Caligari photo/video promotional shoot huge fun and success

I'm too tired to really write about this, but we spent about 10 hours in the studio shooting photos and video of key participants of this fall's "Caligari Project". Huge thanks to photographer Eagleclaw Thom and to Bernie with his great eye. Chrystene for all her magic in bringing people together and Michelle and Jeannie for helping put the pieces together. Here are a bunch of photos that I shot behind the scenes. The real photos are so much better. You'll see them soon in our promo videos and other material.

Michelle Brownridge

Joey Tremblay

Rowan Pantel

Jason Cullimore

Jeannie Straub

Kristine Dowler

Rudy the violinist

Christina Stojanova

Ian Campbell

Gerald Saul

Timothy Long

Fran Gilboy

Chrystene Ells

Berny Hi

Eye doctor

Had an eye doctor appointment. For the second time in a row, there was no change at all. Ron was a bit surprised. Good appointment, we also chatted about final exams and how there are no longer "exemptions" from them in high school. William had his first sit-down-and-write style of final today in math. He feels he did well. Here is my eye:

William's first final exams

William has done two presentation finals this week (one yesterday that he feels great about, one today that he ran out of time so is more disappointed in) but tomorrow is his first sit down and be tested for a couple of hours style of final. Paul and I gave him math questions for over three hours until he was basically exhausted and then we watched "DC's Legends of Tomorrow" which was perfect for someone brain dead. 

Colour me a Bond villain

As part of his exam presentation tomorrow, William wanted to create one of those ubiquitous adult colouring book pages. I thought it might take a long time but figured there might be a short cut to it. I found a tutorial on line and William quickly (about 2 minutes) transformed this photo I took into a ready to colour masterpiece.

Wood

Bought a bunch of solid oak today. Amazingly, I was able to fit it into the car. That went smoothly, but the drive around town today was a nightmare. I caught a really long train on 4th Ave which came to a complete stop for five minutes in the middle. Everywhere I went there were detours and slow congested traffic. I got to a meeting fifteen minutes late and had to leave before it was done to pick up William and then Margaret, still with the wood stretched through the car from the back of the trunk to the radio. 

Blue Monday?

Late this afternoon we were told that today is blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. While the weather was cold, I was able to stay in most of the time, doing some writing, and cleaning my office. While it still needs modifications to the desk so that I can scan and park external drives better, the existing desk if finally clear of junk. The pens and SD cards (which outnumbered the pens) and cds (I reported on those yesterday) and little bits of paper and the dust (on my, this was out of hand) went on seemingly forever. The cleaning process was actually quite relaxing. I mixed it with reading and writing. Had perogies for supper. Now William and I are sitting here together as he prepares for his first final exams (mostly project presentations). 

2 feet of discs

Over the past few days, partially to clear my desk and office of distracting clutter, partially to find some old missing files, and partially because I'm having a manic compulsive week, I went through all the old discs and re-imported old backups and purged the rest. In total, I've just thrown out over two linear feet of cd/dvds (no movies except extra copies of my own). 

The Dread Line

I'm still less than half way through editing Dread Line messages from 1992-1993 but now need to plan the play back through telephones. I picked up this great early 60s dial desk top model today. I'm nervous about whether or not I can devise the necessary switching system though. I'll need some advice soon. 

Cylinder dictaphone

Was shopping for stuff for my exhibition and happened upon this 1910 Dictaphone that would record onto wax cylinders. As I doubt that anyone can supply me with blank cylinders, then the piece is just an expensive ornament. However, were there to be cylinders somewhere..... ?

Gerda Osteneck at the UofR Club

Our friend Gerda has a great exhibition up at the faculty club, made up of about 25 or 30 collage/pastiche pieces of artwork. I think that mounting a big show like this is great; it really demonstrates the range and strength of her work. With collage, single pieces can always be strong but viewing them is such a subjective experience that it is difficult to know what the artist is really up to. Gerda's collective collages act as piece of a puzzle, creating an intriguing (and difficult) self portrait. 

Of course I SHOULD have taken a picture of Gerda but she was busy and it only occurred to me to take a snap as we were heading out the door (and as I was lecturing William on posture) so this is all I have. Sorry Gerda. 

Woodworking course

Tonight I started taking a woodworking course at the Balkwill Centre with Brian Gladwell. I'm pretty excited about it but I also found myself a bit nervous at the same time. I didn't get the joint creation right so I started it again but ran out of time so have taken it as homework. The group of guys taking it seem pretty nice and friendly and Brian is very supportive of my making something else on the side.

Transformed living room

Took William to optometrist today. His left eye is a tiny bit weaker than his otherwise perfect right eye. No glasses yet. William is vying for a monocle. Last night we rolled up the carpet to get cleaned. Living room looks strange with so much floor.
I bought a 4 tb drive to clone my old 2 tb drive onto (why do they bother making them that small?) so I can dive into my work again tomorrow. 

Christmas tree gets last laugh at our expense

Today we took down the tree. It was, as I've discussed previously, a monstrous thing and required a new expensive stand for huge stems. To keep the tree green, we needed to water it a couple of times a day but the density of the branches and the obtuse nature of the water reservoir seems to have resulted in a surprise wet spot on our wool carpet that has begun to mold!. Three hours later, we have the carpet rolled up in the garage awaiting the cleaners.

Veronica and the last Christmas Party

Veronica is in town for a few days. We had her over for what will be the last Chirstmas party of the season. I served up the last of the cookies (now, we have only 7 gingerbread remaining) and we naturally talked about our giant tree which we will likely take down tomorrow. Paul, Terry, and Gertrud were also able to come over. 

Hateful Eight and Heather Cline

Today at 10:30 am Kevin and I went to see Quentin Tarantino's "Hateful Eight". There was something very nostalgic about the Saturday morning matinee, especially as it was a spaghetti-western style film and it felt just right. We had a bit of regret as there was an abrasive crackling sound during the first half hour but then suddenly the film was paused! This was a first for me in a movie theatre, to see a perfectly paused frame on screen. They apologized and said they wanted to test the sound. After a couple of minutes it resumed, but this time silently. The usher was calling the booth from the front of the theatre as they tried over and over again. Eventually they started the film from the beginning and fast forwarded to the proper point. We got passes to another movie as we left. Went to Humpy's for eggs.

This evening was Heather Cline's annual cabbage roll party. Joanne brought a bouquet of roses made out of bacon and brussel sprouts. Through a process of blind judging (names removed from the samples), Heather's husband David won! I visited her studio, and was interested in a lantern  Heather has built. We'll need to talk more about this later.

Mysteries of Connaught School

William and I are continuously confounded by the evolving structure altering the Connaught school property. My hope was that it would be a catapult to throw a giant football at the new stadium, but that no longer seems the case as the giant steel girder was removed today.

Caligari and Shutter Island

Wonderful double bill tonight at the RPL as Christina Stojanova curated and discussed two German Expressionist (one authentic, one influenced) films to begin the lead up to the Caligari Project this fall. William, Paul, and I watched the "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island"

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Dread Line tapes results in new video

For an hour or two each day for the past three days I've been extracting messages from the 1992-1993 "Dread Line" recordings I made. These were all anonymous phone messages. One I heard today (there is a chance this is the first time I heard it as I didn't always listen to the tapes when they were made, due to the excessive number of them), has a girl trying to make up an urban myth without knowing what an urban myth actually is. The result was so odd that I had to animate a film for it.

Pancakes

Took William out of school an hour early to get to a doctor's appointment today. He missed home ec where they were workshopping pancakes so he made pancakes for supper as I videotaped him. Here is the video (clip picture to run it):

Frog story

I started making up a frog story last night for William but then realized that I was cold and so concluded it quickly. Today we made it into a video. I might have been able to make it worse than this, but I'd need some hints at how. Click on the photo to play it:

Photoed, 3D special issue

Loving the new issue of Photoed which is full of 3D images and includes two pairs of glasses. Picked it up at Chapters today. Margaret wanted to see if there was any wrapping paper on sale. I just wanted to walk around and exercise my back which has been sore this week. 

Cousins left, time for Christmas Lego

The girls left early this morning. We had a chance to play one last game of Munchkin yesterday after brunch. See them again in six months. 

 William still appreciates/enjoys a good Lego set. Thanks to Paul, he had a really great First Order tie fighter to assemble today. It has spring-loaded blasters that have a targeting system suitable for a storm trooper. This evening we watched Rope, our first chance to see a Hitchcock this break (it seemed to be impossible to catch up on our tv watching, even without jobs or school for two weeks).

New Year's eve at Star Wars

Last night we attended Star Wars at the Imax (the only place in Canada to see it on actual film). We got in line at 8:30 for the 10 pm show (and therefore missed the changing of the year) but it was worth it. The level of spectacle was elevated three notches due to the huge screen, the big sound, and the good seats. All abuzz, we talked about it until 2:30 when the girls had to wake up their father and take him home.