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by Frank Viva (MoMA Publications, 2015)

So this is a super cool book. It’s part MoMA history, part this funky young visionary’s story. Look at her camera perched by her side! Her confident gaze directly into the reader’s eye! A nearly animated cover where the bittiest blocks of color almost blink!

One of the things that I always look for in books for kids are stories that honor their realness. Their hopes and dreams and fears and feelings that sometimes grownups have forgotten all about. Charlotte always carries that slim smile, even when the nun tells her none of that. I’d imagine this isn’t the only place she’s heard that she might be a bit unusual.

That’s because Charlotte prefers black and white to color, and when kids have a preference, it’s usually a pretty strong one. Kids don’t generally go around only sort of caring about something.

And here’s a beautiful example of that. Charlotte’s safe world is black and white, a stark contrast to that of her parents. To the left of the gutter, a home, and to the right, something unfamiliar and loud.

But her parents know this and they understand.

On Friday nights they take her to see black and white movies. And Charlotte is happy.

And on Sundays, they go to the Museum of Modern Art. And Charlotte is happy.

That’s where Charlotte meets Scarlett, an aficionado of black and white too, and how it clears away the clutter. And that’s where Charlotte’s smile returns.

Here’s a kid, wholly in love with something that might seem unconventional. But she has parents who get it, a trip to an art museum that seals it, and a cat who is always willing to play a part.

So that’s what Charlotte does: makes a film in black and white. Scarlet calls it dazzling and genius, but the colorful people?

Only that was their reaction at the beginning, before Young Charlotte, Filmmaker had finished telling her story.

Be sure to check out Young Frank, Architect as well. These two are a perfect pair.

PS: Over on Instagram, a bunch of us teamed up to share one book on a particular theme each month. This was Michelle‘s brilliant idea, and we’d love it if you followed along. Check out #littlelitbookseries! Janssen of Everyday Reading shared another favorite Frank Viva book as part of that series, which is the same one that I wrote about once upon a time for Design Mom!

And thanks to Frank Viva for the images in this post!

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Here are two #YAlit audiobooks that I recently reviewed for AudioFile Magazine. I am not permitted to reprint the reviews here, but have provided the links (which include audio excerpts).  Both books offer a unique viewpoint of the adolescent male experience - Me and Earl and the Dying Girl through the medium of film making, and 100 Sideways Miles through the medium of abstract concepts.  But now I've had my fill of angsty boys for a bit.  Time for a change of pace.  Up next:  Sci-fi and a new picture book roundup.

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In his four features and one TV series, the late anime director Satoshi Kon developed a unique style of cutting and editing, says Tony Zhou in a new video essay.

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Fleischman, Sid. 2010. Sir Charlie: Chaplin, The Funniest Man in the World. New York: Greenwillow.


For many, particularly the younger generation for whom this book is written, Charlie Chaplin is an icon,   but not an icon in the sense of its earlier definition - as a symbolic star, an iconic idol of the silver screen, but an actual icon - a face with a ridiculously small mustache and bowler hat; a silhouette with bowed legs, a cane, and over sized shoes. Sid Fleischman's book, Sir Charlie Chaplin, The Funniest Man in the World, breathes new life into this icon, the genius of the silent screen.

From Chaplin's meager beginnings as the son of minor vaudevillian performers, a drunken father and a mother beginning to lose her voice - Chaplin fell still farther into the depths of London's Cockney slums.  Already educated in the school of hard knocks, seven-year old Charlie and his older brother Sydney were sent to a workhouse in 1896, "owing to the absence of their father and the destitution and illness of their mother," according to the ledger entry at the "booby hatch." His mother, as she would many times throughout her life, was admitted to a ward for the mentally ill.

Using period quotes and engaging prose packed with personification and similes,

...Chaplin was losing confidence in his isolated and bullheaded judgment.  Disaster holding aloft a mallet, as in one of his slapsticks, might be waiting for him in the theater.  Silent films had become as out-of-date as the once-stylish spats he still wore over his shoes. 

Fleischman gives a chronological account of Charlie's rise to fame with the creation of his signature character, The Little Tramp, his personal foibles (including paternity scandals), his wartime contributions, his fall from favor with the American people (including his investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee and J. Edgar Hoover during the notorious "red scare" years), and his eventual arrival at the place of elevated regard that he finally held in his later years and beyond.  He was belatedly honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1972, and knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1975.

In the book's preface, Fleischman reveals that he arrived in Hollywood in the 1950s to write movie screenplays only shortly after Chaplin had left for Switzerland, but "his (Chaplin's) footprints were everywhere."  Fleischman credits Chaplin's films with tutoring him in the school of "spectator theater" and the gift "of the visual."  Fleischman's interest in and connection with his subject is apparent throughout.

Fans of Chaplin will appreciate this intense look into the ups and downs of a life devoted to the entertainment of others; sometimes at great cost to Chaplin himself and those closest to him.  Those who know Chaplin only as a bowler-wearing icon will (hopefully) scurry out to the public library in sea

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It was one of those days that sort of punched me in the snotbox and only occasionally let me up for air.

I'm talking about today. Tuesday. June 23rd. 2009.

Yes. Tuesday.

It's the hottest day of the year today. I woke up this morning and knew it was going to be sticky and gross. Minnesota. Land of 10,000 lakes and some of the most humid weather ever. Regardless, I work up ready to face the day with earnest, even if it was a day at work filled with meetings.

NOTE: I'm not a fan of meetings.

I did my usual walk from the parking lot to the building where my team meets once a week. Stupid move, but I sort of like to get away from the people on the shuttle bus who complain about work and it's really nice to spend some quality time with my iPod (Robotron 2.0).

By the time I got to the building about a half mile away, I was DRIPPING with sweat. Nice. Way to start the day.

From there, I had trouble staying awake in the meeting. Don't know if I'm still reeling from my crazy weekend of filming, but my eyes were heavy as all get-out. I made it though, got into my 2nd meeting and was just itching to get some work done.

So...when it was over, I walked back...through the heat and humdity.

Here's the thing, folks. I sort of don't mind that it's crazy-hot. I mean, we spend all winter (all 7 months of it) complaining that it's so stinking cold, that when it's hot, we complain about that. So, even though I might go "OH GOOD LORD" when I walk outside, I'm really thinking: At least it's not 7 feet of snow. I can do this.

I got through the rest of the day mostly unscathed. Sure, I thought another meeting of mine was happening an hour before it was actually scheduled. And yeah, I sort of punted when it came time to talk about stuff in the big-important-meeting-at-the-end-of-the-day, but I got through it.

God. I just realized how much my work life sounds like a Dilbert comic strip. Ugh. Need to do something about that.

One of the other reasons I'm not a big fan of Tuesdays is because we have manadatory drills for the fire department that I work at in my spare time. Tonight was no exception. On the way to drill, driving in one of the fire trucks, I was just minding my own business. The window was down, the conversation light and WHAM!!!

Something from outside, flew into the window and smacked me in the face. I hollered out and grabbed at my check and felt something thick and fuzzy. I didn't get a look, but I fired it out the window. It seriously was like someone wound up and punched me right in the gob. It stung like you don't want to know...

That's when it hit me . I GOT STUNG.

Now, I'm 36 years old (for another 4 months, anyway) and I've NEVER been stung by a bee before. And I'm a boy. I've done all kinds of dumb things. I've thrown rocks at beehives, I've stuck sticks into hornet's nests, you name it. Never have I been stung by anything. Until now.

I was like a kid. I told everyone in the department. "I got stung." "Seriously. Right in my face. Stung."

Even a fire chief who also serves in the Navy and was back for a week from Iraq got to hear about it.

"Mr. Troupe! It's been a long time. Good to see you."
"Good to see you, Greg. I got stung by a bee."
"Oh."

But even so, I can't bag on this Tuesday TOO much. Why is that you might ask? Well, two things, but I'm only going to talk about one.

FutureSand got picked by the judges to appear in the 'Best of 2009' show on Thursday night!!! Yes!!! Only 20 minutes before the bee stung me in my face, I got the news from Jason. We're in the top 15 (out of 90-something!) and we'll see how we do against some heavy hitters!!!

So, while Tuesdays generally suck. This one? Not so bad.

y mostly

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Well, mercifully, this post shouldn't be as long as the last couple. Sorry 'bout that. Suffice it to say, there's a lot that goes into these goofy little films we make. What I posted yesterday? That was about a fraction of the hijinx that happened on the set of good ol' FutureSand.

SUNDAY

When we last left our heroes...

I got up bright and early after a couple hours of sleep. (Total sleep for the weekend? 5 HOURS) I headed back to Jason's work to be with the core group, which includes Dirty, Brian, Jason and me. We needed to get the edit tip-top and have it all ready for Jason who was in charge of putting all the sound effects and what-not together.

The other cool thing? Michael Heagle, who did our visual effects stuff, was going to bring us the green screen stuff and also do some cool stuff with the 2 pound sandwich (forgot about that, didn't ya?). Also, my favorite thing...he was going to add some little muzzle flashes to the guns our heroes use. Dang. If I could figure out how to do that, I'd be making movies every weekend.

But, alas. I'm only useful for stories and for getting actors to do cool stuff on film.

So, by now we're all beat, slow-moving and Jason looks like he's fallen off a truck. He hasn't showered, slept much, and we're really starting to feel the crunch. He played some of the music Sherbetty (the band) recorded for us and I'm FLOORED.

I'll admit to not being too blown away when I left the night before. Again, I was cranky and I sort of thought the music was a little too sci-fi. But, I'll eat my words. These dudes made High School Drifter sing and they delivered the goods for FutureSand. The boys recorded a THEME SONG for the movie, complete with lyrics. We heard it and all of were instantly like:

"Man, I want this for my ring-tone."
"I need this on my iPod!"

I couldn't wait to see where it fit in. I already knew that we needed a piece of it for our opening sequence, which (if I may say so) worked PERFECTLY. The end credits begged to fit all the corny lyrics in as the insanely cool 'sandy' effects rolled by.

Dirty whipped up a quality edit and I was able to sit in with a list of things I hoped to tweak before we turned it in at 7:30pm. The clock was ticking. At 7:30, we all turned into pumpkins, our film isn't eligible to compete and it's sort of a bummer. Alas, it's never happened to us, but many a team has fallen in the last hour or two. Computers crash, footage is lost, you name it.

I found a couple continuity errors and some things that didn't work. Dirty did an insane job with the fight scene and we were pretty dang close to 'picture lock.' That means, we're not going to mess with it anymore and we give it to Jason, who will do his sound stuff to it. Add music, sound effects, clean up stuff like (ahem) the director yelling: "Oh, that's BAD-ASS!" over a take. You know. He was stressed, as some of his time was eaten away. The rest of us got to sit and wait.

Now you may be wondering: Thomas, what the heck are you doing there? Your part is over, right? You directed it and wrote the dumb thing. Now it's up to post-production to deliver the goods.

Nah. I like to be there for as much of it as I can. I need to still sort of direct, even if I'm not directly in charge of the different aspects of post-production. I gotta be the 2nd set of eyes and ears on something. We're all sort of part of this big ol' mess and it's up to all of us to make sure the thing makes sense, and most importantly, comes in at 7 minutes or less. Anything over that, and we're disqualified.

Well, to cut to the chase, Jason had us come in and watch the film with the music, sound effects and everything else added. To say I nearly watered the front of my pants is an understatement. I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to be hoarse. Now, I must warn you, I find it incredibly funny to see something as dumb as the script I wrote go through all these hoops and end up being a servicable movie. I'm laughing more at how well it all came together and how great some of the shots turned out. Plus, the fight scene? I just love that crap. It's campy, over-the-top and our actors were BRILLIANT. Also, hats off to Michael Anderson for putting together a rockin' fight with little time to prepare.

So...I know I'm setting myself up for people to go 'Eh...' but I was REALLY pleased with how it turned out. I think we all sort of thought we'd outdone ourselves from last year's High School Drifter. And remember kids, HSD won the audience favorite for our night. Essentially landing us in the top 13 of almost 90 films. Not bad for a group that doesn't do this ALL the time.

With my work done and a family who missed having me around, I left around 6:00pm. entrusting the delivery of the movie to Jason, Brian and Dirty. We high-fived, (not really) and talked about doing something again soon and I was off.

Cut to 7:32pm...

I get a phone call from Jason. He says we might be screwed. Apparently as they were burning the DVD, the picture got all screwy. We shot it in letterbox (because that's awesome) and it made our picture look squished and unwatchable. He said they were at the drop off point and made it there with 2 minutes to spare(!!!). On the way, Dirty had to burn a new DVD with some different settings and were playing it on the laptop while they were in line to turn it in.

I was literally ready to weep openly like a little baby. Jason gave me the play-by-play.

"Okay, it's loading up...okay, it's...it's..."

I closed my eyes tight like this was a bad dream.

"It's all good. It's working."

With that, they turned it in and we were set. We made the deadline and FutureSand was in the competition!!!

TUESDAY NIGHT 7:00pm

FutureSand was set to screen on the first night of the festival @ 7:00pm along with 12 other films. We all met up at the theater and I can't say I wasn't just a little nervous. Heck, my parents were actually coming out to see this thing. I looked at the voting sheet and was pleased to see we were the last film of the group. Not a bad place to be. You definitely don't want to be first, and last sort of lingers with people longer.

The movies began after a lot of er, crap, at the beginning. The guy who runs it sort of doesn't know when to just get on with it. He explained how all the movies had to have the same prop (sandwich), character (Kathleen or Kevin Schnaebel: Expert) and the same line of dialogue ("I hope they decide soon.") I looked around and was pretty well blown away by how many people were there. Probably 250, maybe 300 peeps.

There were some decent ones at the start, along with some that were, um, not so good. I know our early stuff wasn't spectacular and it's just great to see people getting out there and getting behind the camera. Still, I can't help but wonder what stories they would tell about what happened. I saw one film that had almost 8 people as the writer of the script. I'm not sure how that works. I think that's 7 people too many. I've never been good at writing with someone sitting in the shotgun seat, so hats off to people who can do it.

Anyway, we were all feeling pretty good about our chances when the movie right before ours, called 'Fragile' played. It was a Ghost Story and it had two little kids as the stars. And you know what? The kids were REALLY good. The story was dark and really pretty sad. It was about a little girl who finds a gun and she and her brother are grab-assing with it and the guns goes off. It's tricky because you think someone got killed, but both kids are still there.

SPOILER ALERT: The little girl got killed and we see her ghost.

Needless to say, we weren't thrilled having to follow that movie. Our is/was a buddy movie and sort of funny and a little over-the-top. It played and got a pretty favorable reaction, but there were parts (especially toward the end) where people didn't laugh. I don't want to blame the movie before ours, but it's pretty hard to laugh when you just watched a little girl eat a bullet.

We all voted, put in our ballots and hoped for the best.

Afterwards, in front of the theater and stood in the rain and talked about how the screening went. My parents got to meet most of the actors and they took some pictures (which I'm too lazy to post tonight). A big ol' group of us went to a bar called 'Busters' and tipped a few back. It was great. Everyone told us how much fun they had working on it, especially the actors. They all said they'd love to work on something with us again in the near future.

I gotta say, that's a huge deal to me. Maybe it's just me, but I want to make sure everyone is having fun when we're working on this kind of stuff. Seriously. No one is getting paid, the day is long, and we put them through some crazy antics. Heck, Kathy had to lay on the floor for like 3 hours. Still, she was a trooper, as were the rest of the gang and they all told me what a great experience it was. Not to say High School Drifter wasn't fun, but this group really gelled. Everyone got along and there were no attitudes or anything to deal with. The whole thing rocked. I decided then and there that I didn't care if we won or lost. The important thing was this: We made a pretty cool little film and that's all that mattered.

We'd find out our fate the next day.

Sadly...we were beaten by 'Fragile' for Audience Favorite by 19 votes. So, they're going on to the 'Best of' show and we have to wait until tomorrow to see if the judges (who pick seperately) liked ours enough to have us in the running.

Soo...it's not over until the morbidly obese female busts out a showtune.

(TO BE CONCLUDED...TOMORROW)

The conclusion??? I'll have FutureSand available for you to see both here at Tappity Tappity and on my dumb ol' Facebook page on Tuesday, one week after it screened at the Riverview Theater.

Thanks for reading and cross your fingers for us!!!

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It's Saturday morning...who's gonna play with me??? 6 in the morning baby, I gotta long day ahead of me.

I swear that was the song (by the Eels) playing in my head when I woke up ready to tackle our movie. The script for FutureSand was done and all I had to do now was show up, tell people how to act and what I was thinking about when I wrote such and such part and it'll be simple right?

Well...not quite.
First of all, getting to the Music Box Theater was a trick. If you know anything about Minnesota, there are 2 seasons: Winter and Road Construction. It gets to a point where you can't wait for it to get warmer and then when it is, you can't wait for it to get colder so all of the construction dudes are out of work for the winter. Land of 10,000 detours.

Again, I'm getting ahead of myself...

Last year, Jason and I had to do all the shopping for food and stuff for our cast n' crew. This year, we had PEOPLE for that. It's still weird to think that I'm not part of every little aspect of my dumb movies. But, in this instance, I was okay with it. The one thing I DID need to get? A sandwich. I knew of a place to get one that weighed 2 pounds and was just insane looking. So, I swung by, got that, some Caffeine Free Diet Coke (delicious) and some OJ (real OJ) for everyone. I ended up getting 2 sandwiches, just in case...

Once I was at the theatre, I was sort of floored by how much stuff was already happening. Our crew was there and as soon as I was in the door, Brian (our DP, or director of photography a.k.a. camera guy) was asking me about the first shot.

We had a bit of a situation. We needed to move further into the theater as the day went on. At 5pm, an event was happening in the lobby and we needed to shoot accordingly. Thankfully, we thought of all that before we left for the measly few hours of sleep we each got. I told him we somehow needed to make it look like our heroes were coming out of the sand without people being able to see Nicollet Avenue. I knew we had a VFX guy with us and we talked to him about how to make it happen.


Meanwhile, he was already in the theater setting up a green screen. I'll admit to not being overly technical, so I sort of let him set it up and we'd figure out what to have the actors do later.

Oh, yeah...the actors! We were lucky enough to get Riki Robinson (who played Perk in High School Drifter) return. We also had an ex-wrestler/actor named Bill Borea join our cast. Jason wanted us to somehow use his and Riki's talents in a fight of some sort. Thankfully, I worked on into the script. We also had Kathy Kupiecki, who is a talented actress. She also used to date my younger brother, so it was like a mini family reunion of sorts. We also had Joel Allard, who is a musician/actor/renaissance festival guy and friend of Jason & Dirty Abbott (our editor). Rounding off the cast? A last-minute addition actress named Katie Willer. We'd never seen her act and knew virtually nothing about her. When I'd met her the night before in our 'brainstorming' meeting, I figured out the best part for her to play.

Anyway, from the get-go, I was 'on.' We decided to make the entrance into the theater kind of dramatic. We set up some fake doors, stapled thick plastic over them to look like the places was barricaded from the storm outside. We thought we'd make it look like our heroes were breaking in for shelter. Bill would pull a board free and then slice through the plastic with a knife. Very cool looking.

The fun part? On the first take (of which we couldn't screw up) I shouted out: "Oh, that's bad-ass!" The not so fun part? We were rolling sound, so I almost completely ruined the shot. Yeah...that's what happens when you're tired, excited, and haven't directed anything for a year.


After we shot that, which took us FOREVER and totally put us behind schedule, it was time for the green screen shot. You know, a lot of people (myself included) make fun of the actors in the newer Star Wars movies because their acting is so wooden. The reason? Nothing around them is real. All of it is digitally created and these poor people are surrounded by green screen. So, suddenly, I've got my actors in front of a green screen and I'm shouting things for them to do. A cool thing? We had a wind machine, so it looks like they're in the thick of it.

"Okay, look up!"
"Bill, point at the theater out there in the middle of the sand."
"Riki, I need you to nod."
"Can you do the vulcan thing with your hands, Kathy? To block the sand, but still see where you're going?"

You get the idea. I wasn't sure how it was going to look and it was at that moment, I began to wonder if I was making one of the worst films ever. I still didn't love the script, I wasn't sure how any of the visual effects would look, and we were already horribly behind.


From there we did a TON of stuff inside the theater itself. We had the soldiers telling war stories, and we had our first 'fight' type of scene. Thankfully, we had the talented Michael Anderson (who's done fight coordinating before) on our team. He showed Kathy how to slap Katie and make it look good. I stand in awe of the guy and wished we would've had him when we did our fight scene in High School Drifter. Ah, well...

We'd originally set aside 3 hours for the big fight scene, but as things started to take longer than anticipated, that chunk of time was quickly eaten away. Jason, who sort of needs to keep us on track (as the producer) kept reminding us that we were falling dangerously behind. We didn't have any REAL reason to be done overly early, but if we didn't get our crap together, that would eat into the editing time and all of the other post-production things we needed to get done. Our plan was to be done by 8pm.


Oh, and did I mention that Kathy had to be done by 6pm to make it to her gig at Theatre in the Round?

Here's one thing I can tell you about having lots of people working with you on your film. It's awesome, but it's also exhausting as all get-out. I was constantly being asked stuff by everyone around me, from Lori my assistant director, who was great at getting people to quiet down before takes, to Jason and Brian the DP. I swear, any time I sat down, the dude was calling me...


"Thomas Kingsley...can you take a look at this?"

It's funny. I don't think my butt touched a seat for longer than a minute or two before I was up and getting something else going.

The one thing I think I did better this time around was that I spent some more time with my actors. I sort of gave them a 'template' of what I was looking for from each of them. Something like this:

Bill: Tough and gruff. Sort of like Michael Biehn in 'The Terminator.'
Riki: The good guy. Likeable, but sort of conflicted.
Kathy: A take-no-B.S. woman who's survived plenty, but is starting to crack.
Joel: Sort of a horn-dog. It's the end of the world and he's hitting on chicks.
Katie: Scared beyond belief. Sort of in the background and gets treated like dirt.

Anyway, we were able to cobble something together for the fight scene and again, I turned to my expert on this. My only demands were that Bill gets punched in the 'seeds' and that Riki breaks his cigar (which leads to something else that I'll let you see when I post FutureSand here later). The rest was up to him.

We didn't know how the heck to shoot that scene without seeing lights, or grips or other stuff that shouldn't be there in the back ground. Brian had his work cut out for him. We also had to remember to change up the clothing since the fight was supposed to take place two days later. Thankfully, my actors were much more in tune to that that I was. They'd remind me...

"Hey Thomas, since we sort of dressed down, we shouldn't have our scarves and crap on still, right?"

Bless their hearts.

Once the fight was done and I was ready to take a nap or just sit for a minute, we were already to eat some lunch. Again, this was taken care of for us. Rebecca, our production manager took care of getting a bunch of mini sandwiches from Subway. We ate like kings (I ate standing up) and we were immediately back at it, desperate to try and catch up.

Oh...one of the cool things we did this year was have our editor, Dirty Abbott, on site editing as we went along. This was a huge change for me, but here's how it worked. Our camera shoots on things called P Cards. They're basically huge memory cards that our footage gets recorded onto. Once we fill it up pretty good, we switch it out and someone runs it downstairs to where Dirty is set up. He starts to pick the good takes and assembles it using the script as a guideline. This allows us to see a rough cut of the movie quicker than if we were to just put it ALL together later.

The problem? I couldn't help but feel like the way the movie would go together would be in someone else's hands. It's a hard thing to give up and I really struggled with that, even though Dirty is one of my best friends and I trust him with 'my baby.'

Anyway, we powered through the rest of the shoot and I was happy with what we got. We didn't have to cut anything from the script. Essentially we shot everything that was on the page, even if we wouldn't be able to use it for the 'festival' edit. We knew we'd do a director's cut later, so we were thankful for all that. Everyone got done on time, no one got hurt and I think everyone involved was happy with how the shoot went. The guy who runs the theater (who makes a cameo as a corpse) was ECSTATIC about everything. Over and over again he was like: "This is the coolest thing ever. If you ever want to shoot something else here, just let me know."

Bonus!

After Jason and Dirty went off to edit, I stuck around and helped the grips and everyone get the theater back in order. We actually didn't mess the place up so bad, so I felt good about that. I got a chance to call my son, Travis, who was in Mankato with Laura (my wife) and Jake (my littlest guy). I hadn't talked to those guys for a while and when I got on the phone with him around 8pm-ish, he sounded beat.

ME: "Hi buddy, how are you?"

TRAVIS: "I'm gooooood." (his words drag out when he's tired)

ME: "I just got done shooting our movie."

TRAVIS: "Is it for kids?"

ME: "No, it's not for kids. Maybe some day you can watch it."

TRAVIS: "Okay. Bye."

He's not one to mess around on the phone, that Travis.

Once we were done at the theater, it was time to say goodbye to the crew that helped make the shoot possible. All of our awesome grips: Jonny, Dusan, Doug. Our gaffer (who was with us last year) Tony. And of course, Brian, who is irreplacable behind the lens in my opinion. I packed up and headed to Jason's work where the next portion of the show was underway...

Let me say right now that at this point in the process, my sense of humor was pretty much depleted. I'd just spent over 12 hours on my feet, running around, thinking on the fly how each scene was going to work and answering a million and a half questions. Lightning fast decision making and sort of being 'on' for that long is EXTREMELY exhausting. So, when I got to the place where the editing, music and sound stuff would take place, I was sort of wiped.

When I learned that I wasn't really going to be able to sit in while the 'rough cut' was being assembled? I was sort of pissed. Well, not sort of. I was really unhappy about this. That, and Dirty was sort of messing with me. I'd ask him:

ME: "That part where Joel is doing that thing..."

DIRTY: "Yeah, that's gone."

ME: "What about..."

DIRTY: "That didn't work out. We'll lose that, too."

I didn't know it at the time, but he was totally screwing around and trying to be funny. Again, in retrospect, it's funny. But just then? Ooooh...I wanted the guy dead.

So, we sat and we waited. I tried in vain to order Papa John's pizza for all of us and couldn't figure it out. Our set photographer, Greg Schaal (who took most of these pictures) did it for me instead. The band, Sherbetty, came in and got ready to record some music for us, too. They helped us out last year on High School Drifter, so I was stoked that they were back.

After a long time, it was time to look at the rough cut. I think it was somewhere around 11pm. We all gathered around and watched to see what Dirty put together out of all of our hard work and sweat.

...and it looked awful.

Now, that's not to say it was Dirty's fault. I sort of thought "Oh, man...this sucks. We didn't capture any of the cool stuff that we wanted from the less-than-award-winning script I wrote. But you gotta remember kids (which I seemed to forget)... It didn't have music, it didn't have sound effects, none of the visual effects were done. It was literally a barebones skeleton of a movie. Even so, I couldn't help but be disappointed...and tired.

Long story short? Dirty went back in to tighten things up and I sulked on a couch with my swollen feet up, putting pizza into my gob. I got to talk to the band a bit and learned that Jason was hoping for a John Carpenter-esqe sound to the movie. I wasn't sure it would work, but was excited to learn they wanted to write a song (with lyrics) for the end credits.

After a couple hours, it was time for us to see another edit of the movie. The band was jamming as we watched a much better cut of FutureSand. Somewhere around 2am, we realized there was nothing much more to do. Jason stuck around while the band recorded their stuff and I headed home. I ended up getting to bed around 3:30am or so.

The plan was to be back to finish things up the next morning around 7am.


Ah...moviemaking! Isn't it glamourous???

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

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Greetings! (echo, echo...)

Well, it's hard to believe it's already been a year since High School Drifter was shot and shown at the Riverview Theater, but it's true! I've been busy this last month getting ready for this year's showdown and last night with about 4 minutes to spare, we got our newest film completed and turned in to compete with the 90+ other teams in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

This year, we ended up pulling Buddy Film out of the hat. I wasn't entirely pleased. We were hoping for horror, sci-fi, comedy...something other than a sort of pigeon-holed genre like Buddy Film.

Ugh.

When I think of Buddy Films, the movie Lethal Weapon immediately pops into my head. The idea that two guys hate each other in the beginning of the flick and end up pals by the end. Jason (my producer) and I figured out the buddy angle, but I sort of wanted to flip the idea on its end. So, when I post the film up here (hopefully later this week) you'll see what I did with it.

In the interest of keeping this somewhat brief, I'll give you some details about what was required to appear in our film and in every other Minneapolis/St. Paul 48 Hour Film.

Character: Kevin or Kathleen Schnabel - Expert
Prop: A sandwich.
Line of dialogue: "I hope they decide soon."

The title of our film is FutureSand. It's got kind of a sci-fi ring to it, but we wanted to utilize some of the resources we had access to. A fellow by the name of Michael Heagle was good enough to help us with costumes and some visual effects that brought our movie to a whole new level.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself...

Friday night was the night we pulled our genre out of the hat. On the 30 minute ride back to the Music Box Theater (which was our location for the shoot) Jason and I concocted an idea of what we could do with the 'buddy' thing. We tossed ideas back and forth and literally, by the time we turned the corner to our destination, it was pretty well planned out.

The hard part? Standing in front of crew and most of our cast and letting them know what our plan of attack was. Let me get this out: As a writer/director I'm really open to ideas, but it's really difficult to present an idea that is about 10 minutes old to a group. It's not their fault, but it's almost like being a stand-up comedian and getting on stage for the first time. You feel like you're bombing. Maybe it's the way I pitched it, I don't know. But both years, I've gone up there and explained what I wanted to do and I swear you could hear crickets and see a tumbleweed blow by. You sort of get this feeling that the actors are thinking: Great. What have I signed on to?

Then, I say: "Any questions or comments on that?"

It never fails, but the floor is opened up and the ideas from our cast n' crew start coming. Which is good. But I think the hard thing is, immediately after this meeting, I'm going to sit in front of my laptop and pound out a 7 page script within a couple hours. That's all the time I've got.

People throw out ideas (some good, some bad) and I listen to every one. Though it may not seem like it, I internalize that stuff and sort of sift it around in my headspace. One actor thought our 'buddies' didn't seem likable enough the way I described them, another was concerned that the women in the film would seem weak or whatever, someone else thought the sandwich could actually be a sand witch.

Like I said, I listened to them all but I know that we only have 48 hours and I've only got 2 hours to basically write out the blueprint of what we'll be doing. All the equipment and all the gear and everything is sort of hinging on the words I put on a page. It's one part unnerving and one part exhilarating.

Long story short? I was down in the basement of this theater, sitting in a dressing room by myself pounding out the words like it was the last thing I'd ever write. I kept watch of the page count.

FUN FACT: Did you know 1 page of a script = 1 minute of a movie?

When I got to page 3, I got worried. How was I going to get things moving to plan? I had characters to kill off, backstories to fill in, etc, etc... Friends, 7 minutes is not a lot of time to tell a story, especially formatted like a script. 7 pages of straight up prose? No problem. 7 pages of script? Challenging.

I ended up hammering out the script and I wasn't in love with it. I hadn't seen any of our actors (besides Riki Robinson, who played Perk in High School Drifter) act before. I didn't know what they'd bring to the role.

We had an ex-wrestler, 2 renaissance festival actors, and 2 theater/stage actresses, one of which used to date my brother back in the day. I thought FutureSand was going to be my Waterworld. As in...BOMB. Who knows, it still might be...

The script was done and it was time for unnerving part number 2. Having Jason (my friend and producer) read it. Last year, he read HSD with me right there. This time, I left the room and got a delicious soft drink. It's hard for any writer (I don't care who you are) to sit and watch someone read your work without having a chance to fine-tune it or anything. Again, time is money. The clock is always ticking...

As it turns out, Jason though the script was 'good.' Last year, it was 'alright.' Improvement? Maybe!

Another crazy thing about this year? We had an old photographer friend of mine come and shoot pictures of us during various stages of the project. Just about anywhere I went, Greg was cracking off shots. Thankfully, he took pictures of the other folks, too. But dang. The dude's camera was like a machine gun. It took some getting used to, no doubt.

We sent everyone else home, made copies of the script and planned out a rough shooting schedule (breaking down the script set-up by set-up). It was around 2am when I was on my way home to grab a few hours of sleep.

The problem? I got home at 2:30-ish and couldn't sleep. Call it nervous energy, anxiety or a sense of oh-my-god-what-have-I-got-myself-into but I didn't end up falling asleep until close to 4:00am. I needed to be up by 5:30am. I beat my alarm and was up at 5:20.

Apparently, I was ready to go.

(TO BE CONTINUED!)

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SO excited!! Last night our 48 Hour Film Project entry for this year, “Please Forward,” won the Audience Award at the “Best of D.C.” screening. THANK YOU, D.C. AUDIENCE!!! For your further enjoyment, check out the shorts that won for Best Film and Best Directing. Congratulations to all! coughlan48hfp films to see: Best film: http://bit.ly/fTEMK Best [...]

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Last night’s movie screening of “Please Forward” was fantastic! The audience loved the film, laughing in all the right places and giving us a ton of applause. We were last on the schedule, which was an honor in and of itself. A lot of the cast and crew come out with their friends and family to see the movie. I was late getting there because I was ironing on the transfers for the T-shirts, but it did mean that we could all wear them when the screening finished. Bill got the most comments on the film, especially since he addressed the audience with the other directors, but everyone who was wearing the T-shirt heard something great. We ran out of time to make flyers directing people to the Chain Mail International company website, where you can see a preview of the film and read the (fake) corporate history. I guess that venture will be just for us and our online friends.

Anyway, the important news today is that now the whole movie is up at Tohubohu Productions. Both of my kids have roles, and I’m in it as an employee at the company party. And as I’ve mentioned, the script was written by our own Robin Brande. Take the eight minutes to watch it and remember that we wrote, filmed, edited, and scored it in one weekend. Booyah!

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It’s fair to say that the idea for Tohubohu’s newest short film, “Please Forward,” came to me in a dream. Seriously.

In the days before the 48 Hour Film Project, Bill and Robin were joking about chain emails and then thinking how that concept would be interesting for the movie. But with our genre and required elements still not established, they didn’t want to go too far down that road. (In the 48 Hour Film Project, you pick your genre out of a hat and there is a required prop, character, and line of dialogue.) However, that night as I slept, I took that germ of a concept, mixed it with The Office, and a parody video, “Flutter.” I dreamed about a mockumentary about a business that starts all of those obnoxious chain emails. When I told Bill in the morning, he laughed, but not knowing what we’d have to use when we wrote our film, it didn’t make sense to work up the idea. We thought about writing it up afterward for our own film.

When Bill went to the kick-off party and drew the Holiday Film genre, the idea came back into play: What if we went with the mockumentary, but it was at the office Christmas party? On Friday night, Bill and Robin started off the brainstorming and script writing while I finished up the Drama Club performance with my fourth grader (she did an amazing job as a chicken). Back at home, Robin wrote up the script as Bill and I made suggestions, selected our cast, and made phone calls. I ran around the house finding Christmas decorations.

Saturday morning, we headed into Bill’s old office building, where he had gotten permission to film. It was a great set-up for us, offering lots of spaces for scenes, but also lots of room to wait around. Even with only one day to film, there’s a lot of waiting around in the movies. Both of the girls came to be in the Research & Development scenes, and also to help with the clapper board, set decoration, and general gofer jobs. I took calls from our cast and crew, made sure everyone was where they needed to be, picked internal locations, decorated and took down sets, made sure everyone had plenty of food (very important), arranged the order of filming for scenes, walked the actors through some parts, and made sure all the paperwork was in order. Bill just directed the movie. Slacker.

We had a great time during the day, with a pretty relaxed feel considering our tight schedule. The actors gave us some stellar performances. Really top notch. I may be biased, but my favorite scene is with my fourth grader, where the marketing woman is trying to get some ideas about the next generation of chain email users, but is having trouble working with a kid. I also love my seventh grader as a typical teen, texting instead of thinking about the marketer’s questions. The party scene was the most fun to film, and I do make an appearance there as an employee.

We wrapped up at 10:00 p.m. and Bill went into the office to work with the preliminary edit. In the wee hours of the morning he came back to the house for a few hours of sleep, and then went back to edit the film and add sound effects, music, and credits. Oh, and play with sound levels and color correction and technical film kind of stuff. I saw a rough cut at 2:00 and loved it. I reminded him to temper his technical perfectionism and get the film turned in early — no last-minute run for the doors at 7:00.

He did turn the film in with time to spare. Robin has seen it and really liked it. Bill went off with a couple of other directors for a mini-showing at someone’s house and got great feedback and lots of laughs. I can’t wait to show it to you... but it will have to wait until after our screening at the AFI Silver Theatre, Friday at 7:00 p.m.

The 48 Hour Film Project takes place in cities all over the country, so if you’re interested you might check the upcoming dates. While we work with a set team, many other groups need to fill positions in the weeks and days leading up to the competition. On the website, you can indicate your interest in joining a team, and there are often meet-and-greet events to help fill positions. It can be exhausting, but it’s a blast.

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Hiya kids.

Just a real quick update. I've had a lot of folks ask if I'll be able to put High School Drifter (my new film) on YouTube.

The answer, unfortunately, is no.

And why, you might ask?

Well, it's sort of complicated. Since we used a couple of SAG actresses in our film, we aren't allowed ot post it on any site that gains a profit from the film. Since YouTube has all sorts of ads n' stuff slapped all over it...we can't post it there.

However...we CAN post it on a site if it serves as a resume of sorts. You know? Something that showcases my work as an author/filmmaker. So...once I look through the contracts we had to sign with the Screen Actors Guild, I'll have a better idea and will be sure to let you all know where to see my twisted little film.

Deal? Proper.

We're actually spending a bunch of time this coming week fixing up HSD for the next 3 contests were going to enter it into. Since we're not limited to keeping at 7 minutes anymore, we're going to add some of the stuff we had to trim out and make it cleaner, better, stronger.

Sort of like the 6 Million Dollar Man, except, you know...much cheaper.

Stay tuned!

P.S. Jonesin' for some 48 Hour Film Project stuff? I guess there's a site called www.48.tv where they show all kinds of films from the festival. Something tells me HSD will show up there sometime. When I know, you'll know!

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So, it's Tuesday night here in ol' Woodbury, Minnesota and I'm about as excited as a fella can get. I'm completely rested up from our mad-dash weekend of filmmaking and I'm so pumped about how things turned out, I just can't stand it.

My new film (written and directed by yours truly) is called High School Drifter and it turned out 800x better than I ever expected. Seriously. We raised the bar on this one and I feel like I'm ready to do another one next month if I have to.

So...if you've been following the rules and stuff about the 48 Hour Film Project, you'll know this about the movies:

1. We didn't know the genre until Friday night.
2. It had to contain 3 elements that will be present in all of the other entries as well.
3. We had exactly 48 hours to get it done.

Here's what we knew beforehand and what we had lined up to work with:

1. A location: In this case, a high school in St. Paul.
2. 13 actors. Seriously. I think we overdid it on the talent front. 13 actors in a 7 minute film? Crazy.
3. I wanted there to be ninjas in my movie.
4. One of our actors REALLY wanted to do action-y stuff. Plus, he can crack a bullwhip.
5. Somehow, I wanted to have a custodian in the movie who could kick some butt.

Sounds like recipe for an absolutely terrible movie, doesn't it?

Big J, Lo-Ol, and I went to the kick-off event which, ironically enough, was in the same building I used to work at before taking my new job. On our way there, we stopped at Ragstock, which is a 2nd hand clothing store. It's where all the cool alternative kids buy their clothes. We wanted to find a jumpsuit for our custodian. We spotted one and not really knowing what size he wore, held it up to me. It looked like it might be a bit long, but we bought it anyway. $5.


At the event, we learned that there were 89 other teams competing. Imagine that. 89 other crews were out burning the midnight oil and slaving over their little films the same time we were. How friggin' cool is that? At one point, Big J (my producer) looked around and said to me:

"I don't like filmmakers."

I can't help but agree to a certain point. A lot of filmmakers in Minnesota act like they've gotta have a gimmick or something to make them stand out. We saw all sorts of goofballs in really dumb sunglasses, 'arty' t-shirts and piercings that just looked awful.

All I cared about was picking a good genre. We got stuck with 'Romance' a couple years ago and I just didn't want that one again. Yuck.

Well, after what seemed like forever, I got in line to pick my genre out of a hat. I pulled out the piece of paper and unfolded it.

Musical/Western

I was heartbroken. The category is forgiving in that you can pick one or the other, but still. A western in a highschool? What were we going to do? I trudged back to our seat and showed J and Lo-Ol what I picked. Their faces sank.

"We're screwed," I said, envious of the people who picked Comedy or Action/Adventure.

We then waited for the 3 elements that all 90 films must contain. They were:

Character: Mr. or Mrs. Perkinson, a subsitute teacher. (we got lucky with that one!)
Prop: A fish. (great.)
Line of Dialogue: "You look very familiar."


With that info, we took off for our meeting at our location, the school.

There, almost all of our actors were waiting in earnest to hear what genre we picked and to hear what kind of movie we were going to make. It was a little intimidating. I'm not a shy guy, but standing in front of about 20 people (cast and crew) and telling them what my plan was made me kind of nervous. Plus, the A/C was off.

"So, hi everyone," I said. "I'm Thomas and I'm going to be directing this mess."

(a couple cheap laughs)

I introduced everyone in my crew and we went around and had the actors introduce themselves, too. After that, it was all eyes on me.

"So, we picked musical/western," I began. "And I'm pretty sure musical is out the door. I don't think it's possible to write and score a bunch of goofy songs and make it good. Plus, I'm not sure how many of you want to sing."

I looked around at the expectant faces and I felt like a general about to lead his troops into a deadly and brutal skirmish. I took a deep breath and said:

"So, I think we should do a movie about a janitor who fights an elite ninja death squad and he can do all kinds of cool moves and say funny things."

"How is that a western?"

I explained to them that they didn't expect us to build a wild west set and bring in some horses. We would include elements of a western into the mix. There would be a showdown. The main character would say western-y things. Also, there might be a cowboy hat in there.

Anyway, we waded through other suggestions and ideas and some of them were downright impossible. I told them that I had a plan and that as ridiculous as it sounded, I wouldn't just make a big pile of crap for a film. I sort of had a vision.

I think.

After we came up with some very vague character ideas and stuff, we told them what to bring to wear. We assigned our big actress a the part of Ninja Death Squad leader and our action-guy was to be our hero, the custodian named Mr. Perkinson. We sent them home and Big J turned to me.

"Write, Troupe," he said. "You have like 2 hours."

I sat down and was looking over all my elements. Fish, students, ninjas, school... Good lord, what was I doing???

After 2 and a half hours, I had a script. I printed it off and handed it to my crew and they sat down and read it. It was quiet. Too quiet. No one was laughing at first. All of a sudden, a woman who was married to our camera guy and our go-to person for the location laughed. I was sure everyone else thought it sucked.

Big J looked up after he finished it.

"It's too long."

He did this to me before, when I wrote the script for our film from a couple years ago. He didn't say he liked it or hated it, simply that it was too long.

I told him he backed me into a corner, having 13 actors/actresses to work with. I said that if we planned it out right we'd be able to do it. For some reason I was completely confident about the whole thing.

At about 1am, I e-mailed the script to our actors and we prepared for what would be a long weekend.

Saturday was an early morning. We had about 4 hours of sleep and had to do some grocery shopping before getting to the set. We bought all kinds of crap to feed our talent and keep 'em happy. We had our main star try on his jumpsuit and...

It fit like a glove!

We got cracking with filming and literally went from 8am until almost 9pm. All of this for a 7 minute film. I won't bore you with the details, but here are some exciting things that happened during the shoot:

- A girl who played a student was locked into one of the lockers. She was claustrophobic and I had to calm her down so I could direct in how to get herself out.
- I invented a way to launch fake fish guts against a wall.
- Only one actress proved difficult to work with.
- Our grip got his car stereo stolen from his van during the shoot.
- A toilet mysteriously started flushing and wouldn't stop for 15 minutes.
- We had the guy who did the voice of the HOM Furniture commercials play the principal.
- I wanted breakfast sausages to fall out of a character's mortal wound during a pivotal scene. It worked.
- There were tornado sirens going off as we packed up at the end of the shoot.

All things considered, our shoot went amazingly well. We did our best not to waste anyone's time and no one got too angry with each other. There was no yelling really at all. That's a rare thing for people who are tired, cranky and stuck in the same place with each other for a long time.

But...that was only half of it.

At 11pm or so, we arrived at Big J's work to edit the thing down. We had 3 guys sitting around me so I could tell 'em what to cut and where. It was surreal. For so many of the projects I've worked on, I had to wear so many hats. Writer/director/camera guy/special effects/craft services... To be sort of the guy everyone was asking was pretty cool. Not that I like to be bossy or anything, but it's like they knew it was my movie and my vision and wanted to make sure I was down with what they were doing.

We worked around the clock. A couple of us had to sleep for a bit. I stole a 2 hour nap. I literally walked into one of the offices in the building, sat in a chair, put my Nintendo hat over my eyes and didn't wake up until my arm fell asleep....2 hours later.

A couple dudes working with us didn't sleep at all.

Oh...the really cool thing? A local band called Sherbetty came in to see some of the footage and they sat in another room and recorded a soundtrack to the movie. How sweet is that? They asked what we were looking for and I described our main character and the western feel the whole thing should have. After about 4 hours, they laid down a bunch of tracks and took the movie to a whole different level.

Anyway...we had an edit put together sometime around 3am and we all wanted to cry. The movie clocked in at around 11 minutes. It could only be 7 minutes in length. 8 minutes with the credits. I was ready to jump out the window.

One of our editors didn't even flinch. He sat back and clipped off little chunks that were unneccesary. We were convinced that he was only chipping away seconds that wouldn't amount to much. After a couple hours, he had it trimmed down to a lean and mean 6 minutes and 56 seconds.

"Yes!" I yelled, all punchy and delirious from lack of sleep. "We did it!"

We spent the rest of the time plugging the music and sound effects into the movie. I sat in the sound studio and picked which licks from Sherbetty we wanted to use and where. We selected over-the-top sound effects for the fight scenes, really gross noises for the gratuitous violence, and just had a blast doing it. Of course, I could barely keep my eyes open come Sunday afternoon, but I managed to see it though to the end.

Big J delivered the movie to the drop off with about 5 minutes to spare. We all agreed that we were going to do something like this again and soon...maybe not in just 48 hours, though.

So...that's that. My new film High School Drifter (get it? it's sort of like High Plains Drifter, except it's in high school) is going to premiere at the Riverview Theatre on Thursday, June 19th at 6:30pm. It's stuck in there with a bunch of other entries in the festival. I think HSD will play 3rd from the end.

If you live in the area and want to see it, totally come on down. The judges will pick their top 3 and the audience gets to vote for their 3 favorites as well. Call me optimistic, but I think we're gonna give them a run for their money.


Man...if only my work consisted of writing books and making films. How sweet would that be?

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Hey there. You still hanging around this joint? Yeah? Well, let me slap your hand. Thanks for being there for me. Seriously, if you come to my house...Pancake Puffs. All you can eat.

And yes...I'm the worst. I've yet to show you the magic of P-Squared, but I assure you, once I make it through this coming weekend, all shall be revealed. And there's video and there's some pictures. I'm even sticking a chocolate chip Pancake Puff in my mouth with my bed hair fully intact. You won't want to miss it. I see that as a jacket flap picture.

Maybe.

Anyway, I'm writing to let you know I'm heading into the beginning of a very fun and very taxing weekend. That's right, doctor. This weekend is the Minneapolis/St. Paul weekend for the 48 Hour Film Project. It's going to be 23 kinds of awesome in an edible shell.

TKT, I'm too lazy to click the link. What's the low-down?

Oh, you. You always were one of those types. Well, here's the quick n' dirty version of it. We have exactly 48 hours to make a 7 minute film/video. We don't even get to work ahead of time. That's not COMPLETELY true. We get to find a location and get some actors lined up (check & check!) but we don't know if we're doing a drama, a comedy, a western, musical, etc... It's all decided tomorrow night at 7:00. We also find out three elements that must be included in our film and ALL the other films in the running. They'll be:

- A piece of dialogue (a couple years ago it was: 'Do you have a breath mint?'
- A prop (we had to have a balloon that said 'Congratulations' on it)
- A character (a few years prior it was D. Poe - Former Runway Model)

So, we've got a great cast, some crazy ideas that we'll try to bend around whatever genre we pick and then it's a race to the finish. My family (Travis & Laura) are heading south to stay with the in-laws for the weekend. My dog Nigel is going to the 'puppy hotel' and I get to be a real live movie director for the weekend.

Heck, I get to write the thing too!

Anyway, just wanted you all to know what's been consuming me for the past week. My friend Big J and I are going to take home 48 Hour Film Project gold!!!

(here's where you applaud and get out of your seat)

P.S. I saw the Kanye West/Rhianna/N.E.R.D./Lupe Fiasco concert last night. Cra-zy.

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At our screening last night we were able to show “All Roads Lead Away” in high definition — which looked awesome — and get lots of compliments from fellow filmmakers. Unfortunately, we did not take home any additional awards. While I am immensely proud of our film, I’ve learned not to be surprised by the judging. Sometimes a quirkier, but less sophisticated film wins. Sometimes it’s about “wow

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Good morning Tappers.

Hey, is that condecending? You know, that I call my (2-3) readers Tappers? There's another blog I read sometimes and the author calls her readers a certain name and I sort of find it condecending a little bit. I don't think it's so much that she has a name for her readers as much as it's the name she chose.

I don't want to be that guy. So, you know, let me know.

Hi. I'm tired this morning.

You see, I got assigned the mother-of-all tasks last week and this week. They've got ol' TKT under the gun, working on a pretty big video project here at work. Word got around here that I've got a little film/writing background and they thought:

"Hey, we should have that one guy do a video for us. Something fun, something interesting, something that needs to be done in an extremely short amount of time."

CUT TO:

Shot of TKT looking all bewildered-like into the lens. It punches in for a Sam Raimi extreme close-up. The guy never knew what hit him.

So, yeah. That's what I've been doing instead of posting things on the old bloggy blog. My time at work is literally clogged with planning scenes, rewriting stuff, setting up shots, figuring out how we'll ever get this edited in time, and trying to get actors to just read what I wrote for god's sake...

But you know what? It's been a lot of fun. You know, except for the ulcers and the crying.

Oh...right. What the heck am I doing? What's the premise of the video? Well, I'm glad I asked myself. We're doing a send-up of 'The Office' with our own goofy cast of characters. We're making it apply to what we do here at my job and taking shots at management and...

You know, it sounds a lot better when I don't talk about it. Really. I actually bored myself just then. My favorite part? We have fake commercials between the segments and there's one where another guy and I do an homage to the 'Lazy Sunday' video from SNL. Haven't seen it? Before last week, neither had I.

Anyway...progress on GOODHALO is clipping along. I'm just about halfway done with draft 2.5 and I'm already seeing it firming up nicely. By the time I sit down with the ol' scalpel and jackhammer, I'm gonna shape this thing into something magical...

...with zombies.

And no, I haven't forgotten about the contest for your very own copy of PATRICK'S SUPER SOCKS, suitable for reading to, you know, 4-6 year olds. Details on that big ol' beast is coming up.

Okay. My head is about to hit the keyboard. I must be off.

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Have you heard of Blender? Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. Here is some info about it's use by an Italian Illustrator, Enrico Valenza, who created book cover illos with it. Check out his work .

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