July 2003 Archives
July 29, 2003
Guilt
For as long as I’ve been doing this blog, the number-one question I am asked is as follows: “Pleas to be give me e-mail of Mr. Robert Kelly.” This relates to an entry, which apparently people are very excited or confused about. But that’s not really the issue.
The issue is this: I’ve received countless complaints from my fan about the distinct lack of entries that intrude upon my social life. “Come on,” they generally misspell, “if you don’t start letting us in, everyone will abandon your boring old site in favor of sites that are full of drunken debauchery, like the brilliant Tucker Max. Also, they’ll think you’re some androgynous, overweight, social misfit who still lives with his parents.”
I’m here to tell you, gentle reader, that nothing could be further from the truth. While I am an overweight social misfit who still lives with his parents, I am certainly not really all that androgynous. And I’m also not afraid of baring all — gone are the days in which I simply rambled incoherently about my classes and random girls on whom I form arbitrary social crushes because I’m so verbally crippled that I can’t go out and meet women on my own. Now, and forever more, or at least for this one entry, I’ll divulge all the dirty laundry I’ve kept hidden in a hamper of pain.
For once, by God, Stan will have a real issue.
After that tremendous build-up, I’m not sure I can follow up with anything genuinely interesting. But dammit, something’s on my mind, and I’d like to reach out to the many fellow bloggers who read my site and think to themselves, “Huh. My site design is better than this guy’s.” I’m gonna give it my all — all seventy percent! — and see what I can do.
So here’s the sitch (see, I use slang that was invented within the last two decades when I’m more open): I had dinner with some friends from high school last night. We were having what I’d like to think was a good time. The dinner went well, and then afterward, everything went to hell. Yeah, you guessed right: it was all my fault.
At this point, I would like to keep the anonymity of those involved, mostly because if I named names, they would deny any association with me faster than you can say “HUAC” (which is a relatively easy acronym, so you understand the great speed involved with their denials). With that said, it’s time to invent some clever and cloying fake names. I’ll keep it real, and we’ll say one of them is named John, and the other is Lucy.
So, after dinner, John was supposed to go to the mall with Lucy so he could follow her around while she went clothes shopping and then they could go a-drinkin’. I was bored, so I volunteered to join them, which I probably shouldn’t have done. I don’t really have a lot of foresight, though, and it did seem like a good idea at the time.
We went to one of those irritating women’s clothing stores that play obnoxious music and have bare-midriffed 14-year-olds talking at you with mild, adorable lisps. John decided to urinate to make room for the eventual consumption of more important liquids, so he disappeared and I was left, bored, following Lucy around and making fun of the various articles of clothing that people seem to think is stylish. (Should I talk? My wardrobe consists of faux-Hawaiian shirts that I get off the rack at Target for $8.)
Then, I said something really, unbearably stupid. It was one of those things that you say, and as it’s leaving your lips, your brain starts shouting at you, “STOP, YOU FOOL! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY!” But it’s too late. The sentence is out, and suddenly you’re looking at The Look. You know The Look. It’s that one women have, and they wield it very carefully. They only give you The Look when you’ve really, possibly irredeemably, fucked up.
Needless to say, I’ve gotten The Look a lot in my time. I consider myself fortunate that she didn’t have a mai tai handy, or I’d probably still be washing rum and triple sec out of my eyes. (Note to writers: if you don’t drink, it’s always a good idea to attend a four-hour bartending/drink-mixing seminar so you can put in little details like that.)
What did I say to get The Look? It was a fairly simple and horrible exchange. Lucy was browsing through a variety of blouses she seemed to like, and she said, “Dammit, they don’t have any small or extra-smalls.”
To which I pithily and stupidly responded, “Well, that’s a good thing. You’ll probably need to go up a size, what with all that weight you’ve gained.”
It was around the word “you’ve” when my brain finally caught up with my mouth, and a mental “WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?” ricocheted around my fairly echoey skull chamber. I find it ironic that the part of my body that technically does all my thinking was asleep on the job, and as soon as it woke up, it immediately blamed itself. It’s like an M.C. Escher drawing, except this will probably cause my brain to implode at some point.
But that’s really the question that continues to bounce through my head: what the fuck was I thinking? I broke the cardinal rule of talking to women: never, ever, ever joke about weight, even in the jestiest jest of Jest Town. Just don’t do it.
In fact, don’t even bring up weight. Pretend people are massless and are not in any way bound to the earth’s graviational force. Women are just floating, bobbing heads who often have admirable body parts that only exist momentarily when it’s necessary for the male.
These are things I know. I learned them mostly the hard way, as I was ducking and covering my eyes to avoid various breakable dishware, and therefore I should know better. At one point, I had trained myself — or, more accurately, had been trained — to know better. But I’m slipping. It’s been nearly nine months since the last time I’ve had a non-liquid thrown at my head by a woman, and I guess I’m out of practice.
But that’s not really it. I have many female friends who, like Lucy, won’t give me the time of day (with good reason). But with every single other person I know, I can treat them like a civilized human being. My mental censor does not fall asleep; it’s always on red alert, screening the various things I think but should never say and making sure I don’t, in fact, say them. With other women, I’m pleasant almost to the point of utter disinterest.
So, what makes Lucy different? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I haven’t apologized yet — well, I haven’t formally apologized yet. I apologized approximately 800 times between The Look and us parting ways. But, come on, like that’s gonna do any good. I said what I said, and Lucy not accepting my apology is pretty much par for the course, especially when it’s basically a half-hearted, “Gosh, I’m sorry I said that.” That doesn’t even indicate that I’m sorry for hurting her feelings and wounding her self-esteem or body image or what have you — for all she knows, I’m just sorry my dumbass mouth doesn’t work.
But how am I supposed to decently apologize when I can’t even figure out what possessed me to say what I did? Being that I’ve gained 22 pounds since November, and I was never quite the looker (or quite thin) to begin with, who am I to insinuate anything about anybody else’s weight? What right do I have to say a single word about somebody else’s physical appearance, even in jest? I mean, if I joke about it, I just open the floodgates for thousands of jokes about myself that are most likely funnier and more biting.
And I certainly didn’t mean it. I maintain, whether she’d ever believe me or not (she probably wouldn’t) that she’s one of the most attractive women I know. But that probably has something to do with it. I get irritable around her and no one else, and I say really hostile things under the guise of humor, and it probably has to do with the fact that, in the words of Lester Flatt, she don’t pay me no mind.
To her, I’m a big, fat, neurotic loser. This is mostly accurate, so it’s not like I can fault her perception. But it doesn’t stop that bitterness from forming, and it obviously doesn’t stop me from saying stupid shit I don’t really mean (yeah, I’m bitter, but that doesn’t make it true). And yeah, maybe the way I feel about her is a bit deeper — and therefore more volatile — than I’m willing to let on. Maybe that’s why, on the few occasions she’s gotten under my skin, I’ve found myself able to forgive her almost instantaneously.
Ugh. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore. But this rant has helped, I guess. I have a better idea of what’s wrong with me now than I did last night, when I drove around for an hour, seething at the depths of my own stupidity. Maybe now I can apologize and really mean it. It’s a start, anyway.
On a more positive note, I think I just single-handedly increased the emo factor of this blog fiftyfold. That means my dexterity increases by two, and if I roll 11, I finally get the mythril chainmail I so desperately desire.
(Also, this is not, contrary to my introduction, going to become a regular thing. I just needed to vent and I figured, just this once, I’d spare Gina the torture.)
Posted by Stan on July 29, 2003 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Stories of Pain and Humiliation
July 28, 2003
Screwed Again
I got screwed, guys. Screwed sideways, and not in a pleasant way.
See, I bid on this poster on eBay. I was very excited about it, being that nobody seemed particularly interested in it, so I’d get a nice deal on a signed poster by my favorite musician, Juliana Hatfield.
“Signed by the artist,” the listing says. Am I the only one who would take that to mean that it was signed by Juliana Hatfield? Apparently, because when I got it today, it was not signed by Juliana Hatfield — it was signed by Lynn Porterfield, the poster designer. In pencil, no less. What the shit? Who the hell wants “L. Porterfield” written in block letters (it’s not even really a signature!) underneath a poster of Juliana Hatfield?
I’m either really stupid, or the listing was vaguely worded so as to create the impression that it was signed by Juliana Hatfield, so salivating, sex-starved bidders (i.e., me) would run up enormous credit card bills to pay for a seemingly valuable poster that really has no value, unless you happen to be a big fan of people who know how to use Adobe programs.
In summary, I’m frustrated. I’m not sure if I’m irritated with my own stupidity like I normally am, or if I’m just disappointed by the word choice of some eBay seller who wants more money.
The consolations: (1) I’ve been scouring eBay and shitty used record stores for several months, trying to find what little merchandise I can relating to my beloved (not Paige; Juliana); all I’ve found are two t-shirts and the occasional poster that simply has her name, in tiny letters below some headliner, on it. This is the first poster I’ve found that is actually, by gum, for Juliana herself, and I’d be proud to hang it on my wall as soon as I erase the signature (in this case, a pencil signature is a good thing). (2) The price was driven up less than $6 from its original asking price, so if li’l miss eBay thang was shakin’ her lawyer-speak booty trying to get an influx of bids, it really didn’t work out all that well.
Posted by Stan on July 28, 2003 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Money Troubles
July 26, 2003
Kenosha Kickers
Last night was some major fun! There’s nothing more exciting than Kenosha on a Friday night! Also, I am lying. Sitting around in my underwear, watching While You Were Out, is a more exciting way to spend my Friday night.
I met Gina around 9:30, and we spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out the directions MapQuest gave us before we hit the road. Aside from the 75-cent toll, the drive was pretty smooth. The club we were headed to is in this little downtown promenade area that looks really nice and is fairly well-lit and full of exciting bars, clubs, and cafes. It’s also right on the lake, which would most likely be more exciting if it didn’t look like a black abyss of doom at night.
Gina’s not 21, so she had to introduce herself to the owner so that he’d know not to serve her any liquor. Of course, we were all business, so the rollicking party would have had to wait, anyway.
After the brief, semi-formal introduction to the terrifying Aryan bar owner, we went back to her car to load the camera and then bring all the equipment into the bar and get set up as the band got set up. This is when we ran into our first major caveat: her camera didn’t have a take-up spool.
“Fuck” became the word of the night pretty quickly, as Gina dumped 100 feet of unused film onto her backseat so she could use its spool. So, with that done, we loaded the camera with her other roll of film and started lugging equipment into the bar.
Gina’s original goal, for the express purpose of being very speedy, was to set up a single light, set up the camera, take her shots, and then leave. Unfortunately, she was using ASA 200 film instead of 500. This was a mistake, but our professor apparently told her that 200 film looks better, and it would be “fine” for indoor use. He is a failure.
MAGICAL FILM STUDENT PROTIP: The American Standards Association (ASA, later renamed the American National Standards Institute, or ANSI) film speed measures a film stock’s sensitivity to light. I never really figured out what “speed” refers to, but I think it has something to do with the rate at which emulsion particles bounce around when light is refracted onto their surface. Either that, or it has to do with shutter speed. I really don’t know. As the speed number increases, so does its sensitivity to light. So, for example, a film stock of ASA 500 would be more sensitive to light than a film stock of ASA 40. There’s some sort of logarithmic equation used to figure out the ASA based on aperture settings or something like that, which is why the numbers increase exponentially (i.e., the stocks move up like 100, 125, 160, etc., but there’s no ASA 102 film or ASA 128).
I thought Gina should have been using 500 film, because bars are generally dank and sparsely lit. Granted, the band was on a little stage surrounded by some PAR-8’s, but they barely cast enough light even if you aren’t filming it. Of course, Gina’s no idiot — she’s much smarter than me, which may not be a compliment seeing as balls of lint are usually smarter than me — and she agreed with me, but she took the wholly inaccurate advice of our professor and immediately regretted it when she took light readings.
Essentially, with no light, we got no reading. With one light, it barely hit f1.4. With two lights, it hovered around f2.8, which was slightly more acceptable (because of the nature of the stock, we’re generally shooting for f5.6), so we went with it. Of course, in our effort to not block patrons from watching the band rock out, we stupidly set our lights up next to both of the speakers. I still have a mild ringing in my right ear.
Once we actually started shooting, things went quickly. In fact, very quickly. Gina shot off her entire roll in about six minutes, which seemed to make sense since 100 feet is about three minutes of film. So, we broke everything down and put it back into her car. As I was breaking down the tripod, I accidentally slammed one of the legs into my left ring finger. Since it was a big piece of semi-rusted shit, the leg did not open nearly as easily as it closed, so my finger was trapped for about 30 seconds.
Fortunately, I had work gloves on. If I hadn’t, I think it probably would have at least broken the bone, assuming there was more left than a bloody stump. Right now, my finger is swollen to the size of a small, freakish sausage, and there are tiny cuts all over the tip of my finger from the jagged corrosion on the tripod leg. Fiddle-dee-dee, that will require a tetanus shot.
Here’s the point: SAFETY MUTHAFUCKIN’ FIRST. Always wear work gloves. For serious.
We got all of Gina’s shit back to the car, and then she unloaded the camera…and realized that she was looking at the wrong counter. Instead of looking at the foot counter, she was looking at the frame counter.
“I was wondering,” she said as she severed the film with a razor, “why it was going way past 100.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking that maybe she is as dumb as I am. Nah, couldn’t be. She just hasn’t used the camera in awhile.
She saved what was left of her roll so she can use it later. Then, she drove back to the mall to pick up my car. On the way, we had a somewhat lengthy discussion that involved all of the following subjects:
- why our professor is an idiot but at the same time smart
- why Rasta gets on my nerves
- how I’m going to fail this class because I am incompetent
- how I’m unnecessarily neurotic
- the various porn shops in the greater Kenosha area (seriously, there are a lot, and Gina has been to all of them and made purchases at most of them)
- the advantages of digital video over actual film
- why cinematographers should probably know how to load the camera, but why it’s unnecessary for a humble, failed screenwriter to know such trivial things (hey, she said it, not me)
Overall, despite our technical bufoonery and occasional outright incompetence, fun times were had by all. Except Gina. And possibly me.
Posted by Stan on July 26, 2003 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation
July 25, 2003
Friday Five (13)
I’m not doing the Friday Five this week. The questions are terrible.
Posted by Stan on July 25, 2003 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Friday Five/Albums of the Week
July 24, 2003
Sync Shoot
Today was hectic. We spent the entire day doing a sync-sound shoot of three different films. Of course, we ran out of time and only got two done, and even then, I didn’t end up leaving until 5:30. It was pretty much work from start to finish. It was fun overall, but it was a pain in the ass, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve done four hours of manual labor with no break. I’m not really up for it anymore.
Tomorrow, I’m hauling it up the north shore with Gina. She’s shooting a brief scene from her five-minute film, up in Kenosha, in the middle of the night. And guess who’s assisting? Yeah, it’ll be fun. Really, it will. I’m certain of it. Stop looking at me, swan!
Posted by Stan on July 24, 2003 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
End of an Era
Finally. Finally, finally, finally. Three weeks late, our editing project is finished, turned in, and screened (well, most of them, anyway). We had all reached a point where we were just sick of it. Several of us, after putting the finishing touches on our sounds, didn’t even watch it through once to make sure everything was right. We just said, “Fuck it,” and put it on the video.
That basically was the extent of our Tuesday: watching the editing project, giving feedback, discussing what was done well and what was done poorly. In my not-even-remotely-biased opinion, mine got the best feedback. The secret: dialogue and narration. See, the story is bland and worthless, but the guy randomly mutters stuff to himself, so I thought it’d be amusing to write dialogue that sort of fit. Then, I added nearly MST3K narration and just ripped on the really terrible actor who starred in the project. Everybody seemed to enjoy that.
Add to that a soundtrack that consisted of funk and Rachmaninov, and the various sound effects and ambient sounds stolen from somebody else’s project, and that essentially sums up my project. I noted that, despite the fact that my final cut was nearly twice the length of everyone else’s, they all seemed to be more entertained by mine. I also noted that both Gina and Super-Hot Pothead Girl told me afterward how much they enjoyed mine. And, really, those two opinions are the only ones that count.
Prior to class, Gina and I both arrived two hours early so we could finish up the editing project. Several others were there, including Pothead and Fellow. The “dailies” from Gina’s 2-minute film had been transferred to her computer, so we watched them. It looked pretty good — even the stuff she shot under fluorescents — except for some minor focus problems (I’ll probably have the same thing — the viewfinder on the cameras they give us suck ass and are incredibly difficult to focus properly).
Fellow also had his “dailies,” and they looked less good. It looked like the film had been physically smeared, creating an effect only David Lynch could love. He was incredibly disappointed and way too hard on himself, but also hard on us. He’s still bitter — as he should be — that no one helped him shoot his film. My personal opinion was that his pressure plate was loose, and there was nothing he or anyone else could have done to save the film. It was just doomed. Something similar happened to a group in my Production I class.
The problem with the pressure plate is that it needs to be tight because, as is my most likely inaccurate understanding, it applies pressure to the film when it runs through the film gate. If it is loose, the film vibrates and creates that smeared effect because it’s not passing properly through the film gate, and therefore, the image is not properly being recorded on the film (don’t say this blog never taught you anything, even if the things it teaches you are wrong). The bigger problem with the pressure plate is that you can’t tell by looking at it or listening to the film that it’s loose. It’s really a hit-or-miss thing.
I just hope my film comes back all right. I don’t want to have to reshoot it.
I don’t know why I’m writing this entry like it’s Memento or something, but I’m going to fast-forward once again, toward the end of class, after we watched the editing project cuts. We divided into groups, because today (Thursday), we’ll be leaping forward technically and shooting a sync-sound short. The caveats: we have to work in a group of four, flesh out an idea in 20 minutes, and shoot it in 45. I got into a group with Gina, Pothead, Fellow, and Average.
We came up with the following idea, which is terrible but which we nonetheless find hilarious: a Lord of the Rings parody that takes place in our Production II class. Pothead is playing the aptly named Ganjum, who wants to steal an editing project video from Nickel Baggins (Gina). I came up with the latter name. I am a clever one.
But this brings me to a rant that I’d like to really rip into, but I don’t have time because I have to go to class. So, I’ll try to type fast.
This type of idea development, getting into groups, bouncing amusing ideas off of each other, and then writing them down like they’re comedy gold, is exactly why sitcoms are terrible. They do the exact same thing: the writers hang out at the writing table, bouncing jokes off of each other, and then laugh riotously and take another hit. They’re so amused by their wit, they don’t stop and realize that the jokes aren’t really funny. And if they are sorta funny, they aren’t motivated by anything even remotely logical. The best jokes come from character and situation; they don’t form out of thin air.
Argh! It was fun, we had a good time, and we laughed for 20 minutes straight, and it’ll be fine to do for our cheesy-ass short and will be entertaining to everybody who gets all of the hilarious inside jokes, but if I actually gave a damn about it, the whole thing would really piss me off.
That’s it. The end. Rant over. Gotta go to class. bbl.
Posted by Stan on July 24, 2003 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
July 19, 2003
Week in Review
Since I just realized I haven’t properly updated since Tuesday, I thought I’d take this opportunity to float you through the rest of the week. It shouldn’t be long, since nothing much happened, but it probably will be long, because I have a tendency to ramble on for pages about zinnias and which escrow services don’t have rapetastic service charges.
So, when we last left the misadventures of Stan, he was stealing sounds for his editing project and preparing to shoot his two-minute film.
Wednesday
I woke up, showered, and headed downtown to pick up the equipment. My mother went with so she could keep the car running. You know, in case we needed to make a fast getaway. So I pulled onto the expressway, and it was going smoothly for awhile, and then…jam. As always. They should just shut down the expressways during the week, or, at least, change all the signs so they don’t have the word “express” anywhere in them.
At any rate, I was not in the mood to deal with driving all the way downtown at 5 mph, so I skidded off and took Higgins to Milwaukee Avenue, which I took to the Loop, and from there, life is easy. Man, this blog is really sounding like a sad travelogue. I need to stop being so obsessed with roads and the various ways of getting to places and so on.
My mother circled the block while I ran up and checked out the equipment. I told her it’d take about 10 minutes. It took about half an hour, and for some reason, that really shook her up. Apparently, one can only perform so many right turns before cranial implosion occurs. I loaded the shit into the trunk and drove home.
To my surprise — and eternal glee — it only took about two hours to shoot it. Jeff showed up around 1:45, and he left around 3:30. I think it helped that he seemed to have more of an idea of what I was doing than I did. Later, we had a fun-filled dinner at Wendys. In the biz, we call that a business meeting, but since all we really did was exchange a few stories and make fun of the shitty music…actually, that still qualifies. Hollywood is an orgy of procrastination and non-sequiturs and occasionally sex.
Thursday
I went in two hours early and met up with Gina. We started editing, saw a few other people from our class, and talked shit about everything we’ve decided is bad about the course. I decided that the stress level and/or workload of a given course is directly proportional to the amount of bitching students do about said course. Basically, here are our unaddressed grievances:
- Our professor seems to be paid to not actually do any work. Sure, he’s a nice guy and he seems pretty together, but has he, personally, ever taught us anything? Answer: no. As a whole, this seems to be a big problem. I guess it makes sense from the standpoint that he, himself, doesn’t seem to know anything, but he still has the authority to grade us. Personally, though, it doesn’t bug me — I’d rather have a dozen guest lectures from the supposed experts on the staff than have our professor give us bad advice and misinformation. I do still wonder, though, what he’s actually being paid to do.
- Certain students — notably and surprisingly, Rasta — have transformed into big kiss-asses now that we’re mired in projects. This makes the rest of us look bad, and we are not pleased.
- We are way too behind, and at least one major project should be cut from the syllabus.
- The audio equipment they gave us sucks monkey balls.
- What the fuck is going to happen if our film comes back looking like somebody took a shit on every frame? We don’t have time to reshoot. What do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?!!#!!#!$@
I’m leaving some out, mostly problems with certain staff members, because they’re pretty much all the same: “So-and-so’s a dick. What the shit?”
Anyway, after our little bitch session, Gina and I got down to business. I.e., we swapped various stolen sounds with one another and tried to fit them in our project as best as we could. I had brought in a few music CD’s that I thought would fit the tone of my edit, and I must say that, thus far, the only thing that’s good about my edit is the music. Not because it’s good music — though it is — but because it’s the only thing that really seems to fit. It creates a tone that was not in the rough footage, and somehow it looks like the music was cued to the film, not vice-versa. I’m pretty proud of that.
Editing pretty much continued through class, where we were briefly interrupted by our final editing lecture and the accompanying quiz. After that and a few announcements from the professor, the class thinned out pretty quickly. Gina and I decided to leave — we were the last ones.
Outside, it was basically dark. Thunderheads floated in, and the humidity raised by approximately 250 million percent. We were shooting the shit pretty pleasantly, so I decided to walk her all the way to Union Station and then get onto the subway at Clinton Street. It wasn’t too far out of my way, and it actually worked out pretty well, since I was actually able to get a seat despite it being rush hour.
For those of you who read this solely for the juicy, juicy gossip, Gina and I basically just shared sympathies about various things that irritate us about people. We gotta stop agreeing so completely about things. Otherwise, I might have to revert her back to The Crush and hire a contract killer to deal with the boyfriend factor. I am not above hired killers to get a girl. Trust me.
She told me about a guy who has written and directed a number of somewhat high-profile films, who I guess lives in her town. He’s going to the ass-end of the universe for a long, long time to shoot an eight-hour miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel, and she’s trying to finagle her way into a PA job. She said she’d also try to finagle me into a similar job. That’d be nice, though I’m really not sure how realistic it is.
Friday
I shot off the last bits of my film.
Today
My mother and I drove down to turn the equipment back in. The ride was smooth, and we found parking (God, I love weekends). It took about 10 minutes to actually turn in the equipment, and my mother managed to completely humiliate me only once during that time. On the elevator, before the door closed, I heard someone coming down the hall, so I held the elevator door for her. Immediately, my mother shouts — literally shouts —, “NO, DON’T DO THAT!”
What. The. Fuck.
Of course, I continued to hold the elevator door, and the lady got on. This was followed by an extended period of awkwardness. My mother later insisted, most likely inaccurately, that she thought the woman was way down the hall, and that I’d be holding the door open for hours waiting for her. She later changed this story to reflect her crazy notion that yet another student lugging tons of heavy equipment would try to squeeze onto the elevator car. This one made more sense, but considering the pace of the click-clacking, it’s still pretty unlikely that she would have thought that.
When I got home, I ate a disgusting amount of food, watched The Long, Long Trailer, and passed out.
That about brings us up to speed.
Posted by Stan on July 19, 2003 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
July 18, 2003
Friday Five (12)
Watch out, kids. This week’s is a downer.
- When was the last time you cheated?
“Cheated” is such a loose term, but since this seems like it’s geared toward high school- and college-age losers, I’ll leap to the conclusion that they’re referring to, say, test-cheating. And I’m almost disappointed to say that I cheated on an editing quiz as recently as yesterday. But, come on, she left the room, we had the computers in front of us, and at least half a dozen questions referred to stuff we never went over — we were all cheating, which clearly makes it right. - When was the last time you stole?
A few months ago, I went to the Dunkin’ Donuts on Jackson, near Franklin Street, and ordered a medium coffee and two glazed donuts. I reached into my pocket to pull the money out, and it was at that point that I realized I left my wallet at home. They told me I could just pay them tomorrow, because I guess they were under the impression that I’m a regular customer, even though that was maybe the second time in my life that I had gone into that particular Dunkin’ Donuts.Long story longer, I still owe them $2.40, and I plan to avoid that particular Dunkin’ Donuts until a reasonable time has elapsed.
- When was the last time you lied?
You know, years upon years of living with my parents has beaten all the lies out of me. Okay, occasionally I dab a little white lie onto things for the sugary effect of not having people in a rage at me all the time, but it’s so infrequent that I don’t remember any specific incidents.However, one could argue that I lie by omission constantly, since I rarely tell anybody anything unless I think they really deserve to know it, or unless I just want to vent about something or someone that has pissed me off.
- When was the last time you broke or vandalized another’s property?
I used to do a lot of stupid shit, but again, it’s been so long, I really don’t remember offhand. Then again, I did somehow manage to break a vending machine a few days ago, but that was accidental. Of course, my subsequent, enraged kicking of said vending machine could be considered vandalism. But, come on, it’s not like I dented it or anything. - When was the last time you hurt a loved one?
It’s been several months.
Posted by Stan on July 18, 2003 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Friday Five/Albums of the Week
July 15, 2003
Cheaters
We’ve been working on an editing exercise for the past six weeks. It’s sad that we’ve spent six weeks working on a project that we didn’t even shoot ourselves, and we’ll have to divide the remaining six weeks up to conceive, plan, shoot, record, and edit our two- and five-minute films — but hey, I didn’t write the syllabus!
People have been getting frustrated with the editing exercise, myself included. We keep insisting that it should have been dropped, since we have such a limited amount of time. Instead of learning the Avid system and how to work the MiniDisc recorder with an editing project, we should be learning on our two-minute films. Consequently, very few people actually give a rat’s ass about the editing exercise.
This is where today came in. As we’ve been doing for the past week, a full editing lab was reserved for our class today. We’ve all been editing together, and we’ve all been bitching about how we haven’t actually recorded any of the sounds for it. And then, one of my classmates — Fellow, for those of you who actually regularly read the terribly boring soap opera that is my blog — hit the mother lode.
For some reason, somebody imported all of his or her sound files into iTunes. As you may or may not know, iTunes stores these files in a little folder secreted away…in the home directory. It’s not hard to find if you’re a l33t hax0r, but if you’re a computer-illiterate faux-artist, the iTunes library is very difficult to find. Fortunately, I am a l33t hax0r, so I promptly jumped on Fellow’s bandwagon and insisted on copying these sounds onto my Zip disk. I did this for several others, and now many of us are breathing a sigh of relief that we don’t really have to record (m)any sounds for the editing project. Of course, we’re also hoping that the professor doesn’t realize that most of us are using basically identical sound effects, but hey, he doesn’t care about this project any more than we do.
Tomorrow, I’m shooting my two-minute film. Hopefully, I can shoot it as quickly as Gina shot hers. I got some cinematographic hints from her, so I hope that pays off. I don’t think I’m going to have much of a crew, since Gina has to work, Average “probably” has to work, and Fellow has refused to help anyone as punishment for nobody helping him on his shoot yesterday. They’re my only three legitimate friends in class, but I talked to a few others I’m friendly with, and they’re all either shooting or working.
Honestly, while it’d be nice to have some help, I’m kinda glad nobody actually is helping me. I prefer working alone for a number of reasons. I’m not big on people, in case my misanthropy has not been made abundantly clear in this blog of fun.
Posted by Stan on July 15, 2003 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | School Rants
Film School Mayhem
We’ve reached that point in the semester where everyone’s dreams of making the best shitty 16mm film have been dashed, and now everybody is concentrating on simply getting the work done. I can’t tell you how many times since Thursday I’ve heard Production II’s new mantra, “I don’t care anymore; I just want it over with.”
That said, most of us have bonded together. The whole film school competition thing has been thrown out the window, and everybody is trying to work together as much as possible to get these shitty little movies made.
Yesterday, I went down to help the infamous Crush, who is not really The Crush anymore, with her film. For the sake of no longer constantly referring to her as such, I’m going to just make up a name for her. Not a cutesy nickname, but an actual, fake name. Note here that it is not her real name. From now on, she will be referred to as Nefertari Gundangamo, or Gina (as in “Damn, Gina!”) for short.
Let me start over. Yesterday, I went down to help Gina with her film. She was half an hour late, which wasn’t a big deal even though I was half an hour early, but it’s summer, so there were no lines in the film cage. We started shortly before noon, and we were done by 2:30. Ever a woman after my own heart, Gina’s work ethic is exactly the same as mine: get everything done as soon as humanly possible with as few inconveniences as can be managed.
Gina brought a girl down with her to act in her film. She was nice enough, although she’s one of those people who is just utterly flummoxed by life. She’s my sister’s age, shiftless, working in retail, trying to finish college after transferring twice and going to community college for a semester because she ran out of money.
I can’t chide her for wanting to finish college, which is noble, especially when you’re broke, but I can and will mock her for being 23 and graduating in a year, but still having no clue what she wants to do with herself. I don’t exactly have a career plan mapped out myself, but I at least have a general idea of what’s going to happen after college: forty years of unemployed, Speghetti-O-consuming, basement-dwelling fun, followed by death. She, on the other hand, is clueless. She doesn’t even know why she’s majoring in communications, except that she’s taken too many classes in that major to not major in communications.
But enough about her and me insulting her for shortcomings that I also have. Let’s get to the unimaginable seconds of fun involved in this film! Here’s what I did:
- Set up lights to Gina’s specifications.
- Metered each shot.
- Checked off each shot in her script breakdown.
- Stood guard for an hour and a half outside a women’s bathroom while she shot inside. This was even more uncomfortable than it sounds.
- Ran into my Production I teacher, who spoke at me in French for awhile but somehow had total recall of my entire life story, which I don’t really think I ever told her. Time to file that restraining order…
- Carried a printer to a construction site on Indiana Street for reasons I still don’t fully understand.
- Went home the stupid way and had to stand on the train until Jefferson Park.
That about sums up the experience. It was a fun time, as much as this style of filmmaking can be fun. Unfortunately, Gina can’t crew on my film because she has to work (a likely story…), but a couple of others will hopefully lend a hand.
Posted by Stan on July 15, 2003 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
July 13, 2003
Business Scheme
I recently came up with what I believe is an ingenious idea. Often, I’m wrong about such things, but this time, I think I done good. See, recently I dropped $1000 to fix my car’s air-conditioning system. It’s a lot of money, and as I hemorrhage money like a gunshot victim leaks blood, I think about this a lot. Was it really worth that excessive amount of money just so I can be somewhat cooler while driving? I don’t even like driving, and I don’t like owning a car, so what was the point?
Ever since it was fixed, it’s been causing the car to run rough (this isn’t unusual), and it’s also started this random clicking noise (this is unusual), so I either drive with the click or I go and get it repaired. Either way, I’ll inevitably be raped by either the cosmos (in the sense that my car will break down or explode at the most inopportune time the goddess Fortuna can think of) or a large, greasy mechanic named Vito (not gay).
Meanwhile, I’ve had a battery of medical appointments for a variety of reasons I don’t feel it necessary to dive into at this point (short version: I am fat and can’t see; the two might be related). I’m insured through my dad’s work, because I didn’t make it at Starbucks long enough to swindle a free year of health insurance.
Yet another meanwhile: my dad, like most Americans approaching middle-age, hates his job, his life, his kids (i.e., me; he has no beef with the one who moved 2000 miles away), and so forth. He’s in a rut, and he wants to make one last score. No, he’s not a coke addict or a jewel thief (that I know of); really, he just wants to start some sort of business so he could work from home and actually enjoy the declining years of his life. The problem is, he can’t think of any business anybody would be interested in.
And then it hit me: auto insurance that works like a PPO.
No, hear me out, this actually does make sense. For those who aren’t in the know, a health insurance PPO basically has a big, fat book full of medical professionals in your general area. If you choose a doctor on this list, you only have to pay a minimal, per-visit co-pay and the insurance covers the rest. For most people, this works just a tad better than paying the entire cost out of pocket.
Wouldn’t it make sense, what with so many people complaining about anal bleeding shortly after paying off the guy at the local auto shop, to work a similar scheme with auto insurance? I’m not sure if any companies do anything like this — as far as I know, they don’t — so most car owners, since they are in most cases required to have auto insurance, are basically dumping money into a system they never really use.
Sure, it’s nice to know it’s there if you need it, but why pay $1200 a year (that’s what I pay, and boy am I happy about it!) for theoretical coverage? I mean, if you do get into an accident at some point, your insurance premium inevitably goes up anyway. The whole idea that you’re paying money into a system that will eventually be used to cover the costs of future accidents is pretty much a load of horseshit. Why should people pay that?
Answer: they shouldn’t. But insurance is still required by law, wouldn’t it be nice to offer consumers an insurance program that is actually useful? Like, for example, a company that, in exchange for your horrifically high annual payment, gives you a list of mechanics in the area. From there, if you need any repairs or, say, an oil change, or something like that, it’s mostly covered on your insurance, with a sliding — but still minimal — co-pay that is based on the amount of the services rendered.
Of course, if you still had an accident, the insurance would still cover it, the premiums would still go up, but at least, in the interim, you’re actually getting something for your money.
Maybe it’s crazy. I’m most likely talking out my ass, because I don’t know anything about the insurance business, and the only thing I know about cars is that rearview mirrors are pretty easy to adhere onto a windshield and that ABS brakes cause funny smells to shoot out of the air vents. Still, it seems like a good, sound, logical idea to me. If I were into business investing, I’d back somebody who had this idea.
Of course, this is probably exactly why I’m going to an art school.
Posted by Stan on July 13, 2003 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Money Troubles
July 12, 2003
Dunkin’ Donuts — of Terror!
Today, I wandered out to Chicago to help somebody on his 2-minute film. It was pretty exciting: I stood around holding an old piece of ceiling tile that reflected the light, an integral part of any film shoot. However, I was about an hour late for the following reasons:
- I stopped at a stop sign near my house, and my rearview mirror fell off. Oops! I’m a bad driver as it is, so the absence of the rearview mirror made things very, very bad, so I went home and pestered my parents to drive me to the train station.
- The train was fifteen minutes late, and there was a family of Cubs fans (there were roughly 850,000 families of Cubs fans on the train, but I’m noting this one specifically) in my car who had a child who, when any sort of negative response was uttered by his parents, shrieked like the murder victim in a really awful horror movie. And it wasn’t a brief scream — he screamed until he ran out of breath, then he took an amazing gulp of air and screamed some more. It was downright ghoulish.
- I have no idea how long it takes to get anywhere on the Brown Line, since I hardly ever take it.
- His apartment is very inconvenient to the train, so I had to walk 8 or so blocks once I got off.
I decided that the best way to alleviate these minor inconveniences was to stop at Dunkin’ Donuts and get some coffee.
People who know me well — both of them — know that one of my many weaknesses is Dunkin’ Donuts. Forget Krispy Kreme — Dunkin’ Donuts is where it’s at. Whenever I see that pink and orange, the beacon of hope in an otherwise dreary world, I drop to my knees and thank whatever god was kind enough to invent the donut. This is especially awkward while driving.
Since I took the Metra into the city instead of the CTA, I decided to walk all the way down to the Brown Line station at Adams and Wabash. I am a fat tub of shit, and getting fatter as I gain fifteen pounds every time I enter a Dunkin’ Donuts, so I figured I could use the exercise. Plus, I owe $2.40 to the Dunkin’ Donuts on Jackson, near Franklin, and I’m not going to pay it, so I figured it’d be smart to avoid that particular establishment for awhile.
There is a Dunkin’ Donuts right at Adams and Wabash, which is convenient even though I realize that, at this point in the story, I am sounding like a Dunkin Travelogue. But seriously, it will get good. Or at least I think it will.
After following a trio of extremely wide women who were walking so slowly I think they may have actually been going backwards, I arrived at the Dunkin’ Donuts. I went through the revolving door — and then I realized they were most likely closed, even though the doors were unlocked. The place was empty, the lights were off, and sixty feet away hovered tray upon tray of donuts, their coats of glaze gleaming in the dull gray light of the outdoors.
Jaw agape, wondering if I could possibly get away with hoarding away such a stash of goodies, a heavily accented female voice said, “Hello, sir.”
I looked for the source of the voice and saw a short, plump, Indian woman. She was all frowns, a cigarette perched on her lips, blue-gray smoke curling toward the ceiling. I don’t think she was actually allowed to smoke inside the restaurant, but now was not the time to debate the validity city ordinances. Now was the time for — well, I didn’t actually know what. It seemed like I had stumbled into a palm reader’s hut that just happened to have hundreds of donuts in the back.
The woman wore a Dunkin’ Donuts uniform, so I assumed that she was an employee of some sort. I guess she was on her break but was too lazy to walk the extra four feet to get outside (I can empathize).
“Are you, uh, open?” I asked, somewhat confused by the distinct lack of electricity and personnel.
“What you want?” she asked. I thought at first that she didn’t understand my question, so I repeated it, though I realized almost immediately after that she was asking for my order, not for an explanation of why I was there.
“Uh,” I stammered (I do that when I’m uncomfortable, and I’m uncomfortable a lot), “medium coffee, cr —”
She cut me off shrilly. “Cream and sugar?” she bellowed. It sounded more like “keena zooga.”
“Yes, cream and sugar,” I enthused. Who in his right mind would want black coffee? It tastes even more like monkey ass than coffee with cream and sugar.
She looked to her right, toward the donut cases, and bellowed an incomprehensible name, followed by, “Meebia keena zooga.”
I stared at her, baffled, motionless. Was I supposed to go back there? Did she have some sort of android assistant who understood her puzzling accent? Was she using the powers of telekinesis to pour the coffee and possibly make my head explode?
“I…” I explained.
“You go back now,” she said tersely. “He will finish.”
Who? What the hell was she talking about?
I sauntered toward the counter in the back of the restaurant, somewhat frightened by the rapidly diminishing light. A tall, rail-thin, Indian man was pouring the coffee while staring hostilely at me. I decided that I probably interrupted some sort of hot lovemaking session. Or possibly a fight. I looked around for evidence, possibly some recently snubbed-out candles or a special lovin’ blanket unfurled on the floor behind the counter, but found none.
I didn’t get a good look at the man until he approached the counter with the coffee. It was at that point that I realized he had a shabby, unrealistic glass eye in place of what once was his left eye. Having my own horrible ophthalmological problems, I decided it would be impolite to stare at him, so I instead stared at my feet, which I shuffled quietly as I handed him a five-dollar bill.
The man lifted the unpowered register with such force and bravado, he gave me the impression that he was planning on throwing it at me. I’ve had a lot of things thrown at me in my time, most of them sharp, hard, or in many ways unpleasant, but this would be the first cash register. I wondered if I would get to keep the money it vomited out.
Instead of throwing the cash register, he shoved my five under it and produced the change very rapidly. Apparently he adjusted to cyclopean vision quite nicely.
“Thanks,” I said as he handed me the cup and the change.
He grunted at me and stared me down, single eye blazing with unfettered and unnecessary hatred. I ran away.
As I passed the woman at the front of the restaurant I thanked her, as well. She cracked a small, spat out some tobacco smoke, and said something I didn’t quite understand. I continued to run away.
I got on the train and went to do my duty as a Production II student, holding up light-refracting ceiling tiles for no payment. I get the feeling I’ll be doing an unpaid duty for a lot of people for a long, long time. Maybe I should tone up and get a facelift so I have a chance of selling my body on Lake Street.
Actually, if I went down to 37th and Ashland (note: as far as I know, there is no Dunkin’ Donuts location here), I could probably sell my body as-is. It’s a bright day for my future career as a gigolo. I can’t wait!
Posted by Stan on July 12, 2003 6:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation
July 11, 2003
The Pain Train Is Comin’! Woo-Woo, Woo-Woo!
Frequent readers of this blog have probably realized something I seem to have just figured out. Or maybe I had figured it out, but then dismissed it immediately out of frustration.
My life is a huge trainwreck. I’m not talking, like, a rogue cow wandering onto the tracks and getting slammed into the appropriately named cow-catcher. I’m referring to a big, midwestern Amtrak crash that results in enormous explosions and body parts and assorted grain bushels flying everywhere. And, after all this, a couple of survivors decide to rob all the passengers on the train like it’s 1879.
Is the train metaphor not emo enough? Maybe I should quote The Juliana Theory or Dashboard Confessionals, but I don’t really know any of their songs, so I’ll just close with a standby quote from “Vibe On.”
You be like giving me vibrations
The ultimate stimulation straight out of the box
Ugh, no hestitation
Your speakers like a pony that I love to ride
Making me crazy when the volume’s high
You’re compact so I can take you anywhere I want
Make my friends scream out loud
Posted by Stan on July 11, 2003 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
Friday Five (11)
- Do you remember your first best friend? Who was it?
Yes. I really don’t feel that posting his name is necessary, especially since nobody who reads this would know him anyway. - Are you still in touch with this person?
No. - Do you have a current close friend?
Yes. - How did you become friends with this person?
As is the Wiccan way, we exchanged vials filled with our bodily fluids. This means we’ll be friends forever. It’s like the “blood brothers” thing, except more disgusting and for some reason involving eye of newt. - Is there a friend from your past that you wish you were still in contact with? Why?
Yes.
Posted by Stan on July 11, 2003 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friday Five/Albums of the Week
July 5, 2003
The Mighty Rasta
I haven’t mentioned, mainly because I haven’t been blogging lately, that there was a new addition to my Production II class in the second week of class. I have no idea what his name is, but Fellow took to calling him Rasta because of his white-man attempt at dreadlocks. I immediately added “Mighty” to that, naming him after the guy who plays Terry Tate, so I figure it’s an appropriate nickname for the ol’ blog. However, I’m lazy and “The Mighty Rasta” is a lot longer than “Rasta.”
Also, he is my enemy and must be destroyed.
“Why is he your enemy?” you, gentle reader, are surely asking. “Not you, Stan,” you elaborate accurately, “a great philanthropist and skilled lover.”
Yes, I find it as surprising as you do, but I do generally find myself immediately disliking certain people. Usually — but not always — my instincts are good, and this time, I think I made the right call, especially after hearing the pitch for his two-minute film.
See, here’s the problem with Rasta — he’s one of these “artist” guys. Considering I go to what’s basically an art school, we have astonishingly few “artist” types in the film department. I attribute this to the fact that most people view movies as a business, not an art form (which is true), and also the fact that pretty much anybody thinks they can do it (which is truer).
He slid into the second week of class, after transferring from a different session, only to be bombarded by two guest lecturers and utter confusion. Here’s why he was confused: he took Production I at a different school, so he knows nothing about our cameras, our lighting kits, or the way the film program works.
He’s utterly clueless, and to add insult to injury, he’s missed every other session of class. He’s also not very bright, so he’s not gleaning what he misses from the reading (assuming he actually reads it, which he probably doesn’t). While we’re all planning to shoot our films next week, he’s still trying to figure out how to load the camera.
On Tuesday, we went out to Grant Park and shot some footage to reacquaint ourselves with the cameras and to test out some shots we may have in mind for our two-minute films. Through an awkward twist of fate, The Mighty Rasta joined up with myself, The Crush (I still haven’t thought of a new name for her — come on, guys, help me out here!), Average, and Fellow. I have no idea why this was; we divided into three groups and had 12 people, so an even 4-4-4 split would have been logical. Instead, it was 5-4-3. I was going to harass The Professor about this, but it wasn’t worth the effort.
Rasta and The Crush came up with shot ideas for a semi-linear story (which was another goal) while Fellow and I discussed the many reasons Gangs of New York sucked balls. Rasta explained in great deal the various video projects he had shot himself. He was very proud of his many frightening experimental films. The Crush attempted to sidle away from him after that but failed. I felt sorry for her, and I was getting bored because we had already burned about 45 minutes just bullshitting, so I stood up and said, “Hey, Rasta, why don’t you meter the first shot?”
He turned to me and completely innocently asked, “What the fuck is meter?”
A wide variety of jokes about poetry, the metric system, and his stupidity entered my head, but I played it straight and explained the concept of the light meter and why it is important in film. He stared at the light meter, slackjawed, and said, “I don’t know how to work one of those things.”
“It’s easy,” I said and explained that to him. Then, we both decided it would be best if I metered the shots.
“When I shot my video, we never used one of those,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “That’s because most video cameras have more accurate viewfinders and aren’t as sensitive as 16-millimeter. You can pretty much eyeball it, but if you do that with one of these shitty cameras, you’re fucked.”
“Oh,” Rasta said. “That makes sense.”
Here’s the part where I take creative license instead of actually backtracking another week to explain his actual pitch during our actual pitching session. I really should have blogged about that day, but it really wasn’t as interesting as you might think. So what follows is a real conversation we had; we just didn’t have it at this time, on this day. Make sense? Let’s roll.
“When are you shooting your two-minute?” I asked him, squinting because the goddamn sun was right in my eyes (and reading as a 16/22 split on the meter).
“Next weekend, I think,” Rasta said. “I gotta get my shit together first.”
“Right,” I said. “What’s it about?”
“Okay, check this out,” he said, suddenly getting excited as he related the horrifying details of his film to me. “It’s like, we open up on this stage. Like a real stage in a theatre, with a big red curtain that opens up. And, like, you’ve got this clown, dressed as a priest, riding a unicycle, okay? And he’s juggling.”
“What’s he juggling?”
“Uh…like, a bottle of whiskey or something,” he continued, “and a big dildo, and, I dunno, something else that’ll represent child molestation. It’s, like, it’s all about being a priest and all the taboos and all the things they’re not allowed to do but they do it anyway and the moral crisis they face.”
“Wow,” I said, “that really sounds stupid.”
“No way, man. I didn’t finish. Okay, so you’ve got the priest juggling, and then an ape — actually, it’s gonna be a guy dressed as an ape, but my girl works at this costume shop so she can —”
“Get on with it,” I suggested irritably.
“Oh, right,” he said. “Yeah, so this ape comes in and stands behind him. You know, upstage.”
“Upstage is in front of him.”
“Downstage is what I meant. He’s gotta be behind him, because he represents the monkey on the back of all these priests, you know?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, although right now I am actually quoting The Professor, who asked this question during the actual pitch. “First of all, if you’re talking about the symbolic monkey on his back, wouldn’t you pick one that’s a little smaller than an ape? And why is he juggling a dildo? What kind of struggle would a dildo have with that?”
“It means homosexuality,” Rasta said, choosing to politely ignore the first question.
“Oh,” I said, thinking of approximately 850,000 better images that could represent homosexuality. After all, as Chaser observed, “AIDS kills fags dead.”
“So that’s all that happens? A priest-clown on a unicycle juggling sexy things and liquor? And then an ape walks in for no particular reason and stands there?” I asked.
“And the curtain goes down at the end.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yup.”
“Wow,” I said, perplexed. I guess he thought I was awed, because he agreed with my assessment.
I don’t really have any specific incidents to illustrate the other things that bug me about him, and I’m pretty much too lazy to make any more up, so I’ll just list them:
- Dread-locks; come on, he’s a skinny white guy who looks like a sad-sack Ted Koppel. They do not suit him.
- He frequently cuts class, and when he does show up, he dives into a group and then wonders what the fuck is going on; fortunately, this should end soon, because if he misses one more class (and he will), he fails and is tosssed out.
- When he does come to class, he’s late. He doesn’t slink in quietly like a normal person; he has a skateboard, which he obnoxiously tosses around, trying to make as much noise and distraction as humanly possible.
- He also has no regard for the rest of humanity’s natural spatial bubble. He’s a close-talker, to steal a Seinfeld-ism, but he also randomly takes up space that is too close to people, even when he’s not talking to them.
- Every time anybody trashes experimental — and being in a school that traditionally teaches narrative films, under the (overall accurate) theory that knowing three-act narrative structure is the only way to make experimental films, even if they’re devoid of any narrative — he tries to debate them and fails miserably. People have opinions. Some are stronger than others, and most of the people he tries to debate are more articulate and/or well-reasoned than he is. He needs to shut the fuck up and stop wasting the class’s time.
- He seemed to get personally insulted when I pitched my film, which is essentially an anti-experimental satire. My theory is that I can’t make anything better than a shitty student film, so I may as well exploit that by ripping on all the shitty student films I’ve seen (note: I’ve seen a lot). I guess this would be insulting to someone who thinks unfocused, overexposed shots are “art.”
Overall, I’m really hoping he doesn’t show up Tuesday. The Professor is a really nice guy, but he is — and should be, especially in this case — strict about the attendance policy and the importance of being in class, especially when we have so little time to get so much shit in.
In other news, it seems that my thrilling blog is the most popular site on Victoly. Wow! So why the fuck don’t I get any comments? I have issues, man. I want sympathy! Or at least money…buy my Amazon recommendations.
Posted by Stan on July 5, 2003 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
Damn
Even my ophthalmologist says I’ll be unemployed for life.
What a gyp.
Did you all know the term “gyp,” meaning being cheated by someone (cruel mistress Fortune — no, not Vanna White) is derived from “Gypsy,” because all those damn Gypsies used to gyp everyone? It seems pretty obvious, but I never put two and seven together until a month or two ago when I looked it up to make sure it wasn’t spelled “gip” (note: that is an acceptable alternative, but I prefer “gyp” because of the Gypsy relation). I love etymology.
Posted by Stan on July 5, 2003 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
July 4, 2003
Friday Five (10)
- What were your favorite childhood stories?
I assume we’re talking young, like pre-reading or just-starting-to-read level. In that case, Green Eggs and Ham and Scuffy the Tugboat. - What books from your childhood would you like to share with [your] children?
Probably just those two. - Have you reread any of those childhood stories and been surprised by anything?
Surprised by the fact that I still like them. - How old were you when you first learned to read?
Five. Back in the olden days, when I was in kindergarten, they used to pull me, as well as a few other students, out of class for a few hours each day to learn basic prepositions and nouns and shit like that.I assumed that either we were so smart, they were teaching us to read early, or we were so fucking stupid, they had to teach us to read so we could catch up with the other students. I never really figured out which.
- Do you remember the first ‘grown-up’ book you read? How old were you?
Stephen King’s It, which I read either toward the end of fifth grade or the beginning of sixth. I think it would have been funnier if I said the first “grown-up” book I read was War and Peace, and I’m almost done with it. Zing!
Posted by Stan on July 4, 2003 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friday Five/Albums of the Week
July 3, 2003
Hooray for Independence!
Today was actually pretty fun. We had a lighting lecture that was different from any other I’ve had (I’ll explain why eventually): after about two hours of actual lecture, we actually lit stuff. But this wasn’t the normal lighting exercise bullshit, where you’re tossed a Lowel kit and are told to test out all the different lighting positions and shit. We actually went to one of the lighting stages, where all the cinematography majors hang out, constructed a makeshift, three-layered set in about 15 minutes, and then divided into three groups to light and block each layer.
What I mean when I refer to a “layer,” incidentally, is pretty simple but difficult to articulate (because, you see, I am an idiot). Basically, watch Citizen Kane, and in pretty much every other scene (I’d pull out the DVD and select a scene that best illustrates it, but I am too fucking lazy for that, and I, unfortunately, don’t have the movie memorized), you have three layers: the foreground action, the middleground action, and the background action. So you have Kane and Leland in the office, then in the newsroom you have people hanging around doing shit, and then waaaaaaaaay in the back, you have windows looking out into a hall, and people are walking up and down.* And all of it is well-lit and completely in focus.
You don’t see that in a lot of movies anymore. Hell, you didn’t see it a lot back then. Time is money, and movies are a business (not, I repeat: NOT an art form), and it takes an assload of time and — gasp! — effort to set up shots like that. The only time I ever see it anymore are in sight gags, like in Airplane! or something. The reason for this is that you have to light the shit out of every single individual layer of the set, and you have to make sure the lighting is invisible and natural looking.
And then, you have to make sure the depth of field (i.e., what the lens sees in focus) matches the depth of the shot, so everything is focused properly. That’s tough to do, because if you don’t have a lot of lenses to choose from (note: we don’t), you’ll probably have to crank up your f/stop to increase the depth, which means you’ll have to adjust the lighting, which means that if you don’t plan right, you’ll basically have to start over if you lit the scene before you realized you had the wrong lens.
Back to the point: we created a deep-focus shot in about an hour. Basically, it was one apartment (foreground) with a window looking out into an alley (middleground) and through another window into a second apartment (background). We divided into groups, each of whom lit one of the scenes.
I banded together with The Crush, The Token Articulate African-American Fellow (I think I’ll just call him “Fellow”), and The Professor (we had an uneven number of students, so he filled in). Now, the magical part was that we had a whole assload of lights to choose from. It was, if you may forgive my “aw-shucks” sense of excitement, almost like working on one of them genu-wine talkin’ pitchers they have up to Hollywood.
No, seriously. We had pro equipment — and lots of it — and a bustling crew that worked separately but still together (coordinating lighting schemes between the groups so it looked even and none of the colors clashed horribly). Seriously, when you have an entire crew of people who are actually willing to do work — which is pretty much the opposite of every single employment experience I’ve ever had — it makes filmmaking actually fun, no matter if you’re lugging props all over the place, burning your hands on hot lights because you forgot to put on your fucking gloves, or striking a set.
Afterward, one of the TAs asked The Crush, myself, Fellow, and John Q. Average American (“Average”) if we wanted to PA on some upcoming shoots. Jumping at the opportunity to repeat the exciting experience (except in the capacity that we’ll most likely be going on coffee runs and standing in the back like slackjawed morons), we all signed up. Hopefully that’ll work out, and hopefully it’ll be fun. It had better be fun, because I’m doing it for free, you fucking bastards.
After class broke (we met early today and broke at around 1), The Crush, Fellow, Average, and The Unpleasant Catholic Girl (“Cathy,” who is actually more pleasant and less Catholic than I originally gave her credit for), grabbed some lunch and went back to the film building to eat. There, we ran into The Professor, so we hung out with him for awhile.
He let us in on a little secret: this little lighting lecture and exercise we had today is totally taboo. The guest lecturer was, obviously, a lighting professor who has his own classes to teach, so if he’s doing that and giving three-hour lectures to every production class (there are 8 in the summer and around 50 in the fall or spring). We’re supposed to do the shitty lighting exercises I’m used to, but he pulled some strings (which, I guess, is why we had to meet so early) to do the cool-ass exercise. From day one, he’s pretty much been all about getting us to experience what it’s like on a “real” set, because he thinks (and I agree) that it’s much more valuable than most of the stuff we learn in the classroom.
Shortly thereafter, we began recording sounds for our first editing exercise. We really sucked at it. Foleying sounds with no resources (and no video copy of the actual film) is not nearly as easy as it might sound. We spent most of our time trying to record street and elevator ambience. We basically failed miserably. It got excessively windy outside, which was affecting our recording ability. Then it started to rain, so we said “Fuck it” and all went home.
Since I took the thrilling Metra today (I was way too lazy to drive all the way to Cumberland at rush hour, and the Metra — for once — arrived at a time that was almost convenient), I walked the sixteen blocks to Union Station in the rain…with The Crush. That, and the fact that the rain cooled us down, made the walk bearable. Unfortunately, threatening to teeter the scale back toward the “unbearable” side of things were the enormous throngs of fat, unattractive suburbanites (not me, this time) heading toward The Taste for the thrilling fireworks spectacle of this evening.
Union Station was also pretty packed, as was the train. This fucking city is ridiculous. It makes me never want to leave the house ever again.
At any rate, on to the juicy stuff: nothing happened. Man, I set up the pins and then throw a gutterball. I am such a dick.
But here’s why nothing happened (because, seriously, if movies have taught me anything, rain and an attractive girl who is on the rocks with her boyfriend always creates lovin’ of some kind of another): I don’t actually, really, have a crush on her. I need to think of a new, pseudo-anonymous nickname for her (quick, somebody think of one for me).
“Why not, you failure of vicarious masturbatory teasing?” I’m sure you’re all asking and most likely phrasing better.
Well, she’s just one of them girls who lures you in with attractiveness, intelligence, and the fact that she’ll talk to you, but once that newfound excitement wears off, all the dirty feelings (well…most of them) and the whispers of long-term commitment sort of dissolve, and consequently she’s basically just The Friend — possibly more, although not in a romantic sense, but definitely not less.
Also, The Friend is a really shitty nickname. I’ll spend the weekend thinking of a real hum-dinger, and I’ll get on that.
*I completely made up that example. There is probably nothing even remotely similar in that movie.
Posted by Stan on July 3, 2003 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
- What were your favorite childhood stories?
