Big ol' lights

Dang but I would like some big ol' lights!

Stephen Fry Poetry Challenge: Round Three

Street Fart

I spotted this guy on my way home today and I daresay it's my favorite piece by Posterchild in a little while. Very sexy, very stylish and great integration of both his name and his signature symbol.

FAAAAAANS

Holy mother of mercy!

So, whenever I see that someone new has subscribed to the show I like to send a little "Thanks for signing up! Feel free to yell about the show to strangers on the bus or something!" message of varying length. No matter how detailed, I always include the same two things.

1) Thanks for signing on.

2) Yell about the show on a bus.

Well blow me down, that has led to this video response made by a pair of superfans in Alabama!

LOOK AT THEIR T-SHIRTS

Oh dannnnnnng longboards!

Hot dang, I'm doing the 2009 Board Meet tomorrow. Last year I had a couple of months experience and was riding my friend Victor's spare board. Despite rain and the crazy nature of taking over a major city road with about 250+ other people on boards...I only came off my board once and it was one of those "Oh hey now I am running beside my board, maybe I should hop back on" moments.

This year I have a year and a couple of months and my own board, with which I'm pretty comfortable. The weather looks like it could go either way. I predict I will crash headlong into the worlds largest cream pie, which two very strained men will be trying to move across the road at just the moment I'm coming through.

Stephen Fry Poetry Challenge: Round Two

It also has FONTS.

Scriptin' Fancy Like: Final Draft

I popped through an Apple Store today and was darkly amused to see that Final Draft - AKA the industry standard - was selling for either PC or Mac at $299.99. (It's a little cheaper if you buy it as an online download).

This is powerful softeware, you understand, as you would need a minimum of an Intel Pentium III chip to run it! It can process text and it comes with formats as well as the ability to colour code things and search for specific words.

Hoo boy.

In much the same way that you'll be very lucky to find a graphic design student with a legit copy of Adobe Photoshop, I can say that I don't think I've ever met anyone trying to get into the film or television industry as a scriptwriter that has purchased Final Draft.

It's a good program to have, but it should also be selling for $20 at the most. This, I think, should be true of any software that can run on a computer from twelve years ago while basically being a pumped and tweaked version of something from the Microsoft Office Suite circa 1996.

So uh yeah, I guess I have made my feelings pretty clear about this!

But what else needs to be made clear is that however you get it, you should get it. For whatever original reason, this is indeed the most well known and commonly used scriptwriting software. It does have all sorts of useful features that will make life a lot easier for you than if you were to try and imitate them with macros in Word. People may actually send you Final Draft files and expect you to be able to open them.

But for gods sake, don't buy the latest version fresh off the new arrivals shelf. If you're the kind of aspiring scriptwriter who can afford to do that, well then you must be really doing it for love because you sure don't need the money!

Abandon ship? Naw

So I had a think and decided not to abandon this url and make a new blog. The service is fine and I'd have to break the long line of continuity from when this thing started. I think I'll just do a re-design in the next little while - and post the odd video bloggeroo here. Like so:

and SO:

But yeah!

Meanwhile I'm picking up the tools for Handful after a nice break for a couple of weeks and, blessedly, just what I wanted to happen is indeed happening. I'm so excited to be doing it again.

No burning out for me! NEVER.

EVER.

NO WAY.

The title of the ol' video bloggin' comes from here, of course.

Next post? Something with NO INTERNET RELATED CONTENT WHAT-SO-EVER. Can he do it?

ONE MORE YEAR ONE MORE YEAR

Maybe even more?

It feels pretty good to have made it a year, since so many Internet things get abandoned before reaching any real conclusions or meaningful milestones. Aside from doing a gimmiky episode where I managed to recruit some pals to put their aesthetically pleasing faces in front of the camera, I've decided to mark the end of the first year by retiring the brown short sleeve shirt (yes it's on a female torso plastic dummy thing, my roommate doesn't make much in the way of clothes for men).

Dang, I still like some of those FWP strips. Anywho, now I have a year under my belt...maybe I'll look into them New Media grants or some other way to get a bit of money to invest in the show. Certainly, I'd like to get my own Camera of Quality. But enough about the show...

I can't believe it, but after all these years I seem to have broken down and found myself enjoying...Veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelogggerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs. Well, just the three so far. It's...it's uh...giving me temptations. In one form or another, I think it's about time to start a new blog - this one has sort of grown away from it's original purpose and though I couldn't bring myself to delete it...it doesn't really seem entirely fitting for what's going on with me and where I see myself in the next few years.

Any opinions?

Sometimes I do things for the show that don't get used...

Four men enter, one man leaves...

And now you know...

Also

I miss updating this thing more often!

Pippity Pippity Pippity

So hip-hop hooray, another batch of shows in the can. Filming yesterday was pretty interesting since it was the first time I used two sets of duel-500W lights for more than a few minutes and the living room got pretty damn hot! Luckily we were able to cool things down by opening all the windows after we realized the microphone was directional enough to be able to get my voice while not registering any background stuff from outside.I also had had a makeup student that my roommate hooked me up with. It was pretty funny whenever she worked on me as I sort of went into my default "Doctor or Dentist Mode" where I close my eyes, shut up and just let them get on with it. Twice she said "You can open now", meaning my eyes as she'd have finished my eyelids, and I opened my mouth first!
I took some photos through the celebratory martini I made myself after we finished shooting and I rather like the effect! (One part Amaretto to two parts Creme de Cocoa, by the way).Today, feeling a bit cracked out since I'd been up late the night before and my treacherous body insisted I wake up at A QUARTER TO FIVE, I checked out TCAF. I was pretty pleased! It was the first webcomic/comic thing I've been to since London and I'm not entirely sure why - I'll have to make more of an effort in the future. Aside from picking up a couple of prints, one of Ryan's shirts (it only took me six years BEST BUD EVER) and Joey's new book, I had the unexpected surprise of finding out that Paul Pope (AKA my absolute favorite comic book artist) was going to be there for a signing!I lucked out again by grabbing the last available copy (at TCAF) of his art book and then I got in the line up before it became unbearable. He was a very pleasant, totally affable fellow and he did my up this little number (Eloy is my favorite character from my favorite work of his. Favorite).He told me an interesting story about how he lived in Toronto for a short time in the same manner as Eloy - inside a refitted grain silo. Between our short fanchat and what I've read so far in the art book, which reveals him to be far more thoughtful and literate than his comic writing (that is saying something), I consider my expectations met and exceeded. You can't ask for much more then that!

Ahhhhh THERE we go

I think the sound is a bit better too.

I'm not a man with fists full of dollars...

...but I felt this was worth making a donation to - hopefully you will too.

TEALSCREEN

DIDN'T WORK SO HOT ON THE FIRST TRY

NEXT TIME WE SHALL TRY

SEALSCREEN

Annnnnnd breath!

Okay! So I have come out the other end of a stressful but productive stretch wherein' I finally got ahead on the show, upgraded the lighting & sound as well as got everything together needed for the show's launch on lifeforce.tv
I am satiated for a while, I think. By "a while" I basically mean a couple of days. I've been out for a drink and a movie for the first time in ages and I feel good. I've also finally framed a poster I had up in my room in London, which has in turn been rolled up every since I got back!

Now it is time to keep on top of things, work towards the return of the greenscreened backdrops and get out for the odd adventure which has nothing to do with the show.

Hark!

I don't really think this one is "pretty" but I was cleaning off my camera and thought "Hey, why not?".
I think this part is what I really like. Unlike everything else I've painted, this one had no reference picture. One evening I just felt a bit possessed - so I decided to exorcise the feeling by madly dabbing paint.Despite a million things to do indoors and revolving around the Big Projects I have assigned myself, I made a point of getting out for a while to not only get carrots but take a fucking relaxing stroll, dammit.Passing by the back end of the AGO I thought about how this park would be "my park" for the coming warm weather, much the same as Kensington and Trinty-Bellwood parks were "mine" during the glorious five and a half months I took off working last year. Well, glorious but for the poverty and stress over said poverty near the end of that time, let's not coat such recent memories with nostalgia just yet!The market was bustling with the usual weekend traffic and though most everyone still has coats on, a lot are being undone at least partially. It's funny what a short walk I have to take from the edge of Toronto's MoneyTowne (where I now live) back to Bohemiaville, beside which I lived for the lion's share of last year. I like it, though, I think I'd really be a bit bothered if I couldn't easily visit all the little shops and spots I got to know in 2008.After treating myself to a book with a title that seized my heart (the first three chapters, read upon getting home, have me convinced it was a good choice) from a store I've always wished I could support more...I went by Kensington Park. The pigeons were out and, nearby, I found evidence that the street artists had also been up to their business.Yes, that is a birdhouse!

Man, I have to be careful to both meet deadlines and yet also not burn myself out between now and the 12th of next month. It's a sign that I have to watch myself when I find writing an entry like this to be almost as relaxing as the walk that spawned it!

Who's a clever little sausage?

The answer: Nobody in particular, I've just been listening to Ricky Gervais stand-up most of the day and it put me in the mood to use that turn of phrase.

So yes, more Handful news. I know I know, but it really has been a rather large part of my life since the year began and I've been able to ramp things up to a respectable quality and regularity.

I've just agreed to a non-exclusive, one year distribution deal with a Toronto based web television network and I must say it's rather exciting. I'll get into more detail once we get closer to the launch date of April 12th but for now let me say that it should - if nothing else - result in a good deal of help for me in the area which I find I have the least time and energy for: Promotion.

It's also a nice little touch of validation since I was approached by the company, not the other way around. We'll see what comes of this...

Meanwhile, here is a very short urban exploration clip from Berlin that my pal Steph put up.


Good night you clever little sausages of New England

Hot dawg

The last two weeks I have to admit I've been struggling to think of novel ways of promoting the show that don't involve being a human spam-bot. I had one good idea which I look forward to implementing soon but until then it's great to have things like this happen - not only for the traffic but because it shows that someone at Blip.tv has an eye on the show and if it continues to improve then I might be able to look forward to being featured in the big video clip thing (Featuring "The Crew" in the picture here) and other traffic grabbin' things.

Meanwhile!

Tonight I burned a DVD of the first fifteen episodes and then had a Handful marathon. I took notes along the way and hope this helps me improve the writing as my homework for the rest of this week is to get at least four episodes written for filming on Saturday.

I'd write more but the fact is that between the show and my full-time day job I am kind of spending a lot of time at the computer!