Dark Design Pictures

This weekend the wife is going out of town with here sister, and nothing film related is going on. So leaves me with lots of free time to lounge around in my boxers, do some editing of 1-800-Tech-Support, catch up on some TV. Oh, update the web site. The blog is running and old ass version of WordPress. And the 1-800-Tech-Support web site has some issues with the skin. Menus, that would be nice! I’ve also had some promo ideas for 1-800 that I would like to start working on. So much filming so little time to do anything else. Well I guess now I do. Better not watch to much TV then.

While surfing the Video Copilot forum last night I came across this short film called Suddenly by Magnus Engsfors. It is a cool example of the neat things you can do with After Effect, Photoshop and still photography. I have to say it is an incredible short film. The music was well chosen and the effects are well done. Though I know the techniques that Magnus not 100% sure how he pulled it off. I’m guessing he used a green screen to get the photos of himself hanging and shot the background separately. I wish I was this creative. Very nicely done.

The IDE cable went bad and not the hard drive. I think I’m going to go backup my server now.!

Yesterday was a complete and total disaster. Do to an issue at work which I had fucking caused; I had to cancel the shoot. I really can’t go into detail about it, but it was colossal fuck up. I’m very very aggravated and disappointed. This is the 3rd time I’ve had to put off filming for 1-800-Tech-Support because of something (vacation, holidays, schedules, disasters, you name it). It hard enough trying to nail down schedules, wrangle everyone to a single location and then have to cancel last minute. Luckily I had the good sense to call everyone a head of time to let them know that there was a delay and a possible cancellation. Ugh what a day. I didn’t leave work till 9:30PM. Now the process start over of trying to get Monday and Wednesday rescheduled. I wanted to do it last night but I didn’t have the energy. Today is a new day and I’m not going to dwell on it. There are other things for me to be annoyed at today.

Labor day weekend was alright. Yesterday my hard drive crashed so I’ve been spending the last couple of days trying to get my laptop up and running and trying to recover my data. Luckily I’ve managed to save all the scripts which I’m honestly the most concerned about. There is other data I’m concerned about but that is the most important to me. I can recover my MP3 and movies off my ipod. I may have lost my Invaders Zim Episodes which would make me sad. But what can I do….

Hmm, well I seem to be missing a few days. You didn’t think I was going to be blogging the inter time did you? As much as I wanted to it didn’t work out that way. Adjusting to the 5 hour time changes was a bit rough.

Day 3: Hanauma Bay
The wife and I took a tour to go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. Wow it was incredible. The water was clear and blue. After getting settled on the beach we headed out into the water. I got an underwater camera to get pictures of the reef and the local species of fish. I didn’t get any real beautiful shots. We mainly stuck to the shallow areas. Leah wanted to stick to Section 1 which didn’t get any deeper than 10 feet. I think I scored some good shots of the fish though. We hitched a ride back to the hotel on the shuttle and then had lunch. We decided to take a nap and do something in the evening. Well that didn’t work out. We both woke up early the next morning.

Day 4: Shopping and the Beach
We didn’t really exciting mainly wondered around Waikiki and did some tourist type shopping. After that we headed back to the hotel and hung out on the beach the rest of the day.

Day 5: Island Tour
This was the best part of the trip. If you ever make your way to Waikiki take the E Noa Tours: Pineapple, North Shore, Half Circle Tour. It was incredible. Our tour guide was Uncle Derick a part Chinese, part Portuguese, part Hawaiian native, who has been a tour guide for over 25 years. If you ever take this tour see if you can get Derick, he is an unbelievably cool tour guide. The tour started off at the Dole Plantation and then on to the North Shore. After the tour it was back to the hotel and off to dinner. I had been wanting sushi all week, so we head to a local sushi bar that we found the day before.

Day 6: Home we go
The last day is always bitter sweet. We woke up early had some breakfast and head out to the beach for the last time. We headed back up to get changed and catch a taxi back to the airport. Our flight left at 5:30PM Monday which means it was 10:30PM in SA. After a rather painful 7 hour flight back to Dallas and a 1 hour flight back to SA we finally got home at 9:00AM Tuesday, with no sleep.

Over all it’s a was a killer time, however I do have to say it’s nice to be home.

Today started off kind of slow. Leah and I were suppose to go to this time share deal but decided to skip it. Instead we had breakfast at the hotel and the hopped a shuttle to Perl Harbor. We took a tour of the Arizona Memorial. I didn’t know that out of all of the battleships sank during the attack on Perl Harbor all but the USS Arizona and USS Utah were raised and repaired.

After getting back to the hotel we had lunch and took a nap before heading to the beach. The sunset was beautiful. I snapped a few photos. I would post them but Leah didn’t bring the cable to for the camera. So all the pics will have to wait till I get back.

Ungh travel. It was a long as flight 8HRs and a 5 hour time change. I don’t know how my mother did it when she was a flight attendant. If you going to travel on a really long flight I highly suggest booking First Class. Coach sucks, it’s like a damn cattle car. No room what so ever. By the time we got to the island I was tired hungry and a bit cranky. Manly from not eating much the whole day. By the time we go to the hotel it was about 10PM SA time. We wandered around for a bit looking for a place to each and decided to head back to the hotel. Dinner was nice and rather pricey. The wife had a veggie stir fry and I had some swordfish. After that we headed back to the room and passed out. It was one hell of a long day. I don’t have any photos yet but I should soon.

It seems I can’t be involved with the 48HR Film Project with out something going to shit. While at the Cup of Joe preview I got a call from my wife. It was load so I stepped outside to talk. She was crying so I knew what was wrong. He cat Miss Kitty was diagnosed with mammary cancer earlier this year. The inevitable had finally come, my wifes cat was going to have to be put to sleep. So I excuse myself from the party and I get my camera from Matthew before going. I got home my wife was a complete wreck. I held her for a bit while she cried. I asked her what she wanted to do. Honestly, we both knew what needed to be done, but she didn’t to admit it. I told Leah to say good bye to Miss Kitty while I looked for a box. Before I left I threw the camera battery on the charger and queue up a tape for import. The show must go on. I got the cat and took off for the vet. I admit it, I cried like a little bitch. It fucking sucked. I go home a little before 11PM. Queued up another tape and told myself the show must go on. So I’ve gotten 3 hours of sleep, baked in the heat, and now had to have to euthanasized. Seriously, what the fuck? I can’t sleep so I might as well get some color correction and compositing in. Ugh what day. Edit better be some smooth fucking sailing this go around.

I stubble across this web site while reading the VideoCopilot blog. It’s called The Art of the Title. You guessed it, it’s all about the open sequence of movies. You can eve watch them, how kewl is that? It has been giving me some good ideas.