Violence on Campus

On campus today we witnessed an intense fight between the dread space pirate Squidmulon and Professor Delusia the Nochturnalist. It appeared that Delusia left the victor, having strangled Squidmulon with a poisonous snake, but the pirate proved not so easy to kill after all....

Professor Delusia's controversial scientific publications

Yesterday Geremy and I tried out the random science publication software and "wrote" a number of papers ready for publication under our pseudonyms "Professor Delusia", "R. Canister aka Canister the robot", and "Lague Corp".  I think they seem convincing because we have trouble understanding the usage of at least one or two words per sentence. We also looked at an art and film essay generator (which only created titles, not entire essays) and I found almost every title it created to be inaccurate or contradictory, so probably these don't read true to someone with science training.
They are all on my website: HERE. 

cold returns

Perhaps it was the rain, perhaps something else, but I was cold and unenthusiastic all day. I did manage to shoot more backgrounds for Sockvile but only after sitting and staring at them them for most of an hour. I did a couple of variations on the opening title, on strings and again on sticks.This evening at the festival the Filmpool did their screening under the stars. I showed a shortened episode of Professor Delusia because they were looking for one minute films, twenty in all, to celebrate the festival's 20th ear. It was raining and cold and the blues band (and I should note that I'm not a fan of blues bands at the best of times) played too loud and ran an hour past the scheduled end time. William didn't mind it for a while, he grooved with the tunes (see video below). Filmpool had to wait to screen after that. Ug.

Week in review

This is the biggest gap in my blog in three years. I've been here but tired and cranky with nothing nice to say about anything. I'm still feeling somewhat ornery and need to reserve my positive spin words for my student comments that I'm not even close to being finished. There are a lot of distractions and I'm frustrated that my grading isn't done. Who can I blame? Try as I may, I can't find anyone but myself and I know I can't be at fault. Perhaps there are mystical forces at play? The university continues to be busy and I've not managed to stay home a single day since the term ended because of meetings and meetings and meetings. I acted in two student films this week, one by Riley Webster and the other by Gabe Boyko. In both cases I played a tall, long haired film professor at the University of Regina with students who are not listening to my sage like advice. I got to use my well practiced "look of disappointment" in both projects.
On Wednesday I showed my newest film "Grain: Summer - I Can't See the Forest Through My Dreams" at the Filmpool premiere screening. It went well, people said nice things as they are apt to do at such events. The high point of the event was a 15 minute compilation of a few of Ron Mein's drawings from "Jerry's Journal". Ron was a student of mine a year back, doing a bit of animiation. However, these non-animated films are better for their crudity of both content and form. Check out one of them. I am happy enough with my own film, although I would make more changes now. That is always the case and I resist muddling with the past. I've got to start thinking about the future, planning my summer which is upon me. I posted a job offering for student research assistants and will be hiring in a couple of days. The agenda for them will be be help me finish my projects I've started (Modern and Grain) and help me make something new. I have an idea for a new Professor Delusia series, but perhaps it will morph into something else.
Over the past three days we have been getting ants in the house. Annoying.
William and I are going to try to make a Dr. Who project together with William playing the Doctor of course. Earlier in the week I told him to start planning so he took a notebook to school and drew the Doctor's wardrobe (see above). This turned into his real wardrobe, see below. We hoped to start shooting it this weekend but he ended up being a bit sick yesterday so it's not happened yet. I get to play the Dalek (see William's Lego Dalek on his blog). My main concern is trying to figure out the tardis. What I ultimately need is a portable William-sized door with a frame but light enough to move to different locations, allowing him to exit wherever the tardis lands. Once I have that door, I could map it onto an object and try to create an animation of the flying tardis. The rest is just acting.

good news and bad news

The good news is that my guest in class today, Michele Sereda, was really interesting and talked a lot about how a director can prepare with a script to be more able to communicate with actors. Other good news was that William went to a science fair and had a great day too. I also joined Paved by mail and sent in a Professor Delusia video for their Halloween screening. I also recorded and edited the soundtrack for my one take super 8 film "Memories of Uncle's House". The bad news is that the toilet is leaking again.

Halloween

William dressed up as Professor Delusia Jr. I ran a loop of Professor Delusia but due to the dimness of the image, my head was nearly invisible making it "the ghost of Professor Delusia". Ran it for 3 hours.

the next generation

Today I shot my One Take Super 8 film for the 8th annual event. This is my 8th entry, I don't know how many others have entered every time, maybe Shawn Fulton and Rob Pytlyk but definitely not many. This year's entry is "Professor Delusia Jr.".

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.

New Professor Delusia the Nocturnalist

New Professor Delusia.
Posted that this morning and spent the rest of the morning working on a rather frustrating, although easy, on-line cv for a grant application (finally got my part done, on time but two weeks later than requested). This afternoon Eric came by with the equipment from the screening (he attended an after-after-party until 8am, so much for quitting early). He recruited one of the professional musicians to play piano so he got to play host, it was often packed although there wasn't as much traffic in the side rooms on night three. We recorded the music he'd been playing so the dvd can be updated. Then home for some Jackie Chan (the Tuxedo).

rushing and napping

This morning I lounged around doing nothing until 11 am when I was struck with the urgency to get my film developed so I could get all of the Professor Delusia films in to a surrealist film festival in Calgary, so I got Eric to meet me at the university (today is Saturday) and we quickly developed 400 feet of colour film as black and white, dried in no time flat in the heat of the the noon sun, and loaded it up and transfered it to video and were out of there by 1:30. Margaret needed the car for an Artist Trading Cards session in Lumsden so we went as a family. The place was to capacity (about 20) so I sat outside of the main creative tables and ended up dozing in the chair. Then we went to Regina Beach, at fish at the Blue Bird (which recently changed hands but seems the same) and hung on the beach. The beach was nice because it had started clouding over so I kept my pants on and just lay around, getting yet another nap.

New videos

Two new videos for you today, one Professor Delusia, which was the first one that we shot and was all done in camera like Melies would have done them, and one video I've been playing with for a week on William's Lego blog. William's friend Rowan was over today and I shot material for another video, at their insistence, but have not done anything with it yet. New Dance Horizons' Secret Garden Tour began this evening, William and I went to a couple of them and Margaret is volunteering at one.

Angelos visists

We spent half the day trying to accomplish something, anything. We've been a bit fragmented as of late and it was getting to us. While I did re-cover an old kitchen chair last night with thick padding and red vinyl, William described it as a waist of time this morning. It took three trips to the hardware store but I did finally manage to rewire an old standing lamp Margaret found for me a couple of months ago - the wiring wasn't hard but the new socket has it's switch in a different place so I needed specific washers to jiggle it all to the right spot. Margaret is cleaning the deck so it can get stained, just a few years overdue: it was built when William was just turning two and he'll be seven soon. Then Angelos Hatzitolios called, he and his family are in town for the first time in years. Even though I was expecting them, I wasn't. It's written down but I've not been living by the calendar for so long that I never consult it. We got together for a while, he's here for a week.
I posted my new Professor Delusia video.

full day at work

I got a ride in to work with Paul today and was able to put in a solid 9-5. Eric, who seems to have the same level of exhaustion that I'm experiencing, slept in but eventually we got set up to shoot photograms. It took me about one hour to create 100 feet of this work, laying 8 feet at a time down on the slots I have and laying objects on top of it such as kernels of wheat. These images are of course the cornerstone of the "Grain" film project, playing on the idea of film grain and grain grain through the direct physical contact of the two and the drawing of the audiences' attention to the film surface. We switched to using a larger flash for exposing the film for these and bounced the light off of the ceiling. This allowed us to work on either side of the table and not have to be standing or walking at all during the process. I didn't do much developing of film (other than the first 8 foot test) because maintenance is waxing the floor in the student lounge and they moved all their furniture into the darkroom. We also did more kinescoping, redoing a bunch of the later episodes of Professor Delusia.

Monday break ins

Someone broke into our car this morning or last night. I guess it wasn't a real break in, as the car seems to have been unlocked, and it wasn't really a theft, as nothing appears to be missing. This morning, the door was slightly ajar and the ash tray was pulled out (I don't think we kept anything in there as far as I recall) and the cds were pulled out, but they obviously didn't know good music since the best of Dean Martin was not taken, nor any of the other treasures.
Eric and I developed a few hundred feet of film today. I mixed up some paper developer and we did some film with it. I also developed the roll I shot on Saturday, it looks great. I should probably get back to black and white high contrast film, it always turns out for me now.
I posted the first video from my new Professor Delusia the Nocturnalist series.

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Last night Margaret rented Golden Compass (which we all watched together, it's not bad) and Savages by Merchant/Ivory, which we didn't have time for and I watched this afternoon. Wow, very fun. At its best, it is akin to works of Bunuel, inexplicable events reshaping reality unapologetically in a bold, but non-didactic commentary on we as people. At it's worst, it seemed occasionally to be like a window into an actor's workshop as improvisation is taken to a nauseating level. However, most of the time it remains cinematic, with directing taking control of the scenes and taking the audience into the surreal.
I completed last of the 13 video series featuring Professor Delusia the Nocturnalist, burned to dvd and ready for kinescoping. Next they will go to film, be hand processed, transfered back to video and have the music (by Eric) matched to them. I've decided that they will be my next web video series since my Sock-vile set will probably take me a month or more to get the first episode done.
I bought one of Margaret's dad's old grain bins today for $100. I'm going to do something with it, although not yet certain what.

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Stayed home most of the day editing new videos for my Professor Delusia series. I put together five of them last week. Between yesterday and today I've edited six more and have footage for another two.

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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.