The past week or so has been a mixture of me being lazy and things just going on as usual. Millard is leaving today for LA and will then, possibly, move on to Portland. We’ve been talking the past few days about projects and we’ve both agreed we’re going to shelf the movie for now. He’s not in the right mindset to work on it, and may not be for some time. How long will that be? Weeks or maybe even months. I promise that the movie will com out eventually, but Millard needs to concentrate on his Grand Adventure to the city of angels. I totally respect that. And envy it. It’s really awesome that he’s getting his life on the fast track and cashing in on all the hard work from the past ten years. With him leaving, that means we now only have two players for D&D:...
Category: General
No Sneezy, Please
Well, Millard has decided to move to Portland / Los Angeles in the next week or so. In the meantime, he’s staying at my place so he can get some things in order before he goes. I’m not 100% sure what’s going to happen to the movie, but I suspect I will continue to work on it and send him updates and allow him to remotely produce it. As for me, I’m in a position now where I need to organize my surroundings more. I’ve realized that, ever since everyone started staying with us around the 30th of August or so, that the apartment has gone to hell. My bedroom in particular is a complete mess and needs to be organized and cleaned up. I’ve also decided that I need to do something about all the dust and stuff and will start figuring out a good plan to minimize that...
Sayonara
Last night’s D&D session went really well. We all had some fun and the characters are all now third level. Ulfgar got hurt really bad by a crazy mage who decided to throw a huge burst of fire at him. Luckily, Aydan was there to heal Ulfgar and bring him back into the action. Unfortunately Diana will no longer be playing with us, as she’s headed off to school in Tallahassee. We’ll miss her! Luckily her character, Azerad, didn’t do anything innately foolish and may yet again join the party at some later date. I think I’m going to make a big batch of chili in the crock pot today. I’ve had a hankering for it lately. After I’m done writing this entry, I’m going to head to the grocery store, stop and pick up comics, and check the Suncoast Studios PO box. Speaking of Suncoast Studios, the site is...
An Amazing Thought
Last night I finished up our itinerary for Dragon*Con. Everything’s booked and paid for and the roadmap laid out. I found this great website called TripHub that I’m trying out to see if it makes the vacation any easier. So far it’s pretty basic, but allows you to aggregate your flight info, hotel info, and trip itinerary all into an easy to use Web 2.0 interface. Friday’s D&D session went really well. We started late because of some errands I had to run that evening, so we only played from 9:00pm to 11:00pm or so. There wasn’t much action, but it was still pretty fun. I need to start being a bit more assertive on getting the players out of “dead-end” scenarios – I need to force the story line along. Well, I’m sure I’ll get better about this over time as this was only our 4th session. Anyway, I...
Catching Up
It’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged. Mostly, that’s because I’ve been lazy, but some of that is because there hasn’t been much to talk about… I’ve been doing some editing on the feature and have delivered a second rough cut to Millard. I’m also working on another part of the DVD now and expect to have the first rough cut of that done this weekend. The script’s been finalized as well. I have a big stack of stills to scan in to bring me up to date too. I really plan on stepping up this next week to really start hammering out this project, as it’s starting to slip too much and drag on. Speaking of “drag on”, I booked the hotel and flight for Dragon*Con the last couple of weeks. Shauna and I will be heading up there on August 31st and will coming back September 5th....
Balls and the Closet
Last night Brad, Millard and I went bowling with some friends of Brad’s down at Sarasota Lanes. We had two lanes for about two hours and around fifteen minutes into the first game, Cosmic Bowling began. That’s where they turn off the normal lights, turn on the black lights and lasers, and fire up the smoke machine all while playing some great rock music. Very 70’s. Very fun. It’s been a while since I’ve bowled (I was on a league about 9 years ago, and have only played a handful of times since), but I was a pretty good 180 bowler. My high was 225 or thereabouts. I had no delusions of being that good last night, and my games proved it. Game one was a 120, game two was a 99, and game three was 89 after the 8th frame (the time ran out so I didn’t finish). My...
July 4th
Yesterday Shauna, Melisa and I went to Busch Gardens. It was hot as hell (~91 degrees), but we had a bunch of fun. Shauna’s not a big rollercoaster rider, so Melisa and I rode the Kumba and SheiKra. I rode Kumba several years ago, but SeiKra is new. And that coaster is crazy. It pretty much drops straight down… twice… It was a pretty good ride – it was one of the few coasters that didn’t upset my stomach after I got off. So, we rode those rides and also watched a couple of pretty good musical shows and then went to see Pirates 4D, which is one of those 3D movies where they spray water at you and so on. It starred Leslie Neilson and was actually pretty fun. We drank a lot of lemonade slushies and ate some good sandwiches (I think Shauna had some popcorn and chicken fingers too)....
Week In Review
Man, am I ever a lazy mutha. I haven’t posted up here in over a week. A week! Sick. Well, this post should make up for it… The last time I posted I mentioned that the editing began on the feature Millard and I am working on. Well, the first rough cut of it is now done. I toiled away at the keyboard for quite some time (about 35 hours or so – it’s like another full-time job!) and produced a 65GB AVI file. All day today I’ve spent converting it to a 500MB MOV file and am currently uploading it for Millard so he can see it. I imaging he’ll look it over for the next couple of days and send me his thoughts on the edits. There’s still a lot to do: hire the voice talent, create the commercial bumpers, and create the teaser. Of course the final...
Editing Begins
I officially began editing the feature tonight. It took a while to set the project up in the NLE software, as the system needed to conform the audio from all the video clips, which took a couple hours. After that was all squared away, it took about an hour to get a good rhythm down on the editing. I’m going off a shot log that Millard put together in a spreadsheet and am applying those in and out markers to the actual footage. So, I’m bouncing back and forth between Premiere and Excel, which takes some getting used to. Anyway, at this point I’m about 15 minutes into the feature. If I can keep up the pace, I should be done with the first rough cut by then end of the night on Thursday. Tropical Depression 1 upgraded to Tropical Storm Alberto today. The most recent advisory says that it...
Oh How The Time Flies
I haven’t posted in awhile. Shame on me. I’m a fuckin’ jerk. This past week has been a whirlwind of activity. Millard, Shauna, Diana, Brad and I all decided it was time to dust off the manuals, open our bags of dice, and sharpen our pencils and play some Dungeons & Dragons. I know, I know. Totally geeking out, but some of the most “gaming” fun I’ve ever had was playing D&D when I was a teenager. It brings back some fond memories of creativity and was one of the reasons I wrote The Yellow Emerald and now am into films. So, late last week we all decided to start playing on Friday nights. While Millard finished up his adjustments on the script for the feature, I began combing through my DM’s Guide and Player’s Handbook trying to convert my Second Edition rules over to the newer 3.5 rules. And...
