take it with me from the gas station. Anyway, they still had it so I did some bar-be-que and at midnight went to the Folk Festival after party where Eric played piano 10 times to the film we made, "Bonnie's Indescribable Predicament". We only had 8 chairs but played to a full house every time. Some screenings we crammed 20 people into our booth. Eric's fingers were bleeding. Tanya and Carle both made it, hope that Rob Bos comes tomorrow or Sunday.

I must be wicked

I can't every feel rested. I'm barely able to hold my eyes open as I wait for this dvd of the Guy Maddin-esque video that Eric and I made over the past week to burn so I can spend my lunch hour tomorrow with Eric kinescoping, in between my classes with my two grad students. I felt pretty alert while driving home the other day from Prince Albert, I credit the three espressos I had that day, and almost no food. I'm noticing that food makes me very tired.
So last week we went to Prince Albert. Paul came with us, so the car was full. In Saskatoon we had a Fudruckers burger and I got the new Douglas Copeland book, the Gum Thief, from the McNally and Robinson book store on 8th. We visited with Judy McNaughton and Michel Boutan in PA, seeing their studios and so on. There was a parade that was rained on by the bucket but we were able to hide out in the art centre. Day two was really William's day. We spent some time in downtown PA, in a used book store I found "The President Vanishes" by Rex Stout, one of the few of his books we don't have yet. We got some Lego on sale at the Zellers, went to the water slide for a few hours, then A&W for supper and back on the road to Waskasiu. William and Margaret went into the rooftop hot tub while I tried to shoot some film. The sunset on the pier was incredible. The next morning we discovered that the bakery nearby was pretty good and quite cheap, so we survived on pastry half the time. William got to start his Lego and we started each morning with Adam West Batman episodes on the laptop. The battery belt stopped working and wouldn't charge, so I couldn't shoot time exposures. I shot a lot of other footage instead, mostly beach stuff, and I sat down in the lobby for two hours and wrote out the soundtrack to one of the four Grain films, I'm pretty happy about that. I dropped my still camera and now the lens doesn't retract and it doesn't take pictures. I replaced it yesterday. I just discovered that the videos the new one shoots are not recognized by After Effects, grrrr. The next day was our last. We went on a hike and I shot more film, 16mm, super-8, and video (with a video camera rather than my still camera). Unlike the way up, I did all the driving back. Felt very in the moment most of the way. Not bad trip, everyone had fun. Best of all, no one insisted that I should wear shorts the entire trip!

fantastic last minute shoot

The Guy Maddin-style film Eric and I have been discussing got shot today. It required over 100 shots and I filled the cast at the last minute with some great folks, Carle Steel, Tanya Dahms, and Rob Bos. We shot it all in 3 hours and I just completed a first cut (no effects or sound) in another three hours. It's funny, but the whole cast has been mentioned, and labeled, in previous postings I've done.
Very tired now.

fast paced creativity

In the course of three hours I worked on, hmm, I think about 3 or four projects. First thing this morning (or about 10-10:30am) Eric and I shot footage in the studio to create homages to four different Norman McLaren films. I then set up the microphone for a recording with Elder Betty for the End of Life project and, while it was set up anyway, recorded an all new "Mr. Saul" soundtrack. After the recording with Elder Betty, I created and copied to transparencies, the title sequence for the 35mm ray-o-gram style film I've been making. All this while almost dizzy with exhaustion since William woke me up at 5 (I went to sleep at 1:30) and was dehydrated from the physical activity of the shoot (lots of physical movement).
Here is a silent first cut of a video we shot today in reference to McLaren's 1956 "Blur Test".

big storm and murder

Yesterday there was a murder three blocks from my house. The police had the whole block roped off all day. I've not read about it in the paper yet since I had to race off first thing in the morning, as
Tuesday is my teaching day, which means I meet with Chrystene in the morning (great progress on the editing, she's cut about 1/3 or more of the Sisu project) and Janine in the afternoon. However, Janine was away today so I was supposed to meet with Eric but he got delayed at the Christian hard core concert in Montana, so I was on my own. We went as a family to shoot some pin-hole images but the clouds had started forming and I needed six seconds per frame. I got 150 before deciding it was not a good use of time so we drove back in. The storm, of major proportions, followed us. I had a Filmpool meeting and just after I arrived, the wind and rain and hail just crushed everything. We watched chairs from the patio below on Scarth street get blown down the block. Amazing.