the shape of things to come

At the puppet workshop the other day, I sculpted a face for a puppet then made a plaster cast of it. Today I remove the clay from the cast and Chrystene showed me how to add latex so I can have a rubber version of it.
I also met up with Kevin for tea at SGI and shot a bit from the caffeteria windows. They are rather streaked and the sun was bright so there were too many reflections for anything really great. Got something though.
This evening I attended the opening night of the student film festival at the university.

now, just wait...

I don't know why I want to do this, but the fact that it works so well convinces me that I'd better find a good reason to. Just have to wait for the right idea to come along.

Pneumonia

William has a bit of pneumonia so is on some antibiotics now. It is interesting to observe some of the same things I recall when I was similarly sick; the way when things are particularly bad, not only are favorite foods not appetizing, but even favorite tv shows are easily ignored. He fell asleep with a towel on his head while listening to Beethoven.

Lazy day at home

William was sick again today. I did my regular regiment of reading and making a film, but otherwise took the day off to watch tv and web videos with him. He finally got his apatite back in the late afternoon. We started watching Thunderball but he felt too tired to continue by 8:00 and went to bed.

Plastered in puppet workshop

This evening in the puppet workshop, Chrystene showed us how to mix plaster properly and how to make a cast to make latex objects. In the image above, she is using my puppet face to demonstrate.
William was home sick all day today.

21 Years

Margaret and I mark today as our 21st anniversary from our first date. We intended to go our for dinner and then perhaps to the Cannes Advertising awards but William was very sick all day and never rebounded enough (even missed his highly desired game making class with Allan - see below). We ate left overs, looked a some old photo albums (where I found the drawing Margaret made of us - above - about six years ago), and watched "Goldfinger" on blue ray.

Hot house

The house was full of people all day. One of William's friends came over at 10:30 am to play Lego, watch tv, and make a movie. More followed, but by mid afternoon I realized that William had a temperature of 103.4. I  gave him some advil and a rest while his friends continued to play. He eventually felt better and they made some movies together. Only one was on my camera, the others were on Teagan's camera. I posted this small puppet show on William's youtube channel. Just before the last kid left, Steve Karsh from across the street arrived for dinner. We had a nice evening with him. To my amazement, William fell asleep before 8, the earliest he's slept in over five years. He woke back up again at 11:30 so I'll need to spend some time with him. His fever is returning and his cough is still pretty bad.

small head

Years ago when I was in film school, I was told that putting a lens onto a camera backwards could create a macro focus. It seemed like an odd and potentially damaging idea so I've never tried it. Last year Erik Sirke turned in some amazing photos using this technique and explained the simplicity of it. Again, I didn't try it, until today. I've been thinking about it for a few weeks as I'd like to use this approach for my puppet film which would use matches as the puppets. While you have very limited ability to focus on anything but one plane, that plane is very close. Above is a match head puppet I've built as a trial (uncropped image, I get get back any further than this). .My video today also uses this technique.

Men in blue

I went driving around the neighbourhood this afternoon with a camera attached to the side window of my car. I drilled a new, larger, pin hole to be able to shoot pin hole video with the Canon 5D. I also attached various extra gummy lenses they sell to enhance your phone videos to the outside of the pinhole with great success. When I pulled over beside my son's school to change lenses, I noticed a police car behind me with its lights one. He spotted me with a camera around the school (there were no kids outside) and wanted to check up on me. I was pretty happy to see the Regina police doing such a good job.

ironically unsteady

I built this contraption today to shoot through the viewfinder of an old Brownie camera. However, the video was always unsteady, like it was swimming around and never holding in the framing I wanted. Ironically, this was all due to me having left the lens stabilizer on. Once I turned it off, everything was much better. To see the film I shot, go to my vimeo of Glance.

Errands with William

I finished my report by lunch time. After William got home from school, I took him to pick up the replacement glass for the bathroom light fixture he bumped and broke two weeks ago. He felt really bad about it and wanted to give me all his money. I let him pay for it but then took him to Toys R Us and we stocked up on the new mini-figs (series 6). He opened the genie and the two gun western bandit. We also stopped at the refinery and watched the flames for a while.

Forgotten work

I remembered yesterday that I still have to complete my year end information report, regardless of whether I'm on sabbatical or not. It is due tomorrow, creating a bit of a rush to my day. Doing almost anything extra in my day makes it difficult to do my readings and create a film.
Margaret shot this snowman around the corner. It's been warming up again and the snowmen that are here are withering. 

games

William began a weekly workshop on game design with Allan Dotson today. His friend Griffin is also in it. I had a Filmpool meeting. Didn't get much else done, there was a lot of noise all day and I didn't get much reading done and my film didn't go on line until after midnight. One delay was that I misplaced my whale footage from the Maritines. I was going to replace it with lobster footage so modified the script and title, but then found the whale footage and changed it all back.

The Matrix

 

I put on "The Matrix" for William and I to watch this evening. "What's the Matrix?" he asks. Not only had he not seen it before, he'd not heard of it nor did he know any of the secrets. He says it was awesome.