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.

3by3by3by3

Worked all day on the End of Life workshop. I had a great team, John Hampton, Trudy Stewart, Ben Schubert, Janine Windolph, and Mauricio Carvajal. We (or basically they) shot over 10 hours of video. I'll face the real challenge in the next few weeks trying to make to take a shape.

Eh Tea

The Canadian Aboriginal End of Life and Cancer Care Research Network Workshop began today with a potluck meal and a pipe ceremony in the atrium of the First Nations University of Canada. This is the first time I've taken part in a pipe ceremony, very interesting. The last one I observed was looser and the pipe only went around once, when it went out, it was out. Tonight it went around the circle (there were about 20 of us) four times with someone assisting to make sure it was re-lit and so on. The building appears to finally be getting the giant glass tepee from the original design by architect Douglas Cardinal that couldn't be afforded when the building was built a few years ago. A vision.

gold

Yesterday I took William to a birthday party and then later to the Filmpool event (I've not seen any replies to the trivia yet) but also really needed footage of the harvest on Margaret's family farm that I didn't think would be happening until later due to the rain, so I was without any 16mm cameras and was going to shoot some super-8 then optically print to 16mm for one of the four "Grain" films, so I workshopped Margaret on the super-8 camera and she went and shot three rolls for me, a new chapter in our collaborations. I can't wait to see the footage.
I'm looking through a number of old film programs and am feeling a bit annoyed about the length of some people's bios that they have submitted for publication (these are most often written by the person it is about due to frequent shortfalls in time by the short staffed organizations planning art events.) There is inevitably one or two overly long bios that strike me as being done by tremendously ill informed individuals or by ones who overcompensating for something. I think they should contain the sort of information you might tell someone whom you've just met who asks "what do you do?" or something like that. When I see someone listing awards from three years ago or a job history beyond the current job, I have to think that this is someone I don't want to get cornered in a kitchen party by.

broken record

I was asked by Felipe Diaz the other day if I'd be the quizmaster for the 50-104 film festival awards evening, which was tonight, and to come up with questions that might be judged not by the right answer, but by the best answer, so I came up with this list of questions.

1. Bruce McDonald, where did he sleep during production of Road Kill?

2. Arthur Lipsett worked for the NFB throughout the 1960s but left in 1970. He returned for short while in 1978 but did not stay long. What was the primary reason the Arthur Lipsett used in his written letter of resignation from the NFB to producer Bobn Verral in 1978 for leaving the
NFB?

3. Before he was a cylon on Battlestar Galactica, Callum Keith Rennie starring in what film by Michael Hoolboom, and what was the subject matter of that film?

4. Whose visit to Regina in 1998 has been credited for inspiring the creation of the One Take Super 8 event?

5. What did Guy Maddin use as a soundstage for the production of his third feature film, “Careful”?

6. Before his series “Wapos Bay” had the support of the NFB, SCN, and APTN, Dennis Jackson shot a student film that acted as the pilot for the series. Where was this pilot shot?

7. What year, or years, was “The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood” made and what the significance of its completion to Newfoundland?

8. What did David Cronenberg study in university and what, if anything, did he graduate with a degree in?

9. Brad Castor, director of “Get a Job”, and Cordel Barker, director of “The Cat Came Back” worked together in their early careers as animators making short interstitials for Sesame Street and created weekly televisions commercials for what company

10. What years did Jean Oser live in Regina?

Tie breaker: What is Felipe Diaz’s chosen porn name?.

lucky lucky

The pancake breakfast for the 50-104 film festival was wonderful. Thanks to all the staff and volunteers, we had a nice time.

There was an opening/curator/artist talk at the Sherwood branch of the Dunlop Art Gallery today. Casualty, curated by Sigrid Dahle with work by Lorna Brown and Bernie Miller. Sigrid talked and wrote about the importance of unstructured time and rest. It made me think about the number of times that people have commented on how rested I look now that I'm on sabbatical. Considering I'm still running on 6 or so hours per night, I must have looked bloody awful before! Sigrid also asserted that more information is not helpful, we do not rest our minds and find our creativity by having people tell us more, we get it by getting away from the constant infux of the new, that essentially we are creative through our boredom. I had an interesting conversation with Lee Henderson about experimental film made by filmmakers versus experimental film made by visual artists. He was at an experimental film festival in Seoul Korea and was taken with how the work from all over the world seemed to maintain a number of similar aesthetic characteristics, whether from curatorial choice or from an shared evolution of the form by the artists he did not know. However, I am certain that the program he saw was primarily the creation of work by people trained in film as a specialization. While it can be controversial to write about this as it requires labeling people as being from one camp or the other, he thought it could be a good paper (there, I've committed you Lee!).

USA

Got a haircut today, Margaret thinks its shorter than usual but since I only get around to it very 9 months, one must be extreme.
The 50-104 Festival began, I screened three films from my "Mr. Saul's Utopia" series to a small crowd at the Museum. They repeat tomorrow at 9pm. Other films I saw tonight that impressed me included Jason Britski's even more formal than usual two new pieces, and a really wonderful silent film of the Niagara Falls by John Price "View of the Falls from the Canadian Side". It was a generally odd bunch of films, perhaps because of the high number of works from artists or at least from people coming out of visual arts and/or design background/training. 4.5 hours was a bit of a stretch, but enjoyable. The only food available was popcorn however, and as I can no longer eat that, it's lucky I snuck in a peanut butter cup.

6 bits

In this video you will witness the very moment that Kal-El arrives on the planet Earth. This isn't really my finest work, but it is one of my shortest. (I just wanted to test out the video upload feature, but it doesn't like the videos that are shot by my still camera, and my other AVI files in my computer are either too long or too high resolution so here is something from my intel web cam). Enjoy.

.

74

I set up a blog for Margaret's radio show, Radio Delarte. Now I have to convince her to update it. She's being doing this show for at least a couple of years, only missing a handful per year, so I thought it would be a good idea to track the guests and perhaps give occasional additional context through an ongoing blog. As it is a weekly show, I wouldn't expect updates more than once per week.

when the ribbon was yellow

Had a big planning session today for the conference on the Canadian Aboriginal End of Life Care Research Network Workshop which is happening next week and I am overseeing a documentary to come out of it, primarily focused on those issues as well inward looking at the issue of how to conduct research in this area. Hmmmm, it's actually a bit more interesting than is sounds.

half gross

A couple people reading this blog have commented that I seem to do something different every day, and I suppose I do. Today I spent the morning shooting film and the afternoon running errands, this is probably as close to being an average day as I might expect to have. I turned the attention of the camera to Regina, shooting a couple of buildings that I had been thinking about. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, which recently merged with Agricore to become "Viterra", which sounds like some snake-oil energy drink. Their old building on Victoria and Albert got a new sign on top but I thought the newspaper said that the older sign set into the stone itself would remain, but it did not. There is no longer any sign saying "Wheat Pool", very disappointing. For years, people have always identified and remembered the name Filmpool as being the definitively Saskatchewan film co-op due to the association with Wheat Pool. Perhaps that is why I've had a fondness for it.

tenor Pavarotti dies

We went out to the farm and I shot another ghost sequence, this time of harvesting potatoes. I'm still only guessing about what this footage will look like since I've not taken any time to go into the darkroom and develop footage yet. Occasionally I get worried, but as I've got no deadlines looming, the stress level remains low. We went to Dysart again, to the great coffee shop, and I filmed some of the animal skulls they have decorating the place. When I talked to the owner about it, he got all excited and got me out three skulls he'd just received including a Texas Long Horn with a lot of the skin/hair still attached. I shot two rolls of black and white film of them, probably for on of the other "Grain" films that I've not figured out yet. A good day.

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.

Mike said they don't do this in the NWT.

On the south west corner of the city of Regina, south of the airport and outside of Lewvan Drive, is a large area of farmland that is being developed, probably into more "power centres'. Machines have been lined up there for some time, but this week I noticed they had started breaking ground. I took a camera out there today but the space is so vast, and the work is all by large machine so lacks any human presence, so I couldn't find an appropriate way to shoot it and communicate my feeling of outrage at this spreading blight. I think I am doubly angry because I know I will end up shopping there.

Elvis comeback concert

Long day, spent a number of hours at the University trying to find the films that I'm showing at the Filmpool festival in a week to dub them to beta-sp tape, but the newest ones were no where to be found until I determined that they were still in the computer, all much too complicated, I just wanted to make a copy. Got the classy new Faculty of Fine Arts t-shirt - we gave them to new students and all faculty and staff wore them all day. They are just black with a small but colourful logo on the front and a UofR logo on the sleeve. Nice. Made biscotti this evening - I'll have to slice and bake them a second time tomorrow, then it is the feast of triple chocolate. The key is in whipping the butter with the table top kitchenaide mixer. Perhaps I'm a bit tired, but I can't help wondering why William's new heat-vision Superman toy looks like George W Bush?

summer of love

I am finally ramping up my shooting of my film, especially now that I've figured out the "ghost" motif that of the four "Grain" films will revolve around. However, I'll need to return the camera in a few days and have a few non-film commitments before then, so I'm worried that this small amount of momentum will be lost. Today I shot construction workers on the condos near our house as well as others building the new bus depot.
It was a gallery hopping evening, September is quite the season for that. We started off with a talk at the north branch of the Dunlop with Darlene Wight from Winnipeg contextualizing Inuit art. It was rather condensed but she brought some humour and life to the images. It's great to hear from a scholar who really seems to love and care about the art work. This is apparently the first Inuit show EVER for the Dunlop!

Next we went to Mysteria where a group show opened. Lots of familiar faces including Misty Wensel with her new baby. Misty is a dancer and has a studio where William took a few classes. She and William performed in a garden together years ago, he loves her (but didn't really love taking classes). The show included works from Chad Jacklin, Marlo V, Lynn Cecil, Brad Kreutzer, Theresa Kutarna, and Melonie Rose. I liked Marlo's internal organs made out of felt, but wished she'd done the colon - always my favorite.

Third was the MacKenzie Art Gallery and a show of work by Ron Bloore. My mind was rather full of art by that time so I have to admit that I didn't really spend much time looking at these large paintings but instead talked about Flintstones and Birdman with Mark Wihak who is fresh back from Montreal where he premiered his new film "River".

get your kicks

William had a tooth pulled today, it was one that he'd had a big filling done when he was much younger but now it has an infection under it so he's got it pulled even though the adult tooth won't come in for a few more years. They put in funky place holder, a wire that has been custom made to fit around the tooth beside it and just have a loop of wire in the gap so that the teeth don't shift. For his recovery time, I bought him "Birdman", the 1967 series.

It's Paul's birthday today so I baked a cheesecake and we put up a banner and blew up some balloons. After a rousting game of Kerplunk, we settled into some heavy crossword puzzling. Hmmmm, when I write it down, it doesn't sound nearly as exciting.

I'm finally able to stop recording "Toopy and Binoo", a surreal kits cartoon about a big mouse and his best friend, a smaller silent cat. William loves the show and I don't mind it even though it generally puts me to sleep. Toopy and Binoo runs in a number of different time slots on Treehouse, pretty much every day, sometimes just 2 of the 5 minute episodes, sometimes 5 put together into a half hour. According to the Spectra Animation website, there are 104 of these episodes, but there are not episode guides ... UNTIL NOW!!! The following is a list of the entire 104 episodes, in alphabetical order,

Abracadabra

Amazing Maze, the

Ant Mimi

Baby Toopy

Backpack

Ballooning with Binoo

Big Blue

Big Parade

Big Race

Binoo Blows Raspberries

Binoo’s Island

Binoo’s Letter

Binoo’s Wand

Binoo's Birthday

Bistro Binoo

Bubbles

Bug Smooch

Camp Out

Castle, the

Christmas Eve

Cinder Binoo

Cloud Gazing

Colour Me Toopy

Cuckoo Clock

Diaper Dream

Dreamland

Duckling

Dusteroos

Eggheads

Flying Hat, the

Four Seasons

Funny Bunny

Gargantua

Genie

Giant Footprints

Godmother Toopy

Gone Fishin’

Gopherville

Great GooGoo

Grunt Monster

Happy Toopy Day

Invisible Dog

Invisible World

Jack in the box

Jungle Toopy

Keyhole

Land of Colours

Land of the Lost

Little Bo Toopy

Little Red Binoo

Lost Bear, the

Magic Bowl

Magic Marker

Magic Mirror

Magic Woosher

Meatball Western

Moon Bounce

Mud Cake

Night Light

On and Off

Peanus-Butterbot

Pet Palace

Playclay

Power Pyjamas

Pumpkin Party

Puppet Show

Recess

Robot Doctors

Rockin Toopy

Santa Toopy

Seven Binoos

Sky Friends

Sneezing Toopy

Snowflakes

Snowglobe

Soapy Toopy

Sock Puppet

Sock Safari

Song and Dance

Space House

Sparkle Binoo

Storm in a Bottle

Strange New World

Super Toopy

Superball

Three Bears

Tickle-Me-Tail

Tiger Binoo

Toopy Goes Bananas

Toopy Knows Everything

Toopy’s Bed

Toopy’s Nose

Toopy’s Present

Toopy's Story

Toopy's Surprise

Topsy Turvey

Train Ride

Treasure Hunt

Treehouse

Under the Bed

Warm Circus

Water Wings

Where's Binoo

Where's Patchy Patch?

feeling like retiring

I posted the nutty "Wate-One" image yesterday on an impulse without even doing a web search on "Wate-On", but just did so and found a couple of other sites which also uploaded ads for humorous content (note: later versions than the one I did: 1971, 1973) but I also just found that it is still marketed today! However, it does not appear to be a steroid as I suggested, but rather just a multivitamin with sugar and flavor.
We went to the farm today. I shot a bunch of time laps, time exposure sequences including one around an abandoned house on Margaret's mother's land that we described to William as the "Ghost House", and continued calling it that the rest of the day. I think one idea is starting to come together for "Grain", the use of the long exposures will either erase moving people, or make them ghost-like. I'll try to weave the sequences in this style together into one of the ten minute films as an exploration of the lost past. My form and content are coming together with what I want to make, this is an important step in my process.

will you still be sending me a valentine?

My mom found me "Song Hits Magazine", the September 1967 issue, from a garage sale this week. This add is on the inside back cover and makes me wonder if they were marketing steroids to women forty years ago...?

one one one one one one

We went to Regina Beach today, an exhibition of photographs and paintings by Pat Close opened at the Last Mountain Lake Cultural Centre today. William was the first to write in the visitor log, saying "I like the details" which were, as in all of Pat's photographic work, amazing. The show was work created while at a residency in the Yukon with landscape in change being the principle subject matter. Margaret will be talking to him on her radio show on Wednesday and this was our only chance to see the exhibition before then, as it is closed the rest of the weekend. After lunch at the marvelous Blue Bird Cafe (fish and hamburgers) during which I was shooting time exposures of the iconic front of the building through my car window, we went to the beach. We expected it to be unpleasant as the wind was very very strong, but it ended up being really nice. We went out into the water where the wind sprayed water at us, but back on the beach we could relax. I finished reading Splice Magazine, the Filmpool's publication that arrived yesterday while lying there. I am embarrassingly over-represented in this special 30th anniversary issue as I wrote a review of Dianne Ouellette's films (3 pages), a response to Nora Gardener's article on art and industry (one page and a large photo of me), there is a tiny photo of me in a collage page about the anniversary party, and a large photo of me toasting with Patrick Lowe within an article he wrote. On top of that, I have a 2 minute video in the free dvd that is included with every copy of the magazine; "The Repeating Game" which features voice and piano by William. Look for it where ever free stuff is sold.

62

I used up my random encounters too early in the day. This morning I ran into David Gane who was a student of mine at one time (one of my first courses) and he now has a house which is the same design as a house I knew as the Taj-ma-hole that I rented with some party-types back in 1988, but David's house is across the street from the school and his daughter, who was born while his wife was in another of my classes, is just starting kindergarten at William's school. While William was in class, I had a meeting about the upcoming First Nation's End of Life conference that I overseeing video production around, and we walk out of the room and run into a couple of suits standing there, and of course I don't want to get close because I've got a biscotti in my hand that I grabbed off the table in the meeting room (it was left over and paid for, so why no...?) when one of the suits says "Hi Gerald" and it ends up being my old friend Kevin, looking unusually dapper in a nice suit and shined up shoes. I was a bit flustered to have caught unaware like that, but needed to rush off since the school bell was about to ring. So a few minutes later, I am picking up William from school and we run into one of William's friends, Ethan, and his mother. The two of them were in pre-school together and had lots of fun. They apparently live quite close to us now and Ethan is now also Kindergarten (due to a later birthday than William) at the same school and thus a classmate of David's daughter. That's all fine and dandy, right?
So then we embark upon the trip I'd been thinking about, but obviously not planning, all day. One of Chrystene Ells' last shooting days is around the mock-up, full size sculpture of ribs of the ship, built on the prairie, by Chris St Amand at his acreage near the village of Avonhurst, about a half hour from here. I had been promised instructions, but with production in full swing, these sorts of things are easily overlooked. So William and I cruise out of town, fighting traffic all the way as it is the beginning of a long weekend, and arrive at this 3 house town at a few minutes past five, just in time for the Co-op store employee to drive away and to our surprise, we can't find the location. Not only that, but we can barely find people, unless you count those driving combines on nearly every field. Up and down every road, but no random brushes with people we know were forthcoming. My cell phone eventually ran out of money as I called the director, whose phone was off, and whose number was the only one I brought with me (no real planning, remember). However, the town and surrounding roads offered up many treasures, including the title character from the old Loudon Wainwright III song (see below).
We also picked some flowers by a house that's not a house anymore. I'll probably come back out and shoot more film as there are many great old structures that are falling down without looking dilapidated.

Highway 61

William and I ate KD and pistachios in front of "The Flintstone Flyer" today during his lunch break.

I went down to the Filmpool and dropped off "Loose Screw" and also got word that "Mr. Saul's day at the Beach", "Mr. Saul's Definitive Portrait of His Family", and "Mr. Saul on How to Be a Father" are all to be screened at Festival 50, 104 in a couple of weeks. This is the first time multiple films from the Mr. Saul's Utopia series have screened at the same time, so it's a bit weird. They are super-8 films of my family at different times and places, aware of the camera, waving and posing in front of places we have gone or pretending to have fun. Accompanying the films is a voice over by a character called "Mr. Saul", a man of limited vision who is more than a bit certain that everything is does is correct. He is particularly proud of his prowess with the super-8 camera and the accompanying zoom lens. I've performed a number of these live, but the jury does not seem to have asked me to do a new work, and those are usually the only ones I perform with verbally.

three score

Today was William's first day of grade one, the first day that he's stayed in school all day long. I walked down and picked him up for lunch, as I intend to do every day, and we ate sandwiches in front of the tv. I looked for Flintstones season 1 at the store the other day but they didn't have it, so I'll have to look around some more. I would like him to have at least one year that reflects my own childhood, and don't we all? I think a key to nostalgia is the desire to convince others to have the same nostalgic feelings we have ourselves. Today William made his own sandwich for the first time. It seemed a bit of a mess as the peanut butter was chilled and the bread was soft, but he made it and ate it, so who am I to criticize?

While he was in school I finally got a chance to watch Sylvie Blocher's "Wo/Men in Uniform" at the Dunlop Art Gallery (see July 14 posting). It's been up for 6 weeks and closes today but to date I've only managed to watch short clips of this 50 minute project that closes today. It was quite engaging, although perhaps both too short and too long. It could not impact with as its maximum potential audience because few gallery goers are prepared to sit for an hour during a stop at the library. However, I know that there were dozens of hours of footage and I often felt it was just skimming the surface. There are short portrait/interviews of about a dozen Regina police officers and her off screen (muted) questions must have been well delivered because each officer broke from his or her expected response and revealed something personal about their relationship to this job. I wanted more, but each was only allowed a few questions, a few minutes, and then fades away. I have to criticize the gallery, although I have a great deal of respect for it generally, for the quality of the presentation; the projectors and air conditioning created an annoying din that made it less than comfortable to listen to the voices. I ended up sitting on a chair, rather than the couch, so that I could sit next to the speaker and be better immersed into the program.

I finished "Loose Screw", a one minute video in a similar style to the five second video I have on YouTube from a couple of days ago. The Filmpool is having a screening of short videos with an open entry with the deadline in a couple of days, so I'll enter this. I will probably also kinescope it and work it into my Modern project.

59

For William, today is the last day of summer vacation. That's not as traumatic as it will be when he gets older as he doesn't have that much freedom as it is, and the prospect of meeting a new teacher and new friends and having recess and all that is exciting. I'll miss having him around all day, although I admit I've been looking forward to having the time to accomplish other things, so I spent most of the day doing stuff with him, a dentist appointment because he's got an infection under one of his teeth that had major work on it a couple of years ago and may have to be pulled (its a baby tooth but one that should have stayed for another 3 or 4 years) so they had to do a casting of the tooth to put a filler into the spot until the new one grows in. They use a mint flavoured putty that, gaging from his reaction, was nasty. We did some clothes shopping at Please Mum where I had a hard time attracting assistance even though there were three staff and only two customers, I usually get good help being a man with a child, willing to spend fast and uninterested in extensive shopping. Rented "The Pacifier" (the duck on the cover sold it) and watched it with William, predictable and full of flaws, but passably amusing and befitting but aforementioned midlife crisis. This evening I worked on my "Loose Screw" video, getting another 15 seconds completed so that I just need credits and about 5 more seconds tomorrow, and then a soundtrack.

LVIII

Spent much of my day working on a new video while William played with Daniel, Leesa Streifler's son who is the same age as W. This is probably the first time in 2 weeks that I've been able to work for more than 15 minutes during daylight hours without an emergency (a missing Lego piece constitutes an emergency this week). I'm plodding along frame by frame and having wonderful results now that I've started making new brushes and extracting photo elements (such as my face) to do so. I had a great conversation with Leesa today, our first "sabbatical party" and I was able to show her what I've been doing (even though the program crashed - some sort of disc error - during my demonstration) and she's even cool with me doing a response to her style of work (I'm thinking about her "Normal" series) as a moving image piece in this style. I've been wanting to do this for years but never seen to have the energy and time to even start it. The image above is from this week's one minute animation project; I'm calling it "Loose Screws" and I'm trying to get it done for the end of the week for the Filmpool festival event.

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.

56

I'm trying to figure out YouTube today. I joined and I've uploaded a very short video (5 seconds) that I created in After Effects and Photoshop, using new brush designs to essentially stamp images onto a blank canvas to create work that has similar formal characteristics to that of Norman McLaren or Len Lye. I've called it something forgettable, but I think if you click here, it may take you there. Or perhaps here. It also features a random clip of my first recording with my Theremin (discussed previously). It's interesting to notice how blurry everything on YouTube gets with the compressions they use. Here is a still from my video, notice the (relative) sharpness of the screw on the left hand side of the frame under normal video resolution:

I can't drive to freedom

William and I went to see "Mr. Bean's Holiday" at noon today, basically the first screening in the city. It's been a few years since I've done that, but his summer vacation ends in a few days and we're trying to do something birthday related every day this week, fun stuff, you know. Anyways, it's not bad. It has a looser structure, more like the episodes, which is better suited to the humour than his first movie. However, it isn't always a dense with jokes as his show, so you don't find yourself squirming in your seat. Also, the character is rarely as mean or callous as the show, he actually has compassion for some people around him. Willem Defoe is really good in it, Margaret asked if he was funny and, with William listening, I had to say "no" but that I found him funny and so would she, although through William's eyes he could be, he's basically the straight man and as close to being the villain as any character in the film is.

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.

Edmonton Crash Pad

William and I went for a big drive today, partially prompted by Elaine Pain giving me a heads up that a grain elevator is being demolished in Cupar, so we headed up there and I shot part of a roll of the crushing of the side building but when I went to change film, part of the pressure plate on the Bolex came apart and I couldn't fix it, so we continued on down the highway and found ourselves in Dysart where Pure Prairie Western Giftware same highway until we reached Fort Q'Appelle where Chrystene Ells was in the middle of her first day of shooting her feature film, one of the finest coffee shops in Saskatchewan happens to be, restful and full of rustic (real rustic, not hovel-rustic or tacky-rustic or worst of all "rustic"-rustic) furniture and items and very nice coffee and then we continued along the "Sisu", although we found out that the location was on the top of a rather high hill, or perhaps more accurately at the top of the valley but that can only be accessed from the bottom so it might as well be a hill, and that William, who complains about not being allowed to take the elevator to the second floor at the university, was likely not going to make it to the top, and therefore we did not visit the set and have only a photo or gardener/entrepreneur Rachel Ursulescu from the Dysart coffee shop to offer you.

The Deck

I'm a bit under the weather today, but mainly stayed home and watched cartoons (Space Ghost - original series) and fiddled with my Modern videos. I've been watching a few things of note: "Ryan", a very slick dvd out of the NFB featuring the Academy Award winning short film as well as "Walking" and the other short films by Ryan Larkin, the subject of this animated documentary, and other films by Chris Landreth, the animator behind "Ryan" and a documentary about Chris's process and relationship with Ryan by Laurence Green. It's all convoluted and worthwhile. The incomplete and fragmented 3D computer animated images are luscious to look at as well as conveying the idea that the portrait is incomplete and the subject is being deconstructed.
A must for animators. There is a dvd at the RPL (well actually it's at my house but I'll return it soon).


We exchanged one of William's presents that he had a double of and bought Operation and Kerplunk games! I've never owned either of them before, and although they are both loud, they never fail to satisfy.

17 x 3

William turned 6 today and Margaret began a month long job as a full time temp admin position at the Dunlop, so I took William to "Underdog" which hasn't been getting good reviews but we both thoroughly enjoyed, him for basically everything about a super powered talking dog, live action with fur rather than the old animated version which is simplistic, hairless and "freaks him out", and me particularly for the performance by Patrick Warburtan whom I personally remember most for being "The Tick", although he was apparently in Seinfeld as well, but I have seen so few of those that I think I missed him but might go back and watch for him because he is certainly, in my mind, the perfect superhero, although technically he is a supervillain in this, or actually just a villain, or perhaps more accurately he is a henchman, but his hair is great, which makes this whole Underdog thing more about hair again as William will not watch even a minute of the old Underdog series but loves the live action, and loves the live Disney versions of Inspector Gadget far more than the original, even though he's been watching those finally as I can record them every morning, commercial free, off of YTV.

Gerda came to visit this evening and brought a card that featured images of the wood and wool sheep that she brought William as a birth present from Estonia, so we sang happy sixth birthday to both William and "Bricks" the sheep and had a great time until William overpowered Gerda, knocked her into the stairway, and darn near gave her a concussion. The boy is growing up fast.

Hawaii

After building a 1000 piece Lego batcave, I really get wondering about how someone who is retrofitting a crime fighting lair into an existing subterranean area could get so obsessed with symmetry?

square week

Spent the day jumping between the kitchen and the computer, rendering "Modern" videos and preparing foot for William's birthday party; salsa, guacamole, cheese cake, chocolate cake, rice krispie cake, hummus, and chocolate chip cookies, and or course there is the wrapping of the Lego.
Huge storm sat on top of us, thunder that sounded like gunshots above our heads, but it's supposed to clear for tomorrow.

2 days

We just go back from Saskatoon, went for a couple of days to shoot film and visit a bit. The high point was visiting the studio where Dennis Jackson is shooting his Wapos Bay series. They are in hiatus right now, but will start shooting season three in a October. Season two will be starting to air on APTN this fall. It is a puppet animated series based around a fictitious first nations community in northern Saskatchewan. I was honored to be involved on the pilot episode (the one hour "Christmas at Wapos Bay") in 2001 at the same time William was born. He was given the nickname "Wapos Papoose" (FYI, that rhymes). They now have a much larger studio so there can be 10 scenes shooting simultaneously. The armatures are now much more sophisticated, I've taken extensive photos so as to be able to steal lots of their ideas. It's shot digitally now, rather than on 16mm as "Christmas" was, so there is much less tension about missing shots or errors. It was a great tour and they gave me a hand, yes, a hand, one of the new wire filled latex hands, soon we'll all be using them.

On the less happy side, I dropped a light meter with dire results...

47

I've been writing about formalism in experimental film. What is formalism you ask?

It's everything!

46

William lost his first tooth today. It was pulled actually. It was loose and then about a week ago the adult tooth emerged behind it so he ramped up the wiggling but to no avail, it still didn't come out. He had a dentist appointment today and he really wanted it out as the tooth fairy event weighs heavily on him, so she popped it out for him and let him carry it home in a plastic necklace shaped like a tooth. He has a special pillow with a pocket in it just for this event.


Wikipedia says this about the tooth fairy: "The most commonly accepted belief by academics is the fairy's development from the tooth mouse, depicted in an 18th century French language fairy tale. In "La Bonne Petite Souris", a mouse changes into a fairy to help a good Queen defeat an evil King by hiding under his pillow to torment him and knocking out all his teeth."
I'm not sure how the mouse was supposed to accomplish this task. The only version I've found so far, an English version on line called The Queen and the Mouse does not include the pillow and tooth part. This site contains better info on the tooth fairy.

45

Just watched the John Hughes penned film "Baby's Day Out". It was all fresh and exciting for William and, recall my midlife crisis of being 6 again, I got into it too. Where are the Adam Robert Worton twins now? All reviews point out how cute there where, but not another film in 13 years. Washed up at 9 months, very sad.

44

Work. Today I filmed myself working and thus have officially burned the candle at both ends, having made a one minute colour 16mm film created from over 1200 two second time exposures which should result in rapid ghostly movements, and I have painted the garage (just one end of it, yellow oil paint). It might be part of my "Grain" series as a reference to the black and white sequence of me smashing up a sidewalk beside my house in the first part of "Toxic", but it might just be a side project (I'm thinking that everything I do is a side project and that I've not started a real project yet).

age

Drove out to Moose Jaw today, shot 100 feet of colour print stock (mylar base, tungsten balanced, with filter need to be treated as iso 0.75). Left it in car while lunching at the fabulous Nitt's Thai Food on Main St (best Thai food in Saskatchewan) to run 2 second time exposures for part of the roll. A problem I anticipate with the roll is that this final time lapse/time exposure sequence was shot from the back window of the car, in direct sunlight, with a black coloured Bolex, over three hours. The camera was so hot that I could barely touch it. Colour film does not react well to being heated like that. Should I even bother storing it in the frig?

THE answer

A few days ago I was giving William a bath. He wanted me to ask him questions so I was quizzing him on things like "what is 2+3?" and "what do you get when you mix blue and red?", but after a while I started to run out of interesting questions until I scooped a clear glass of tub water up and asked him "Is this glass half full or half empty?". He started to answer but was startled by the complexity of the question; he paused for a moment, staring at the the glass and then slowly said: "I think it's half full".

41

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.

40

This is the 40th day of my sabbatical. I turned 40 a few years back (3) and had anticipated it being a very traumatic event. Somehow it wasn't. I had a big party, which is very unusual for me, and invited lots of people. It was the last week of classes and I'd also just received tenure, so I pretended that was the purpose of the party so that no one would bring presents, but the cat was out of the bag when the cake came out. I hired one of my grad students to document it on super-8 film, I've not done anything with that film yet but am proposing a screening for this fall. I should have been working on the pitch today but instead I watched the late 70s cartoon series: Superfriends: the Legendary Superpowers Show with William for half the afternoon. Some great commentary tracks, more honest than previous seasons, in which the old writers and the DC historian point out the missing characters, limitations of movement due to the requirement that all movement in Hanna/Barbara cartoons is limited to left and right, the influence of Jack Kirby onto DC in the 70s with the Darkseid character, and the influence of Marvel onto DC shown through the introduction of the Firestorm character and his teen angst. Perhaps my mid-life crisis is reverting back to being 6 rather than 16 and enjoying all the shows I was too old and cynical for when I was a teenager.

B-side to You're My Best Friend

I just found out that Michelangelo Antonioni died the other day, but it was the same day that Bergman died so he seemed to not have gotten any press. He's best known in America for "Blow Up", one of his two English language films. We saw it in film school, it is great and highly influential film. One film that I always think about is "The Red Desert" which I was asked, by my favorite professor from my undergrad days - Szymon Choynowski - to edit the commercials out of after he taped it off of French tv. He'd been looking for it for a long time and that was the first time he'd been able to get his hands on it. I was very pleased to do some work for Szymon, especially something as interesting as this. Unfortunately, the version was in Italian with French subtitles and I speak neither language, so I continue to be in the dark about the plot, but the images were beautiful. I'm certain I can find a copy easily now, we probably have one in our department collection, but my experience of it could never be improved upon.

XXXVIII

I'm not sure what to think about Facebook. I registered onto it a couple of weeks ago and log onto it now and then. Even on sabbatical, I get the feeling that I don't have the time to waste on it, but then on the other hand, it seems like an interesting little release/distraction and I wish I did have the time to dive into it, zombifying friends I've not seen in years, writing on their walls, and making up lists. I guess I'm feeling a little divided whenever I sit down at this machine, I have email that I want/need to do, I do this blog, I have a writing project I'm trying to do (a project that is still pretty early so I've not mentioned it here yet) and working on more computer animation for my "Modern" project. Sometimes at the university, I work with two, three, or even more computers at once with graphics rendering on one, dvds burning on another, and writing on one as well. In those cases, it sometimes is fun to have something trivial on the side, no one could accuse you of slacking off when you're running so many machines at once. On the other hand, it's not like I'm not wasting far more time than I possibly could on Facebook by watching tv, reading comics, and staring at the wall. So won't you be my friend?

signal vs. noise

.
We went to the farm today, Margaret's brother's family and ours. It's easy to find, you drive north past Southey then turn at the farm that isn't there anymore and onto the road with the tree that used to look like a chicken. See picture below.

crucifixion

I stayed up late last night reading the seven issue comic book series The Eternals by Neil Gaiman (published between August 2006 and March 2007). I've not followed Gaiman's work for very long, I'd been buying comics in the 80s pretty much stopped in the early 90s when the collecting mentality brought cover prices up while my personal income was at an all time low. However, I was aware of his Sandman series and had glanced at an issue or two but had not been engaged enough to start buying them. However, a couple of years ago, Margaret borrowed the entire Sandman series in graphic novel form from the library and we both devoured them. Since then, we've looked at many of his stories and generally enjoyed them immensely. Earlier this year I listened to Stardust as a book on tape, read by Gaiman himself, again staying up half the night, unable to turn it off. Similar to Sandman, the Stardust story twisted and turned, it excited and amused, it drew from the long history of a particular genre (fairy tales) and took it somewhere fresh. Gaiman is a good writer and would have my vote for the best (English language) comic book writer, that is until last night. The Eternals was a comic book series written and drawn by Jack Kirby in the late 1970s, published by Marvel. It presented a new set of characters, new comic mythologies, and represented an important return of Kirby as a central creator for Marvel. I bought them all and still have them stashed in the attic somewhere. They weren't all that great, I think Kirby wanted to draw lots of "deviants", monstrous people each of whom had entirely different physical characteristics, fighting against the eternals who still dress like the Greek heroes they were many millenia before. In other words, it got stale very quick. Gaiman has proven himself very apt at reworking tired old ideas and bringing depth to minor or forgotten comic book characters. I had high expectations. They were not met. I'm not saying that these were bad comics, I was taken with them, they were page turners and I jumped from one to the next. However, I was never really carried somewhere new. They were a bit more sophisticated than the originals, and certainly more creative in the violence performed, but in the end we are left with the same problems and lack of conclusion Kirby left us with, the domination of the god-like celestials who stand in judgement over the world. Like so many traditional comics before it, character development ends when superherodome begins, the insomniac character struggles with overwork, loss of love, etc until he accepts his super powered existence, then he runs off like a testosterone filled teenager, racing around the world with his buddy. Gaiman does suggest a certain religious standpoint, but his characters spend too many pages discussing and concerning themselves with the trivial that they become trivial, human, and non-heroic themselves. When they transform back into eternals/heroes, I don't buy it.

HP's first pocket calculator

On the topic of mini-series, I also just finished "Prehistoric Park", a 6 part show out of Australia (I think) by the creators of "Walking with Dinosaurs" that uses the fictional pretense of a time travel mission to retrieve extinct animals to create a contemporary animal preserve as a way of presenting engaging computer animation and paleontology and scientific theory about the lifestyles of numerous animals from 10,000 to 200 million years ago. It's got some funny moments although I can't quite recommend it to an adult audience. It was really fun to watch with kids as they get very engaged in it, William can't stop talking about it, even while it's on. I found the science rang true although it could have been denser. William seems to have absorbed almost all of the facts after a single viewing and he's not quite 6, so they certainly could have pushed the envelope more. My favorite moment is in the extra features when the producer, asked about time travel, says that Einstein often talked about how difficult time travel would be but he knew, as do the film producers, that all you need are a couple of sticks with lights on top of them. William never questioned the practicality of time travel which is good because none of the regular issues seem to be addressed. It's just a device, and its more fun that way.

POST SCRIPT REGARDING HP POCKET CALCULATOR: When I wrote this blog post six years ago, I began by numbering the posts based upon what day into my sabbatical the post was written on. After a while, I began replacing the number with references to that number. In this case, on day 35 of my sabbatical, I refer to this early calculator, the HP-35. In hindsight, I'd have been better served by naming the posts by something that I'm actually talking about. My apologizes to those people who  have hit about this post (and this has recently become a daily occurrence) under false pretenses. 

Selenium

I've been watching "Jekyll", a new BBC show that I've been downloading. It's a modern version/continuation of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", which begins with a stylish opening episode with some good dialogue but I initially had grave doubts about. It seemed to be a simple updating of the original, the haunted doctor trying to protect his life and the world from the monster within himself. However, by episode 3 it had become a very twisted, imaginative program that had me riveted. I rarely knew where it would turn. The ending episode, there are only six, was a bit disappointing, but episodes 3-5 are some the best TV I've seen.

−2,147,483,648 through 2,147,483,647

William says that a hot summer is like spices in a frying pan.

The result of the heat is that we are already picking our apples which are too small and transitioning from green directly to over ripe. It will be apple sauce canning until midnight! Last year we did apple sauce for the first time. It was initially very difficult as we didn't have the right tools. I started to use colanders and sieves and Margaret wanted to go buy the proper device for straining the cooked apples but they didn't seem to have them at the economical places like the hardware and grocery stores, but only at the specialty kitchen boutiques for a price that makes you think very carefully about the price of each jar of resulting sauce. I did without, but when I was going to do a second round with Margaret's mother's apples, my mom asked if I wanted to use her saucer? It was the perfect, classic device, now highly overprices, with a strong metal cone and a solid wooden wedge, and my mom never uses it so now it's mine! The result is that we can process the apples much quicker and more usefully than making juice or cutting them up for pies/baking. We actually ran out of the vast amount of sauce we made last year. We need to sweeten them with some brown sugar because they are "challenging" without.

10000

William and I did a drive-by radio appearance today. While coming home from swimming, we were listening to Margaret and Carle talking about the fair within their topic of "tight pants" on their live community radio show so we decided to stop in and give our two cents. While he's been on television a handful of times already, this was William's first radio broadcast. He talked about his favourite rides and introduced a Loverboy song (as they said, hasn't everyone seen Loverboy at the fair?). William declared that we should wear shorts that are loose so we can have lots of air in the summer and perhaps tight pants are for the winter because shorts are too cold then. Margaret paraphrased that "tight pants are to keep us hot". It will re-run Friday at 9am.