I managed to get myself involved in a play this Spring. I had notions of trying to direct a play myself (Shakespeare’s Twelth Night was the leading contender), only to discover that someone else was ramping up to do this one, and would probably be pulling from the same pool of actors that I would have tried to cast. So I tossed my idea out and threw in with them.
I suppose you could say the whole endeavor went relatively well. I was cast in a minor role as one of the villain’s henchmen, which required me to do just a little singing in choruses and to pronounce my two or three lines of dialogue with a French accent. I think I got to speak the best verbal gag in the show (for those of you who know it, it was “Well…it spoke Latin”). For me it was generally fun, but not too taxing or overwhelming.
I actually wanted to be more involved than just that, so I volunteered to act as assistant to the director. I find that my efforts there weren’t really of all that much use. I tried to take copious notes of all the stage directions that she invented as she invented them. I say I tried because sometimes I was busy writing down the stage directions for my own character, or worse yet, I was busy actually trying to execute my stage directions, so I seemed to miss a lot. The few times someone actually asked me what my notes were, they tended either to be missing, or to contradict whatever the actor remembered such that I was summarily overruled. Despite the notes never getting much use, I found I got a bit misty the day I was asked to erase them all out of my folio. It must have taken me a full hour to get through it all, as I had very generously decorated every page of the thing.
A slightly more useful (albeit not much more) task I took on was the building of a website to promote the show. You can find it at magnificentproductions.net.
The site was fun to do because I got to play with some design techniques I hadn’t tried before…like having a multi-layered background (gradient over a tiled image, with one of the images placed right on the element). I also got to build a new interface for looking at photo galleries that involves a lot of auto-scrolling (in other words, you hover your mouse over the thumbnails in the gallery, and the thumbnails scroll up and down depending on whether you move the mouse up and down, without you having to click on a scroll bar or anything—too bad it doesn’t work on touch screens ). You can see examples of this in the cast and crew gallery and in the performance and costumes gallery. I imagine about 12 people ever visited this website, but at least I can use it as a showoff piece for web development jobs.
The thing I did for the show that really was useful was craft services. I brought snacks to every rehearsal. I don’t suppose they were the greatest snacks of all time…I would usually just raid a Ralph’s before each of our big Saturday rehearsals, with a trip or two to Smart and Final to buy bulk items that would keep longer. You get a really good sense of what people want to eat vs. what they say they want to eat. Everyone always asks for healthy stuff: fruit, vegetables, bagels. But the donuts will always get devoured before the carrot sticks. I suppose then, that while I may have contributed a great deal to the ability of our cast to continue to function throughout some of our longer rehearsals, I may have also contributed to their girth. Sorry kids. Read more...
Continue reading the full text of The Scarlet Pimpernel. (843 words, 2 images, estimated 3:22 mins reading time)
A couple of artist buddies of mine wanted to put on an art show. Not having any access to a building to use as a gallery posed no problem. They simply invaded the pedestrian tunnel under Olympic Boulevard at Selby Avenue in West Los Angeles. Kenny (one of the buddies) had me drop in with my 7D and we shot some footage. Here’s the result that Kenny cut together.
I’m currently sitting in a basement in a lovely colonial home in Germantown, Maryland, guests of the older brother of my good friend Max Fitt. The older brother, Todd, is a nuclear reactor tech and father of two with a fantastic hobby: he builds scale models of Star Wars vehicles. We spent last eventing oohing and aahing at his most audacious creation: a 2.5 foot Star Destroyer.
The thing is rediculously detailed. Todd created much of the surface of the thing from his own molds. The inside has an intricate network of fiber-optic lines which start from some central light bulbs and branch out to the surface of the ship. Todd tells me there are over 1600 distinct light along the surface of the hull. When I have a chance, I’ll post some pictures of the thing. For now, here’s a link to his site, showing images not only of the finished Star Destroyer, but also of the process of its creation:
I’ve had a chance to upload photos of my trip to the East, so here are some pictures I snapped of the Star Destroyer, as well as some of his Millenium Falcon, and two other freighters of his own design.
I just got a Canon 7D, and got to put it through its paces working on a little movie called “Late Night Worker.” You can view the movie here. The thing was conceived of and directed by a guy named Kenny McNett. You can check our more of his shenanigans over at his website at www.streetsmartcomedy.com. We shot on June 25th in the middle of the night, and debuted the movie at the LA1/SM3 movie night on July 17th. When Kenny has the movie posted on his YouTube channel, I’ll link to it. In the meantime, here are some photos I shot of the cast and crew while we were getting ready to go make the movie.
The Crestock Photoshop contest is upon us once more!!! What is the Crestock Photoshop contest, you ask? I’ll tell you that as soon as I tell you what Crestock is.
Crestock is an online repository of stock photography. The images housed there are all royalty free, so once you’ve bought one, you don’t have to pay anyone every time you use it. You can buy your images a la carte or get a subscription and have your way with the whole library.
No doubt in an effort to generate more sales, Crestock sponsors an annual contest for designers. Each week during the month of the contest, Crestock selects six images from their library and makes them available to anyone who wants to enter the contest. The contestants are then required to use at least one of the photos as the central part of an image. The image can be of anything, eventually. It just has to be cool, show skill and talent with Photoshop, and it helps if the thing is a little funny.
Designers only have one week to work on their image. They upload their entry and the entries are scored both by Crestock’s team of judges and we, the masses online. The first week’s winner receives an iPod Classic and iPod Nano. The winner of week 2 gets a 13″ white MacBook. Week 3 gives out a 15″ MacBook Pro. And the winner of week 4 gets the granddaddy of prizes: a Mac Pro with 2 (yes, two) 30″ Cinema Displays.
So you want to try your hand at winning the big prizes? Follow this link to read all about it:
If you want to enter the contest, there is no time to waste! The first set of stock images was put online on November 13th (that’s yesterday for those of you reading this immediately). The first submissions are due November 20th. Good luck if you enter. Otherwise, have fun seeing the crazy and interesting stuff that the contest entrants are already creating.
Get FirefoxFor a more pleasant web browsing experience (and so I don't have to spend half my time getting the site I'm working on to display correctly in stinking IE6).
Lynda.comFantastic video tutorials to learn software at your own pace.
). You can see examples of this in the cast and crew gallery and in the performance and costumes gallery. I imagine about 12 people ever visited this website, but at least I can use it as a showoff piece for web development jobs.
