Whereupon Gandalf reflects on his journey to Bel-Air.
May 22, 2010
May 20, 2010
The World’s Stupidest Sport
Okay kids, today’s activity is to go down to your local Pizza Hut, have the oven set for 261° and insert your body into it. The tips of your ears start to ignite. The backs of your arms scream. Your throat burns as if somebody had stuck a tiki torch down it. Your lips feel bitten by large, unseen raccoons. And you haven’t hit 30 seconds.
Now do it for 10 minutes or more, and that’s what it’s like to compete in quite possibly the world’s dumbest sport: the Sauna World Championships.
A Little Historical Art on this Fine Day
From the frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court building. Nice, eh?
May 19, 2010
May 18, 2010
More, Please
It was a scene Saudi women’s rights activists have dreamt of for years.
When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition.
But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping.
A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix.
For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop.
According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.
“To see resistance from a woman means a lot,” Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist, told The Media Line news agency. “People are fed up with these religious police, and now they have to pay the price for the humiliation they put people through for years and years. This is just the beginning and there will be more resistance…
…Saudi law does not permit women to be in public spaces without a male guardian. Women are not allowed to drive, inherit, divorce or gain custody of children, and cannot socialize with unrelated men.
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I hope these bullies and thugs (who are most definitely not wanted by the majority of Saudi’s) keep getting humiliated. It’s long past time that the rest of the world took a stand for some real women’s rights in that part of the world.
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May 15, 2010
Around the World
She did it! 16 year old Jessica Watson completes her around the world solo unsupported sailing voyage. Erin and I were able to catch the live webcast from Sydney at midnight our time last night. It was thrilling to see the hundreds of boats escort her into Sydney harbor, and to watch her take her first wobbly steps off the boat she’s spent the last seven months aboard. Way to go!
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May 14, 2010
Grecian Formula
You might think, with riots in the streets of bankrupt Greece and the other nations of the European Union in a panic over which one of them will be next, that more officials here in America would be asking the logical question:
“For years, we’ve been doing the same things they’ve been doing – deficit spending, growing entitlements, and bloating bureaucracies – to create a cradle-to-grave European welfare state here, so is it time we finally wake up and do something different before we go bankrupt and have riots in our streets?”
There is something President Obama and Congress should do: Stop spending more money every year than the government takes in from taxes, user fees, public asset sales, and tariffs. The federal budget deficit last year was $1.4 trillion and it is projected to be $1.6 trillion this year.
The problem is clear: Like Europe, we’ve created so many entitlement programs that promise such generous benefits to so many people that our government is rapidly approaching the point at which its unfunded liabilities – promised benefits it cannot pay without draconian tax hikes that cripple the economy – that there is no alternative to default.
Another word for “default” is “bankrupt.”
Hey, but it’s okay when it’s your guy in the White House!
Round the World
16 Year old Aussie Jessica Watson completes her 7 month solo around-the-world sailing voyage tonight at 10 pm when she sails into Sidney Harbor. Read more about it here. I’ve been following her daily blog updates for a few months now (it’s great to live in the future, no?) and it’s an inspiring story. There aren’t many firsts left in the world (or even seconds or thirds), so it’s wonderful to get to see someone make the news for a first that’s uplifting and hopeful. Her trip time isn’t very long on the face of it, but she’s sure changed more than just 7 months in the time she’s been gone.
Around the world solo in a sailboat at 16. Incredible.
May 12, 2010
Soundtrack Pro
Props to the Soundtrack Pro team at Apple. I’ve spent a lot of time in the program lately, and it’s very nicely done. It has a lot of useful little tools for dialog editing, foley work, and general mixing. It’s still got some quirks, and some things I would love to change, but now that I’ve cut my teeth on it, I’m really impressed with the way they manage workflow and assets. Way to go, Apple!
May 11, 2010
Production Brain
I’ve been mixing the movie for a couple weeks now, and have a few more to go. One of the interesting things I’m noticing is that the more I get into super picky mode on the scenes I’m working on, the easier it is for me to catch production mistakes when I watch a TV show.
Tonight I caught a radio hit on an actresses RF mic on Castle, then Erin and I decided to watch Firefly (what can I say? Nathan Fillion overdose) and I caught something I’d never expected. There’s a scene in the pilot episode where Wash drives a 4 wheel off road buggy off of the ship. He stops on the ramp to talk to a character, then after they’re done he slowly putts off screen. They would have had to have had the buggy turned off because the engine noise would have overwhelmed the dialog, but how did the buggy go when called for? If you look really carefully in the bottom right hand corner of the screen you can very clearly see a hand in a black glove come in and grab the front bumper of the 4 wheeler and PULL. Yup, it was grip powered. Hey! This didn’t take place in space at all!
Erin has now forbade me from pointing out any other problems I see (I always catch boom shadows, camera reflections, ADR mismatches). Argh! The perils of Production Brain.
If anything, it makes me feel better about my editing. I’m going for perfection, but it’s nice to know that the average audience member isn’t as picky as I am. Erin told me today that audio editing is NOT the best thing for a perfectionist. It just reinforces our bad tendencies.
May 9, 2010
The Iron American
Iron Man is the most perfectly American superhero, next to Captain America, whose own movie is on the way. The armored avatar of resourcefulness and ingenuity, Tony Stark does what capitalists always do, in the long run: create incredible possibilities, far beyond the narrow vision of politicians with constituencies to appease. He understands that no one else can lift the burden of responsibility from his shoulders, and he’ll be damned before he lets anyone take it by force. His marvelous suit of armor is his defiant statement that threats to his loved ones and fellow citizens are no longer Somebody Else’s Problem. He doesn’t want to run for office, but he’s a perfect American leader nonetheless – funny, creative, maddening, indomitable, in love with himself and everyone around him, and completely uninterested in blaming anyone else for his troubles. He cleans up his own mistakes. I’d vote for him.
Interesting take on the modern superhero.
Movie Update
I’m deep in the middle of the mix for Paradise Recovered and loving it. Lots of time at the desk, but it’s really starting to sound like a feature film. I hear that the color correction looks fantastic, and the picture editing is wonderful (Storme and Lee did an excellent job). It’s funny to watch the film over and over and get familiar with every facial tic of the actors, as well as puzzle out the “why’s” of all the different edit decisions. Why hold for a few extra frames here? Why show the reverse on an actor there? Why go to that reaction shot? It’s all part of the subconscious decision making process of the visual edit. I’m trying to do the same thing with the sound edit by including subtle background foley sounds, or actors breathing (or not breathing) off-camera, as well as getting the ambient/vocal ratio just right (where I have control- darn doves).
It’s a tremendously fun process that takes a lot of attention to detail, a bucket load of creative decision-making, and a ton of seat time, and if I do my job right, the rough production tracks will sound smooth and unnoticeable. That’s the downside to the mixers art. If you do it right nobody will notice. I think of the audience as the stereotypical demanding parent that only comments on the one B+ on the report card. They only notice the deficiencies.
The deeper I get into the film, and the more I see all the scenes come together, the more I forget what it was like to shoot the movie. It’s starting to “feel” like a real film to me. What fun!