Sonnet II

Since my teens, when I first read MacBeth, I got the Shakespeare bug and never looked back. Today, because it's my birthday, this sonnet holds a unique significance for me:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
—This were to be new made when thou art old,
—And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

Oh YEAH?? Well, I did THIS!!

Dishwasher soap and dishwasher detergent are not the same thing.

Now I know.

Touch typing pays off

I taught Lucy how to touch type... and now look who she hangs with!

My Shortest Apposition, Day 3

Josh and I shot the B roll for My Shortest Apposition on Wednesday and I'm very happy with the footage. I still need to massage the stills into black & white, give them a white border on the printouts at Long's Drugs (with their supercoolio self-use photo machine), put the pics in a photo album, then shoot them on video.

I also have to shoot the credits with Zoë, but on Wednesday, she had her Chicken Pox vaccinations and they told us she'd be woozy for a couple of days, so Josh and I decided to punt it; thankfully, the bulk of the work had already been done, since the B roll footage had to be shot by someone other than me, since I was in most of the shots. [For posterity: I will never star in my own film again—it's one too many hats and frustratingly time-consuming; the only reason I did it this time was because the film is about me and Zoë.]

But the good news is, the crayon title credits are 95% finished. Josh took a peek at them yesterday and loved them... I can't wait to put this sucker to bed because with music and credits and everything, it should look pretty swanky. This started out as a simple project for Hans and me (yes, "Hans and me" is correct) to horse around with 16mm, but I never seem to do anything half-cocked: the end result has been 1000% better than I anticipated.

And then there's the silliness on set, which is always fun:

I am Key Man! I can kill you with a single key!


Tracie and I go down to L.A. next week, so hopefully I'll have a rough cut to show Hans by then. Stay tuned.

One of my heroes died today...

William F. Buckley, Jr.
1925–2008

You've got to be effing kidding me...

This is just about the craziest thing I've ever seen:

Slusho Pics—You can't drink just six!

For those who missed my last post, CLOVERFIELD: Marketing the American Godzilla, go read it now. If you're in a hurry, skip to the bottom of the post to read the bit about Slusho.

I said pics were coming and I wasn't lying: this week I received my Slusho hat and T-shirt. Because I know no bounds of geekdom, I held my wife at gunpoint to take pictures of me opening the Slusho box. Oh, the joy!

You'll note that some of the stuffing inside the box is Japanese newspaper... there's some speculation that the newspaper is yet one more clue about Cloverfield's storyline, but nobody knows for sure...

Cloverfield opens nationwide in theatres tomorrow. I'll be going to the 9:20 PM showing which is the closest match to New York City's 12:03 AM EST, which is when the story is meant to occur. [Actually, it just hit me that I'm late by a day—12:03AM on 1/18/08 happened about 4 hours ago, but whatever!] Thankfully, they'll be showing Cloverfield on the pristine Digital Light Projector, the best medium possible to show Hi-Def video.

Anyway, if you're still on the fence about seeing it, consider that it's produced by Alias and Lost co-creator, J. J. Abrams. His marketing pitch was something like, "Give me one $1500 camera, a bunch of no name actors, and $25 million—I'll put all my money into the CGI and make a killer monster movie."

Oh, hell yeah.

I may even order a slushy just to get myself in the mood.

Front Yard

Most kids had green grass, a big tree and stickball. I had a skyscraper balcony with a view of the East River.

Urban tribes rule.

Seam Carving

Take any picture and electronically resize it. Delete people from photographs. All without distortion. You have to see it to believe it:

Oh, Silas...

My 93 year old Aunt-in-Law Kitty Pruden passed away last month and my cousin was able to scour through her photos, of which there were many. It was actually through Kitty how I got the first picture of my paternal grandfather:


That's a peculiar photo because he looks so much like my own father that many people often think they are the same person, just older/younger:



You can imagine my surprise, then, when my cousin mailed me the photo below. Scrawled on the back were the words, "1870s, Silas Pruden". I am related to a Silas Pruden, but is one of these guys Silas??? And what were they doing? Was it a posse? Was it a secret club? The mystery continues...

The Kashi Shoot

Worked on a great shoot as Script Supervisor this last Saturday for Kashi. As the photos here show, Kashi pulled out all the stops to make their commercial the best it could be. Frankly, I was surprised they shot a TV commercial on 35mm:

The biggest problem doing continuity on commercials is the pace. The day starts out fine with the 1st A.D. highlighting which scenes are the most important for continuity, but then the lighting takes longer than expected, the instructions get garbled, equipment invariably malfunctions and all the while the sun is moving relentlessly forward. Suddenly, you're under the gun and a continuity question has to be answered in 10 seconds rather than 2 minutes, which makes it hard to give the right answer but you do your best and take snapshots of everything. The good news is that continuity usually doesn't matter too much on a commercial, but you can't count on an editor to give you that grace; as the master of continuity, your job is to kill continuity errors before they get in the can.

The catering on this shoot was spectacular. Breakfast included scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, fruit salad... but lunch was astonishing: tri-tip, chicken, sweet corn on the cob, roasted peppers, Portobello mushrooms, wheat rolls, seasoned butter... as I was chowing down these delicacies, I realized that their catering had to be outstanding. This was, after all, a company whose product was nutritional food, and the commercial was about trading in bad food for "stuff that makes you feel good." If they had served McDonald's-type fast food, Kashi would have quickly gained a reputation for hypocrisy. Instead, they implicitly bribed 60+ cast & crew to tout Kashi's gastronomic good will forever. Everything you do is publicity, even if it's off-camera.

The most interesting part of this shoot was filming the product shots at the end of day. The grips and P.A.'s spent many, many hours constructing a black tented studio right there on the grass in Land Park. It's kind of surreal to walk into a black hooded box where at least 10 crew members are already assembled—Director, DP, 1st A.C., 2nd A.C., Production Designer, Gaffer, 2 Grips, Script Super and Client(s)—and feel like you're on a studio lot, but then look down and see grass under your feet. Then you wait while the D.P. makes countless tweaks to get precisely the lighting he wants. As frustrating as it is to wait for the lighting to be "just right", this caliber of filmmaking is motion photography as its finest. Truly, an art form.

Also check out the photos of the cantilevered pulley mounted on the dolly to keep the heavy 35 mm camera hanging in mid-air. That's a clever tool to simulate handheld shots while keeping the weight off the shoulders of the D.P.

Did I mention the temperature got up to 104°? Man, was I happy I brought sunscreen.

Behind the Scenes: IN DOUBLE DUTCH

Last night, I saw the first cut of In Double Dutch, the 10 minute short I directed back in May. So far, the edited footage looks, and sounds, amazing—so I'm going to be ecstatic when the whole thing is completely finished. You know you've got a good film when you watch the raw footage without any of the bells and whistles—the black & white filter, the widescreen aspect ratio, the musical score, the beginning and end credits—and you still get drawn into the story. When the core of the story and the acting is strong, all the extras that "frame" it just make the chewy center taste even better. For any cast or crew reading this who worked on the film—a job bloody well done! (Pictured at left is Jim Munch, the best Key Grip/1st A.C./Gaffer/P.A. in the whole world in the history of time.)

Of course, it doesn't hurt to have a smokin' hot actress like Meaghan Sinclair. I mean, just look at her! As Letterman woud say, she's "easy on the eye":


As founder and co-owner of Sweet Embry, Meaghan did a lot to make In Double Dutch come together and I know she's going to be really happy with the results.

That's me with Sweet Embry co-owner and Firearms Supervisor Rob Thomas (at left) and Emmy-winner sound mixer Dave Losko from Audio Oasis.


Dave Losko is the best guy in town for production and post-production sound mixing and I make a point of saying so because not only is he the consummate pro with the best equipment to get the job done, he's also a really nice guy with a good sense of humor. If you're going to spend 50 shooting days with anyone, this is one guy you wouldn't mind spending it with.

We did have some fun on set. I made sure we did. Otherwise, why make a film at all?



Pictured here are Cesar Huitron, Ray Dussault, me, P.A. Krystal Kashuba, and Sean Boncoto. Cesar and Sean are partners in VOH Entertainment and did the DP work (check out those swanky cameras, yo!). Sean's also cutting the film. Ray, the founder/owner of Lai Khe films, was my 1st A.D. and is pictured here showing off his new manicure. I'm the guy in the blue shirt with the beige baseball cap with my name embroidered on it. (It was a gift from my ma. Promise.)



Stay tuned to find out when and where In Double Dutch's premiere will be. We're planning a sneak preview, too, so let me know if you want to come to it... Or you could stay in the know by adding In Double Dutch to your Myspace friends!

The First Person Ever Photographed

Saw this photo on Wiki the other day and thought it worthy of posting (click to enlarge).

"Boulevard du Temple", taken by Louis Daguerre in late 1838 or early 1839, was the first-ever photograph of a person. It is an image of a busy street, but because exposure time was over ten minutes, the city traffic was moving too much to appear. The exception is a man in the bottom left corner, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show up in the picture.

This photo is ironic for several reasons:

1) Daguerre, the photographer, probably didn't know anyone would show up in the photograph. A very happy accident!

2) the first person ever photographed didn't even know their picture was being taken.

3) the first person ever photographed is unindentified; they might have been important, or not. We'll never know. Given how photography and video have become so pervasive in modern society—and how having one's picture taken unknowingly is so commonplace—it seems fitting that the first person ever photographed remains forever anonymous.

Zoë's dream animal? The Bunny.

Part of the fun of being a parent is dressing up helpless newborns in outfits they're embarrassed about for the next 20 years. Here's our favorite pic of Zoë, although there are 48 more pictures here:

Zoë meets world

Well, the Z girl isn't even two days old and everyone's suddenly after me to post pictures of her. Here are a few to tide you over, but over here, I've posted 23 more.

The (image of the) person you're about to see is not real

Albert Finney's 1981 movie Looker tells the story of real models being "sampled" to create a perfect computer generated actor... so perfect that viewers become completely hypnotized when watching. Perfect for commercials. And newscasts. And movies.

The future catches up with a vengeance—the image below is a real actress, but the image is not a picture... it's all computer generated (click on it to enlarge):

Here are the pictures used as reference points (with the bottom left the finished CGI image):



Still don't believe it? Here are the settings in 3dsmax:



This astonishing work and provides a glimpse about the future of digital entertainment. Sure, this image is basically a souped up scan of a real person, but the technology now exists to create computer generated still photos of imaginary actors (Time magazine once combined 100 American faces into one face to give us an idea of what our descendants might look like), then computer generated moving images of imaginary actors... and then Rachael.

Full article about the above photo here.

Fun with color correction

I've used Photoshop for 20 years and while I'm still far from being an expert, a small color correction can really improve a picture's quality. I did color correction on some photos for a friend's web site and thought it'd be fun to share a couple of the results. I'm sure I could easily sink another hour of work into each, but you can already see the difference after 10 minutes of tweaking.

Before color correction:


After color correction:

The ocean is still too green, but I'd have to mask her out to do a proper color correction, which is another 15-20 minutes.


Before color correction:


After color correction:


Doesn't it look like a thin grey veil has been peeled off the original? Few people really understand the value of color correction until they see results like this.

The Segway Lite

As an über-geek, my friend Todd posts to a programming blog which appears to be very useful if your brain is the size of a tractor tire and you do coding in UNIX, LINUX, PLASTIX or MARGARITAMIX. Even though I understand only 15% of what he's talking about, I still read his blog on the off chance he'll talk again about his new MacBook Pro. After all, when hard-core PC users switch to a Mac, the sky is, indeed, about to fall.

Back in April, Todd posted this—it's so good, I just had to repost it:

New Segway Dali LE (Light Edition)
I’ve always been intrigued by the original Segway but until recently they were out of my price range. That all changed with the new Segway Dali LE (Light Edition). Here I am enjoying the commute on my new Segway Dali LE which sports the following features:



1. Powered by the EPA approved ultra green Personagy Drive™: no more recharging or running down the batteries.
2. Lighter weight: you can carry it up the stairs now, no need to lock it up on the street where it might get stolen
3. Sturdier: can now safely carry your whole family with the optional platform extender
4. Balance improving technology: the original Segway promoted poor balance by compensating for it
5. Possibly eligible for renewable energy vehicle tax credits (check with your accountant).
6. Degenerative breaking skid plate: just like the original Segway, simply lean back to stop
7. Newly endorsed by the Bush administration and the Homeland Security’s border patrol group
8. Already in use nationally by UPS, Fedex, and Sears home delivery
9. Durability: comes with a lifetime warranty, never-flat tires, and is completely submersible
10. Now available for $49 MSRP at Amazon or for a $7 daily rental fee from U-Haul.

When Good Supertankers Go Bad

These pictures are really just too amazing not to repost. Most people probably forget that ships exist out there so large that they make the mind boggle when we see them. This effect is doubly magnified when we see them in settings where they don't belong. Take the story of the APL Panama, a supertanker which ran aground on a California beach on Christmas Day 2005.

Witness but a few "Oh my god!" pics (click to enlarge):

Just another day at the—HOLY CHRIST! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT DOING THERE!?!?!?

Time to offload with an Evergreen Sikorsky S-64 Sky Crane. How long do you think that took?

Here you can actually see the tanker lurching to her port side under the tugboat's pull. Alas, it would take many tries...

In the end, it would take until March 10 (over 2 months) to insinuate this topheavy lady back into her native waters, all because the captain was too impatient for the local pilots to come aboard and navigate her into port.

Take home lesson: patience is a virtue.

Almost forgot... this story courtesy of Todd "Gabrito" Huss.