Thought I'd give a little sneak-preview of the video project I'm working on, and also an idea of the things I somehow convince people to do for me.
March 2009 Archives
Well, the two harrowing days I was dreading in the previous entry have now passed with a pretty high degree of success. I've only had time to look at some of the footage I shot again, but so far I'm not disappointed. I can't wait to get this video together and to show it to y'all. I think it should be pretty entertaining.
The other major event of the weekend so far was that I went to see animator Don Hertzfeldt (of Rejected and Billy's Balloon fame) at a showing of all of his major work so far plus his new short, I'm so proud of you at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. As someone who (ashamedly) had only seen Rejected and the stuff he did for The Animation Show before yesterday, I was surprised by how deeply touching, dark, human, serious, and warm his more recent works are, especially Everything will be OK and I'm so proud of you (which are the first two parts of what will theoretically be a trilogy about a single character).
He's an extremely talented man and must have an amazing work ethic--all of his stuff is hand-drawn and animated frame by frame. All of the visual effects are done in-camera on film. During the Q&A after the screening, he expressed remorse that the animation world seemed to be shifting entirely toward digital technology and abandoning traditional methods when they still have so much potential.
He's surprisingly young (just 32), considering how contemplative his recent work is and he seemed like a genuinely friendly and articulate guy. He's really living the dream, too--he's never had a job other than animating and he's never done commercial work. Apparently he subsists entirely on prize money, festival appearances, and DVD sales. Pretty amazing.
Anyways, in order to unwind from all the directing and rushing around I've been doing the past two days and because the previous layout was starting to grate on me, I've redesigned this site again. Give it a look-see.
The other major event of the weekend so far was that I went to see animator Don Hertzfeldt (of Rejected and Billy's Balloon fame) at a showing of all of his major work so far plus his new short, I'm so proud of you at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. As someone who (ashamedly) had only seen Rejected and the stuff he did for The Animation Show before yesterday, I was surprised by how deeply touching, dark, human, serious, and warm his more recent works are, especially Everything will be OK and I'm so proud of you (which are the first two parts of what will theoretically be a trilogy about a single character).
He's an extremely talented man and must have an amazing work ethic--all of his stuff is hand-drawn and animated frame by frame. All of the visual effects are done in-camera on film. During the Q&A after the screening, he expressed remorse that the animation world seemed to be shifting entirely toward digital technology and abandoning traditional methods when they still have so much potential.
He's surprisingly young (just 32), considering how contemplative his recent work is and he seemed like a genuinely friendly and articulate guy. He's really living the dream, too--he's never had a job other than animating and he's never done commercial work. Apparently he subsists entirely on prize money, festival appearances, and DVD sales. Pretty amazing.
Anyways, in order to unwind from all the directing and rushing around I've been doing the past two days and because the previous layout was starting to grate on me, I've redesigned this site again. Give it a look-see.
So tomorrow is the start of the (theoretical) whirlwind two-day shoot for my final video project. I'm sure I'll have a good time doing it, but as usual thinking about it is making me jumpy and tense. Today I've been swinging back and forth between feeling terrible, headachey, nauseous, tired, etc. and feeling perfectly fine and cheerful. This is probably the last major stress hurdle of the year for me, though. Unless, of course, I have some sort of unforeseeable internship- or housing-related ordeal.
ANYWAY.
The Gargoyle Centennial issue is done and printed and looks nice. I secretly believe it's a terrible issue, but that's what I thought about all the other ones this year, and people seem to like them well enough. It's about as dirty as the previous issue was clean, which makes for an interesting contrast.
I've been starting to listen to The Decemberists over the past week, a band I've been aware of for a while, but whose music I was never really compelled to investigate. I guess I expected them to be kind of whiny and generic, but I was pleasantly surprised. Their recently released rock opera, "The Hazards of Love" is really interesting, varied, and unique. I'm now working my way backward through their discography and having a lot of fun. If you haven't listened to them yet, go for it.
ANYWAY.
The Gargoyle Centennial issue is done and printed and looks nice. I secretly believe it's a terrible issue, but that's what I thought about all the other ones this year, and people seem to like them well enough. It's about as dirty as the previous issue was clean, which makes for an interesting contrast.
I've been starting to listen to The Decemberists over the past week, a band I've been aware of for a while, but whose music I was never really compelled to investigate. I guess I expected them to be kind of whiny and generic, but I was pleasantly surprised. Their recently released rock opera, "The Hazards of Love" is really interesting, varied, and unique. I'm now working my way backward through their discography and having a lot of fun. If you haven't listened to them yet, go for it.
Not that my names are ever super-creative (Mouthboy, Mr. Frowns, etc.), but I think I should hold off slapping a name on this guy until I know a little more about him. I've been sketching him for a while, but he's still not all the way to wherever he's going. Whatever that means.
Herein I will recount today's STRANGE EARLY-MORNING SONIC EXPERIENCE.
So I was awakened at 5 AM this morning by what seemed to me to be a very loud, repeated musical noise emanating, seemingly, from the air around me. I would describe it as two brief chords from a Simon and Garfunkle song (by which I mean, Simon and Garfunkle singing) followed by a bright chord played by a duo of french horns. I was briefly worried in a half-asleep way that the Second Coming was happening.
As I became more awake and the sound repeated again, I figured out that it was a remarkably musical train whistle, probably emanating from the tracks down by Main Street. By how, you ask, did they sound so loud and so near?
I WILL EXPLAIN USING MY 9TH GRADE PHYSICS-LEVEL KNOWLEDGE OF SOUND WAVES.
Oakland is a street bounded on one side by close-together houses on an embankment and on the other side by close-together houses at street-level, essentially what we people who have no formal science training like to call a "SOUND TUBE." Oakland dead-ends at my apartment building. More specifically, at my window. Even more specifically, at my gigantic plate glass window that covers an entire wall of my room. This window acts as a giant ear drum, essentially, that catches and amplifies all the sounds that come down Oakland, EXCLUSIVELY FOR MY BENEFIT. This allows me to be awoken at strange hours of the night, horrified that Simon and Garfunkle and a small brass ensemble are in my room.
IT'S SCIENCE
So I was awakened at 5 AM this morning by what seemed to me to be a very loud, repeated musical noise emanating, seemingly, from the air around me. I would describe it as two brief chords from a Simon and Garfunkle song (by which I mean, Simon and Garfunkle singing) followed by a bright chord played by a duo of french horns. I was briefly worried in a half-asleep way that the Second Coming was happening.
As I became more awake and the sound repeated again, I figured out that it was a remarkably musical train whistle, probably emanating from the tracks down by Main Street. By how, you ask, did they sound so loud and so near?
I WILL EXPLAIN USING MY 9TH GRADE PHYSICS-LEVEL KNOWLEDGE OF SOUND WAVES.
Oakland is a street bounded on one side by close-together houses on an embankment and on the other side by close-together houses at street-level, essentially what we people who have no formal science training like to call a "SOUND TUBE." Oakland dead-ends at my apartment building. More specifically, at my window. Even more specifically, at my gigantic plate glass window that covers an entire wall of my room. This window acts as a giant ear drum, essentially, that catches and amplifies all the sounds that come down Oakland, EXCLUSIVELY FOR MY BENEFIT. This allows me to be awoken at strange hours of the night, horrified that Simon and Garfunkle and a small brass ensemble are in my room.
IT'S SCIENCE
Alternately titled: "In Which C. Fisher Provides an Unbiased Review of Watchmen Nonetheless from a Nerd's Point of View"
I have not read the Watchmen comic. Most of you know of this, and of my insistence not to read it before seeing the movie. I wanted to experience the film without bias or expectation, except those that I came by via word of mouth and conversation.
I know people have strong feelings about Watchmen, so I am going to do my best to COMPLETELY DISREGARD them and give my honest opinion.
Watchmen was a visually beautiful film ruined by clunky dialogue, an incoherent (by which I mean "un-cohesive," not "difficult to understand") plot, and a distracting overuse of popular music.
I'll start with the positive. Many of the shots, effects, and images of the film were truly beautiful and mesmerizing, especially near the beginning. Trying to parse meaning from the ever-shifting shapes on Rorschach's mask was one of the more mentally engaging parts of the film. Unlike a lot of people, apparently, I didn't find the opening credits particularly amazing, but the fight scene resulting in the Comedian's death was fantastic. As the film progressed, I will admit that I started to get bored of gore splatter, slow/fast punches, and bone-breaking. I did not get bored of looking at Patrick Wilson, but that is beside the point.
The plot was the weakest part of the film. I'm sorry, Alan Moore fans, but as I ranted and raved about in my V for Vendetta review a few years ago, his plots just can't be transferred directly into the film medium, they NEED to be reworked. I had some investment in the characters, some moreso than others, but no investment at all in the story. Someone killed the Comedian. Okay. He seemed kind of like a terrible person. There is going to be nuclear war? Hm. Okay. I guess for me, there were really no stakes. If you want to make an audience worried about a nuclear war, show some shots of normal people panicking, praying, weeping, building bunkers and holding their children close, not talk show hosts talking matter-of-factly about how the Doomsday Clock is at four minutes to midnight.
There wasn't much build-up to Dr. Manhattan's realization that he still had feelings. There wasn't much build-up to Nixon deciding to go to DEFCON 1. There wasn't much of a build-up to the climax at Ozymandias' secret South Pole fortress of solitude, either. These were prime opportunities for the film to get us invested, to make us excited, but it just kind of blandly laid events out. Choosing any one of these as THE BIG CLIMAX and working around them would have automatically made the film more engaging.
I think the strongest parts of the plot were the little backstory vignettes that composed the first half of the film. Each was its own little mini-movie and they were fairly effective. But all these great, complex characters were all set up only to essentially go through the superhero motions at the end. DISAPPOINTING.
I'm sure a lot of people have talked about the music, so I won't spend a lot of time on it, but I found it REALLY distracting. Did we really need that Simon & Garfunkle song at the funeral? Did we need "99 Luftballons" in the restaurant? Sometimes gaps without dialogue can stand on their own! I feel like the insertion of the songs there represented a huge lack of faith in the power of the visual narrative.
All in all, for a film that was supposed to run dark and deep, there were a lot of silly giggles in the theater when I saw it. Some at the almost comedically explicit violence, some at the sort of cliched lead-ins to the Silk Specter/Nite Owl sex scenes, some just at awkward dialogue. I think a lot of the laughter could have been avoided if (sorry Zack Snyder) it had been put in the hands of a more skillful director. Snyder is great with action scenes, but he cannot do drama for the life of him.
Any drama the film had was salvaged by the fantastic Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. I've only ever seen him (that I remember) in Little Children, but he was fantastic in that as well, obviously in a very different way. In Watchmen, a film where most other actors were kind of sadly smiling and shrugging their way through, he was absolutey in the zone.
In closing, I'm sure that this film works excellently as a supplement to the comic book, but it absolutely does not hold up as a standalone film.
WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS
I have not read the Watchmen comic. Most of you know of this, and of my insistence not to read it before seeing the movie. I wanted to experience the film without bias or expectation, except those that I came by via word of mouth and conversation.
I know people have strong feelings about Watchmen, so I am going to do my best to COMPLETELY DISREGARD them and give my honest opinion.
Watchmen was a visually beautiful film ruined by clunky dialogue, an incoherent (by which I mean "un-cohesive," not "difficult to understand") plot, and a distracting overuse of popular music.
I'll start with the positive. Many of the shots, effects, and images of the film were truly beautiful and mesmerizing, especially near the beginning. Trying to parse meaning from the ever-shifting shapes on Rorschach's mask was one of the more mentally engaging parts of the film. Unlike a lot of people, apparently, I didn't find the opening credits particularly amazing, but the fight scene resulting in the Comedian's death was fantastic. As the film progressed, I will admit that I started to get bored of gore splatter, slow/fast punches, and bone-breaking. I did not get bored of looking at Patrick Wilson, but that is beside the point.
The plot was the weakest part of the film. I'm sorry, Alan Moore fans, but as I ranted and raved about in my V for Vendetta review a few years ago, his plots just can't be transferred directly into the film medium, they NEED to be reworked. I had some investment in the characters, some moreso than others, but no investment at all in the story. Someone killed the Comedian. Okay. He seemed kind of like a terrible person. There is going to be nuclear war? Hm. Okay. I guess for me, there were really no stakes. If you want to make an audience worried about a nuclear war, show some shots of normal people panicking, praying, weeping, building bunkers and holding their children close, not talk show hosts talking matter-of-factly about how the Doomsday Clock is at four minutes to midnight.
There wasn't much build-up to Dr. Manhattan's realization that he still had feelings. There wasn't much build-up to Nixon deciding to go to DEFCON 1. There wasn't much of a build-up to the climax at Ozymandias' secret South Pole fortress of solitude, either. These were prime opportunities for the film to get us invested, to make us excited, but it just kind of blandly laid events out. Choosing any one of these as THE BIG CLIMAX and working around them would have automatically made the film more engaging.
I think the strongest parts of the plot were the little backstory vignettes that composed the first half of the film. Each was its own little mini-movie and they were fairly effective. But all these great, complex characters were all set up only to essentially go through the superhero motions at the end. DISAPPOINTING.
I'm sure a lot of people have talked about the music, so I won't spend a lot of time on it, but I found it REALLY distracting. Did we really need that Simon & Garfunkle song at the funeral? Did we need "99 Luftballons" in the restaurant? Sometimes gaps without dialogue can stand on their own! I feel like the insertion of the songs there represented a huge lack of faith in the power of the visual narrative.
All in all, for a film that was supposed to run dark and deep, there were a lot of silly giggles in the theater when I saw it. Some at the almost comedically explicit violence, some at the sort of cliched lead-ins to the Silk Specter/Nite Owl sex scenes, some just at awkward dialogue. I think a lot of the laughter could have been avoided if (sorry Zack Snyder) it had been put in the hands of a more skillful director. Snyder is great with action scenes, but he cannot do drama for the life of him.
Any drama the film had was salvaged by the fantastic Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. I've only ever seen him (that I remember) in Little Children, but he was fantastic in that as well, obviously in a very different way. In Watchmen, a film where most other actors were kind of sadly smiling and shrugging their way through, he was absolutey in the zone.
In closing, I'm sure that this film works excellently as a supplement to the comic book, but it absolutely does not hold up as a standalone film.
I've been on a busy cycle for the past week, dealing with Board meetings, the Garg's financial plans, working on the centennial issue, internship business, various housing headaches, and the ever-present irritant of schoolwork. SO. I am allowing myself a 5-minute break before I get back to work.
Bullet point! The Garg administration has been banking a lot of its hopes on a plan we came up with at a meeting with some Board members last month. The plan involved publishing the mag as an insert in The Daily and having the Daily business staff sell our ads, since we're complete failures at it. Well, yesterday we met with the Daily business staff to discuss the plan and they very flatly shot it down. OH WELL. We did manage to cut our budget for next year significantly, and if all goes according to plan, we should be operating at only a $1,200 deficit.
Bullet point! After finding out that Adrian couldn't live with us next year a few weeks ago, Peter, Billy, Zack and I were somewhat distraught. We figured we'd be losing our ideal house if we couldn't find a new fifth person. Well, Wilson White was apparently having problems renting it, so they allowed us to make an offer on it that we could afford, and they accepted it, with the condition that the rent would go back up if we found a fifth person. So we signed the lease and got that all wrapped up.
Bullet point! I got a call from Conde Nast last week, asking to set up an interview. I was understandably absolutely fucking ecstatic because I half believed that wouldn't get called back regarding ANY internships I applied to, much less such a prestigious one. The interview is scheduled for Friday, and I'm sorta-kinda preparing in my free time by writing lists of anecdotes about times I overcame obstacles.
Bullet point?! I have to figure out whether I'm going to go through the trouble and uncertainty involved in rooming with April in NYU housing this summer or take the easier route of NYA housing and be forced to room with someone I could potentially want to strangle. I've decided that I will figure it out after my Conde Nast interview.
Pullet boint! My obsessive tendencies have manifested themselves yet again. We've had trouble deciding on what to put in the Garg centennial issue cover, and Adrian is sort of busy strangling koalas or whatever he's doing in Australia, so I decided executively that the cover would be composed of a lot of older covers. The question, of course, was who would scan, process, and compose these covers? Can you guess? (The answer is: me.) Also, I realized to my chagrin that the Daily's scanner was on the fritz again, so for the past few days I've been carting stacks of old issues home to be scanned and back to the office again. I'm pretty much done, but I think I might be getting a little too controlling.
Bullets point! Last Saturday we had a Garg work day, and at a certain point I decided that I wanted to be riding my bike (which has been sitting in the office since December) again what with the recent warm weather. I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly what the problem with it was, but I had an inkling that lubrication and the lack thereof might have been a major part. So I went to White Market, bought a can of WD-40, and lubed the hell out of the gears and chain. I've been riding it for a few days, and it seems to be working alright, as long as I only use certain gears.
Boollet punt? Also, I've been writing essays. For school, remember? I am still going to school.
Bullet point! The Garg administration has been banking a lot of its hopes on a plan we came up with at a meeting with some Board members last month. The plan involved publishing the mag as an insert in The Daily and having the Daily business staff sell our ads, since we're complete failures at it. Well, yesterday we met with the Daily business staff to discuss the plan and they very flatly shot it down. OH WELL. We did manage to cut our budget for next year significantly, and if all goes according to plan, we should be operating at only a $1,200 deficit.
Bullet point! After finding out that Adrian couldn't live with us next year a few weeks ago, Peter, Billy, Zack and I were somewhat distraught. We figured we'd be losing our ideal house if we couldn't find a new fifth person. Well, Wilson White was apparently having problems renting it, so they allowed us to make an offer on it that we could afford, and they accepted it, with the condition that the rent would go back up if we found a fifth person. So we signed the lease and got that all wrapped up.
Bullet point! I got a call from Conde Nast last week, asking to set up an interview. I was understandably absolutely fucking ecstatic because I half believed that wouldn't get called back regarding ANY internships I applied to, much less such a prestigious one. The interview is scheduled for Friday, and I'm sorta-kinda preparing in my free time by writing lists of anecdotes about times I overcame obstacles.
Bullet point?! I have to figure out whether I'm going to go through the trouble and uncertainty involved in rooming with April in NYU housing this summer or take the easier route of NYA housing and be forced to room with someone I could potentially want to strangle. I've decided that I will figure it out after my Conde Nast interview.
Pullet boint! My obsessive tendencies have manifested themselves yet again. We've had trouble deciding on what to put in the Garg centennial issue cover, and Adrian is sort of busy strangling koalas or whatever he's doing in Australia, so I decided executively that the cover would be composed of a lot of older covers. The question, of course, was who would scan, process, and compose these covers? Can you guess? (The answer is: me.) Also, I realized to my chagrin that the Daily's scanner was on the fritz again, so for the past few days I've been carting stacks of old issues home to be scanned and back to the office again. I'm pretty much done, but I think I might be getting a little too controlling.
Bullets point! Last Saturday we had a Garg work day, and at a certain point I decided that I wanted to be riding my bike (which has been sitting in the office since December) again what with the recent warm weather. I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly what the problem with it was, but I had an inkling that lubrication and the lack thereof might have been a major part. So I went to White Market, bought a can of WD-40, and lubed the hell out of the gears and chain. I've been riding it for a few days, and it seems to be working alright, as long as I only use certain gears.
Boollet punt? Also, I've been writing essays. For school, remember? I am still going to school.
Other Internets
