End of a (45 day) era

Bathroom wall is patched (still need some sanding and fixing of plaster and painting). We've not installed the lights yet since we are painting an area near them. It's the end of the month so I fulfilled my promise and shaved the ugly old mustache (45 days old). Worst part of the day: in the middle of our all day "End of Life" research meeting at work, Mary wanted a group photo for our forthcoming website so it will look like I'm being attacked by a caterpillar for all to see.

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".

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I'm trying to maximize my day and feeling both good and bad about it. I have some frivilous reading I'd like to do, and some tv to watch, but haven't because I've been working or on the computer or with William all day. Met with John and Trudy to get a game plan for the next few weeks for the End of Life videos. John and I discovered a shortcut for making dvds out of the Avid. I made a new video for William's blog. I started typing up my script for the next series of web videos I'm making, a 13 part serial called "Sock-vile". I did laundry. I drove Margaret to work at the Sherwood library and back again later. I picked up the new issue of the Buffy comic which I've been looking forward to for weeks, but haven't cracked open yet. I designed a spinning hand wipe transition effect that I think I'll use to combine all of the How to be an Experimental Filmmaker videos together once they are done. I shot material for the new one but have not created the video yet. I started working on a secret gift for my parents, although I still have no idea what to get dad for father's day. I watched some cartoons will William after school. I still feel so far behind.

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This morning I met with the Aboriginal End of Life research group. I had a chance to ask Elder Betty about William's concern that he shouldn't read any books after winter ended. She says that fantasy types of stories shouldn't be told after the solstice (June 21) but education based stories could be told.
This afternoon I finished a version of my website. I'm going to try to upload it with Kalyn's help tomorrow morning. I solved my sorting/data base issue with the spreadsheet in a crude fashion. I created hyperlinks to the web pages within the spreadsheet of titles. I then sorted the page in the ways I needed and exported the appropriate portions of the page for each sorting choice the website will have. Thus, in the end, the website just presents sorted lists, it doesn't do any sorting itself. To add new material, I will need to first add it to my spreadsheet and export it into the necessary choices (each film will be in a minimum of three lists; chronological, alphabetic, and at least one genre). However, after making a mistake with the list and having to redo them all, I found that I can do this update in about 5 to 10 minutes, so not a big deal.
Margaret got her hair cut and when she got home I shot my Warhol video of her. I've not finished all the manipulations of this video set, but I now have all 15 of the source images (see photo: this is not the background I used, I shot outside with a grid pattern from the deck behind her).
This morning the courier arrived with my three boxes of film stock consisting of twenty 100' rolls of 16mm colour negative, ten 400' rolls of 16mm black and white negative, 1000' of 35mm black and white negative, and the super expensive 1000' roll of 35mm colour reversal!
Tonight there was a retrospective screening of Ian Toews's films at the Filmpool. I wrote the program notes and am posting them on my other blog. Ian liked them, which is always the worry about such things.

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We went into the studio and shot the interviews with Angie and me for the documentary on the Aboriginal End of Life conference we shot last month. I've tried to stay out of the limelight on this project but since the focal point of this project is to be the process of researching using video, it does make sense that I say something. Angie also brought her sister, another Dr. Baydala, whom we also interviewed.
Finished up the session just in time to join the NMSL meeting where I found out that our lab downstairs in the Riddell Centre is going to move to much smaller space in the Green house gasses building very soon. I agree with the logic, but it will be highly disagreeable to the students of mine who will be using it, especially in the winter when they have to go trudging a block outside to get to the edit room. For myself, I like the Greenhouse Gases Building when I'm not teaching, I can pull up to the parking lot, go in, work, and leave without seeing anyone, isolated with no distractions.

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.

Trouble at the fifth estate?

I met with a research team I've been a member of for the past few years where we create videos on the subject of First Nations end of life care. This may seem quite distant from the other film and video work I tend to be involved with, and I suppose it is. It all started about five years ago when I was contacted by Dr. Angelina Baydala who had just joined the Psychology Department at the U of Regina, coming from Edmonton where her husband, Pete, had been friends with my wife's cousin John Bessai, who is a filmmaker in Toronto with his company Cinefocus. I've worked for John and his company a couple of times including, coincidentally, as animator of another First Nations health care film "The Story of Turtle from Turtle Island". So apparently Angie, Pete, and John all got together in Edmonton sometime before Angie and Pete moved here and it was suggested that she contact me, so I got a call. We sat down over a coffee and she told me about this project she wanted to do but how impractical it was seeming. You see, if you are not a filmmaker but you need a filmmaker to work for you, they are hugely expensive. If you have a filmmaker friend, they are often extremely economical. I think I get into more projects through friendships than any other way. I will either work with people I like, or I'll work alone. Working with/for people I can't communicate well with is almost never worth the trouble (for more about trouble, skip to the end of this blog). Given that my income over the past two decades has been through teaching, animating, or personal grants, I have been able to maintain this as a reality for a long time. Thus it came to pass that I got myself involved in a series of documentary/instructional films that has been able to attract funding and have expanded in scale and scope in surprising ways. The people involved are quite good hearted and I enjoy meeting with them. The videos are made by committee, which I've previously only seen fail, but with much of the heavy lifting of shooting and editing being done my a number of keen students, and with a group that seems to have significant mutual respect, the projects take shape. Today's meeting was regarding the video to document and contextualize a one day conference we will be hosting in mid-September. The video will assist other research teams to understand the process of doing sensitive research involving First Nations people.

Theremin is coming along fine. I started the wiring but am missing four of the quarter inch sockets, so will need to pick them up before I finish it.

It was extremely hot today so we ate on the back deck and played Trouble afterwards. In the photo below, you will see that William (green) won the game, Paul (yellow) did very well, even though he'd had a very rough patch, I did very well (blue) with my last peg only one space from the end, and that Margaret (red) had all four of her pieces still in the beginning base. I've never seen such luck.