the long the the short of it

It was worth it, but what a wait! This evening we went to the Sukanen Village Halloween event. We've wanted to go for a couple of years but didn't for one reason or another, but this year we were able to. Sukanen Village is a few miles south of Moose Jaw; it's were the steel ship built by Tom Sukanen is now kept and partially restored and where Chrystene shot much of "Sisu". It started at 7:00 but Margaret had been working all day so we didn't get a quick start, leaving Regina at 7:30. On the way, I noticed some interesting light in the sky on the pollution above the Kalium plant outside Belle Plaine. I'm certain it could look very cool with the use of some time exposures (Ryan, perhaps you could take a look sometime). It was a bit rainy so the sky was cloudy; this might have added to the effect. We didn't get much of an image of it, this was just shot by Margaret out the window of the moving car: We arrived at Sukanen Village at 8:20 and I really didn't think there would be many people since the signage was generally so poor. However, I was immediately struck with the image of cars parked throughout the ditch. We parked along the grid road that services it and got into a large line up. I soon realized that the line was moving very slowly, owing to the fact that they were only letting groups of about 12 in at a time, probably every 5 to 10 minutes. At 9:30, William's feet were frozen, owing to the fact that he'd worn his crocs. At 9:45 he wanted to leave but we were at the gate and kept going. Inside the building we were able to warm him a bit as we got placed into a group (I think they placed groups with children in different groups than teenagers+ so that the scare factor could be altered). We were then led out to what I thought would be the tour but was in fact another line. They had the canteen set up as a holding area for the groups where they could buy hot chocolate and snacks. We did so and moved, one table at a time, towards the launch area for the tour. By this point William had really made it clear that he wanted to go home but we persisted and, miraculously, we finally got our turn at 11:10. The tour was quite amusing and mainly consisted of us following our host, the only person with a flashlight, as we walked backwards quickly over very uneven ground and a variety of people yelled from the darkness or jumped out at us. A great lark. William laughed and laughed. He fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Incredible

(Image: William and cousin's on Tom Sukanen's ship)

I am starting to get back on track with my projects. I think it takes the completion of some important tasks for me to start feeling positive about what I'm doing. For example, today I had the music from yesterday under my belt and was able to start laying it out with the picture and suddenly I'm able to imagine finishing the project (Modern) rather than it being another albatross around my neck. As well, I think the long End of Life documentary is a step closer; I reviewed a work in progress today and it is able to go to it's next step (audio correction and sweetening). Next Tuesday we record again and I should also be able to get some incidental music for "Grain" recorded and be able to complete that film. On top of all that, I went out and had a wonderful time with William this evening, walking as he rode his bike. We dropped off William's old Dash (from the Incredibles) jacket for Gavin's son Jack. Jack burst into tears when confronted by me and his dad trying to put a jacket on him; completely inconsolable. I figure Jack must have thought the jacket was to correspond to leaving and that he didn't want to leave, especially with a stranger. Or perhaps he's just not as into the Incredibles as we'd be led to believe.

Sisu

Chrystene screened her film Sisu at the Paradise Theatre this evening for cast, crew, and invited guests. June and I went. It was really good. Some pacing issues we'd discussed last week did not seem to be an issue when it was so big on the screen. I had a nice conversation with Don Wood, the star as well as Don List, a filmmaker I've known for 25 years. Don talked about the actor who'd played Tom in the NFB short film, an ex-Roughrider football player. I introduced the Dons to each other. Photo: Don Wood with co-star Brian Dueck.

more storage

This morning I woke up early in William's bed because he was in mine and I couldn't sleep so I got up at 5 and made a few espressos to begin my day. I worked my way to the end of act 4 of A Midsummer Nights Dream, then at 8 started feeling very tired again. I met with Chrystene later this morning, her animation is looking great. She's been working on Kalevala sequences - Finish folklore - that are interspersed throughout her film "Sisu". Janine had to postpone this afternoon so I went Saskatoon berry picking then went to the store and bought a terabyte external drive for $160 (the two 500gb drives that I have in my 8 month old Dell computer are almost full and $160 seems cheaper than taking the time to thin out what I no longer need on them). That's 16 cents per gig, like Kool-ade - pennies a glass.

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.

teaching

I began the two courses I'm teaching with two graduate students today. Chrystene will be working on the post production and animation for her feature film Sisu, and Janine will be working on photography in many forms. It seems that the Flipbook animation program doesn't work with an HD camera, so it may require an upgrade for the footage shot with it to match Chrystene's project. After work we did lots of shopping including the purchase of hooks and stuff to hang the hammock we bought in Mexico, some stacks of DVD-R on sale for $3.97/25 stack, some chocolate to paint the biscotti I baked last night, and the bionicle Toa Ignika for William.

330

Today I sat down with Chrystene and we watched her "Sisu" film all the way through in its rough cut form from beginning to end. Most scenes are working quite well already. I thought it would be easier to see what areas needed to be fixed more easily, but perhaps the interruptions between scenes disrupted my ability to figure that out (or perhaps I just can't see them). It's running a bit over 2 hours now, so there is lots of room for editing. Digesting it for a few hours, I've been thinking more and more about the main character, Tom, and his relationship with his mother and his wife. This might be developed a bit more to help create a thread to follow his delusions and passions. Does he call to his mama when he hears the gunshot by the river as a child? Could he then whisper "mama" when noticing the changing seasons and freezing rivers? These small details may help ground him as someone striving his whole life to satisfy his childhood dreams (I won't get more Freudian than that).

320

Met with Chrystene this morning and took a look at more scenes from Sisu. I am hoping to sit down and watch the first rough cut all the way through around the end of next week. Looking great.
Went to Speed Racer with William this afternoon. Lots of movement, I got a kick out of it, especially the barbarians who threw bee hives into the other drivers cars.
This evening there was an opening at the Dunlop with a projection performance. Really good. My niece Michelle is in town and came with us.
My Youtube videos total number of hits reached 10,000 last night.
Tired. Good night.

245

Chrystene was out shooting the last of her pick-ups for Sisu today. I wasn't able to join her, but the weather was good so I hope it went well. William was finally back to normal today, the tooth pulling thing threw him off a bit, and this being a five day weekend for him made it all a bit strange. As it is Saturday and there are colour comics, William went and drew his own. I try to "read" the images, but am invariably wrong. Then he told me the story so I ran and got the recorder and got him to repeat it (although many things changed in that 3 minutes between then). See video below.

I got into the edit room and finished my pass over the End of Life video. I have it down to 90 minutes, although I was hoping for 10-15 minutes off of that. Next step is to start making it look snazzier, some titles, graphics, 2nd unit images, etc. I also brought home the last of the web clips for my site, I now have all the content except new ideas that keep popping into my head, so all I need is my interface for indexing the film lists. Hopefully soon. Then I will be ready to put it on-line. I'm only days away!

We watched "The Mouse on the Moon" this evening. I've had it sitting on the hard drive for a couple of months, avoiding watching it since the disappointment of "The Mouse That Roared". These were both very funny when I was young, but Peter Sellers just seemed overdone and un-funny in the first of these films. The second does not have Sellers, but was directed by Richard Lester. He seemed to find humour in the script, rather than Sellers's posing, and in the end it was interesting for William (although he was upset that the rocket wouldn't go faster) and for us, as the political satire was nearly in tact.

236

Met with Chrystene today, Sisu is coming along well. She's shooting her pick-ups in a couple of weeks. Still lots of editing ahead. I wanted to remember the comment I made about a scene, that we see Tom through these other guys' eyes because we don't see Tom. Hmmm. Makes even less sense now. I captured more clips for my website today (about 50 more) so I think I have pretty much all the raw material I need to finish it. As with Chrystene's project, still lots of work ahead. i was getting ruthless in trimming the End of Life video, I cut section one down from about 20 minutes to 9. Six more sections to go and I'll have something concise and to the point.
William started swimming with his class today. He'll swim twice per week at school and once with lessons. When I walked down to pick him up from school, there were the usual cars idling. I noticed a disposible coffee cup on the road, obviously discarded by some parent. It seems evident that coffee is the new cigarrette. After school William got his hair cut. In the water it is looking quite long, which I'm not against, but it is getting in his eyes and so far he prefers it shorter. Rushing directly from school to haircut, William really wanted a snack, an ice tea and a peanut butter cup, so I stopped at a confectionery. They didn't have as much of a pop selection as I'd like since most of the cooler was taken up by specialized water. Water has become the new coffee. I barbequed some chicken tonight, the weather was great for it. Reminds me that going outside isn't just for smokers anymore. Cigarettes have become the new water.

222

William's new antibiotics in capsules are a bit easier on him but he's still been a bit sick (no more vomiting but problems out the other end instead) so he stayed home again today. He's getting well enough that he's less able to just stay in bed and rest, so he'll have to get back to school tomorrow. He's finally getting the hang of swallowing the capsules. The dentist suggested opeing the capsule and mixing the powder in with jam. This is like what I had to do when I was his age, except with apple sauce. The pharmacist suggested keeping the capsule whole and burying in into a spoonful of ice cream. This seemed like a good idea so we tried it but he just couldn't do it and ended up with the cap in his mouth and the ice cream all gone. Eventually he's got his mouth trained to do it and the last two went down on the first try, just with a mouthful of milk.
Watched 18 minutes of Sisu, it is coming along well. Some issues around different actors, some being better than others, that has limited the ways some scenes can be cut, but it all seems solvable.
We went to see poet/art star John Giorno at the MacKenzie Art Gallery tonight. He was the sleeper in Warhol's "Sleep". The presentation seemed very 1962, although with a 71 year old guy doing what yoú'd expect a 20 year old to be doing, sort of beat poetry stuff. Bold and often funny, it would have felt better with a haze of smoke in the air and at least three drinks in the belly.

206

I'm catching a cold. My nose has been running and I'm starting to feel achy. Grrr, I hate getting sick. I've been reading a Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe novel "The Red Box", but keep falling asleep every two pages so seem to never get to the conclusion. It's the forth of these books I've read since the fall, they are pretty seductive but I try to avoid casual reading like this except when I've got down time.
I met a woman who used to live in Calgary and travels out west on occasion who wants to write a book about Tom Sukanen and his ship. She really only knew a superficial version of the story so I gave her a more expanded summary.

179

I went to Future Shop to get some great deals today, as they have their super colossal Boxing Day sale. I couldn't figure out what was on sale. I wanted to pick up the Angel series on dvd as the Future Shop website said they were on for $14/season, but there were no signs that this was true in the store, nor could a sales person be found. The line up was 20-30 people deep, even though it was 4pm and the sale had been on for 10 hours. I left and went to HMV to discover that Angel was on for $15/season, so I bought first to third. I also got Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer, as I think William and I will enjoy watching it again sometime ($10). This evening we watched "The Thirteenth Warrior" (borrowed from Kevin, thankfully didn't pay a rental on). It had a few moments that were fun, but we just couldn't figure out where the cave dwelling cannibals kept the hundred horses they rode into their raids with but kept hidden from farmers and vikings living a couple miles away? Speaking of swords and warriors, we put together William's dwarven mine Lego this evening. It comes with four great looking dwarves, some with two headed axes that required assembly, plus a couple of goblins and a troll. He has spikes for ears, William liked that. And speaking of well forged metal, Margaret was just reading that Tom Sukanen, the guy who built the steel ship near Moose Jaw, had such malnutrition in his last years while trying to complete this project that his teeth went wrong so he pulled them out and made steel dentures for himself. This isn't in the Sisu film that Christine is making, the prosthetics would have been very expensive even if she'd wanted to go with this angle. I wonder what they looked like? The only pictures I've seen of him are from earlier in his life, and I think his mouth was always closed anyways.

173

This morning I was able to look a couple of scenes in progress from Chrystene Ells' "Sisu" production. It's looking quite good. Of course, it's hard to tell with just a couple of scenes, a feature needs an overall rhythm and tone that takes quite a while to get right. Hopefully there will be an overall rough cut in a month or so and then she'll have a better idea where she stands.
Got William "new" skates today, traded in last years so it was a good deal. He's got a skating date at Teagan's tomorrow after school, which is of course going to end early as its the last day before the Christmas holiday. This evening William and Paul worked on modifying his Lego Batcave into a Lego Star Wars set, with amazing success! See the attached photo of the station where Vader fights Luke and Chewbacca is at the controls. R2D2 and a stormtrooper and a rebel fighter are standing by beside the fight. William doesn't own any actual Star Wars Lego (yes, they make a lot of it) so I was extra surprised. I took part, building a Lego George Lucas, but William didn't want to have filmmakers, just real Star Wars, so he took George's head off.

153

A less than quiet day today, at least at first. We met with William's teacher this morning. He is second in his class with his reading, behind his friend Teagan of course as she is reading at a grade 3 level, and his comprehension is high (I attribute this to the fact that we've never spoken baby talk to him and Margaret loves to define even the most grad-school-esque words to him in the middle of supper, and we wonder why it takes so long to eat around here). This afternoon I met with Mauricio who asked if I'd be on his committee if he is accepted into our grad program and, as I am familiar with his talent and dedication, I had no problem committing. A series of meetings with Chrystene and others finally resolved a dilemma that arose regarding funding for her Sisu project (perhaps she'll outline it in her blog sometime), and then a talk by Sean Whalley was, as always, enjoyable. He takes wood that is being thrown away and makes really cool sculptures out of it, he's now on faculty at the University of Regina. I've got some important reading I've got to get through in the next week, so Margaret let me have some much needed silence and spent the evening with William over at Teagan's family's house, leaving me to get ahead and even get started on some new "Modern" videos - WOW, the 2.6Ghz processor sure makes a difference with that stuff!!!

137

Today I spent the day in the edit room, got an assembly of the first two parts of the End of Life conference (22 minutes and 30 minutes), then got a chance to look at some of Sisu with Chrystene. It looks very nice, the scenes of the ship frame that I missed in real life (late August I think it was) were hypnotic.
I read that it only requires the energy of light to reduce 4 particles of silver halide to silver for the entire crystal of the silver halide salt to become an exposed piece of the grain of a photo. The bigger the crystal, the greater the chance to be reduced, but also the bigger the grain. Ain't books wonderful?
I took a workshop on how to make Bernard Callebaut truffles this evening. It was unsatisfyingly easy as they had the materials prepared and all we had to do was roll the stuff into balls, but they gave us the instructions on how to prepare the base so I'll give it a try sometime. I stopped and bought a kilo of Callebaut dark and 390 grams of white chocolate, so it'll be party time at our place.

LXXXIII

Nice day of reconnecting with grad students, first with Janine Windolph whom I've not discussed before. She is doing a video documentary project which has evolved significantly over this past year to be a very brave look at her family and family history. Today we discussed some new revelations as two of her family members are discovering repressed memories of violence from years ago. If the project is as engaging as our conversations, it will be amazing.

This evening Chrystene Ells and Raul Viceral came for dinner. Chrystene told me a variety of tales of problems and annoying activities on the set of Sisu that she wouldn't even mention in her own blog such as .... well perhaps if she doesn't publish, I shouldn't either. We talked quite a bit about her thesis and potential critical discussions for her support paper. She suggested a slightly maligned idea about "community" which on further thought might not be bad, especially in regards to community coming together to celebrate a mythic figure that the community distrusted and destroyed just a generation before. How does a community collectively redeem a person over time?

Raul brought me a copy of the September 2007 issue of "Real Valuable Comics" (this one called "Valuable Comics from Space!" with his first local publication. He's a great illustrator, he did hundreds of storyboards for "Sisu". His story is really good, a clever opening chapter to some sort of robot cop story that I'd definitely look for new issues of if I thought there were any. The print run is much smaller for this issue so you'd better run out and get it. In exchange I gave him a copy of "To Be Announced" #1 published by paul Stockton and his company Strawberry Jam Comics from back in the 1980s. I rewrote "Strawberry Fields Forever" to be "Strawberry Jam Forever" and it's printed on the back cover -- my first (and only) comic book publication.

We ate espresso cheesecake.

10 weeks

In today's Regina Leader Post newspaper, Chrystene Ells got a full page on her film "Sisu", I get my name in print as well. Good article with lots of pictures.

We hosted a garage for "The Garage Show" today. This was a project instigated by Sheila Nourse and Jeff Nye in which a dozen artist artist are situated into a dozen garages around the cathedral neighbourhood, with maps disseminated so that people can walk from one to the next to see art. We had an intermedia artist named Adam Lark who had a number of dust masks hanging from (nearly) invisible strings accompanied by a clear and somewhat chilling soundtrack of spray cans being shaken and sprayed. Of course we would have to be hosting a sound based installation on the day that my next door neighbour has contractors in to lay the foundation for his new garage. It didn't seem to hurt too much. The program seemed very well attended, I'm certain close to a hundred people must have gone through.

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.

less -40

I visited the set of the second day of shooting for "Sisu", Chrystene Ells film about Tom Sukanen. Today they were in Estlin, a small town about 15 minutes south of here, shooting scenes in which old Tom, delusional and near death in a hospital, sees a vision of his mother he'd not seen in decades. It's being shot on a 24p HDV camera that the NMSL recently acquired. The weather was cool but the clouds were creating interesting patterns and pools of glorious light that should really pop.