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Category Archives: research
Clearing Cobwebs
I’m actually not allowed to blog, there’s too much else in the queue, priority one, hurry the fuck up and get it done sort of stuff. So let’s just keep this a secret, just you and me… k? Where have … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, desire, organization, plan, real life, research, story, time, upkeep
Tagged madness, random update
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A Dogged Determination
I thought I’d already begun a post on the almost obsolete topic of unfinished projects. It’s been on my list to finish that post, but I guess I never started it. Well, here we are anyway. Since posting Illustrated Revelations … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, health, people, plan, real life, research, story, time
Tagged bus, David Allen, DOG, Getting Things Done, serendipity, wheel
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Illustrated Revelations on an Art of Self
The outcome for 1/1 – 1/2 is to publish a clear and fun compendium and quick reference for the driving objectives of 2013. Let’s begin with thinking about thinking. How do introspective sessions connect and coalese, how do I bind … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, Daughter of God, desire, health, organization, people, plan, practice, production and post, protocol, real life, research, Science Fiction Musical, story, upkeep
Tagged alternate universe, chaga, DOG, driving force, earth, fuck mother, george galloway, glimmung, goals, hack, Lena Maude Wilson, mantak chia, master ru, money, objectives, pkd, polymath, projects, swami bua, tantra, teachers, to do, wordpress
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Progress
Good lawd, what a ride. It’s November now and peddle to the metal. Today I am going to finish revisions on the team and tasks document. Roto artists are providing a constant flow of results. Money is definitely thinning out … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, research, story, technique, workflow
Tagged focus, hologram reshoot, joe, post, roto, storytelling
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How to finish DOG, step by step
October 18, 2012 Time for yet another revision. 1. update the current status for a subset of shots, let’s shoot for Red Hallway and Essentials, Act 1. We’ve committed to Red Hallway so it’s effectively Essentials. Cabin Window is already … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, organization, people, plan, practice, production and post, projects, protocol, real life, research, technique
Tagged bid, budget, contractor, cost, credit card, galactic pot healer, Jonathan Kelly, money, Philip K Dick, plan, planning, process, roto, shot, spreadsheet, task, tasks and team, time, vfx series
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Holy something!
My dog, have I done a lot of work on this project or what?! In three words, yes, yes and yes. You know things are getting interesting when you wake up and have to babble ideas into your recorder because … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, organization, plan, practice, production and post, protocol, real life, research, workflow
Tagged artist, book of dog, contractor, mayan calender, prop, talent
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December 2012
Specifically, December 15, 2012. What I want to have accomplished, that is. What I want to experience. DOG is done. Pretty much good enough, 80% of awesome. Doesn’t suck, watchable, fun through out, even stellar at times. Screeners going out … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, desire, health, people, plan, practice, projects, protocol, real life, research
Tagged boat, december 2012, DOG, greenhouse, health, objectives, practice, ready, shack, tools
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What I want to be when I grow up…
That’s a question for little kids, right? I’ll be 50 next May! So what’s the point of asking this question now, isn’t it too late? Didn’t I squander my youth and if I haven’t grown up by now then chances … Continue reading
Posted in desire, health, ideas, practice, production and post, protocol, real life, research, technique, time
Tagged civilization, dennos museum center, DOG, flea, flower, fxphd, gaia, games, global, global life support, indy game, joe campbell, kids, life, life support, life's work, process, question, Ray Kurzweil, result, sandbox, singularity, sustainable, system
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Toyota Prius Repair – Press release
For immediate release Contact: Reagan and Camille Frixen 231 352-7899 Tim McKay 231 651-9295 Dan Kelly 231 882-0460 Ben Woody 231 383-1866 Micro Movie is a Benzie County Collaboration What do Precision Collision of Frankfort, Fauxgrass’s Tim McKay of Benzonia, … Continue reading
Posted in people, production and post, real life, research
Tagged ben woody, camille frixen, danny fox, fauxgrass, precision collision, press release, prius, reagan frixen, toyota, trickster pictures
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Projects in Progress Chapter 2
The current push is to get the to do list to a manageable size. This means the plans for any given day are actually achievable. Obligations are being consistently met, no new obligations are taken on unless they are strategically … Continue reading
Projects in Progress Chapter 1
Here’s my instant review of Blue Planet with David Attenborough – things want to eat and breed and not get eaten. The ocean is big and mysterious, underwater photographers experience some serious beauty. What struck me in the tub at … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, Daughter of God, desire, people, plan, real life, research, Some Almonds are Harder to Skin than Others
Tagged birth, breed, Brooklyn, children, clutter, cory doctorow, david attenborough, father, Gurudeva, JFK, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, kinnicutt, marriage, new york, ocean, og mandino, organize, parent, pound ridge, project
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Music to repair cars by
Ben Woody rocks. As a summer intern for Trickster Pictures, Ben rotoscoped for DOG with zen-like concentration and produced a slew of personal bliss projects for YouTube. Towards the end of July, he proposed making a time lapse of his … Continue reading
Posted in budget, hardware, people, plan, real life, research, software, story, technique, time
Tagged After Effects, ais clamps, auto body, ben woody, camille frixen, chapel pond, dan kelly, danny fox, deer, fauxgrass, gopro, maple grove, paint, precision collision, reagan frixen, tim mckay, time lapse
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Queue for Fall 2012, v.9
How to wrap DOG when there are some significant items in the queue? I don’t want to get distracted by other projects, especially other people’s projects. Diverting energy risks the completion of DOG. There are a few objectives to handle … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, ideas, people, plan, real life, research, workflow
Tagged Artist house, beach, floor, greenhouse, raft, renovation, shack, structure
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Asad 8-30
Having safely landed his ship on the surface of the strange planet, Micro Mizako secures the bridge with a flick of his mighty gauntleted wrist. All systems spin down in a satisfying whirr of mysterious technology. Not mysterious to Micro … Continue reading
Airplane! dubbed in Spanish
Here’s my story a day for yesterday, written in the whee of this morn. This is a true story. A man lies in a vaporous clawfoot bathtub watching the movie Airplane! – dubbed in Spanish. He doesn’t speak Spanish, but … Continue reading
Crazy talk
For proper ambiance, play this video while reading… If you’ve been paying attention, you might have noticed that there’s a police state coming online under Obama’s watch. Whistle blowers jailed, militarization of the police, prosecution of journalists, on and on. … Continue reading
Mental Spaghetti Festival 2012
Last night in the deep wilderness of Weldon Township, skipping along a narrow gravel meander, I located our local electronic and experimental music festival, Mental Spaghetti, No. 3. Got the days mixed up, Saturday was the second and last day, … Continue reading
Posted in ideas, real life, research
Tagged electronic, experimental, painting, performance, sketch, soundtrack, visual
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Liz Vision
I got an actual letter from Liz Paladino on June 25, freshly recovered from the archives.
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, people, real life, research
Tagged hobie, liz, liz paladino, nuclear, ondesire, vision
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Fukushima in the USA
Arnie Gunderson – 23 plants in the USA identical to Fukushima, 2 near Chicago, Dresden and Quad City neither are on Lake Michigan
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, budget, plan, production and post, research, story
Tagged Arnie Gunderson, fukushima, nuclear power
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Prop and set injections
She’s approaching the boat, passing boutique shops. Haute and Tea Room. Haute was couture for ladies and now features clothing strewn every which way, stylish gowns half hanging through shattered windows, fluttering in the morning breeze. Tea Room sign has … Continue reading
Posts to post
I’ve been blogging in my mind for the last couple of months, here’s a sample of the topics I’d like elaborate on soonish. First, a crisis of confidence. Gosh, why blog at all? With the explosion of FB, a personal … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, hardware, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, software, story, technique, workflow
Tagged animation, ben woody, cows, doug michels, dragon frame, farm, flag of earth, h16, hello world, hobie, james allegro, james weston schaberg, Jeff Gibbs, nuclear power, patrick kelly, rosie, seti, shack
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Summer priorities
Before Lena Maude headed west, she grabbed the full set of Tony Robbins Personal Power. I have taken the course about 10 times since the early 90s and suggested she give it a whirl. Admittedly Tony is a little over … Continue reading
Cutting glass
Ben and I do DOG daily (have you met Ben Woody?) but my early evenings and weekends are dedicated to acquiring old Hobie 16s cheap – usually with soft decks and other structural issues. This is long range planning for … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, budget, production and post, real life, research, story, technique, workflow
Tagged ben woody, deck, fiberglass, hobie, hull, rotozip
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Deserving to live
You know, I haven’t yet reproduced. There’s been some opportunity and perhaps even motive, but my unique DNA remains proprietary. Cool people should breed and all that. Am I cool? Do I or any of you deserve to even survive, … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, people, plan, real life, research
Tagged presence, survival, wilds
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Artist reference May 2012
Introduction x Daughter of God is a narrative short originally shot in 2006, now moving steadily through VFX towards a completion by summer of 2012. Though roto artists will be repairing some continuity and production gaffs, we are mostly adding … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, real life, research, software, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged assignment, cell, communication, compensation, completion, contractor, DOG, roto, team, text, VFX, workflow
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Snip snip here…
04/29 Wow! In assembling the definitive essentials, I am finding more bits of fat to trim away… incredible! Beyond essentials, if we do flashbacks perhaps Uncle Joe could be making Christina tea when she comes in with the PKD book. … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, projects, real life, research, time, workflow
Tagged completion, contractor, DOG, edit, editorial, percentage, projection, roto, spreadsheet, svelte
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Today is the first day…
…of the rest of your life, Geritol. Use only as directed. Welcome back to the DOG progress report. Editorial on the first and second act is (dare I say it?) done. There are some weld edits which require a deeper … Continue reading
Progress on Gerry’s cabin
Gerry’s cabin or Act 2 is very close to it’s final iteration. The length was cut from 9:00 minutes to 8:15, 45 seconds. We lost some lag and tuned the performance by splitting several two shots. My first foray into … Continue reading
Gender based test screening
It occurs that separate test screenings for men and women would be good. I am especially interested in what women think about the Christina character, if they relate to her as a more elegant cut emerges. Is she despised by … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, production and post, real life, research, technique
Tagged character, Christina, DOG, Faisal Azam, feedback, intense, itch, Laura Peterson, men, test, test screening, women
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Interns and the last test of Version 1.0 2012
Trickster Pictures has two interns through the TBAISD Career-Tech Center’s Film and New Media Program – Cameron and Micah. They’ve been learning how to rotoscope using both After Effects and Mocha and will hopefully be able to contribute to DOG’s … Continue reading
Go Go Go Again
Budgeting for the completion of DOG distills down to a simple formula… Tasks / Team = Duration Each task describes a specific change to some shot, a shot defined as the IN point to OUT point of any edit. A … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, plan, real life, research, technique, time, workflow
Tagged budget, calculation, guess, intern, interns, predict, productivity, projection, schedule, shot, task
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Roto ramping up
April 2, 2012 I’ve identified the Essential tasks and have assembled a core roto team – this week is the shakedown cruise. I’ve got two interns and two contractors and am interested to see how much progress we make this … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, software, technique, time, workflow
Tagged ae, After Effects, artist, clock, contractor, DOG, essentials, mask, nuke, rate, roto, task, vector, workflow
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Artist reference version 1.1
Introduction DOG was originally shot in 2006 and was revived in the summer of 2011. The objective is to have a festival launch by summer of 2012. If you’re inclined to read this blog, you’ll notice that I have an … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, production and post, real life, research, software, technique, time, workflow
Tagged artists, guidance, protocol, roto, rules
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Artist reference
Introduction DOG was originally shot in 2006 and was revived in the summer of 2011. It’s a quirky first project which I’ve decided to see through to the completion and thus here we are. If you’re inclined to read this … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, workflow
Tagged artists, guidance, protocol, roto, rules
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What’s essential?
In theory, we could loose the intro to Joe, though that fucks up the ending with the surveillance of C and G, unless we introduce the interface on laptop with G, which has to stay anyway. Then the inference is … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, plan, production and post, real life, research, software, technique, time, workflow
Tagged calibrate, clock, code, director, essential, ftp, lingo, post, programming, pulling hair, roto, text, time, video
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Here we go again
That’s a delightfully ambigious post title for a critical topic – the schedule for completion. Am I reluctant to jinx myself with another prediction of imminent closure? Indeed I am! No more optimistic announcements, just the facts, ma’am. Last night … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, technique, time, workflow
Tagged ball park, budget, calculate, completion, cost estimate, data, estimate, expertise, guess, measure, prediction, productive, productivity, project, projection, rates, roto, schedule, scope of work, spreadsheet, time, VFX
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Testing V 1.0 2012 script revisions
I’m now cutting a rough test of the script revisions, with some basic effects and visualizations. So far so good. Having tried with the narrator voice, it’s too heavy and preachy. Interwoven with other audio it’s doable. The shortwave audio … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, research, story, technique
Tagged backstory, editorial, flashback, inventory, rough cut, story, surveillance, taoism, taoist, trope, VFX
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And so, New York
I got back from a 10 day NYC expedition last Monday. Here are some quick commemorative pix. On the way out I stopped at Cabelas near Ann Arbor seeking alcohol for my stove (they didn’t have). Snapped this iconic camo … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, projects, real life, research
Tagged brain, composting toilet, good times, noodles, nyc, philadelphia, pix, rant, rap, road, seaport
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Tech – FCPX file management
There’s all sorts of voodoo to reconnect files in FCPX. I am reminding myself that an AVCHD camera archive has to be mounted for FCPX to find the media. Also, there’s a protocol for moving events and having them be … Continue reading
Posted in production and post, real life, research, workflow
Tagged camera archive, fcpx, missing media, reconnect
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How I became a genius!
I had a conversation with Curtis the other day. He’d like to direct – he’s written scads of lots screenplays and lately has been exploring editorial. Now I want him to learn how to do roto. Is that a digression, … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, production and post, projects, real life, research
Tagged curtis pickford, digital compositing, editorial, mike seymore, ron brinkmann, roto, rotoscoping, VFX
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Internship – a symbiotic alliance for dream manifestation
Version 1.1 February 01, 2012 Version 1.0 January 31, 2012 I have to evaluate interns at the end of the semester using CTC’s form, so let’s look at the categories that are most important to Trickster Pictures. Read everything, there … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, workflow
Tagged career tech center, evaluations, interns, trickster pictures
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And so, DOG
Recent posts explore the motivations behind finishing / not finishing Daughter of God. Dedicating an hour to daily introspection makes sense, meanwhile the urge to edit builds. If finishing is really so important, why don’t I just finish? Rather than … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, plan, production and post, real life, research, story, technique, time
Tagged completion, episodal, length, notes, review, strategy
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2012 year in creation
Heal back/pelvic basin stiffness, reveal cause and discover / implement protocol for repair. physically robust, feeling/looking svelte and yummy. Daughter of God is finished. Ultimate Around Lake Michigan Expedition. Science Fiction Musical script and score/lyrics. 6 new feature scripts. Feature … Continue reading
Posted in people, production and post, projects, real life, research
Tagged future, motivation, objectives, plans
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2011 year in review
On December 28’s M3 meeting, we asked everyone present to talk briefly about their top three accomplishments for 2011, and it was darn inspiring. I think it’s valuable to do a more extensive list for myself, so here goes… With … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, ideas, people, production and post, real life, research, Science Fiction Musical, SFX reel
Tagged 2011, accomplishment, achievement, project, year in review
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Ecosystem
In a June 26, 2011 post on Michigan Movie Makers, I blithely asserted that the regional production community is an ecosystem. I wonder – what was I talking about? Does the metaphor actually provide any movie making insight or advantage? … Continue reading
Posted in people, production and post, projects, real life, research
Tagged artist, aspire, audience, ecosystem, enthusiast, entrepreneur, movie, movie making, process, producion, profit, story, student, vision
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An emotional being
Here is an up to date assessment of the emotional experiences I am moving toward and away from. The values are ranked highest to lowest with a description of how they feel, and rules for what has to happen to … Continue reading
Posted in people, real life, research
Tagged emotion, emotional values, experience, moving away, moving towards, Tony Robbins, trigger
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Hanging treehouse
This came to me as I woke up this morning. A tree house is an intriguing idea, I’ve been thinking about how to expand the Artist house’s guest capacity without permits, maybe this is also research for some utopian movie. … Continue reading
Desire to finish DOG
I’ve added a new blog category – desires – specific objectives and rehearsed feelings. My motivations deserve more screen time generally, so now it’s got it’s own category. Ok, revelation. I’ve stalled on exploring my feelings about the finish of … Continue reading
Everything I do I do to get laid
I wrote the song, ‘Everything I do, I do to get laid’ around 2000, a post divorce dark anthem. In 2011, thinking about why I want to finish DOG, “Laid’ seems spookily profound. In the early 90s, after several successful … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, real life, research
Tagged blog, cynical, cynicism, divorce, freak, highly attractive, hot women, laid, marriage, Shakti Gawain, true love, trust, visualization
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