scanner working

With some degree of unusual difficulty, I got the scanner to work again (now convinced it is a Vista problem, I downloaded a patch). Here is my portrait by William.

portrait of me

Had some meetings and ran some errands today, then spent much of the afternoon lounging by the pool working on the storyboards for the film I wanted to make with Eric tomorrow, but still don't know if it will happen. There was an opening at the Dunlop, William spent the whole time doing pretty cool drawings of people. When we got home, we watched the first two episodes of the Adam West Batman series which are still not available on dvd. Holy Downloading! Computers are great except when they don't work, such as when the scanner won't work and you can't get the drawing your son drew of you into your blog.

fast paced creativity

In the course of three hours I worked on, hmm, I think about 3 or four projects. First thing this morning (or about 10-10:30am) Eric and I shot footage in the studio to create homages to four different Norman McLaren films. I then set up the microphone for a recording with Elder Betty for the End of Life project and, while it was set up anyway, recorded an all new "Mr. Saul" soundtrack. After the recording with Elder Betty, I created and copied to transparencies, the title sequence for the 35mm ray-o-gram style film I've been making. All this while almost dizzy with exhaustion since William woke me up at 5 (I went to sleep at 1:30) and was dehydrated from the physical activity of the shoot (lots of physical movement).
Here is a silent first cut of a video we shot today in reference to McLaren's 1956 "Blur Test".

waxing on

My top priority for today was to get film developed for Professor Delusia to submit it to a festival in a few days. However, the floors were just waxed in the darkroom, without warning, so I couldn't use it today, and perhaps not tomorrow. Eric got back from Montana but all we could do was some planning for some shooting we'd like to do tomorrow.

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.

Indiana Jones

Today I guess I got a bit lazy, hung around the house and watched the kids play, did a bit a stuff on the computer that was of little consequence, hung around with Ang for a bit as he's going back to Toronto tomorrow (he dropped me off a bag of old metal 100' daylight spools in the round metal cans that Kodak stopped making around 1990). It was really hot so we decided to go to a movie and to our surprise, Indiana Jones has left the main theatres. The only place it is at is the Paradise Theatre which is in the back of an indoor mini-golf course beside the Sherwood Mall. It was surprisingly nice. The seats and screen and layout of the theatre are nice, holds about 200 (that would leave 197 empty seats plus the three of us). The projection was good (35mm and the lens seemed fin) but there is no staff so the projector just runs unattended so I have heard of numerous errors. Today the framer was off a little bit, leaving a bit of the top of the frame lodged onto the bottom of the frame. Last week William and I watched both Raiders of the Lost Arc and Last Crusade and he handled them very well. There was one death that shocked him today, and the creepy stuff in the old tombs with old skulls was spookier on the big screen than it is on tv, but he really liked it. I think it was fairly good. The 1950s stuff was interesting, the adventure itself was a bit of a rehash.

Batman

Did some secret gardens this afternoon then went to Dark Knight this evening. It was good. Sorry for the thin blunt post, but the movie was enjoyable enough that I would prefer not to talk about it with people who haven't seen it rather than writing yet another review of it (there were three in yesterday's paper but I didn't read any of them), so now going to watch some Veronica Mars.

Saturday laziness

Margaret had to work all day at the Dunlop at Sherwood where they had an opening of work by Vic Cicanski, Donna Kreikle, and i-Ann Siwek, as well as some garden events and dancing by New Dance Horizons. William and I watched Johnny English this morning then went to the opening. I'm really tired from staying up way to late watching Veronica Mars season 3, which I've been waiting four months for through the library (I was about 25th on the list, but luckily there were 3 copies). I also read The Invention of Hugo Cabret, an amazing book which was mostly drawings, all set in1931 about clocks and cinema. Check out the sample first pages on the website. I had a nap and am ready to watch Veronica Mars again until morning.

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.

supper with Ang

Angelos Hatzitolios and his family came over this evening. After dark we watched 16mm films in the back yard. Ang found a reel of interesting shots he'd compiled for a demo reel 25 years ago and we threaded it up. Some great stuff. The funniest moment was when Ang, appearing in his own film clip, sits down on a bed and pulls his socks off and throws them aside. His kids ask about it and his wife, Christine, announces that he still does that.

computer give and take

I took my old "evergreen" computer that I purchased from work back to work today as it has been acting rather funky since the virus I got in it last year. It is primarily William's computer now, and even he is getting frustrated with it. They reformatted the c drive and reinstalled windows but somehow in the process, or perhaps in the moving the computer from home to there, the second hard drive won't work. He couldn't figure it out but did suggest that the power supply may have failed. On the up side, he felt that the 256mb ram wasn't enough and found some more sitting around and doubled it. Works well now, so far as I can see.
Eric and I developed some black and white film, including the 35mm I exposed with wheat ray-o-grams last week. I am using a system of laying that film on top of the colour film and exposing it in different orientations with different coloured lights. I think it will be very effective but am uncertain if I'm getting it all right. The cost of my film colour film is about $160 per 100 foot roll, which is what I exposed today, so I'm nervous about how well this basically untested system will work.
Mike came down from Saskatoon today. He has a new car (for him) that William has named "Greyster". He also has a new office with a window, a reduced teaching load for the next year because he's doing work on the on-line courses, and he's moving to a new apartment. That's a lot of news for anyone, especially Mike.

Mandy Cmoc

In a whirlwind of emails yesterday, it was arranged that Mandy Cmoc, who is a film student and whom I taught a couple of years ago and is working at the UofR recruitment office this summer, would come to the two sessions I had with grad students today to videotape for a recruitment video to be shown in China and India. When I contacted Chrystene to ensure she was willing to be a part of it, I also asked her about the availability of "rip-o-matics", video trailers made of found footage, and Chrystene told me she was happy to be in the video and that, without me having mentioned her name, Mandy Cmoc had made a very good one for a class Chrystene taught last term. Of course these things always come with a snag as it seems Mandy may have lost her video due to loss of a hard drive this spring, so I'm waiting to see if she can find a disc with it.
I was looking for a lost roll of 16mm film and found one labeled "sepia stoma". It would be a great title if this film didn't contain exactly what I labeled on it.
This evening we went to the RCMP sunset ceremony, lots of marching, nice evening.Publish Post

really working at home

Last night I got a call from Ed asking if Rowan could come over today, perhaps all day. Rowan and William play Lego together and I agreed, initially just for the morning but later for the day. Ang brought his kids over at about 3, making it quite a party. However, before that, I got my nose to the grindstone and got both of my syllabuses done for the fall term. I made a huge mistake about what day the classes were on, and that cost me an hour of my evening correcting it, but they are emailed in and so I feel the term is half done (planning what to teach is sometimes the biggest effort, once that is done you at least know what books to open and what film clips to find - it's almost easy). Anyway, the kids played together so well that I had very few distractions.

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.

fermented honey

Leslea and Leif had their annual bar-be-que today. Leif brought out his home made mead, two varieties, to sample. Odd but very nice. He added more honey at a later time for some secondary fermentation which translates into bubbles.
William and I watched the third Indiana Jones movie today (skipping the second one) and he liked it, it was never really too scary for him except for the guy who aged really fast and turned to dust. I stopped a couple of times to explain bits of history or the bible to him, but if we see the new one I won't be able to do that, so during his shower this evening I explained the cold war to him. "the Americans built one bomb so the Soviets built two bombs to make sure the Americans wouldn't use their one bomb, so the Americans built three bombs so the Soviets would be afraid to use their two bombs, so the Soviets built four bombs..." He's pretty good with figuring out this sort of pattern, and he has secret agent Lego, so the notion of spies and so on was also an easy sell. He's more informed than I was when I was his age.

sort of holiday

I hadn't really meant to take the day off but I ended up not really doing any work. We dropped William off on a play date in the morning but then ran out to the Re-Store to look for old windows for the bin I have on the farm. They have found that artists are buying these windows and the ones with multiple panes are worth more so they sell them based upon number of panes in the window. So a 2x3' window would be $5, but if it were to have a division in it making it a 2x3 window with 3 panes to it, the cost would be 3 x $3 = $9. Some of them are not large but are in 9 or 16 parts. These purchases are suddenly impracticable, but I guess so long as a few artists don't accidentally make a profit, I guess that's all right. This afternoon I took William swimming and didn't get home until mid afternoon and just didn't get focused on my work, but sometimes that is what Fridays are for.

full day at work

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

Sweeny Todd

Busy day, morning filled with shooting (and some re-shooting) kinescopes with Eric, and in the afternoon I had an End of Life research group meeting. Margaret worked until nine up a Sherwood so William and I packed supper and took it up there and we had a picnic. I didn't sleep well last night so by seven I was wrecked and needed a nap while William played Lego. Later while William was reading another of his Magic Tree House books (I think he's on #23) I finished volume 1 of my Popeye comic collection (1928-1930) which is amazing for the long strange story it told (20 months on the same story). After William was in bed I finally watched Sweeny Todd (which I bought the day it came out but didn't open until today.) Amazing Burton as always, I'm surprised at how daringly conservative he was with his camera, it is often locked down and doesn't move a hair (I've become highly annoyed at the constant adjusting of the frame most films have, cinematographers do it out of habit now).

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.

Monday break ins

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

Sunday at the movies

Yesterday, as I mentioned, we went to the farm. This is me in front of the bin I purchased (photo by William). It's 12x16 feet inside and not many holes in it. We decided to have it moved to a very scenic spot where the original farm house had been. As soon as I have a free afternoon, I'm going to the re-store to see if I can find some old windows for it.
It wasn't too hot out today, but it was supposed to be so we planned to go to the movies to beat the heat again. Saw Kung Fu Panda, very good, stayed to the end of the credits for extra bits.
I posted some new videos on William's site.

Saturday relaxation

We went out to the farm for a while this afternoon. I shot a bit of film but as I left the battery belt at the university, I couldn't use the animation controller and thus could not expose using the pin hole "lens", so it was just a single roll shot the usual way. This evening we watched the last 3 episodes of the new season of Dr. Who (freshly downloaded from Britain). Great as usual, the final 2 parter has tons of guest stars and handled well with lots of emotion and humor.

darkroom frustration

Spent the afternoon with Eric in the darkroom to develop some of the colour reversal I shot in black and white chemistry. This generally works, but today I looked at the bucket of ID-11 and it looked quite green. I decided, wisely, to test it before committing. Sure enough, it had oxydized and was no longer useful as a developer. I had another box so I mixed it up and began to develop. As it mixes hot, the development time is short, but I am confident of the charts I've made. However, everything ended up dark. The second test was also dark. I theorized that the temperature might have greater impact on the colour film than it does on black and white, so I emersed a container of cold water into it to cool it (like a big ice cube) but the next test was also very dark. I had assumed that this was all the result of overdeveloping, but then it occurred to me that the original film, being a 20+ year old roll of 7239 reversal, might be the problem. I will likely need to re-shoot. I accomplished nothing today.

returning to the students

Busy today, but not stressful. William slept in and I managed to finish my compilation video with spinning hand transitions for How to be an experimental filmmaker (a silhouetted hand spins from the distance, at once obliterating the image as well and transitioning into the new image, in between each of the 13 chapters, now without titles). I took William downtown for lunch at the SGI building and it's great view, then picked up Margaret and they dropped me off at work then went on to buy more Lego, on sale at the Bay, while I met with both Janine and Chrystene to discuss the courses I'm doing with them this summer, starting on Tuesday. Eric and I developed 5 rolls of colour film. The two rolls of reversal, which I did last, appear to be overexposed or overdevoped, perhaps a nature of the film, perhaps a nature of the exposure. Came home with Paul then worked on Lego and some baking until now, which is time for Dr. Who.

actually going to work

Today was the first day I'm back at work and not on a holiday. It really wasn't much different that last week except that I was prompter about answering my email. I went to the university and did some kinescoping (alone) until my battery died. I had to pack up and get home at lunch time so that Margaret could use the car - she's training someone this week so has put in a few extra hours. I worked on putting a compilation of "How to be an experimental filmmaker" together - removing titles and creating a graphic transition between each section. Carving the titles off brings the set of 13 down to below 9 minutes. William had two play dates over, Daniel and Rowan, and they played fairly well, although right now he is pouting because I've told him he has to have a bath instead of watching more cartoons (we finished the Justice League series after supper). Gavin DeLint dropped in with discs I lent him and to pick up discs he lent me. I was going to drop in on him after the cartoons but decided that William would expect to watch whatever we borrowed right away, and that wouldn't work out well. (William got over his grouchy time after 30 minutes and is now reading a Magic Tree House book in bed).
A couple of days ago a stack of discs arrived from Deric Olsen with, what the two of believe to be, a video that Fazail created with me based upon a 3D scan of my face. However, the disc won't play in either his nor my computers. It was my last hope for finding this lost video. Now I'll have to find my notes on how the 3D scanner works and start from scratch (of course the entire thing probably took 4 hours to make and I've spent 20 trying to find the files).

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.

364

William and I went to Wall-E today, very good film. Of course, William was full of questions and a bit nervous about the situation, so needed to voice them constantly throughout the first third such as "where are all the people", "are they all dead", that sort of thing, of which I did not know the answer (they aren't dead).
Weather is hot, I put a second coat of paint on shed door and planted another grape vine (now have four). I bought a six dvd set of NASA documentaries at London Drugs on my way for coffee with Kevin. Nice thing about NASA is that all their space footage is public domain, so expect to see some of it re-purposed in my future videos.

363

Saturday, didn't do any real work, watched some Justice League with William. Had to run off and get more photos for a collage frame for my parents, those ones with a bunch of odd shaped holes to fit pictures into but get them to fit is really time consuming. Ran back and forth to the store twice and never did remember to mail my medial reimbursement letter in (a number of months of stuff for the whole family).
My friend/colleague/ filmmaker Dianne Ouellette had a backyard pool party today. Kathy Toth wore a grass skirt.
This evening we went for a family supper to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary. I had a photo album book made through the Costco on line photo lab. The interface was terrible but the product was good.

362

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

361

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

360

Eric and I started a city symphony style film today, which is a traditional of weaving together images of a city into a visual study to be played with music. I had us focus on alleyways in the Cathedral area of Regina, shot from a high vantage point with a wide lens in reference to Wilf Perreault. We shot at least 50 shots, I've not reviewed the tape yet.
It was the last day of school for William today. His report card is good. I bought him the Spiderwick Chronicals dvd and we watched it before summer. It seems the ending is changed from the books and if anyone has seen it, can they explain to me how the family won't get arrested for the disappearance of their great aunt at the end of the story?

359

I just found The Incredibles soundtrack at the library. I'd meant to order in on line a couple of years ago, having never been able to find it on the shelf, but I rarely get around to that sort of thing. Then on a whim I glanced through soundtracks at the library while waiting for Margaret to get coffee for her break and there it was. It's great in the car, classic 60s style, but po-mo, so that always makes it better.
Eric and I did some more film copying with the flatbed, this time copying film that have optical soundtracks on them to see how well those copy. We probably won't develop them for a week, so I'll have to wait to find out (unless I slip in and do the black and white one...?).
We were supposed to have our first Filmpool Board meeting of the new year this evening but didn't get quorum. Eric is a newcomer to the Board so we talked for a while about things that we didn't need to make decisions about and to bring him up to speed on what the Board does (which I can't reveal here, or else I'll have to kill you).

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.

357

This evening we watched some Sherlock Holmes with Jeromy Brett, certainly the best adaptations ever. It gets me all excited about the character again, especially after some of the other versions I've watched this year. I put a coat of paint on the shed door and painted out some graffiti on the garbage bins in the alley.

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.

355

I was up way too late working on my videos last night, so today when I had committed to kinescope all morning then process film all afternoon, I almost died. Eric did some very cool video feed back with the kinescope chain. We shot onto really old Kodak 7239 colour reversal stock, probably early 1980s. We developed it as black and white negative. There is a murkiness to it, so the whites aren't clean, but otherwise looks pretty good.
Today was solstice. We had a fire and popped corn over it in the backyard.

354

and this is one of those days where I am just so busy I cannot really find the time to blog. I've been at the computer all day, but for a run to the bank and the photo place at the drug store, banging away on this machine to create five (count em, 5) videos based upon the Melies films. I perform in them as Professor Delusia, the Nocturnalist, who performs magic tricks. We shot one using in camera tricks and then some follow ups using green screen. I think I can make one or two more out of the stuff we shot, each of them is about a minute. They are silent films. I might post them in the future, but my current concern is for getting them ready to kinescope tomorrow morning. Bedtime now.

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.

352

Eric was late coming in this morning, assumably because he was up late last night frustrated with the optical printer eating my film, which also happened for me when I reloaded it so it wasn't just a simple error, but it did not eat the dummy roll I added later, nor the next roll I put on, so I will have him finish with an alternate roll instead of my 40th birthday roll I wanted him to explore as a random time study, running forward for a few seconds then pausing for a couple of seconds, suggesting that our memory of moments is more random than we want to believe. I won't know if it was effective until we develop it later in the week. The original rolls were shot by Lisa Rae Vineberg while she was a student here. Anyway, Eric and I worked on more surrealism and in particular on the Melies style films, but this time in front of a green screen on video rather than traditionally in the studio on film with black screen. I've still not edited that, but hope to do so tomorrow.

351

Eric and I went out shooting pin hole cinema- tography again today. Actually, by using the higher speed colour negative, we were able to shoot fairly quickly, one tenth of a second, which is quicker than the animation controller will go. Thus we over exposed a bit. That will be fine. We shot a hundred feet of a train crossing (three trains came) and another 100 of the refinery.

350

Father's Day today. William brought me breakfast (or Margaret did actually) in bed and we all hung out and read and relaxed for a while. Margaret went to work in the afternoon so William took me to "Forbidden Kingdom" with Jackie Chan and Jet Li, we enjoyed it. Not a perfect movie, some pacing problems, but overall fun and well made. I love the Monkey King, I read a story about him recently so those parts were particularly appreciated. This evening we bar-b-qued then went for a walk for ice cream. My back is sore so I've not been tempted to do any work today, but feeling guilty about it so it doesn't feel like a break. I did post a new video for William on his blog though.

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.

347: my Toronto vacation

We got back last night from Toronto where we were visiting Margaret's brother and family for a week. Of course, it is Toronto so we naturally were overly busy and did too many things. We made a rule when we lived there that we would only plan one thing per day. If we accomplished more than that, it was gravy, but it should never be expected.

The flight to Toronto was without incident. We stayed with Margaret's brother George and his family (wife Ivana and girls Katherine and Kristin, who are aged one older and one younger than William). Ivana picked us up then we dropped her back at work then we took her car on a long scenic route back to their house which is in Markham, which is basically a city adjoined to the north end of Toronto (if you don't know the clues, you cannot possibly know that you are passing between cities when you cross Steels Avenue). We made a stop at our favorite bakery, Nina D'versa on Keele. George and I picked up a mattress for William but could not fit the accompanying box spring down the narrow stairway. William, still on Regina time, stayed up two hours past when his cousins did, even though he was excited about the idea of sleeping in Uncle George's basement.

On the second day, Thursday, we went to the Village of St. Jacob where there was a Lego outlet store. For more information on it, see the photos and video I posted today on William's blog. On Thursday evening, George and I pulled apart his cappuccino machine, removing the pump and immersing it and other parts in vinegar to try to get it working again. More surprising than our success was the fact that George got it back together again at the end.

Friday we decided should be a calmer day. It was very hot again (and muggy) so we drove the 1/2 mile into the old main street of Markham and went to the shops there, including a pretty good used book store and a chocolate shop which sold both Belgium as well as French chocolate. (The Mug and Truffle) I think the French stuff was more bitter and balanced by a sweeter filling, nice but I prefer the Belgium. William had a Sprite out of a glass bottle. When Margaret was talking to the proprietor of the chocolate shop about art, he suggested we visit the church down the block where a painter is working. We did so. It is an eastern orthodox church where a painter from Macedonia, Georgi Danevski. He was painting the entire inside of this church, he was close to being done after two years work, perhaps only a year remaining. He was really nice, he climbed down from his scaffold and made us coffee. William was initially quite shy but warmed up after they began drawing for each other. He likes to draw horses and drew one for William beside the one William drew. William gave him a picture of Mary and baby Jesus onto which Georgi added the halo. Georgi wanted William to call him Uncle Georgi and said he'd draw William's portrait if we came back the next week. Unfortunately, we did not manage to. Back at the house, William built his new (old stock) Bionicle. It's not on his blog yet but will be soon. We took a short tv break and watched the first scene or two of High School Musical. Even William lost interest. How obvious and formulaic can you get!!? It could get a cult following for its absurdity, but I can't understand how it has an earnest following of kids, I don't care how naive they might be.

William with George Bessai

Saturday, as planned, we went to Christian Island where Ivana's parents have a really nice cottage. Margaret, Ivana, and the kids went out first while George and I mowed the watered the lawn (after 10 years in the house, Ivana is extremely pleased to have a back yard lawn for the first time as of this month). George took William on an ATV, the girls are already driving them on their own. Of course, George took him around with the little one so he ended up tipping and George took a good scrape to the knee. Supper was grand, lots of ribs. Discussion of the mineral content of the water on the island led me to discover that a similar issue exists in Markham. My poor sleep since ariving might be the result of the water, which I'm still trying to drink more of instead of pop and other sugary liquids. Whoa is me.

Sunday, Ivana's dad is building a new, permanent dock. He was doing some arc welding and got a sun burn on his arms from it (no sleeves). George took William on a two hour ATV ride, taking in all the sights and trails (and many places that weren't trails) of the island. We drove home without mishap.

Monday morning we drove downtown and went to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). I thought we'd have a quiet day there, but there were hundreds of kids there on school trips, so it was a madhouse. They've put on a huge addition, the crystal, that is quite odd. In a few places such as the dinosaur area where skeletons hang from the ceiling, it works. Most places it is just obtuse. However, the old areas are very old fashioned; rectangular rooms with old wood and a sombre mood, so a shake up was needed. William was most excited about the Egyptian exhibits, that he would see a real mummy! See photo. After that we went to the Danforth area and the Big Carrot organic food store and adjoining cool book store. William got the Stink books he didn't have, including the new fourth one. As we fed the pigeons, just as he had done four years ago, there was a downpour and we ran for the car. My old friend Angelos Hatzitolios lives in that area and we got to his place, watermelon in hand, for supper. William had been getting grumpy but fortunately he was able to play with their son's Lego and it eventually became a bonding experience. After I mentioned the slides I had been posting (automatic postings that I set up before I left Regina) on my blog, he put me on to a website where someone buys photos and does something similar on a regular basis called Bighappyfunhouse. It's pretty cool, check it out. It rained a lot on the way home, but we still made fair time on the Don Valley Parkway. We watched National Treasure until late, kind of fun, wish I'd watched it with William as it is quite innocent and he'd have liked it. I'll put it on my list.

Tuesday I was tired so I had a nap while Margaret took William shopping for gifts for his cousins. They were taken with the Bionicle he built so we bought some for them. Later, we picked up the girls from their school, the Somerset Academy in Markham Ontario, where parents care a lot about their kids education, although not enough about their safety not to park their environmentally unfriendly SUVs all along the fire lane in front of the school. We took them to Margaret's cousin Tom's house, near downtown. His house is amazing as he has been renovating it into a modernist dream. Architect. Tom's brother John and John's wife Joan also came, so it was a crazy Bessai party. I met David Wellington (director of "I Love a Man In Uniform") there, seems to be a friend of John and Tom. I'd heard his name but not until I looked him up did I realize the Man in Uniform connection. That movie poster was up in the seminar room at York and I used to stare at it every day. Now we have a copy of it up in our office hallway. Anyway, since Tom is an architect has three boys it goes without saying that he has lots of Lego (not as much as we do though) so you can guess what William spent his time doing. Actually he did get involved with their water fight, although that has mishaps. Driving home did not. George's dogs (two ten year old German shepherds) had torn open our zip lock bags of Lego when we got back to the house, so I had to assemble until I was certain they'd not eaten any. They hadn't.

Wednesday was yesterday, our last day in Toronto. Our flight home was for 6:00 pm. We swapped cars around, taking Ivana's Lexus which, even with 300,000 km on it, drove very nicely. We went for lunch and ice cream at Nina D'versas then headed downtown. We showed William a few sights, mostly through drive-bys, such as Casa Loma. We ended up in Chinatown. Ran into Rory McDonald (sculpture prof at UofR) in Kensington Market. Got some nice new plates and bowls at our favorite store. It was hot again and we were getting worried that William was getting heat stroke, but he held up well. At three o'clock we started on our way to the airport where we were to park the Lexus for Ivana to pick up when she returns from her flight she was also going on that day and would be returning the following day. We drove past the new renovations at the AGO (not open yet) then headed to the Gardener Expressway. Suddenly, nothing. The car died. There was no electrical power. The car would not start and the windows wouldn't go up or down. We called CAA and explained, they guaranteed that we'd have a truck there by 3:29. The police arrived at 3:25 and told us to move it, they gave us 10 minutes. THOUSANDS of cars were being affected. William and I went looking for a phone since the cel phone battery died, and had a closer look at the CN tower before we eventually found one at 3:50. CAA told us they'd have one in 10-15 minutes. At 4:05 a truck arrived but not a CAA one. Here is where our luck turns; HE WAS A COURTEOUS, HONEST, HELPFUL TORONTO TOW TRUCK DRIVER!!!! Most people who have driven in Toronto will swear they don't exist, but my hat comes off to this amazing tow truck driver, a hero, D. Birko (sp?) of Laidlaw Towing. He hooked us up, let us drive with him, lent us his phone, explained how we can get CAA to agree to pay the bill, and drove us to the mechanic. At 4:40 we got to a Canadian Tire and he then boosted us enough so we could get the windows up in case of rain and he negotiated with the Becks cab for a flat fee for us to the airport. The miracles continued as the cab managed to get us to the airport by 5:30 through rush hour traffic (mostly on the QEW). The airline people doubted that our luggage would make it there, but we could board and they would try (you are no longer allowed to say you won't fly with your luggage, but if it's their choice/fault, that's okay). The flight was fine (a bit rough) and Sarah Abbott got on our plane at Winnipeg. I didn't realize until we were going to bed that we'd had nothing but bits and bites for supper. Miracle #3, the luggage made it! Paul was waiting with all of William's castle Lego assembled and the Hogwarts Castle restored. We were very tired and went to bed at 11.

Today I'm starting to get back to work (even though I seem to do nothing but write this blog) since I really did just vacation while away and didn't use the laptop I brought and only shot a bit of video for use in my web videos (got an interesting strobing one out the cab window of these intermittent dividers between left and right lanes, but I'll save that for another day). I met with Eric just to discuss future plans since my hope to shoot was crushed by todays rain.

346: slide restoration 8

In the interest of science, Rudy has continued to eat every meal in the same way, from the same bowl, since 1972. Rudy also continues to be single.

345: slide restoration 7

During the big child care strike of '63, the professional stroller pushers chose not to walk out.

344: slide restoration 6

Maya never did know why her father cursed and spat whenever the price of Fantastic Four #48 increased. It had always been his dream to send his daughter up to be the first surfer in space.

343: slide restoration 5

Having eaten the keys to the station wagon, the tortoise made a valiant run for it.

342: slide restoration 4

Sinclair, in the red shirt, age four, discovered the meaning of life in the mouth of a scorpion. His family, in search of a power centre that would give them the best possible prices on straw hats and clogs, declared this spot to be simply "too warm". Sinclair forgot the scorpion until he was sixteen, as the 1970s was coming to a close, and created an underground cult that seeks, to this day, to find this fateful hotspot.

341: slide restoration 3

Not only did they all mysteriously survive the crash when no adults did, but they flourished... that is, until the gloves came off and little Trudy revealed the birthmark that proved her to be the rightful queen of Latvia.

340: slide restoration 2

See posting 339 for further information about my new slide restoration project.

No one was as surprised as Agnes.

339: slide restoration 1

The other day I bought a couple of hundred slides from a garage/house sale. They were not well labeled, so in the interest of history, I will present a selection of them here with facts that should be self evident. If anyone has additional information about these images, it would be a great boon to mankind if you came forth to further clarify the origin of the images.


Kal-El's ship was not a rocket but a space craft powered by a combination of a solar sail and pedaling by an in-house cabana boy.

338

I posted a new video on William's site. The road crew came an hour later and finally started progressing on my road again. Met with Eric for just a short time, gave him a bunch more optical printing to do, the super-8 blow up to 16mm has been working really well and so I'll be using a fair amount of that in the "Grain" film project. I commissioned a new (mysterious) satchel from Nikki Henderson and it was ready today. It has a walrus on it....

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.

336

The last month of the sabbatical begins. Dread.
Mom gave me two grape vines today, I planted them against the new fence with the southern exposure. I didn't read up about them first, might have to dig them out later and do it right, but how else can I achieve perfection but for unnecessary practice.
Kevin and I saw "Iron Man" at the theatre today. Enjoyed it. In particular, I liked that it was basically a Tony Stark movie. The guise of Iron Man was basically like watching Transformers, which is fine for what it is but doesn't sustain interest long. I've been enjoying talking with other dads such as Tyler or Gavin, about superheros. I can draw shamelessly upon my thousands of comic books in my attic as well as the graphic novels Margaret brings home from the library for my small talk.

335

I had a tick on me! Yeew! I didn't notice it until it fell off me onto the floor and I squished it like a bug, which i guess is sort of is.

334

I had a lazy day, went out driving, paid some bills, stopped a few garage sales (found a glass bottle with a flip lid like the ones I keep water in the frig in, but smaller, an individual portion of my decrepit water/juice mixture I've been almost enjoying since curtailing my pop consumption two months ago). A great find for 25 cents. I also found a short super-8 copy of Rod Steiger in "Al Capone". It's one of those 50 foot, 3 minute silent condensed versions they produced for the home movie market. This is the first one I've found at a garage sale.
This evening we lit a fire in the back yard and roasted some marshmallows.

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.

332

Today I cracked open those expensive rolls of 35mm motion picture film and did some tests for my photograms. A while back, I build a folding board with guides and groves to put 8 feet of either 16mm or 35mm film into that would allow you to put stuff on top of the film without it rolling off. I used this to cover the film with grain and nails and noodles then trigger a flash to expose the film, leaving the shadows of the objects on top of them. Don Hall lent me his flash meter so I could test my flash brightness. It ends up that I needed to move the flash pretty far back then filter it for two more stops before shooting with it. I could have used a third person as I needed to leave Eric by the flash (17 feet away in complete darkness but for the flashing lights of the motion detector, and don't ask me why there is a motion detector in our classroom). That left me to lay out the film, place stuff on top of it, then remove all the stuff, advance the film, make sure both sides are still well cover, and let it get exposed again. I repeated this process six times, it took nearly an hour. Worked at home all afternoon so the film is not yet developed.

331

Pinhole cinematography.
Today I put my pinhole lens to use. I made it last night using an extension tube (to be able to thread it into a c-mount lens mount) and a small piece of aluminum from a pop can. I took the aluminum, traced the end element, drew where the lens will be, calculated where the centre of the circle was, pushed a pin most of the way through it, then sanded the back of it until the divit became a round hole. Today I put that pin hole piece onto the overhead projector alongside a transparent ruler to be able to measure the hole. It is about .33 mm wide. The distance from the pin hole to the film to be exposed will be about 23mm. The optimal size of the hole should be about .2mm, but I didn't want to redo it at this time for a factor of 50% (1/2 stop). Then I calculated the f-stop by dividing the focal length (23mm) by the hole size (1/3 mm) to get f 69. This is pretty close to f 64, the aperture of choice for the famous F 64 Group who shot a lot of pin hole photographs. Anyway, I mounted the lens and the animation controller onto the Bolex and shot a series of sequences of still life out in the very bright sunlight we had today. I shot at 1/2 second up to 3 seconds. However, I didn't mount the motor correctly (I can't believe I'd make such a novice error) so I had to re-shoot, shorter clips this time (50 frames of each, rather than 200-400). I processed it and am happy with the results. I think 1.5 to 2 seconds will be the best timings for it.That should mean it will take 45 minutes to an hour to shoot a minute of film, that is when the sunlight is as bright as it was today. Here is the clip, it was a negative but I've reversed it digitally. It is of small trees on campus with buildings in the background. The nature of pin hole cameras is for unusual depth of field (ie: things are in focus from close to far away):

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).

329

Another busy day, well not too bad except the conflict in my usually calm Sunday. The Filmpool AGM was this afternoon. I rarely miss these. I think I might have missed 1996 as I was in Toronto on the tail end of my graduate work, but otherwise it is likely that I've attended every one since I joined in 1984. I came to the meeting today in jacket and tie and cut out after 30 minutes to attend Brett Bell and Hildy Bowen's wedding. It was to be outside but needed to move in due to rain, but was still nice. Not as much of the film crowd as I'd been expecting. Didn't know what to get them as they didn't have a registry, but that is explained in their wedding blog - read the first part, quite funny. Anyway, this is the second wedding of Brett's that William has attended, but likely the last. They both have such wicked senses of humor that they are bound to make it. Here they are "sucking face" as they discussed in their blog:

328

Mike came to town and came over this evening so we cracked out Carcassonne and taught him to play and, miraculously, Margaret won even though she was practically asleep throughout, after helping Terry with her table out at the Cathedral festival street sale all day, which William and I attended for a short while and had a snow cone and took a turn at the bouncer but left when the wind and weather took a bad turn around noon and opted for Lego and Justice League and the audio book of "How to eat fried worms" all afternoon. Now my headache is back.

327

I think I did everything at half speed today including, or perhaps especially, thinking. Tired and have a perpetual headache that I think is part of a cold or sinus/allergy thing right now.
Talked with John for a while this morning until I had to drive him to the airport to connect with his shuttle to Yorkton. Put $60 gas in the car. Poked away at the computer but accomplished very little this afternoon. The screening under the stars was tonight, primarily a rerun of the premier screening, so I took William home and Margaret went without me.
Yesterday I was looking into hiring a machinist to create a threaded tube/pipe to screw into a lens mount and cover to create a pin-hole camera. Later, while I was waiting for Mark Montague to come and interview me, I found an extension tube in my cupboard that was part of a beat up Bolex I bought from Craig Langley about 15 years ago. It is exactly what I need, it has the exact threads to screw into the mount and is an open tube, containing no glass or lens of any sort. Next step is to cut some aluminum and make the hole. More on that next week.

326

Busy busy busy.
Most of my day focused around my screening tonight, but there were a couple of other events. Mark Montague, who was a student of mine about 5 or 6 years ago, is doing a tv show about Saskatchewan filmmakers and did an interview with me today at my (yes, very cluttered) office. We talked about the university, the Filmpool, and in independant filmmaking in general. I also had another optometrist appointment where we think he finally has the correct shape of contact lens to fit my left eye without it giving me significant halos and double vision. The screening went well in general. Eric helped set up. The sound guy was late and we didn't know if he would have the correct connectors for us to patch the recorder into his board. It required XLR to RCA, not a common cord. I went to the university and searched and searched. I finally gave up but when I went to turn off the lights in the equipment room, I discovered another rack of connectors and managed to find what I needed there. Once we were all set up, we were able to go look at some of the street fair. I had a lengthy conversation with Ryan Hill and Brent Brataan who were sitting on the patio at the wine bar. Time travel mostly. Just as I left there to try to find Margaret, her cousin John Bessai from Toronto found me. He's in province to attend the Yorkton festival but decided to spend tonight here to visit and see my screening. We had ice cream, even though I had no jacket and was getting pretty cold. The parade came next; as Margaret was an organizer, I walked with William. He was getting very tired to we stopped at the Cathedral Centre where the band and films were to play and waited for Margaret. Lots of people came including a number of old friends. The band, Intergalactic Virgin, started at 10:45 and I ran my films on a paper screen suspended from the ceiling. Many of the more subtle films didn't show up well due to the throw and the abundant ambient light. However, a lot of it did look really good. Here is a clip:

325

Today I followed up on a system Alex MacKenzie introduced me to a couple of years ago, that is to use a flatbed editing machine as a contact printer! A flatbed is a table with multiple platters that hold rolls of film that run through a gate area where light shines on it and reflects the image up onto a view screen. The machine can go fast or slow or hold on one spot. By running unexposed film bi-packed with film that has an image on it through the machine at the same time in such as way that the light shines through the image on one film and onto the raw film, you expose it. Of course you must stop light from hitting the film when it is on the platters or leading towards the gate, so this morning I purchased a metre of black, opaque sable suede cloth ($25) to drape over everything. I had Eric there to ensure that the platters were able to turn without tangling the cloth. The next big trick was exposure. I used low speed black and white film (Kodak 7363 hi-con) which I rate at 6 iso under tungsten light (as this was) and ran the flatbed as fast as it would go (about 4x speed, reducing the exposure by 2 stops), but still measured it as too bright. I used a one stop neutral density filter to try to compensate the rest. The results were not bad, although perhaps a bit overexposed. The image was steady and clear (of course you also should try to print emulsion to emulsion, which was easier due to the fact that this stock was double perf and thus could be loaded in any direction). This is part of my Grain film project.
Eric is working on transferring the work to video so I'll be able to post a clip soon.
Tomorrow night I will be showing about 30-40 minutes of Modern at the Cathedral Arts Festival at 10:45 at night in accompaniment to Intergalactic Virgin.

324

Today in the darkroom, Eric and I processed the last of the colour film that I've shot, meaning that I am completely caught up in processing my films for the first time since I started teaching at the UofR. The optical printing of super-8 onto vision colour negative is looking good although a lot of the colour print stock looks like it doesn't have much colour range. I got him started telecining all of the recent work onto video. I'll soon be able to put some clips up on the web from the 16mm versions of Modern.
Watched Donny Darko last night. For those who have seen it, it seems at first to be strewn with odd coincidences, not the least of which seemed to be the fact that I watched it after Battlestar Galactic and that the title character's mother is the same actress as the president. Hmmm, how did they plan that...?

323

This morning we got into the Cathedral Festival lantern parade, marched down Elphanstone to the Balkwill centre, shooting super-8 along the way, and attended the picnic and comic jam there. William was really into the comic jam, which was run by Allan Dotson. William, inspired by his Stink books, created two pages of "Idiom Comics", illustrating such things as "he lost his head" and "he got up on the wrong side of the bed" and "it's not the end of the world". I contributed by drawing the head on a surrealist inspired exquisite corpse drawing (in combination with Allan, Gavid DeLint, and Margaret) - which of course turned out really well, despite my contribution. This afternoon we attended Rob Bos's art opening in his bathroom.

322

My sister Sharon and niece Michelle came to town for the weekend. Michelle (14) spent the night here last night and discovered the William likes to wake up much earlier than teenagers do.

321

William and I made a video this morning. I posted it on his blog. Check it out.

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.

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!).

318

Bit of this and that today, didn't really complete anything, tried to write this morning and only progressed a couple of pages on Midsummer Night's Dream before just got tired and out of focus on the whole thing. There was some sidewalk painting going on so I shot 100 feet of film to be my new test roll (where I use a couple feet at a time to test chemistry), since I used up my last test roll last week (it contained footage of William age 2 in the backyard with his car). I worked on my new web video but don't have it done yet. I made a brush based upon my hand scan and, even in the brush mode, it clearly shows my fingerprints. I made this in as a filmstrip in photoshop; only a portion of the frame will be shown so I figure I should show it all here. It is 15 seconds and silent (and compressed with flash so the fingerprints are not nearly as visible). I only made one brush this time and I can't figure out how to rotate the brush, which is pretty obvious in this video.

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.

316

Eric and I set up to kinescope more Modern footage today. He's got some graphics work on the new Stephen King movie shooting in Regina now, so after the camera battery died I let him go and work on his road signs while I charged it up. Shot a 400' roll, that's another 11 minutes. It's made up mostly of new material, although it does have a couple minutes of stuff from a couple of years ago that I never included before including some with Tanya Dahms' microscopic surface images captured with a laser. I was amused by one video I created that has this image with descriptive text floating across the screen slowly enough that it takes on a deliberate video strobe/shift. While not really video, it is astoundingly video. This afternoon I worked on End of Life video stuff, starting to get really tough on it and trimming it to the bone. I'm getting braver and happier with it. I couldn't stay awake tonight and basically passed out between chapters while reading to William at 7:00.

315

Mothers day, William woke very early and we did a breakfast in bed thing. Got Margaret a new Krups coffee grinder.
Yesterday I posted my new How to be an experimental filmmaker video.
And they seem to have re-designed the Kraft Dinner box. Why wasn't this on the news?

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Saturday is cartoon day, William announced at 7:30 this morning. I'd told him he could wake me up in the morning to continue reading the Bionicle Legends book I'd started last night (volume 4 out of a current 9 book set, in that Bionicle series). However, my promise was before I decided to watch the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men at midnight, so was up until past 2. Ouch. We watched an episode of the Tick (vs Brainchild), then the Iron Giant (Brad Bird's masterpiece). This afternoon we went to the Sherwood Dunlop branch for the opening of Cindy Baker's "Gimmick" show, which I have mixed feeling about. This show features an array of objects which appear to be parts of magic acts. It looks pretty cool, but they don't make much sense without being able to handle them, which is partially allowed, but they don't all stand up to this type of scrutiny. See video: sorry if it's longer than most video I post (1:37). Leesa and Daniel were there and got lots of attention during the magic act that followed the artist talk. Supper was at Margaret's mothers houses as she is hosting a couple of kids from Africa who are part of a school of orphans who are touring North America and singing in church choirs. William played with them in the back yard for a while, it was nice. We thought we'd surprise them with the bucket of snow we were storing in the freezer, but apparently they've been here for six months already, so were not interested.

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I worked on creating some new videos for Modern today, I want 11 more to kinescope on Monday. Sometimes I think I'm repeating myself, they all start off derivative of my previous work, but then I work it and work it until it is new again. They make me happy. I have about 6 or 7 new now, hope to finish tomorrow. I might have finished the set had I not been so tired, I sat in front of the computer while it was doing a five minute render and drifted off in my chair, had a wild set of dreams about Lego until the computer chimed and woke me with a start. Had supper at mom's tonight. Margaret booked us a trip to Toronto next month on air miles (free but for the $700+ in taxes). She's found a Lego store there, will be a thrill for William. I put my birthday present from William to use finally, it is a small metal lunch box, about 4x6x3", with Spiderman on it. Joe and Roland helped me fit it with foam and today I cut it to hold my mp3 player, my memory cards, some ear-bud headphones, and my pen drive. Tonight's episode of Battlestar Gallactica, which promised answers, really didn't. I've been getting tired of the slow pace of it. All grit, no plot.

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Today I demonstrated the optical printer to Eric and had him reproduce some super-8 footage onto 16mm film while I developed some black and white film. Amazingly, I developed all of the backlog I had of black and white, this is the first time I've done that since 2001! Then we developed the colour footage Eric shot; however, the colour developer must not keep as well -- the footage is rather dim (as is the test control strip), so the test was inconclusive. I'll have to start it again tomorrow or Monday. I want to save the new batch of chemistry for the next batch of kinescoped images that I'll shoot next week.
I had Kalyn and her boyfriend over for supper. She figured out how to get me onto the server and allow me to update my own website. I have done a few changes, just minor things such as activate the return to main button on William's page and the Splice magazine page, and to connect the second How to be an Experimental Filmmaker button to its page. I've not figured out how to add new pages yet, but I should get it alter.
After Kalyn and James left, Margaret started falling asleep so Paul and I built Bionicles out of the box of parts, so William will find 10 assembled in the morning, instead of just 4.

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This afternoon I went to a nutrition session which was supposed to tell me about tri-glycerides, a concern since my liver tests showed only that I have fat around my liver that could be a future problem. Instead, the session told me how to reduce my cholesterol (which is already low) and to eat more fiber (which I cannot do without dire physical consequences). There were about 20 people there and I really didn't feel like making a fuss then and there. On the way home I picked up some romance comics then made some worthwhile new Modern videos that Margaret was convinced were done with colour pencil and ink, even though every texture was digital. I was trying out some masks which are arranged to reveal out of phase versions of itself below itself. I made three that I'm happy with. Margaret was interviewed by reporters regarding the Cathedral Festival and showed off the Ghost Rider lantern than she made with William's help. It's cool.

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Eric and I got into the darkroom first thing this morning, or at least 10 am or so, to develop the Warhol footage we kinescoped last week. I chose to use the Kodak "Flexcolor" C41 negative developer to cross process the colour reversal film. The source video images had been converted to negative so the outcome will be a positive with no orange masking that is inherent in regular negative colour films. I've had mixed results with this and I was worried this was going to be a bad day after the first test gave me black frames (but great frame lines). unwilling to give up right away (but in the back of my head planning to re-shoot the footage) we reduced the developer time from 4 minutes to 2 (and the temperature had dropped from 36 degrees to 32) and the result was amazing! I probably have the best colour film I've every processed. We did all 800 feet, plus a roll of black and white, and everything turned out well. We dried it all on the lawn outside the Education Building but the sun was behind rain clouds and the wind had calmed. While it didn't rain, the drying started taking too long and I had to pick up William at school and had no car. I couldn't just leave Eric working since he was my ride. Therefore, I gathered the largest piece, a 250 roll, and carried it as a huge mass into Eric's car and he sped to Connaught School, only 3 minutes late for picking up William. I wound the film onto its core while standing on one of the few pieces of grass in the schoolyard. The still above is from Modern, as converted to film from video using my rudimentary systems. The colours are not altered.

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I had a nice day working at home, partially on A Midsummer Nights Dream, and a bit on other things like a dvd for "She Said...". I posted my new How to be and experimental filmmaker video, which finally brings me back on schedule. I read William the first book in the Bionicle Legends series (it looks pretty dire at the end, a real pot boiler) and while Margaret was out, we watched "the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad", although he needed clarification a number of times why people were doing things such as the prisoners hired onto the ship who then mutiny and the magician who betrays them in the course of the adventure. Great movie, great Harryhousen, great experience.

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Last night was nuts, I was so tired I fell asleep at 10 but then woke up with a sore throat at 3:30 and got up and watched half of Blacula which I'd taped the night before. William called out, having woken up and heard the tv, so I went up and slept with him a few minutes then went to bed. I woke again at 6:30 and watched the end of Blacula (he never calls himself that, thankfully, but was named that by Dracula in the 18th century when he was being "cursed". Neither as good nor as bad as I'd hoped. I liked the bar scenes with the comments about his cool cape though. The black and white gay designers who bought Dracula's castle at the beginning were an embarrassing hoot.
We finished the Film Frenzy today. The group I was with, consisting of me, Raoul Cormier a sculptor and musician recently here from Quebec, Ramona Furkert who is rekindling her interest since taking a year of film about 10 years ago, and Debbie Bradford, a creative young woman and mother of a four year old. It was quite interesting (could have been frustrating if I had different expectations) to work with the team, none of whom I'd met before. We all seemed more interested in talking about making a film than actually doing it. This led to hours of discussion. Editing only expounded this situation. We spent six hours putting the footage together today, about four of those were talking about the philosophy of the project, the meaning of the animals and scultures in the shots, Eisenstein's montage theory, surrealism, conflict/non-conflict, and countless other ideas. It took ages to come to consensus. The Filmpool requred other decisions by the end such as a name for our film (Take a few shots on the wild slide) and for our group, which went from "birdbath" to the "birdbathers". We screened the films tonight with Raoul playing live guitar to accompany our film. A jury met and then Jemma Gilboy and Berny Hi announced the winners:

I'm finally back on the cup!!! I was on the winning team for the first two years but then lost on years three and four. Now I'll be on three of the five plaques for this cup. It's built in the classic way so that new tiers can be added, and one already has. Here is the team: L-R: Debbie, Ramona, Raoul, me.
William was in the film so he came, had a good time, took some picures (not this one).

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I'm wishing to say "I had a lazy day" but instead, yet again, I had a busy day. It was the beginning of the 48 hour Filmmaking Frenzy at the Filmpool. Since 9 am this morning I was out with my group shooting film then in the darkroom developing. The results are looking good, although the project is less focused than I'd have preferred. Editing will be more of a challenge than usual. The screening will be tomorrow night at 7:30 at the Filmpool. It was also free comic book day. Margaret and William got to a store but I missed out. She got me a Hellboy comic, so I'm happy.

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Another busy day, I worked with Eric again this morning and we set up a new rear screen I built and shot the 15 minutes of Warhol video onto the film stock that luckily arrived at 9:15 am. I think it went very well, although only after processing will I know. This afternoon I worked on the three new videos for Youtube, one is posted. Eric helped me shoot the keyed shot against the sky, although there were other objects behind me when we shot. I used a clip with me off frame as a difference map and was able to remove all the trees and so on, although parts of my legs did disappear too due to the fact I was wearing blue jeans and they matched the sky colour. This evening was a really good artist talk at the MacKenzie with Kent Monkman. Totally worthwhile. I'm only sorry that the paintings he showed slides of in his talk are not a part of the show. They were responses to 19th century romantic landscape paintings but with homoerotic cowboys and Indians featured within. He showed an 11 minute film that took a fun stab at deconstructing the western film and the relationships between aboriginal people and the presumptuous European colonizers. Saw Adam Budd, he's in town helping Lea shoot a new film this spring. Talked with Alan Dotson for a while. It was a diverse crowd but certainly containing a high proportion of the established art crown. We didn't stay too late because Margaret's mom took William to Horton Hears a Who at the new Rainbow theatre, which is apparently in the back of the Rainbow indoor mini-golf place up on the north end.

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Very busy day, not the least of which was my sudden urge to create a blog for William so that we can periodically post his Lego news. Here it is: William Loves Lego.
At about 3 minutes before 9am this morning, Margaret and I both left the house to walk William to school and to look at the book fair in the gym. When we got back, we'd missed the courier (who claims to have been there at 8:58, even though the 9:00 bell rang when we were just 2/3 of the way to the school which is only 1.5 blocks from our house in a straight line with a clear line of sight). As a result, I didn't get the stock I needed to shoot the next Modern/Warhol films, which wasn't a big deal since Eric called to say he was swamped by the last thing he needed to do for his last job. It gave me time to get all my ducks in a row for shooting tomorrow as well as other necessities such as mixing up reversal bleach over in Tanya's lab for the weekend workshop. I did stay up until 2:30 last night getting the Warhol 15 minutes of famous finished and packaged to dvd, but I have one flaw that I'm going to work on now.