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...it's not flat...
It's crazy not flat.
Above is an art piece which illustrates the terrain in relief. I have one of these in my living room.
Click here for webpage where you can buy one (not cheap!)
Click here for a video with the artist making fun of Google Earth for making S.F. look flat.
Was looking for something on YouTube today and found some videos people had shot while Dana and I were extras for the filming of Milk.
This one is from our 2nd time playing extras.
There I am!
In the video I'm in a brown corduroy flat cap, shirtless. I'm visible in various points of the linked video above, but if you watch between 3:43 and 3:50 you can see me pumping my fists in the air.
And here's some video of the recreation of the Candlelight March we did, shot by someone parallel to the marchers.
A while ago something else from my childhood popped into my head...it was an architectural construction toy we had. I think Mom got it at a thrift store or from the church or something, because I never knew what it was called. Anyway, it consisted of white plastic frames, beams, transparent panels and textured plastic panels. Even as a kid I realized we had what appeared to be an incomplete set.
I did sketch in my notebook to remind me of it.
Tonight I remembered the sketch and decided to search for Architectural Toys via Google. I quickly hit on a page that catalogs many dozens of them. I systematically paged through each one until—eureka!—I found it!
The toy was called Super City by Ideal. Click here for more!
I'd know those yellow plastic domes anywhere...
Another childhood mystery solved.
At this rate, I'll have them all solved about the time I forget them all.
I just ran across a Channel 4 program which illustrates the environmental footprint of the average Brit. It's fairly eye-opening how much we consume and soil.
Take an hour and thirteen minutes and twenty-four seconds to watch it.
The Human Footprint on Google Video
I understand there's a National Georgraphic special on the same topic and with the same title abotu Americans, but their website is being recalcitrant!
So, I was telling my friend Robert about my new 1/18th scale Batmobile, and that got us talking about Hot Wheels, which got us talking about other toys we had as kids (we're the same age).
First up were Wiz-z-zers...stringless, high speed tops which would tangle up any unwary sister's hair in 2.2 milliseconds. Apparently, they are in production again by Duncan...
Back to Hot Wheels, we got to discussing Sizzlers...the electric powered racers. Charge 'em up, let 'em go... oh my goodness...they make them again, too!
As we discussed that, I mentioned to Robert that I had a electric train thing that was related to the Sizzlers. He pointed me to a webpage that showed it: the HotLine! It was a train that in in a Hot Wheels style track.
On the same page he pointed me to were toys I'd utterly forgotten having... the short lived HotBirds! Die-cast metal planes with retractable langing gear. You'd race them down a fishing-line—which would invariably tangle like a Wizzzer in your sister's hair—and they'd come to a thunking halt after 3 glorious seconds.
You'd launch them from this Flight Deck thing with a sort of crude speaker in it. The vibration of the plane's guide hooks rubbing against the line as it went along generated a sound that I can still remember.
Between my brother and I, I think we had all of the HotBirds in this photo. I definitely remember the green prop job (Cloud Hopper) in the upper right. They look cool in a sort of retro way. Too bad they flew like lead balloons on a wire.
celebratoryFour words:
Coolest Hot Wheels Everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!
I wanted a Batmobile since I was a kid...I found a regular 1/64th scale Hot Wheels batmobile a short while ago and bought two, one for me and for another bat-fan (you know who you are). Then I found out they made a 1/18th scale Hot Wheel with working doors and details galore.
I'm in Bat-Heaven.
This will so look bat-good in my bat-office, old chum!
Freefall
I had to laugh...
The comic's current strip is always here: http://freefall.purrsia.com/default.htm
Concept for the rear wall...
As per yesterday's post, here's a quick sketch for the rear wall for a few shots. For this I'll put the actor in a chair near the camera with some mockup backs of the "floating" screens of the original set position in front of him, with some lights mounted on them to get a glow on his face, and a small piece hung overhead to replicate the back of the overhead unit in the original set.
Speaking of the set, above is the full set as it was shot...well, almost...above was a test of making a digital matte painting to fill in some bits where the set ended. But you can see the "dimpled" panels along the top of the wall to the right, the same ones noted in the sketch. You can also see the overhead unit.
The underside of it looked like this...
...and, yes, that round thing IS a model of the flying saucer from The Invaders (a Quinn Martin Production).
Been busily working on getting Flight Control back on track and towards completion. Last week I re-edited the rough cut to the revised rough cut, slicing the film from 14.5 minutes to 11.8. I'm much happier with this version, as it's getting tighter and more interesting. My approach has been to cut from the ends IN towards the middle, figuring out how it should open and end and then tweaking and trimming the middle to make sure it gets from point A to B.
What's obvious is that some limited reshoots are going to be necessary, partly to address some lighting that didn't work out, and also because as I cut I have sliced out a bunch of single lines, and this leaves some bits rather choppy as I don't have a single shot without cuts around some of this material.
Towards this end I've been planning how much of a partial set I'll need to build to get the shots I want. I'm figuring what I most need is to rebuild a chunk of wall that was to the left of my actor's seated position.
The original set is long since dumpstered, but I retained a few significant fragments, one of which features in a number of shots in the original photography, so I can build around it and make it match. On today's lunchtime sketch (below), that piece is labeled (in my patented illegible quick scrawl) "TRN PANEL (EXISTING)".
As to "MISSILE COMMAND PANEL (REBUILD)" that was a flat panel with decals that were copies of artwork form the prototype Missile Command arcade machine that I put in as an in- joke. Fortunately, I saved the files for this artwork, and I can easily reprint those and remake that panel.
I'm completely changing the panel that was to the right of the TRN PANEL because it's never really shown in any of the footage I plan to use, ergo, there's no reason to match it. VID means I'll have a flatscreen monitor screen in that location, allowing me to silhouette the actor against a video display, something I did in one sequence elsewhere in the film, and which I really liked the look of.
To the right of the monitor are personal photos...I had some of these in the original set, also, but they never showed up. I wanted this to feel like a place where someone actually worked, so I thought he'd have manuals, futuristic Post-It notes, and personal photos tacked to the walls. Fortunately, I still have the original photos, so they'll get dusted off one more time!
I'll also need to build something I never got around to shooting during the original shoot, which is the back wall of the set. Actually, it was never built. The original plan was to pull the walls I built that appear through the frosted glass at the front of the set and set those at the back as the wall there. However, we ran out of time before we could dismantle those and move them.
So, I'll have to build a wall for this...but it's going to be a very simple one...mostly flats without all the greeblie detail the main set walls had. I quickly whipped up a sticker to go in the corner of each wall panel, to imply they are access panels (albeit the camera will, as usual, never be close enough to read them).
To figure out how much of this I need to build, I've been doing rough storyboard drawings, as below. I'm estimating I'll need a wall piece about 6 feet high and 7 feet wide, but I have to check the lens I used and see what the field of view is.
Sketches...
Yes, there's a figure walking through the background in one sketch. One thing I never got during the original shoot were some shots were you'd see other people in the background...a necessary thing to sell that this isn't one lone guy, but just another cog in a wheel.
The one small problem is that I only have ONE costume, and making another isn't an option because the suit is loaded with expensive, glowing EL wire. On the other hand, I only need one costume, because, as can be seen here, in these angles you can't see Mr. actor below the neck, so he can just wear his turtleneck and sit in his boxer shorts while I get one or two other bodies to walk by in the background wearing the illuminated suit.
Fun fun!
Gorgeous day in the City by the Bay... balmy, shorts and tee shirt weather!
So what do I do? I go into a darkened movie theater (with Becky and Dana)!
Okay, admittedly, not for long. Becky and I always try to catch shows put on by the silentfilm.org, and today, as part of the JAZZ + SILENT FILM FESTIVAL, the Castro Theatre screened Buster Keaton's 1924 comedy, Sherlock Jr. (click for details on the film), one of Time Magazine’s “All-Time 100 Best Films”.
Sherlock is a hilarious tale which features a hapless projectionist who dreams of being a detective. After being falsely framed of stealing a watch, he dreams himself and the people he knows into the film he's projecting, wherein he assumes the role of the the dashing detective of the film's title.
This movie is nothing short of phenomenal, with visual gags that are so good that you're left wondering how they did them even as you're laughing. In one scene, Keaton dives INTO a suitcase full of disguises being held up by an accomplice—disguised as a woman—who instantly snaps the case shut and walks off, all in one take.
The movie is fairly short (45 minutes), but it was preceded by a vintage Felix the Cat silent cartoon: "Felix Woos Whoopee"
What made this show extra special was the music. The Silent Film Festival always has live music with its films: usually a small quintet or grand piano or the Mighty Wurlizter house organ. This show was accompanied live by the Clubfoot Orchestra, performing their original scores for both films. No quaint old fashioned piano here, this was fun, up tempo jazz music that really brought the films to life. Felix the Cat never seemed funnier, and the score of Sherlock Jr. was great, featuring a bass guitar doing a James Bondian riff during a chase scene.
(It appears that the film with the score is HERE on Google Video).
Afterwards we went to a bar to have a cocktail, and upon learning Becky's trip to Hawaii had been cancelled because of the Aloha Airlines shutdown, Dana decided that we must have tropical cocktails, and proceeded to program the jukebox with every tropical theme song he could find.
A nice dinner and then a pot of tea on an outdoor patio at twilight brought the day to a close.
Ahhhh...
