Student Originated Studies: Media

Thats right. You heard me. I hate FCP. I'm in Non-linear 1, trying desperately to finish, and I am so close. But Final Cut, or maybe this computer, is determined to keep from that goal. I have edited all of the scenes in separate sequences, so as to have ultimate control and not overload the CPU. Now that they are tentatively complete, I am setting them, in their entirety, into a master sequence. Once, doing this, Final Cut wants me to re-render all of the audio. So, I do. Then, it throws everything out of synch, and not by a few frames, but by an enormous margin of error, like completely displacing a scene's audio, and then setting it at the film's intro. Its incredibly frustrating. I have just quit the program and restarted the computer, hoping that this will correct the erroneous rendering.

OK, it has not. I just re-opened Final Cut and set my introduction into the master time-line. I hit render, and it is saying it will take nine hours to render out my audio. RIDICULOUS! Wait. In the time it took me to write the word "RIDICULOUS" the transport bar disappeared and all of my audio now appears to be renderd, and at least close to where its supposed to be. I'm going to watch it. Wish me luck.

After marathon editing and scoring sessions, I am close to being done. For the first time, the piece sits in its entirety in a single time line in final cut.  It is 75% scored, and the rest will begin in ten minutes when I move from the non-linear suites into the music tech labs. 

After remixing the opening score with John Manini this morning, I sat down and ground away at the two "problem" scenes until I was happy enough to place them into the time line. Then, for the first time, I watched my piece all the way through. After two pages of notes, i began revising. Two hours later, the two pages were gone and I did a preliminary export to serve as guide for my scoring (Digital Performer supports video, YAY!).   Though I am in a good mood now, it has not been all butterscotch and cocoa. This morning I totally wrecked OSX like 3 times trying to update my file back-ups on the server. It was too much info for those silly little buses to handle and it just didn't work. So now, I am hanging precariously over the edge of oblivion, with no current back-up of my project.   If my drive, also made by Lacie, shares the same fate as the Unicorns' drive, all will be lost.  I am very frightened. I will be able to hopefully back up my project file, but as far as all the newer materials go, they will be left in the cold.

 I am already excited about new projects. One is a $0 music video for my band I'm going to shoot this summer. I am going to shoot it entirely on my Canon Rebel, implementing some very creative synch methods.  This will also be a great opportunity for me to further delve into the world of After Effects. Hush Hush, as I knew it would, served as an introducer to the program, and now I am very excited about learning even more fun compositing and animating tools inside its bottomless belly.

Hopefully, On Wednesday, I will also be setting up a video installation in Com 210. It is last minute, but its all there. Get ready. Its gonna be something. 

Oh thunder clouds overhead, why do you linger with such petulant consistency? It seems that on this day, I should feel the breech of sun through your boggish  tendrils, yet the cold wind blows on and I am not done.  Tasks to be completed are numerous and lively, demanding more time than exists in a day. I wonder how I will feel when all is complete. But I am no fool, or so says the fool, but I know all is never done, no task truly complete until one has set it down and left it for the wolves. Four fourteen. Four fourteen. These numbers begin to live inside me. For four days, I will click and drag and press and pull for fourteen hours straight, and perhaps then I will be that much closer to complete. Truths to say are this. There is little more truth than that. I am not done, and am trying my damndest to get close enough. It will be something, that much is definite.

Here is my blurbage:

"Don't you recognize me?"
She does all she can to keep the outside world where it should be... outside. But soon, she won't be able to silence it any longer.
Joy  lives alone, with little more than the television to show her the world outside of herself. But when a visitor comes from long ago, and brings too close all that Joy had tried so hard to protect herself from, that thin veil is torn from around her.
 

Title: Hush Hush

Format: 16mm transferred to DV

Runtime: apprx. 25min 

Yesterday was a bad day. Not entirely, but the latter half was most definetely dark. I began to hate everything I have done. Sometimes I wonder why i want to put myself through this. In my limited number of years, I have taken on an array of projects in varying mediums; sculpture, pottery, music, painting, drawing, writing, photography, cooking, and of course film making. And in every one of these ventures or experiments, I go through the same thing. I am initially excited by the ease with which I can create something. Then, once that creation begins to take form, I loathe it for doing it so crudely. It must be patience I am lacking, patience for my arts to progress and grow. Am I supposed to be good at this stuff, yet? I have exhibited flights of youthful abandon when dealing with such feelings before. I went from having gallery shows for my sculpture and pottery at age 17, to forgetting, overnight, why I thought I could make something worth showing to anyone. I haven't touched any clay since. I sold off most of the pieces I could and left the medium behind. Yes, I was a kid. And now I am not, right? I can't just leave behind all that I have done to get this film made, and I won't. Its just wearing on my sense of self-worth right now. I have to finish it, if anything for the sake of the actors and crew people who lended me so much of their time and energy to make MY film. So, do not take this entry as complete desperation, but only a woeful complaint at my fickle nature. Sigh...

It was around 1am, and I was heading home after a long day of work, class, and then late night editing. I was smoking a cigarette, trying to shake off that daze that comes with prolonged exposure to video monitors. It wan't doing it though, just making me thirsty. I decided to pull of and buy myself a drink, preferably some kind of juice. Beer was out of the question that night, too tired. Sometimes I need to give myself little placebos to get me through those anxietal moments of exhaustion and stress that have been a big part of my life lately. Tonight, because getting a buzz was out of the question, gambling seemed to be nice alternative. I bought some tea and a two dollar scratch ticket, for little more than the few seconds of indulgent excitement that scratching off those little colored squares would bring. I won't bore you with any suspenseful description of the scratching process. I will tell you that I took a drink of my tea first and then scratched the ticket with a penny that I had earlier deemed to be unlucky due to its precarious heads down position I had found it in. And I will tell you that the ticket was a winner. 100 bucks. Though it is not a dream home or a yacht or even a new Power mac with octacore intel processors and the new final cut studio, it will pay for me to reshoot my botched animation sequences. I've never really won anything before, except that turnip I won in Bellebuckle, Tennessee when I was ten, and that was skill, not luck dear friends. What happened during those animation sequences, I assume, was a camera timing issue in the bolex. Oops. I have to go to work now, I'll fully explain the animation issues later.

Yesterday, I went to alphacine for what was to be my final film to tape transfer. However, things did not go perfectly as planned.

A great deal of the footage I transferred yesterday was shot in single frame mode, to animate 3-d objects and the body of Julia, the lead of the piece. Having shot many successful segments in the specific Bolex I was using, I shot all of the animation with confidence that everything was working properly. I was wrong to do so. From my observation and speculation, something in the timing of the camera is malfunctioning. The frame of every sequence I shot in single frame is bisected about 1/3 from the bottom of the image. The bottom third is perfectly exposed and looks incredible. However. The top 2/3's is overexposed and flickers significantly.  It appears as though the shutter was hanging up every other frame, leaving the top portion of the frame exposed for at least 1/20 of a second too long, which as you might already know is quite a significant bit of light. I believe some of the shots to be useable, especially due to the "dreamy' nature of those sequences. However. Most of them, though, are too blown out on the top of the frame to be used. Its a big bummer. 

I think I may have to reshoot. BLAAAAARGH! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWNWTP7olKQ

Hey Jed, I see you're online. Do you think you could meet me at the MML a little early? I'm already here and am ready to get to work.

I had actually forgotten about this little interaction, maybe because of the interesting response of the Fort Lewis guard, but this is perhaps a far more bizarre circumstance.

This past Saturday, the day that I was to shoot at the Ft. Lewis Cemetery, I was at home preparing my equipment for an expedited day of production. For the specific shot I was planning to capture, I needed a small camera crane, a.k.a jibb arm. I was renting this piece of equipment for a very generous rate from a friend of a friend, whose name I will leave out for posterity's sake. So, I packed my truck up, and left my house to pick up the crane and Colin T. Fox, whom, as I mentioned before, was serving as crew for that day's shoot. Anyhow, I headed downtown to grab some cash form the ATM to pay for the crane's rental. Pulling into Bank of America, which was closed for the weekend, I noticed that there was some event taking place across the street at Traditions or the Gspot, and all the parking in the area was taken. Being in a rush, I pulled into a loading spot next to a handicapped parking space which was located, literally, five feet from the ATM. I usually don't occupy handicapped spots for any amount of time, but I figured that because I was only going to be there 2 minutes and would be standing right next to my truck, it would not be an impedance to any differently-abled individuals. As i pulled in however, a man on a bicycle was standing next to the ATM, seemingly waiting for me to do so. I ignored him, hopped out of my truck and stepped up to the teller machine. He was a graying, late 50ish, white man in pink shorts and a blue polo shirt. He had on sunglasses and was balding a little. As I slid my card into the card-reader, he said to me, "That spots for people with physical handicaps, not mental ones."

He said it so cooly, as if he had been waiting for someone all day to park there so he could give them their come-uppins, I was a little speechless. So, I gave him a knowing smile and went on with trying to complete my transaction. He stared on though. He said then, "Thats a handicapped spot. That makes you an asshole." Again, I gave him a knowing look, but offered him little bait to continue further beratement. He then hopped on his bike and rode slowly into the parking lot, repeating as he went, "..that makes you an asshole." I began to fear that he was going to attempt a physical attack, his demeanor becoming more and more aggressive. He circled around the parking lot in a slow loop, beginning to chant,"That spots for people with physical handicaps, not mental ones." I couldn't remember my PIN all of a sudden. I couldn't remember why I wanted to come to the ATM in the first place. Why was this guy harassing me? I broke my silence as he said to me again, "...that makes you an asshole." I turned and faced him and said all I could think of, "You're the asshole, Man!" This only aggravated him further and he began to pedal a little faster, his circle becoming a little larger and more sweeping. "THAT SPOTS FOR PEOPLE WITH PHYSICAL HANDICAPS, NOT MENTAL ONES!" I turned back towards the ATM and suddenly remembered why I needed cash and extracted the funds. He continued to chant.I had the money and turned to get in my car as a young father walked into the parking lot with his two daughters. This silenced the cycling and chanting man, and he suddenly cut out of the parking lot and into the street. I imagined a bus coming out of nowhere, smooshing him to the grill. I got in my truck, left, wondering what the hell that was all about. As I turned onto 4th from State a few minutes later, I saw the man biking a meandering path down the boardwalk. I again imagined a bus and a smoosh.

Sorry Anthony,

I'm not going to be able to make it to your shoot on Thursday. I'm kind of booked out of my mind right now and need to utilize my lab only Music Tech lab time this week on Thursday. If you need help finding actors, let me know. I have a few friends who are almost always willing to play pretend on camera.

-Ben B. 

On Saturday Past, Mr. Colin T. Fox and I returned to Fort Lewis. After my last venture there, I was far more wary.  Last month, I spoke in depth to the Public Affairs Officer, a high ranking PR official who oversees all things dealing with non-military persons.  I lied to him a little.  I told him I was doing my senior thesis project, a video portrayal of the sustainable and not-so-sustainable practices of burying human remains.  I told him that I wanted to gather some video footage of different types of cemeteries, public, private, and of course military. I told him I wanted to shoot at the Fort Lewis Cemetery.  All and All, he was a personable and interested man, very understanding. This was not what I had expected.  He granted me a one-day pass to come onto the fort to shoot. After such a warm reception, I drove to the base the next day with confidence. Elisa Barrios accompanied me as crew.   However, the warm reception was already over.  I approached the guard at the visitor's center, told him that I had received permission to come onto the base to record video at the cemetery and was promptly denied access, and denied with vigor. He displayed a strong distaste for my presence. Its rare for me these days to encounter hatred projected towards me, and experiencing it form this guard ruined my day; it actually made me question my entire inspiration for doing this piece and why I want to make art or deal with any people at all ever again. His reason for denying my access was that I had an expired insurance card for my vehicle, a detail that had been overlooked on my previous visit. But this time, it was enough to keep me outside the gate. 

 So, after renewing my insurance card, I called the Public Affairs Officer and restated my request, again receiving permission to come onto the base. I told him about my not-so-warm greeting last time and requested the guards be given the old "Heads-Up" before I arrive. He agreed and supplied me with an "official email" to show to the guards upon my arrival.

After reading Callie's last comment, I decided to post this notice. One week ago on this past Thursday, a Greener past away. His name was Tyler Carr. His death was tragic and heartbreaking for his friends and family. Tyler lived in Olympia for about two years and was a former resident of B-dorm. He was from Texas.  Tyler was friend of mine and his death has been a grim reminder of how short one's life is and how a small decision can change or possibly end your life forever.   If anyone knew him and wants any more information, feel free to contact me. And Callie, I'm really sorry for your loss.  Thanks for being brave and posting your news.

-Ben B. 

For the second time, DHL, the shipping company, has ruined my day. I made an order for my two final 100' neg rolls to shoot time lapse with this past Tuesday. I specified that they be delivered overnight via DHL. Mistake indeed. It is Thursday, and as you might have assumed, I have not received my film. After calling Kodak and then DHL, I have been informed that DHL has indeed lost my package. They don't know where it is, which apparently means it never even made it to Washington.

If you remember a month and half ago, DHL made the mistake of putting a much larger order on the wrong truck, causing it to arrive five days late. This put my entire shoot in jeopardy and in the end drastically changed the plot of the piece. This second blunder has also put the entire production in jeopardy, especially in light of the looming deadline. I need to do one final processing and need all of the film to be there when I do it. To be forced into making a separate trip and processing just for these two rolls would not only exceed my time limits, but my budget as well, which is dwindling quickly. I am pissed off!

I mean, I am really really pissed off.

So, I am on camera right now! EM is shooting a promotional video to show to investors to the college. Its goal is to encourage said investors to contribute money to the Evergreen Media Department so that we can have a T.V. studio again. And guess what! I am the student diligently typing away at his computer so that these investors can see REAL students doing REAL work. So, here is that real work, telling all of you, "Look Ma! I'm on T.V.!"  Though I know many of us are to gradutate this year, I am hopeful that evergreen will get its T.V. studio, so that those little greeners to be will have such an opportunity that we have not.