Well, it's finally over. For the past few hours the sun's been out, the temperature's 72 degrees, and there's been a light wind. It's absolutely beautiful outside. I've decided to go and clean out and re-organize the closet in the studio and get rid of a ton of junk in there. This should make room for the render farm, which I'm still researching how I'm going to build. The goal will be to have several machines in the closet, with some good ventilation. Millard got back into town last night after being up at Mumpdase's wedding. Exhausted, he napped on my couch for a bit, then woke up, grabbed the hard drive with his audio masters and headed home. Hopefully we'll begin working on the DVD tomorrow afternoon. Sick Thought of the Day: Pig urine in the milk.
Category: Studio
Wilma Advisory 31
Here's the latest on Wilma: No Image Available. Advisory 31: 11:00 pm EST, Saturday October 22, 2005 Today I joined the American Film Institute. Since I was young, I've loved films and have been drawn by the creative spirit behind not only large studio directors, but the independent filmmaker too. I feel that being an AFI member will enrich my love and understanding of film, and will give me a stronger foundation in my pursuit of the art. I've put together some sample DVDs today of the SMM Instructional DVD in both 480i and 480p versions, and hope to sit down with Millard and discuss them as soon as the storm blows over. Until we can discuss this, I'm planning on working on some samples of the title animation and menu design.
Tests, Logs, and Configs
When my editing workstation's capture drive failed a while back, I lost a couple of projects. When I say "lost", I really mean that the captured video went bye-bye, and I lost maybe a total of 3 hours of work (beyond the time it took to capture the video, which was maybe 2 hours). So, now the drive's been replaced, and I have a secondary drive in the system as well, which now gives me almost half a terabyte of storage space for rendering, video and film work. That said, I've re-captured then next project and recovered the scene logs from backup tape. So, now that the project's all set up, all I need to do is edit. I've done some tests with multi-pass VBR MPEG encoding, to see what settings I like the best and am happy with the results. The 3D models for the Transformers game (we call...
Milked
I've finished the remastering of An Essay on Milk. The video quality was extremely poor (very grainy, overly red and pink like old film) so it took some time to do some color balancing and sharpening of the picture. I rendered the video out and ran it through the compressor to make a nice DVD of it, which should help preserve it for a while. I'm also archiving the digital capture and project so that we can go back to it again in the future if we so desire.
Milk
I've added another project to my list of things, which is remastering/restoring the original An Essay on Milk footage directed by Jared Whitham for Sir Millard Mulch back around 1998. This is an internal project that probably will never see the light of day, but I'm posting it in the Projects section nonetheless.
More Than Meets The Eye
A project I've been working on for quite some time now is the Battlefield 1942 Transformers Mod video game. For those of you not familiar with the Transformers, check this out. I've only been doing some minor work here and there, mostly 3D modeling. The project manager has asked that I start working on some alternate aircraft/spacecraft modes for Optimus Prime and Megatron. I'm beginning the sketches and concept designs today and will work on them throughout the weekend. I hope the begin modeling no later than Monday night. Stay tuned to the Projects page for more info.
Prepping for the Dragon
Last week was terrible for productivity. I spent the time getting everything in order for my trip to Dragon*Con, which starts in just over a week. Now all the prep is out of the way, I can go back to focusing on the projects on my plate. Another thing that didn't help (hence, I took advantage of the downtime) was the fact that one of the main hard drives I use in the studio for editing decided to die on me. It was replaced this weekend so I'll be editing some more starting tonight. I think I'll be on schedule for completing the editing by Sept 1. After I get back from Dragon*Con, I'll work on the DVD authoring. Hopefully that and the package design will be done by Sept. 27. Also, the trip to Dragon*Con will continue the tradition of eating tons of hot dogs on the road. Check...
Swelling, Sleeping, Editing
Millard and I hung out yesterday. He was feeling a bit under the weather due to a nasty sunburn he suffered while out on a boat. Ouch. We rented Hitch and ordered pizza. Movie was pretty good. Pizza was better. I slept in and called into work today, as I was exhausted this morning. I'm about to open up the editing room and begin working on the DVD. More on that as it develops.
Meow
It's been a while since I posted last. Things have been pretty busy for me the last week or so. Anyway... Saw Catwoman this weekend. The movie was OK, but after Spider-Man and X-Men, the story seemed very campy; a little too comic-bookish. I guess it may be my viewing preference, as I like the way the directors of these Marvel movies are portraying the characters as real people, and the "laws" of comicbookdom are not applied too much to the movies. I've always had trouble latching on to DC story lines, as they just seem too far-fetched. Halle Berry was alright, but the constant purring and cat-like movements really hurt the film. I'd give it a C+, and that's mainly for Benjamin Bratt's always-great portrayal of a cop. Also bought a new acoustic guitar yesterday. It wanted something inexpensive that had a decent sound, so I got a Yamaha...
