All work and no play, but Johnny is happy

The Me7erg Ergohuman office chair by Raynor is quite a great piece of engineering.

Before you think I've sold out and am shilling for the company, I'm not. It's just that I've been spending twelve and thirteen hours glued to my chair, in front of the computer and – no pain. Wow, wonderful! Since plenty of people peruse this blog because a google search for a good office chair has led them here, I thought I'd mention it once again. It deserves it.

I'm in the midst of building the pre-vis for The Diamond Chasers and yesterday, I goofed around with adding some sound. Something I say every time I post a movie or show of some sort is how important sound will be. I've said this to countless past clients as well as many a test audience, however, I never cease to be amazed by just how effective music is. Every time I add sound (music and/or effects) to a project, I am as amazed and thrilled as the first time I did it. Doing this pre-vis has given me a chance to experience the drug-like rush without having spent the millions (which it would be in this case) of actual production. As I'm watching some of the roughs, with sound, I firmly believe that if I can't fast track the movie based on these, I should go into carpet sales. Or maybe masonry. I've always fancied that.

Anyway, short story – I am deeply immersed, not exercising or eating and slowly going insane as I maneuver little people on, over and into virtual biplanes.

But man, am I having a good time and my back isn't aching.

Tomorrow I start recording voices for the pre-vis. First up is a friend of mine who, in addition to TV and film acting, does quite a bit of game VO (voiceover). I'm looking forward to hearing him do some accents and eccentricities.

Soon my masterpiece vill be complete!

Antics 3d Pre-vis Tool is Amazing

Generally, I try to title my blog entries with something clever – something that might not make sense till the entire entry has been read. This is a practice shunned by those trying to get the most readers possible. Rightfully too; people looking through the various feeds, and google searches, etc. – would have no idea what the heck "The Old Grind", "Itchy Fingers on Keyboard", or "Partial Reveal" are about. I don't care as I'm not obsessing about building a reader base or anything of the like. Not at the moment, at least. Ironically, the most frequent searches taking people to this blog are for the ME7ERG Ergohuman office chair (which is the incredibly great chair I'm sitting on now as I write this) and Miniwax Polyshades (awful product btw), which I described when I was building a DVD shelf.

I break my tradition of obscure blog titles because I DO want people to surf to this entry – to learn more about this product.

I'm currently pre-visualizing several scenes from the movie I'm in pre-production on (to be known from now on as The Diamond Chasers) and have to report – this is one of the coolest pieces of software I've used in a long time. I'm excited in the same way I was when I moved from tape to digital editing with audio so many years ago; the same feeling as going from a typewriter to a word processor. This is a radically important piece of software. It works and it works well. It not only makes it possible to visualize a movie before it's made, it enables one to really practice directing; honing visualizations or creating entirely new ones one that might never have been thought of on set - where the ever present knowledge of cash vanishing into the ether rightfully stifles the creative musings of a director in flux.

Incorporating ik (inverse kinetics), lighting, character movement – as well as gaming logarithms AND some AI, this stuff is nuts. It's a big program and it does bog down the computer after a while, but man o man… so cool. I am not a 3D person, as I previously wrote, but this software really allows people who don't do much with 3D to avoid the mind-numbing modeling and other work, and get right to the creative stuff – creating a scene.

I will be putting the actual pre-vis online when it is finished, but for the moment – I tease with twenty seconds of part of it. There's still geometry crashing through itself, lighting and shading is super basic and still in test mode, timing isn't right, I'm still playing with camera angles – and it's obviously silent – but it gives an idea of what can be done with this incredible program.

The season finally begins

Have I written lately that I love my new chair?

I do, I really love it. I’m actually caressing parts of it. I know – that’s weird. I’m in a honeymoon period with - a chair. Let me continue for a sentence or two longer. When I stand up after a long day (like today), it doesn’t feel like I’m standing up after sitting at all. My body doesn’t require readjusting… I’m simply, standing now. This chair is awesome.

Okay, enough.

New season of ROME and EXTRAS began last night. It’s not television, it’s HBO. Pretty amazing stuff. Rome is one of those shows that will be appreciated more with time. Pretty much every choice they’ve made, I’ve approved. The last season ended with a gored and bloody Caesar gasping like a fish out of water staring at Brutus - as Brutus struggled with his conscience to stab him. When he finally does, Caesar gives him a look that says those words. But he doesn’t say them. He twitches and dies slowly on the senate floor in a pool of gore. It’s devastating. It’s Brilliant. This season opener had the funeral of Caesar. Rather than see the speeches that Brutus and Marc Antony make, we hear the plebs talk about them after the fact. Brilliant! Frame after frame of this show is artwork. Visually, almost any single shot could be frozen, blown up, and framed as a work of art. It’s some of the most beautiful cinematography I’ve seen.

EXTRAS is amazing on a different level. Ricky Gervais has made the comedy of humiliation an artform. The Office (the British version in particular) was amazing, but I can really relate to Extras much more closely. Of course it’s because I’m in the business upon which he’s commenting, and because, like The Office, it’s spot-on accurate. I will say that there are a few jokes that are strictly British. I smiled at one, a none-too-subtle jab at a comedian, though I didn’t specifically know who the comedian was. Had I known, I’m sure that smile would have been a laugh.

Moving on - Though a cough and frequent blowing of the nose remain, I’m finally well enough that I’m back to writing in a big way. This feels like the first day of the New Year. Everything till now has been a haze of feeling-crappy. Happy New Year everyone!

Today was a good day, and as day turns into evening, will hopefully continue to be. I hit a slight slow point – not lack of direction – just a slight dragging of interest, hence this quick entry.

The third act is undergoing another metamorphosis, the ruling having been made at a writer’s meeting about a month ago to ‘make it bigger’. Presently, it’s wordy, easily weighing ten pages too much, but it’s headed in the right direction. It’s certainly going to be ‘bigger’. The movie at this point is getting studio-picture size. I keep getting told not to worry about it, but the no-budget indie filmmaker in me is writing with a slightly dubious expression on his face. I’ve always written things in the past with the idea of having to find the money for them at some point. I have a pretty good idea of what’s easy to pull off, and what’s not. Blowing things up, for instance, is surprisingly inexpensive. A barroom brawl - not so inexpensive. Even now, as I’m re-writing this last act, I think, “well, if I framed it like this…”

This image will give you a slight inkling into the climactic battle. Just an inkling, cause trust me, there’s a lot more...

Arrival

You could stick a couple bodies in that box with no problem.


I realize now that I couldn't have purchased this from a brick and mortar place as I would have had no way to get it home.

Assembly was easy, and now it is my new office chair.

I promise to soon return to blogs with more substance. The cold seems to be in a plateaued state. When putting the chair together yesterday, I realized I must still running a very slight fever as I got quickly overheated from such strenuous activity as holding an arm to the seat and twisting an Allen Wrench. However, though all the symptoms are still very much a part of my life, I have a sense of feeling better.

Considering it’s day twelve, it’s about time, right?

I wrote, I proof-read, I deleted

I wrote an entry in the current phlegm addled state I'm in.
The title explains the rest. I won't waste your time.

Here's picture in the ongoing Office Chair adventure. Share in the excitement.

Watch out for the bug that's going around

I’ve got plenty to write about, but right now I feel like doing nothing.

Because I am sick as a dog. I feel like crap.

I don’t know where the expression came from, and I haven’t seen a dog as sick as I feel. I’m pretty lucky in avoiding the winter bugs, and I seem to have a pretty good resistance to them. Not this time. It started a day before New Years, and Marianne brought something else back from the east coast. I don’t know if these things mixed, or what… but the final result is matching my “hell flu of 1999”. That one was worse though, cause I had to fly. I got that at Sundance and took it to Rotterdam. My left ear was stuffed for six odd months afterwards. Now that was hell.

So what’s been happening in the week(!) I’ve been sick?

Besides the usual writing thing, albeit with a lot of coughing and choking thrown in, my chair hunt has reached a climax; I currently have a bid on something on Ebay. The next blog entry will determine whether I got it or not. Which one, you ask? It’s a Eurotech me7erg. Is it beautiful? Um, no. It actually looks a bit like something Terry Gilliam might put in one of his movies, but my god, the comfort and adjustability! I’ll tell you more as the saga completes itself. For now, wish me luck on my bid.

The weather over the course of the New Year thus far has been tumultuous. Heavy winds have buffeted us for a couple days now. Rather than clear the air, it was dusty – coming in from the desert. Today it’s calm, and visibility is amazing. The mountains look perfect in the distance. Staggering out of bed this morning and looking out to the backyard, I saw the wind had done a little work here too; a rather large branch came down from the avocado tree. The tree, being so large, I couldn’t determine where it came from. No harm to the tree, a bit of natural pruning, it’s something for me clean up and maybe a few avacadoes to pick up. Walking into the kitchen confirmed that. Marianne had already picked what she easily saw from the branch.

I’m saving, for my next entry, the most entertaining thing of the last couple days. I will leave you with a picture of what the fedex man left on my doorstep.

The pain of the modern man ("man" meant to include women)

There are many filmmaking websites. Within these sights are countless articles on all the aspects of making a movie - writing, shooting, editing, etc.

Through all of these, there is one thing that is very rarely, if ever, discussed; yet we all deal with it. This thing also abounds in your life if you are reading this. It’s certainly not just something that exists only in the life of the writer.

If you are a person that sits in front of the computer for any amount of the day - and the fact that you’re reading this means you are one of those people - then you too very likely share the pain and difficulty which I am about to reveal.

What is this thing of which I write? What is this thing that can cause so much anguish and suffering to the writer, the editor, to you, fair reader?

The chair upon which we sit.

The office chair that I presently use is junk. It masqueraded as something else, but it was junk from the very beginning and has only gotten worse with time. Through the years, my back and neck have made progressively more cracks and pops and I realized not too long ago, that it is because of the amount of time I spend in front of the computer, sitting on this thing that could better be used for Geneva Convention (un)-approved ‘interrogation’. Cushions helped slightly, but only in the basest of ways. Thus, for this holiday, the gift to myself from Marianne (and myself) will be a new office chair.

The obsession has begun.

We began the hunt, going to the local office stores and sitting in the $150.00 and under chairs. Any one of them is better than the cushioned plywood, shaped into a mockery, upon which I currently sit. However, the chair for 2007 and beyond must save my back and rear. The throne upon which I spend the majority of my day and evening must be perfect.

From the $150.00 chairs, we moved our posteriors to the $300.00 and above chairs. Expensive yes, but the improvement is substantial. Above $500.00, one moves into significantly important territory. Once seated in these chairs, there’s no turning back. I realize with some dismay that I will have to spend the money. However, I dare say, this is a more important investment than a computer. It will last a lot longer too.

My research has taken me deep into the jungles of office chairs. Awed whispers of the legendary Hermann Miller waft in from the darkness. I’m traversing territories unknown to me. Adjustable Lumbar support, waterfall edges and cloth mesh are the stuff of the natives. I must learn their ways.

So, don’t think of this as a wasted blog entry. This is important reading. I bet you too are now squirming and readjusting yourself in your chair, stretching your back this way and that, wondering, or perhaps knowing that your body too is slowly being destroyed.

Stay tuned. I’ll report my findings.