Hopelessly eclectic, Thoroughly geeky …
So I just got this book someone recommended to me … 51 High-Tech Practical Jokes for the Evil Genius
The thing sold itself on the title alone … Not that I’m either a big practical joker, or saying that I’m an evil genius (I try and only use my powers for good, not for evil), but it just had a certain appeal.
Continue reading “51 High-Tech Practical Jokes for the Evil Genius” »
Here’s an interesting interview with Gene DeWitt of DeWitt Media Strategies over at ScribeMedia.org.
Gene’s been around advertising media executive circles in just about every capacity over the last forty, or so, years (I worked for him briefly at his first media startup, DeWitt Media, in the mid-’80s), and makes some particularly interesting observations on New Media/Social Media, the concept of the “Digital Age”, and online advertising.
His observations on banner advertising, will make you sit up and re-think your Google Ad Banner strategy, at the very least.
Okay, I take back almost everything I said about how expensive NewTeeVee Live is … I’ve been watching some of the panels being streamed live. The last Bridging the Gap Between TV and Web was very, very good.
They keep tossing around the term “Trans-media” to describe using complementary media (mixing components on print web, comics, Webisodes with on-air media) to describe techniques for mixing portions of content on various media to build something greater than the sum of its parts … Good stuff (although we need to come up with a better term than “trans-media” as it seems to be annoying everyone by now.)
Jason Alexander from Heroes was one of the panelists, and he’s been very successful taking this approach.
David Verklin from Canoe Ventures, gave a mini-note representing the cable industry. Kind of an odd speech that seemed to run along the lines of “forget this new media stuff, the strong grasp of our iron hand is inescapable and we will continue to dominate your lives.” The presentation of his ideas on new cable tech, leveraging the ability to address each box and tailor programming, advertising and shopping opportunities to the individual, sounded more like Farenheit 451 meets 1984. David himself has more than a bit of fire & brimstone in his presentation style, which made the whole thing seem like the old Apple 1984 commercial.
Given how user-driven and non-invasive new media is, it sounded, once again, like Corporate America just doesn’t get it.
Contrasted with this was Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings’, keynote … Which portayed an Internet-driven future for video all of types. “We have a model, and the model is the Internet.”
Hastings has an image of the future which is filled with choice and options that is in stark contrast with the view provided by Verklin.
Liz Shannon Miller’s interview with Felicia Day is probably the best I’ve seen to date, as it’s focused on the kind of day-to-day producing issues in dealing with a Webisodic that are so important and beneficial to those of us looking to follow in her footsteps. There’s a lot of talk about Felicia’s commitment to retain the rights to The Guild, as an important part of the business model for Webisodic production, as well as news of an announcement to come next week regarding a sponsorship deal for The Guild. (Congrats to Felicia, Kim & George!)
All of the vids of these sessions are online on the NewTeeVee site … I’m going to catch up on all I missed when I get home tonight (unless I make a stop off to buy the new WoW expansion, in which case it might take a little longer to get around to it. 
)
Anyway, I’m planning on hitting NewTeeVee live in person next time around, in the mean time the live streaming of the panels is the next best thing.
Out of all the days of my youth, the best of those spent marching in drum corps, I will never forget those early years marching in the St. Andrew’s Bridgemen.
The Bridgemen started as a small parish corps in downtown Bayonne, NJ. A picturesque town of oil refineries, factories, and waste-water reclamation plants that represented the best of life in Middle-Lower-Class New Jersey. The place was a friggin’ dump.
The thing that makes me proudest about my years in the Bridgemen is the lasting impact that the corps made on the activity. Sure, the campy antics and crude costumes of our shows from the late ‘70s and ‘80s may lack the sophistication and polish of today’s corps, but it was seminal work … Like James Tiberius Kirk, the Bridgemen boldly went where no drum corps had gone before, and did it with tongue planted firmly in cheek.
The same intensity of attitude and joie de vivre with which the corps approached its work on the field manifested itself in the group personality of the corps off the field. A personality that resembled a combination of The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus rolled up into one merry band of traveling funsters who always went for the joke first, and asked questions later.
Within the ranks of the corps absolutely nothing was sacred and if there was a corps motto of any kind, it was probably “Cut No Slack” … A phrase heard often around Bridgemen rehearsals. If someone went walking into a setup for a good one-liner, it would be considered blasphemy, if not bad form, to let it go without comment.
It wasn’t a corps environment for everyone and, although many of us survived, and often thrived, in this never-ending stand-up comedy routine, some individuals felt, after a time, that being in the Bridgemen just wasn’t the place for them. Hey, we were like the Marines … The Few, the Proud, the Mostly-Charming-but-Quite-Often-Obnoxious…St. Andrew’s Bridgemen.
I can remember one guy quitting the corps after getting a hard time about something or other and remarking, as he left the parking lot never to return, “This place is a walking one-liner.”
In true Jersey form, and without missing a beat, a voice chimed in: “Yeah. So?”
It took a thick skin to be a member of St. Andrew’s, and it wasn’t any different for the instructional staff. Every new instructor had to earn their stripes … to prove that they were one of us. Hazing, possibly, a right of passage, if you will.
Such is the strange case of one George Tuthill. A Long-time drum instructor for the Hawthorne Caballeros, as well as my first competing corps, Our Lady of The Angels Blue Angels, from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
The 1975 season was what was euphemistically referred to as “a rebuilding year” for the Bridgemen … In other words, we were awful. Rank, raw, grab-your-kid-and-head-for-the-hot dog-stand-now-while-you’ve-got-a-chance bad. Most of the stalwarts who had helped bring the corps to DCI Finals in ’72 and ’73 had aged-out or moved on, leaving behind a small nucleus of veterans that was augmented by new recruits from our feeder corps, the St. Andrew’s Kidets, as well as a number of “imports” from out of state … including a sixteen-year-old me.
It was a bunch of mostly unrefined talent without any real seasoning … The corps had 35 horns, about 24 of whom actually played. We didn’t go to any of the major competitions that year because, as one member remarked, the field announcer would have asked, “Judges are you ready? Bridgemen … Are you serious?”
It was a tough season to be sure. The only thing that held us together that year was attitude. An attitude that was at the core of Bridgemen values. An attitude that says “Don’t tell us what or who we can or can’t be, do or achieve, or we’ll make it our business to prove you wrong no matter what, or how long, it takes, and your car might possible get fire-bombed in the process” (just kidding about that last part, mostly.) It’s an attitude that, tempered by time and maturity, has served most of us well over the years, and may well have kept the Bridgemen from folding that season.
Adding to the ongoing problems was the mid-season loss of our drum arranger and instructor, John Flowers. Flowers’ wife was adding to the family roster back in Delaware and he just couldn’t get up to New Jersey to be there with us that summer.
The guys told Corps Director Eddie Holmes he should hire the guy from Hawthorne. The guys actually meant Dennis DeLucia, the instructor from our dominant rivals, the Hawthorne Muchachos Junior Corps. Eddie went ahead and hired Tuthill from the Hawthorne Caballeros Senior Corps.
That was probably when the guys realized they needed to be more specific with Eddie.
George came to the corps in the middle of the season with all the best intentions, but too late to bring about any real improvements, so he focused on damage control.
Now, as I mentioned, every instructor who walked through the Bridgemen’s doors intending to teach the drumline had to go through some sort of trial-by-fire before they could be accepted as one of us. An initiation if you will, a mating dance, whatever. It was a chance for the instructor to decide if he could fit in with the drum line, and a chance for the drum line to decide if the instructor would, well, be allowed to live (again, kidding … It’s true that one guy who came to us from the Complex Simpletons, of Wesuckandweknowit, Ont., disappeared after a few rehearsals, but no body was ever found, and he left saying something about suddenly discerning a vocation to join a cloistered order of monks…in Kuala Lumpur.)
It was no different with Tuthill.
I remember the night as if it were yesterday. We were practicing at the old Geigy chemical plant in Bayonne’s industrial district (which wasn’t very much different from the rest of the town in atmosphere, aesthetics, or toxic waste, it was just zoned for it.) One of the snare drummers asked George if he could take a spin in George’s brand new Triumph TR-7 … A baby-blue treasure of a mid-life crisis made manifest on wheels.
George reluctantly said yes, thinking a turn around the parking lot was in order. Our guy took off, drove around the parking lot and headed off into the sunset, somewhere in the direction of downtown Bayonne. He showed up about a half hour later, with refreshments, tossed the keys to a bright-red Tuthill and chirped, “Hey, nice ride”, before picking up his drum and jumping back in line.
Later that night Tuthill started re-working the book. John Flowers, it seemed to Tuthill, had written an impossibly difficult drum book that included every manner of percussion toy and artifact available. From wood blocks to flex-a-tones to metal castanets, we used it all … The list was endless (and remember the pit, or front ensemble, wasn’t even a concept back then, so we had to carry all this junk around with us.) The line carried more sets of sticks than Vic Firth could manufacture in a year. Even the snares carried around a utility bag full of sticks, mallets and gadgets.
After listening to a few run-throughs, Tuthill looked around and said, “How come you guys are using so many different sticks? Do you really need all of them?”
The drum line looked around at each other, and shook their heads no. No they didn’t.
In a fatal error of tactical judgment that could come only from a complete lack of understanding of the nature and motus operandi of the individuals he was dealing with, and their propensity for physical humor and over-the-top sight-gags, Tuthill suggested, “Well, okay then. Get rid of them.”
No sooner than he had completed that sentence, a hail storm of mallets, drum sticks, and other assorted beaters, rained down upon George from all sections of the drumline. Hell, we even threw the sticks we were using, just to keep the bit going a little longer.
It is a rare sight when you get to see your drum instructor dance.
No permanent damage was done however. The sticks were all still usable, and Tuthill was in reasonably good shape as well, aside from a few minor contusions and a badly bruised ego. Now at least the ground rules had been established.
George left the corps shortly thereafter under very ambiguous circumstances. He left the activity all together a few years later to pursue a kinder, gentler, career in music education. In fact, he convinced the Salem Argonauts, one of the oldest competitive drum corps in the country, that they should get out of the drum corps business and become a concert band.
One only wonders if it had anything to do with … Nah. Coincidence.
Sadly, George passed away in 2001.
Good guy. Decent instructor. Couldn’t dance worth a damn.
The rest of the 1975 season was pretty much a wash, except that it created a nucleus of fanatically determined membership who vowed to bring the Bridgemen back to the top levels of the drum corps activity or, at the very least, never lose to the St. Ignatius all-girls corps again. Ever.
Did I mention it was a really tough season?
There’s probably nothing more humiliating to a bunch of rough-and-tumble blue-collor kids from Bayonne, than getting schooled by a bunch of mostly pre-teen girls from Long Island in cowgirl costumes and majorette boots. They were vicious, determined, and we barely escaped with our lives.
That fall, the guys talked to Ed again, and he finally hired the guy from the other Hawthorne. In September 1975, Dennis DeLucia, percussion arranger/instructor for the famed Muchachos, took the reigns of, what was to become, one of the premier drum lines of the late ‘70s and ‘80s.
Now understand … Dennis had to earn his stripes with the drumline just like any other instructor, and those moments were no less colorful than the Tuthill incident … In fact I remember an escapade involving Dennis, a color guard show and a Boston Cream pie but, that, but I’ll just save that story for a future telling.
Those were different times in the drum corps activity. Far more naïve and far less refined, but a time that is well worth remembering. Drum corps were places to get kids off the street and away from the negative influences of tough urban neighborhoods. The corps was a place full of opportunities to learn, grow, and discover. Most importantly, the members learned about risk and reward, and the potential gains that could come by taking chances. The education that was taught in the St. Andrew’s Bridgemen wasn’t in advanced musicianship and movement, as it is today. It was an education in life. It was about opening your eyes to the possibilities that lay outside of a couple of square miles of your own home town, and to what could be achieved by venturing out of the familiar and into the unknown.
And if, at the end of the day, there was also an opportunity for a good punch line to be meted out to some, more-or-less, innocent bystander, well … That was about as good as it could get.
Now that I think about it, it still is.
Copyright © 1998-2011 Doug Luberts, All Rights Reserved.
Michael Crichton’s death this past week has had me thinking back quite a bit to the fiction of my youth.
Dr. Crichton was definitely a huge influence who sent me in the direction of a lot of forward thinking, highly-educated, science fiction writers of the era, such as Asimov, Heinlein, and Frank Herbert. I respected them all … In fact I think just about every science fiction fan of my generation could roll off the Three Laws of Robotics faster than they could remember the first seven words of the Declaration of Independence … But these guys weren’t the most profound, or lasting, of my early literary influences.
That distinction belonged to a writer named Jean Shepherd.
Who? Yeah, I thought so … A lot of folks won’t immediately recognize the name, but you probably know his work. In fact, with the Holidays rolling around the corner, no doubt we’ll be seeing the screen realization of his most famous work, A Christmas Story, make its rounds on one of the cable networks ere long.
Note to Readers: I don’t write a lot about Drum & Bugle Corps on this blog, although it’s an activity that I have been involved with from my early teens, first as a performer with the Bayonne Bridgemen, to the present day as a fan and supporter of The Blue Devils from Concord, CA. This past summer at the Drum Corps International World Championships, a very special relationship emerged between the fans and the corps that would become the 2008 Drum Corps International World Class Champions, The Phantom Regiment, from Rockford, IL. Fortunate to have been able to be a part of this remarkable experience, I decided to chronicle it for the readers of Drum Corps Planet. I include it here, as just another view into a part of my world … One that got just a little bit larger than life for three days, and provided memories that I’ll carry with me forever. If you’re not of a part of the drum corps scene, and this all seems a bit foreign to you, don’t feel bad. There is a lifetime of back-story here, about an activity that is almost universally misunderstood by the majority of people not involved with drum corps.
August, 2008
Even before the scores were announced at Memorial Stadium last Saturday night, fans, judges and other members of the drum corps community were hailing 2008 as the single best, and by far the most memorable season in the history of the DCI Movement. It was a year marked by what many believe is a turnaround in the direction of drum corps programming, with a return to fan-friendly music, and performance levels in all of our corps that exceeded any expectation. Edutainment seemed to have made its peace with Entertainment, and Finals night saw the single-greatest collection of drum corps ever assembled in a top 12 competition.
This year was also a watershed year for storytelling in drum corps, setting standards for using narrative, music and visual imagery to tell tales in new, exciting, and innovative ways.
There is simply too much ground to cover to try and present a single, all-encompassing view of what went on in Bloomington, as there were just so many positive things that different corps brought to the table. The most remarkable, to me, seemed to be the successes of some corps over some of the more established contenders. These successes due, largely, I feel, to this new direction in the art. Glassmen’s “Kar-Ne-Val”, with its circus imagery and lyrical music; Bluestars, and their awesome use of music and movement to convey the imagery of The Tour de France in “LeTour: Every Second Counts”; The Bluecoats and their use of archetypal imagery in telling their Boxer story in “The Knockout”; Carolina Crown and the sheer wit, brilliant musicianship and wonderful color guard in their story of a Mad Composer in “Finis”. These were but a few examples of what made this week the most memorable DCI Championships that I’ve ever been to.
The big story, the one that drum corps fans will be talking about for years to come, is the story of our newly-crowned World Class Champion, The Phantom Regiment.
The tale of this year’s Regiment is more than just a story about a great drum corps passing a number of extremely worthy competitors to win a title at great odds, although that’s a hell of a story in and of itself. The real story is how the Regiment was able to break through the “4th Wall” and grab the audience, not so much pulling them into the story of Spartacus, but by bonding with us in such a way that made everyone in the audience leap willingly through that imaginary wall. In doing so, they created a synergy between the performers and the audience that I don’t think has ever been experienced to that degree in a drum corps competition. The whole three day experience developed into nothing short of a love affair between the Regiment and their audience coming from a spontaneous bond that was not unlike what performance artists in the ’60s would call “a happening.”
Just as a point of reference, my own junior corps was mostly made up of members who were, what are known in showbiz lingo as, “Money Players” … Our performances depended a lot (for better or worse) on the involvement of the audience. When we were on and, the audience was on, there was an energy that flowed between us and the crowd that amplified the experience … It inspired us to greater heights, and gave us the energy to really lay it all out, if you will.
Conversely, if the audience was flat and lacking in enthusiasm, we tended to be flat as well. It was a symbiotic relationship, a groove between the artist and the audience that made the experience something greater than the than the sum of its parts. I hate to get all metaphysical, but that’s exactly what it was … the connection of that energy was like a mystical high that we thrived on. We loved our audience, and on the best of days it was reciprocal.
I’ve been jazzed about this year’s Phantom Regiment ever since I saw them at Stanford in July. Even knowing that Regiment always builds on the effects and adds the bells and whistles as the season progresses, there was a certain coherence about the show that looked like they had the potential to take this a lot farther than might be evident on the surface. I thought Regiment was sitting on a winner … If they could take it far enough.
That potential really started manifesting as they started adding to the show … Oh, they had the musicianship from the get-go. The talent was there. All the little changes, additions, costuming, props, the herald trumpets … all of it built on the foundation. But what really started making it happen, more than anything else in selling that show, was when they started letting loose with the magic ingredient: A complete commitment to the selling the theatrical elements of the show. In other words, fully committing to approaching drum corps as theater.
It was genius.
Photo by Christina Mavroudis
It was when they totally brought on the attitude, cranking it up, and getting in to character that the production really started to take off. With every level that they amped-up the attitude, and committed more deeply to their characters, they reached out further to the audience until it finally clicked. They connected on that deeper level with their audience and found their inner gladiators.
When the Regiment took the field in Bloomington, the sheer presence that they projected reached out to the crowd completely. They didn’t just take the field … They owned it, and everybody else in the house had just been borrowing it. Now they might as well take the IU logo off the fifty and put down a double chevron. They were home.
Every bit of play acting, from the soldiers’ brutal treatment of the slaves, to laying the seeds of discord between the drum majors … It all got to the audience, quickly, and suddenly we were in it with them. Willing participants in the passion and drama that was to come. In doing this they took theatricality in drum corps to a new level, almost creating a new type of performance art. The further over-the-top they took it, the quicker and easier it became for the audience to get involved.
I’ve been in and around drum corps almost all of my life. I’ve marched in a top 4 DCI corps, and I’ve experienced, what I felt was, an unbelievable connection to the audience. But never anything that ever approached the level of intensity of the connection between the Regiment and the audience in Bloomington. It was as if every bit of fire and passion that the Regiment was putting into their show was coming right back at ‘em from the crowd, almost willing them to take “Spartacus” to new heights and us along with them. It was literally about sharing the love, pure and simple.
At some point spontaneous audience interaction just started. Happening with audience member after audience member joining in with the corps screaming an impassioned “I AM SPARTACUS!”. We were there, we were with them. We were them. It was good.
This special bond only increased as the week progressed. By Saturday night the contract was sealed: They had us and we had them. We were gonna’ get through this thing together and the love just flowed back and forth between the corps and the crowd. It was pure Magic.
We drum corps folk tend to be a pretty partisan lot … I regularly honk a NorCal shade of Blue. Friends around me were into different shades of Blue, Green and Red … The whole spectrum. On Saturday night when Regiment hit the field, it didn’t matter … Regardless of home team, we were one. We were Spartacus.
The show was sublime … The highlight of a night of truly gifted performances by every corps that took the field.
When it came time for retreat, the energy was flowing into the Regiment in a major way. It was between the audience and the Regiment. The had won our hearts, and while that was amazing and special, the collective consciousness wanted, no, demanded, it to go further.
As the Regiment drum major lay on the field in between the other corps’ majors covered in his death shroud (another brilliant extension of the moment), we waited.
The scores were announced as the tension built amidst a reading that included other surprises for many. By the time Carolina Crown’s 4th place score was announced, the air was thick and quiet.
Then … 3rd place … Cavaliers! Spartacus was still alive.
What happened next has already been well documented. You can probably find the video on YouTube. As legendary DCI field announcer Brandt Crocker sliced though an agonizingly long pause, awarding the Silver Medal to the Blue Devils, Memorial Stadium erupted in an explosion of audience approval unlike any reception received by the crowning of a new champion in DCI history.
The rest of retreat was like a blur, the bittersweet approach of the end of the evening tempered with the knowledge that we would get to see our heroes take the field one more time. An interminable amount of time seemed to pass before Brandt voiced the words we were all waiting to hear.
“Phantom Regiment, the field is yours!” And with that simple acknowledgement, the stadium filled again with the cheers of an ecstatic crowd.
They did not disappoint. Phantom Regiment honored their audience by going back, resetting, and giving us a full performance of their World Championship show as an encore … From the very first entrance of the returning Roman Army and their slaves to the inevitable conclusion of Drum Major Will Pitts’ untimely demise at the hands of one of his subordinates.
And once again, it was magic.
As a final gift, the Regiment shared with us a performance of their most treasured music selection, and corps’ hymn, “Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral”. The guard holding each other, arm in arm, as the lush Wagnerian melody filled the air.
There were few, if any, dry eyes to be seen anywhere on the field … or in the stands for that matter.
Finally, it was time to let our victors have the field to themselves, as they circled around their Director, Rick Valenzuela, in what was clearly a family moment. They had given us all they had, and now it was their time for a bit of reflection and celebration before beginning the next step of their lives … Wherever it may take them.
Hoarse from screaming, I found a couple of other “old timers” to share thoughts with. Our opinions were unanimous. We had just been witness to something unprecedented in the annals of drum corps history.
Dismiss this as the overly-sentimental musings of a life-long drum corps fan, or not, as you will. It is my belief, that the story of the 2008 Phantom Regiment, “Spartacus”, and three magical nights in Bloomington, Indiana, will go on to become the stuff of drum corps legend.
I feel privileged to have been there to share the experience.
Seems I started a theme of essential texts for the beginning editor this week, and I’d like to conclude that with a book about the “other” professional editing solution (of which there are actually a number, but it’s mainly a Final Cut and Avid game, so I thought I’d throw out a little Avid love this evening.) The Avid Handbook: Advanced Techniques, Strategies, and Survival Information for Avid Editing Systems, 5th Edition
Continue reading “Book Blurb: The Avid Handbook by Greg Staten and Steve Bayes” »
Continuing to build on yesterday’s post about learning the craft of editing from books, we’ll take the next step and discuss a book that teaches you how to edit in a particular vendors editing package. In this case, Final Cut Pro.
It’s usually at this point in a conversation between editors where a religious debate ensues. Editors tend to be very passionate about their choice of editing software. Avid users, in many cases, would rather fight than switch. Final Cut Pro users feel the same way, except they have more time to talk about it since they’re so much more productive with the software than Avid users. I kid! (not really.) I’ve cut on several flavors of Avid, including the Media Composer, Adrenaline, and Avid DS, Discreet Smoke, Final Cut Pro, and, even a little bit of Premiere (although that was years ago when it was still a very young product.)
Continue reading “Book Blurb: Final Cut Pro 6 by Diana Weynand” »
I’ve been reading Scott Kirsner’s Cinema Tech Blog for a long time now, and enjoy the his perspectives on the influence of emerging tech on the film business. As a long-time lover of Cinema History, I was looking forward to his new book Inventing the Movies: Hollywood’s Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs
As it turns out I had the opportunity to hear Scott talk about the book a couple of weeks ago, and finally got around to reading it this week.
There’s a lot of familiar ground here … Anyone who has studied the history of the Film business has heard the same basic stories about Thomas Edison, the Lumiere Brothers, the Warner Bros., etc., but with Inventing the Movies
Continue reading “Book Blurb: Inventing the Movies by Scott Kirsner” »
I got my new Canon HF100 Camcorder on Wednesday, and managed to take it out for a few minutes this week. Basically I was looking to shoot some footage, get the data off the flash memory card and into Final Cut Pro. This is just to get an idea of how easy it it, and what it looks like to shoot with this HD format off the shelf, and without any tinkering.
Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco
The HF100 is smaller than it’s older siblings … Such as the HV30. That’s due to the absence of any tape drive mechanism. The first thing I noticed is that you want to hold it at chest-to-waist level, but the record start-stop button is placed to be convenient for holding the camera at eye-level and using your thumb on the back of the camera … Which is kind of weird because there is no view finder, just a very nice view screen that folds out from the left side of the unit. (Heh, heh … I said “unit.” <$1 to Beavis & Butthead>)
I would have probably opted for using the space reclaimed from the tape drive to provide a viewfinder and a little more surface area for ergonomics. Also a start/stop button on top of the camera would be nice.
My new Canon HF100 should be arriving tomorrow … I can’t wait to get it’s HD goodness into my hands.
Yeah, I’m friggin’ psyched and I’m blogging about it … Deal!
I’m typically not an early adopter when it comes to an OS … Having survived the Windows 98 implementation, I learned to take it slow when I new one comes out. I finally broke down and upgraded to OS X Leoopard a couple of weeks ago … Mostly because it would work betterer with my iPhone 3G and under the delusion that I would actually be learning enough Objective C to be able to write some little iPhone apps that I thought would be fun.
Note to self: Any sentence with the words Objective C and fun in it is an oxymoron. C’s still a drag.
Anyway, the first thing I noticed after upgrading my iMac was that it started crashing, almost immediately. It was also running as slow as the old grey mare (you know, the one they shot because she was too old for the glue factory?) Someone suggested I up the memory to a full 4 Gb … and it worked.
The machine’s running well again, and doesn’t take forever to boot.
So there I was … a 47th Level Warlock with a specialty in demonology, ready to break through and level to 48. It was hot in Gadgetzan. Well, it’s always hot in Gadgetzan, since the sun is always at meridian height (Goblins are really kind of binary creatures when you get right down to it: Sun, No Sun, Buy, Sell, Live, Die … It’s no wonder that it’s always midday there during the day.)
It was just about time to take off for the Un’Goro Crater. I had a hot mission from the Arch Druid in Darnassus to secure some soil samples for … Whatever. I’m a Warlock not a tree-hugger, damnit. The Elf was offering me good coin to bring him a few bags of dirt, and I wasn’t about to turn my nose up at it. Not with the Azeroth economy looking like it does these days, what with the Gnomeregan Exile bailout and all.
No, sirree. I was on it like stink on a Noxious Ooze.
I was beatin’ feet to the local Gryphon Master to charter a flight when he came on me out of nowhere. Taking a right out of the armor repair shop, I found myself face to face with an 8-foot-tall Orc Warlock. Big, green and ugly (Which is a fair description of any Orc as they pretty much all look alike) … and as he stood there, quietly staring me down, I could tell he was open for business.
The next thing you know, the big pile of chartreuse pig-puss throws down a dueling flag.
It was like a moment from High Noon, and I was Sheriff Wil Kane. You could almost hear “Do not forsake me, oh my darling” playing in the background (almost, but not really, as playing this in-game would most certainly put Blizzard in an actionable position with the music publisher.)
As someone coming from a Film Editorial background, I’m often asked by people starting out what they should learn, and how.
Most folks tend to expect an answer regarding Avid or Final Cut Pro for the first half of the question, but I don’t think that’s the important part. It really doesn’t matter what non-linear system you learn on … Both Avid and FCP (and Smoke and Lightworks) have their pluses and minuses, and if you can drive one you can pretty much drive them all, with a bit of practice. What you really need to learn if you want to be a professional editor, is editorial standards and practices.
The best place for that, of course, is by working with an established professional assistant editor to learn “the system” as well as the craft. Outside of that, and studying at USC or AFI, one of the best resources around is Norman Hollyn’s book, The Film Editing Room Handbook, Third Edition: How to Manage the Near Chaos of the Cutting Room
Continue reading “Book Blurb: The Film Editing Room Handbook by Norman Hollyn” »
“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things”
- My Favorite Things, Rodgers & Hammerstein, 1959
I thought I’d lighten it up a little, and get back to the the sources of a lot of my passion for the visual arts. I’m first and foremost a film, television and theatre geek. Films of all kinds, any time, anywhere. Good television, especially intelligent long-form work from folks like Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin, along with a lot of the classics from the ’60s and ’70s, are always a good time. When it comes to the theatre, while I am a total fan of the Bard of Avon, George Bernard Shaw, Moliere, and a host of other dramatists, musical theatre is what really floats my boat.
So this will be the first in a recurring series of articles about my favorite Films, TV shows, and plays.
