The Inmates have Taken Over the Prison

Just a quick note to say I have taken over The Celluloid Slammer film blog site. I have been writing for it for many years at the request of Donna Lethal and since for almost two years I have been the only one writing for it, she was kind enough to hand it over to me. I am joined by Mike Luce who does a video series called The Movie Wrench where he fixes the mistakes in films under the character Hipster J. Douchebag.  I have asked several others to become contributors but no one else has stepped up so far. So if you are interested and have something to say about film and video... contact me!

Discovery from the past...

This one of several pages of notes I took on the 80s during a Super 8 film class I was taking at the time. I had just bought a beautiful bell and Howell camera that did single frame, so I could animate, it had sound and could do 18 and 24 frames per second if I remember right.

That's right children, grandpa had to know long the roll of film was to know how long he could film a scene !

animation: " Music of Erich Zann"

Finally done after 5 years. This was a challenging personal project as I am not great at modelling characters like humans etc. I kept trying and changing and adapting from pre-made characters but finally got to the point where it was accept what I have now or NEVER do it. I changed the street a hundred times as well choosing to go with a more based on the story description version than what I had in my head and I think it was  a good choice. The sets are much more complicated and realized than in previous solo projects and this time I am really telling a complicated story and trying to get more subtle emotions into the characters. Plus little horror I hope.

The street set from above:

The final street:

Early Zann concept:














Early street concept:

Film and digital differences still exist

I somehow persuaded myself to get a new camera after passing a certain age recently… better than a sports car I suppose. As usual when I have a new camera, it’s a digital SLR and it always makes me nostalgic for my film cameras. So, while I am in this mood I thought I’d bring up some of the differences between the formats that still exist, and might always exist between them. 

Conservation: Film is still the best way to conserve images. For one thing, a negative can be  reprinted and even scanned at different sizes and into different formats. It does degrade over time but so does digital and digital is less reliable over the long term for conservation. Digital files are pretty much in the highest quality they ever can be when you make them and it’s very hard to get them into a new, especially larger format without losing a noticeably in quality. 

Practicality: This is where digital shines. With one flash card you can take 100s if not 1000s of photos and they are all available to look at instantly. Processing film takes a room, chemicals and lots of expensive equipment. Not mention money. Once you have a a computer and a software for image processing (Photoshop is an example but there are more and more alternatives out there now) you are almost without limits as to how you can manipulate the photos and even make as many versions of it until you are happy with the results. many of the techniques in Photoshop are from ones used in dark rooms over the last century or so it’s just easier to accomplish now. 

The longevity of cameras: Film beats digital hands down in this respect. My old medium format from 100 years ago still works fine and can take awesome photos. Digital, is different, there is the every changing technologies, formats and the limit to the camera’s sensor lifespan. I also find digital cameras to be more expensive overall, something I don’t understand since they don’t last as long. 

Quality of image: This is a personal choice in many respects but I still find film a higher quality image and I think technically the amount of information in a digital image is still a long away off from the information you can contain on film, in most cases. I have yet to get images I like as much in digital that I got from my medium format camera. To be fair I don’t have medium format digital camera, nor the 10 000$ it would take to buy one. 

This conversation is pretty useless nowadays: While I might pine away for film, the fact of the matter is film is pretty much dead and even now is only used in a shrinking specialty market. Digital is not going away and the quickness and convenience of it doesn’t make it a bad thing at all. I do wonder and hope that eventually digital will catch up in the areas it it currently weaker in. 

Million Year Picnic doc started!

As I start my latest and long suffering in the shadows documentary about the Million Year Picnic comic book store, I am rudely reminded of how difficult it is to do one of these things all by yourself. Every film has challenges, but this time I am starting with all new equipment and new formats I’ve not used in a personal project before. 

For starters I am using a Canon xa10 to film things, using the 30p setting and a Zoom sound recorder which I have to admit is not so easy for me to figure out. Even with that I have got some good sound from it using my shot gun mic, keeping it close to the subject. 

The biggest problems so far is  getting it all together for editing in Premiere Pro CS6. I’ve been using Pluraleyes from Red Giant software to sync the video and Zoom sound, which works pretty good and very quickly. The problem after that is that .mov files are not easily processed by Premiere even though they are prepared especially for it by transcoding the MTS file to .mov using MTS converter. I experimented importing in Final Cut Pro 7 and the same issue. Oddly they play fine in quicktime and in Pluraleyes. I finally discovered I can use the XML import from Pluraleyes to get the interviews into the editing software, but it’s a time consuming and far from elegant process. I had to go back a version for that work properly, however. These thing never come easy! 

The interviews went fairly well despite not really having a space to do them in. I even had to do one in a stairway! Visually they look pretty good and the sound could have much, much worse so I can’t complain too loudly. I really need an assistant or two to work devices while I interview… it really is just too hard to do them all at once. Beggars can’t be choosers so I’m doing the best I can on my own. 

Next stage is to get supplementary materials, like photos, scans of ads, whatever I can get my hands on to enhance and inform the film more. I’ll also have to make several more interviews at least before summer is over. On my post production side, I’ve already made a 3D version of the store’s logo that can be animated, lower 3rds with animations and experimented with some other graphic elements. So… allons-y! 

The Sweet Fail of Success

Success is measured in many ways and in the creative fields there are perhaps more ways to think of it than in other endeavours. 

In my case, for example, I can point to many signs of success. I wanted to work in special effects/animation as a child and make movies. For the personal documentaries I  made I wanted to:

1. Win some awards
2. Get a project shown in a real cinema
3. Get something shown on TV

I've done all of these things and even sell my films on Amazon.com, something I wouldn't have imagined starting out. So I can't complain that I haven't achieved my basic goals. 

Now the fail part. I also expected with these achievements I hoped I would be able to squeak out a small living, nothing ridiculous, but this has not happened. I've worked on some nice professional projects for PBS and well know documentary film makers, and even though some won Emmys and Peabody Awards, I am cleaning streets part time to make ends meet with almost zero graphic design and truly zero video work is coming in for a couple of years now. 

There are lots of "reasons" for this. No one has the budgets anymore with the economic crisis ( or so they say) to hire people and I did not grow up in Montréal or New York City or get the chance to go to college… all of which would have helped make stronger networks to draw work from. So while my work is considered excellent and not even expensive, I have to remind as many people in hiring positions possible that I still exist as often as I can. Knowing the right people is everything in business and no amount of talent, hard work or dedication can overcome the basic fact of "it's who you know" and "getting there at the right moment". 

Then there is the artistic part. I am very happy with my drawings for one thing and while I could certainly use more money (read: any money) for my film projects, in the end I'm happy to keep making them and progressing slowly into more complicated things. So… success again. 

So in the end, I'm a success in how I think of my work and how it's received when I get jobs... but a failure in the "making a living" area which is, truth be told, the only measure of success everyone, including artists can agree on. 

The Twelve - remastered 1270 doc on sale!

My film "the Twelve" about the 15 years of fun at Boston's most divers disco is now for sale at Amazon.com! Remastered with new animations, sound and slightly longer, this film lets the employees and club goers of the time tell the story of Boston's disco hay days. 3 floors of music and a roof deck, nothing before or since has graced the club scene like the 1270 did!

buy it now!

c'est fini!

After many stops and starts, "Hérisson Maudit" is finally done. It's very short, basically it was insprired by a visit to a friend who had a pet.. cute... and very noisy... not to mention a bit... psycho.

Bienvenue!

The new animated short film, "Nomi & Chog" is now visible on the Behemoth media homepage and our You Tube page. Sadly this film was inspired by two real dogs and my dog of 17 years, Nomi, passed away recently after a short illness. Behemoth media and my life were all the better having him around and we will never stop missing the little pest that he was. The better quality clips are on the Behemoth homepage.