Dreamworks

William watched Monsters vs Aliens again today; he's totally loving it (Chrystene: check it out for the destruction and mayhem in San Fransisco). William then got out some paper and wrote a letter to Dreamworks telling them to make a sequel. I found an address for them and we'll mail it in the morning.
I also found a message in my no-longer-used email account from Steve Wolfson. We worked together on an comedy show years ago. He posted some of the work on Youtube including this one featuring Jeff Looysen.

sorting photos

I was sorting photos and getting stuff printed for the album last week and reminded myself of this photo series that William and I made in Penticton this summer. It's based on the "flying" technique that McLaren did for "Neighbours" in 1962 but William actually suggested it without that reference so I finally got around to putting it together into a video. I posted it to Youtube, my first such posting all year.

New student video site

This evening was the One Take Super 8 Event. It went well. William stayed for the whole thing for the first time. luckily he has no school tomorrow as it didn't end until 10:30. My film was in focus, although a couple of the mirror shots were too dark. It went well.

i've set up a new youtube site where my students are required to post the assignment i gave them, which was to draw images from the public domain internet.org site and make a found footage video. They are also required to give an image back to the world, uploading it to the same site. the videos they made will be HERE.

avoidance

I got some fair work done on my grant application today, but spent a lot of time avoiding it as well. Someone tagged our garage door a few days ago ("Some 43" or "Sume 43") and it wouldn't clean off so I repainted the whole door this morning. I ran around to garage sales this afternoon, got a lamp for $2 that I just finished spending $21 on parts re-wiring. I also posted a new Delusia video, one of the best ones I think, on Youtube.

a day off...

I spent the morning sorting my notes for tomorrow's class and Margaret wanted us to go do something in the afternoon so we drove to Lumsden, missed the duck derby but saw a bit of the craft show, then drove the opposite way to Indian Head where they have redressed the town to be the set for Little Mosque on the Prairie. Got some pictures. William isn't trying to be rude here, he is trying to catch raindrops on his tongue.
I posted a new Professor Delusia video.

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.

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.

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.

Canada Day, back to work

My sabbatical is over, it's back to work, although today is a national holiday so I won't be dong that. Off to the beach then! It's too hot to sleep in. I just checked my Youtube numbers, I have a grand total of 12,938 hits on my videos, all but one of which were posted in the past 6 months and all of which were posted during my sabbatical.

365

Today is the last day of my sabbatical. The title of today's blog is 365, which is an error, as there were 366 days this year owing to the leap year. About three months ago I made a numbering mistake (278), but I'm not inclined to make all the changes. No one would notice if I were not pointing it out right now.
It's going to be a scorcher today, probably 34 degrees, so I got onto my computer first thing to get some work done. While the university is open, I gave Eric the day off with tomorrow (Tuesday) being Canada day. He'll be beaching it for sure. Margaret is working all day so I'll hang with William. He's working on his Lego and I've posted a new video on his blog demonstrating a new dwarf war machine he built yesterday. I'm also posting the last chapter of my How To Be an Experimental Filmmaker series on YouTube. Today is week 26 and I've got 26 videos this year (two series' of 13). We're off to Nim's Island this afternoon to beat the heat.
Have I completed everything I set out to do this year? No. There are a couple of more things I will finish in the next month, but some stuff I've abandoned. Other stuff (example the Youtube videos) were not on the initial list. I think I did okay. I don't feel rested however.

358

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.

356

I posted my new video, the 12th of a 13 part series.
Most of day spent with William on a play date then shopping for clothes and Lego, then to Terry's for another play date and hanging out until 11pm. We borrowed the 3 Bionicle movies from her since the library's copies are very scratched and I can never find them in the store.

353 - a year in review

This is my 366th posting of a daily blog as I began this on the 19th of June, 2007 and it was a leap year. For those of you thinking of starting one, it was very easy. I had intended to begin on the first of July but felt I might need a few days to figure it out. I began logging on and setting it up while William was in the bathroom (some big business) and by the time he was done, I was typing my first post. Now it is getting hard to remember a time when I was not typing every day, although about once per week I almost forget to post, just because my thoughts are elsewhere. I think this has been a good tool for me to keep track of some of the things I've been doing as well as to communicate with some of you on a regular basis. I'm also increasingly wary about what I write, this blog is public and my identity is far from secret. I envy some bloggers who maintain anonymity and can therefore complain about everyone and everything around them. Part of being human is to react against things that bother us, but blogs give us a soap box that is potentially a bit too high. In the end, it is for the best that I am forced to self censor. It requires me to find more diplomatic ways of expressing myself.
Today I recorded a forty minute interview with Ed Knopf about agriculture and technology for my "Grain" project. He has a lot of interesting observations about complimentary technologies, where one invention leads to some other change or advancement. I talk about this sort of thing in film history such as the invention of plastics that allowed for the creation of flexible film, and therefore cinema. Lots of cool ideas from him. William and his sone Rowan played Lego.
I posted my new video to Youtube.

349

Saturday: Margaret went to work and left William and I to watch Justice League cartoons all morning. We went to the children's festival in Victoria park for a while; I changed some sidewalk chalk writing that said "EAT PUSSY" to "GREAT BUGGY" and put some wheels below the drawing of the cat. I posted my new video chapter of How To Be An Experimental Filmmaker to Youtube, and also updated William's blog with the Sphinx he built to go along with his pyramid.

348

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.

337

Eric and I shot 100 feet of film in a Melies style today, it was tremendously exciting. I played the magician making strange things happen to a vase of oats. I've wanted to do this sort of thing for a long time. I requires working in front of a black screen and superimposing things in-camera. It was so 19th century.
I posted a new video today.

333

Slept poorly last night, got up in the middle and finished re-putting together William's Lego dwarven mine. My favorite part was the anvil and the war hammer cleverly put together from standard Lego parts. This afternoon I was going to take a nap but cut it short to put together my (late) weekly video which uses some footage I found a few years ago and reproduced using the optical printer, again a few years ago, but did not develop the film until a couple of weeks ago and only yesterday had transfered to video (thanks Eric). Watch it, enjoy it, pass it around.

I also posted a new video for William called "Attack on the Dwarf's Mine" on his blog.

319

We slept in this morning, William has the day off and Margaret is sick. I posted a new Lego blog with a video for William and a new Youtube How to be and Experimental Filmmaker video for me. Richard Kerr told me once that you have to make something before noon, even if it's just a decision. I try now and then, some extra sleep helped (I was away before one am!).

317

Eric and I developed the Modern work from yesterday plus some colour negative from optical printing super-8 and 3 rolls of colour print film for Grain (totally 800 feet). It started raining so we only got half of it dry, the rest was in buckets. I'm on the hunt for good jugs for chemistry so I had Eric drive me past the janitorial supply place on Dewdney on the way home but they didn't sell any. There was an interesting story on CBC about youtube "virus" videos, videos that seem to get thousands of hits per day and where they came from. The case study was a rather absurd, but earnest music video called "Speak The Hungarian Rapper", it's pretty ridiculous but fun. The back up singers are apparently all popular Hungarian pop starts, now a bit past their prime and down enough on their luck to take part in this. After I got home and started hanging up the wet film I had in my buckets up onto the clothes line, Margaret came home and casually said "so you must have found the car". "What do you mean", I asked. She then explained that she left me two phone messages saying she was leaving the car in the parking lot for me. I didn't notice the messages so I had to get a ride back to the university to get it, then quickly home to eat and then to the Filmpool for a short Board meeting then a meeting with Christopher Dray, who is in town to advise us on a capital campain to acquire a building.