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I got 9 rolls of super-8 film back from the lab, including 4 rolls that Margaret shot of the harvest for me back in September. I seem to have been shooting with a lot of grey skies, so I'm not as excited as I hoped to be about all the footage. However, there are certainly some high points. Margaret got the grain being augured into the bins, flowing like liquid, the exact stuff I was needing for "Grain". I'll be optically printing some of this stuff. Speaking of super-8, my film "A Spin In Turtle Park (after John Porter's Cinfuge)" (yes, my longest title ever) will be playing in Calgary at the $100 Film Festival in mid-March. I'll be running the original super-8 film (not on video) and might modify the soundtrack if I can think of what to do with it (I've never been completely happy with the sound). It's supposed to be -50 tomorrow and I agreed to go to work for a meeting that I could have put off to the end of the week, ayiiiiii!.
I had an appointment with my eye doctor today. He said he was amazed at how well I could see, and that my bad eye has improved on some levels. He order me in some new lenses and he's talking about reading glasses as well to make final corrections for close up vision while my lenses are in. Only after I left did I realize what he'd actually told me which, obviously, is not what I want. I want something to help me read in bed before I go to sleep when the light is dim and I'm straining, not for a minor adjustment during the day when I'm wearing my eyes and have near perfect vision anyways (except for all the f@*#%ing vignetting that goes on). Those are not ordered, so I'll talk to him in a couple of weeks when the lenses arrive.

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Wednesday September 26, 2007

I'm in Victoria with no computer so this entry is a day late. I screened my film "A Spin in Turtle Park (after John Porter's Cinefuge)" at Open Space as part of the Antimatter Film Festival. It was a good crowd. Deborah, the director, saw me on the street and called my name, having recognised me from my previous films, primarily from the Toxic series. Also met Heather Harkins from Halifax and had a great conversation. She was also showing a super-8 film, just before mine. She's on ruite to the IMMA conference in Montreal - I don't exactly know how Victoria comes between Halifax and Montreal, but the world is always changing.

I finished Douglas Coupland's "JPod" novel on the plane. First novel I've read in over a year, quite liked it.

The hotel I'm in (Huntington) is posh. I've got a balcony and can see the ocean.

Margaret tells me that Keith Calhoon has put her radio show on hold for not talking up the pledge drive enough during her really important interview with Joe Fafard yesterday. If anyone is tempted to make a pledge this week, I'd do it only under the condition that Keith retract his hold on her show.

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.

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I sent an email to a local magician the other day, trying to book him for William's birthday party, and I'd not heard from him so I started looking through my junk mail to see if it got sent into there, and I found a misdirected email from the Antimatter Film Festival in Victoria accepting my film "A Spin in Turtle Park, after John Porter's Cinefuge" that I made on super-8 for the One Take Super-8 Event last year, in the style of John's film, created by spinning a camera around yourself, a technique John says he can do without a problem but that I was absolutely floored by, as I seem to be far less able to spin in circles than I thought I could, but therein lies the magic.