Chrismas Eve

So we made it through our fist family christmas at home. It started with preparations for Santa. The first one was new for me, putting out some food for the reindeer (think oatmeal with glitter in it). The reindeer food serves two purposes, it reflects the moonlight so the reindeer can find
the house and then of course as a snack while the reindeer wait for Santa to leave the presents. Here's a movie of my son putting out his reindeer food:

Second was the more traditional milk and cookies. We baked the cookies that night, so they would be fresh for Santa. Actually they were more like brownies, but I'm sure Santa was okay with that. Though there was some debate over whether Santa leaves all his presents by the fireplace or if he just does the stockings by the fireplace and then puts any presents he brings under the tree. In this case he ended up leaving all the presents by the fireplace, but that's probably because the stockings were overflowing and he just decided to leave everything together.
Christmas day was good. I'll put movies from that up later, I shot it on the video camera, rather than the little digital one. I makes me want to save up and get a camera that records to solid state media so I could just dump straight to a hard drive. Oh well, maybe next year sometime if production work keeps up at the current level I'll be able to get something together.

Finally, skipping ahead to today. We took an unexpected trip to an ice skating rink. We had to rent skates, I don't think I've been in ice skates in 15 years. But it went much better than I had expected. With the exception of the two times I tried to use a heel brake, like on rollerblades, I was fine. And my son was walking in the skate almost immediately after getting them on. And was able to skate with the use of the stability bar (as seen in the picture) and me holding onto one of his belt loops. We were out on the ice for about 20 minutes before we had to clear out for the Zamboni. After that my son wasn't interested in going back out on the ice, but "Maybe later". We'll see, if his interest increases we'll see about getting our own skates. My only concern is his skating aptitude and his previous interest in hockey sticks. Cross your fingers for no hockey.

Why is the snow burning my face?

So we went sledding yesterday. The first pass was not so much fun or my son. Here's a picture of us before our first run. It's how we went sledding in our backyard last year. But this time we went to a bigger hill and there was fresh powder, the result was a lot snow spraying up in his face. He was very unhappy about it. So the second run, I went down by myself, face first in the sled. No snow in my face, so my son wanted to tray again that way, with horrible results as can be seen in this video.

At this point my son was ready to go home, but I talked in him to one more run, with me sitting in front to black the snow. This went much better and we ended up sledding for about half an hour, or until he was to tired to walk up the hill and I was to tired to carry him up. After we got home we ended up playing outside with the neighbor kids. Then coming inside for some Sunday football. We put on our jerseys, my son's is a Dolphins jersey (#23 RB Ronnie Brown) that was an early christmas present from nana and papa and mine is my jersey from high school.

On a football note I have just discovered that all the Sunday night games on NBC and all the Thursday games on the NFL Network are simultaneously broadcast on the internet. That's right, at the same time. Actually the internet broadcast is better, because it will let you cut between 5 different camera shots of the game. What I want to know is why nobody told be about this earlier. I could have been watching lots more football. Well, at least I got to see a good game last night (good being defined by an exciting finish and the Panthers loosing).

Well, more later. As we're down to 3 days until Santa.

Winter Wonderland

Well, just in time we're getting some good snow for christmas. And it looks like its going to stay cold enough for it to stick. Maybe some sledding tomorrow. The holiday festivities are beginning, my wife's brother and his family visited today (more on that later), we went to a christmas party hosted by one of my wife's colleges and we finally got pictures for our holiday cards done (so late that they're going to be New Year's cards this year).
So now it's time for a cozy night at home with some sort of mini-marathon of television shows.

Finally, I was impressed by my son's restrain today. With the visit of my brother-in-law's family we did a mini-present exchange. And though he did ask if he could continue opening the rest of his presents under the tree, only had to be told once that we were waiting until christmas day to open the rest of our presents. That being said, he has also developed his own victory dance. It's funny but also vaguely taunting with it's usual accompaniment of either "See I told you. I was right, Uh huh, uh huh, huh huh." or "I beat you, I win. Uh huh, uh huh, huh huh." Here's two movies one with him celebrating making it trough a snow tunnel (no taunting on that one) and one after winning the race upstairs at bedtime (some taunting on that one):

One Week Untill Santa

How will Santa know to stop at your house and leave presents? You put up lights, like at the airport. Here's our Santa signal:
And yes, that's mostly grass in our yard still, the snow just won't stick this year.

I think all that's left is shipping some remaining presents and baking cookies for neighbors. Speaking of neighbors, my son & I ended up in the neighbor's so he could play with the 3 year old boy across the street. They're very close in age and will end up going to school together, so getting to know each other now seems like a good think. Well, I have discovered that they are a no toy weapons family (no guns or swords). Now my son doesn't have any guns (except the ones the Transformers shoot each other with) but swords, axes and clubs are sort of plentiful in our house. It's hard to avoid with the SCA around. And he's very good about not hurting people and not attacking unarmed people. I'm just wondering how it's going to go when they end up over here playing Power Rangers, Transformers & Ben 10. All kind of violent, but still fun. I guess on the up side, the neighbor's kid spend about half the time at his house using legos to build guns. So, I suppose exposure to swords at our house won't hurt too much.

Finally, who looks angrier in this picture, my son or the elephant:

Fully Awsome

So we went to a friend's 30th birthday party yesterday. It was up in Syracuse at a Lazer Tag arena.
Here's the scoreboard from the second game, when we ditched the teams as played all individually.
I think if I ever blow out an elbow or shoulder and can't fight in the SCA anymore, I'm switching over to competitive Lazer Tag.
We also finished our christmas shopping over the weekend and put up our lights, pictures of that coming soon.

Xmas preview

First, here's a movie of my son opening an early christmas present at the thanksgiving present exchange my brother's and I had.

If this is any indication, christmas morning is going to be very exciting for him. Actually it may be christmas all day, because I have no plans of rushing him through gifts and he likes to open and play with everything for a while. And since this is going to be his last christmas as the only child opening presents I figure we can let him savor it.

December

Well, Turkey Day was great. It's really a Wed-Sunday thing, with trips to Toga and Connecticut.
I won the weight loss contest with my brothers. Yay! Now we'll see if exercise and sensable eating will keep me at this weight.

Last Wed, before we left for Thanksgiving my son and I went to see the local mall Santa. He's a great Santa. He comes up from North Carolina to work as Santa for a month and my son has seen him every year, the the photo studio where I get most of my video work runs the photo/Santa village at the mall. Well, this is the first year that my son was willing to sit with Santa and tell him what he wants for christmas, he even had a question for Santa, "Where are the reindeer?" Anyway here's the picture of the Santa visit:


So the rest of month is a bit hectic. Some deadlines, christmas prep and it's about time to start setting up a training for crown tourney in May. And I'm hoping I can fit in some time to enter a couple of video contests this month. Finally I need to get my focus back to short films now that the video contests have gotten me moving again. So, I think I'll shoot for end of the year to have my short film from North Carolina ready and out for festival submission, at least one feature script far enough along that I could get and editor to help me polish it up and another serious short film project ready to shoot in January or February.
So that's three goals, we'll see how I do.

Is it christmas time yet?

So roughly twice a day my son will ask if it's christmas time yet. I think he's figured out that he'll be getting presents when it's christmas. Either that or he's just happy to see his holiday choir come out of storage. Here's a movie of him, well not really conducting, but at lest coordinating the singing:

On a totally different note, I'm trying to freshen up my magic card trick skills. I'm doing this mostly by just carrying decks of cards around with me and practicing the basics. Hopefully I'll have a couple of tricks down by Thanksgiving. Audiences always make it more fun, but I don't want to bring anything out if I'm so rusty I ruin the trick. We'll see.

Finally, I'm reuploading the video to the last contest. Mostly because I went to review it and thought "This looks like a black bear and a puma fighting on a moonless night." Or, in other words, it's too dark to see anything. And though I'm not so happy with the video, much like most of what I do after a few days, I'm just going to fix the brightness and toss it in again. I'm sure I'll re-link to it when the better version is up.

More, after Thanksgiving most likely . . .

Video Contest 4

Well, I've made my fourth entry into a video contest in as many weeks. I've put together a quick montage of SCA fighting that we did at a kind of super sweet 16 birthday party. I was also coordinating the video of the party, so we managed to get a 2 camera shoot of the fighting for bettering editing. Anyway the video can be found here. Don't be afraid to watch and rate it, though I don't know if that will have any impact on the contest outcome.

With Thanksgiving next week, I don't know if I'll shoot any personal video. But I suspect I'll be entering more contests in the near future.

No real pictures or movies to post right now, but there are some meat ones over on my wife's blog.

The only thing worse than a diet . . .

. . . is a diet that works. I'm in a weight loss contest with my brothers and I've started my secret diet for the last three weeks. I hate the diet, but I'm dropping weight too fast to justify anything else. Why can't exercise have this effect?

I've entered another video contest, but they haven't posted the video yet. So, I'll post the direct link when it's up.

And finally, two pictures of my son. One in normal clothes and one in his current superhero phase.

Parenting

I've noticed recently that my son, who is 3, is very easy to reason with. It really became apparent last week when he put a piece of plastic wrapper up his nose. At first he was freaking out and REALLY wanted the plastic out, but after one attempt to get it out with tweezers he changed his mind and said he'd rather just leave the plastic in than have the tweezers in his nose. But throughout the entire plastic in the nose adventure, which involved a trip to urgent care and about half-a-dozen more attempts by the doctors to get the plastic before they successfully extracted it, he would freak out if any of the extraction devices came near his nose. But if I told him that they just want to look with a light to see if the plastic was still there (and they really were just looking) then he would almost immediately clam down and become completely cooperative. The whole incident was so surreal, I'd love it have it on film just to see what it looked like from the outside.

I'd say he's becoming more independent decisions, but he's always been as unpredictable as he is opinionated. So, it's always been easier to let him make his own choices.

On a side note, I've entered a clip of him into a Parenting Magazine contest. I don't know if it should count towards my 4 contests in 4 weeks as it's old footage that didn't require any editing. I think I've posted it here before, and since the contest is decided by judges with no viewer tracking, I'll just post the link to his video:
Video Contest

Oh, be aware it will automatically roll into the next kid's video at the end of his. And so on. If you're not careful you could end up watching a lot of kids the someone thinks are cute.

Another Video Contest

So I've entered my next video contest:

Doritos Crash the Superbowl

Click the link to watch my video. Big thanks to my brothers, their wife and girlfriend and my wife for putting up with my directing so I could make this commercial.

I'm a little disappointed by the motion artifacts in the uploaded video, but it already has almost 200 views so I don't want to repost it. Oh well, they say finalists will be asked for better versions of their commercials, so I guess I'll cross that bridge when I'm a finalist.

More later . . .

Velcro is king and belts are stupid

My son has decided that his shoes have to be Velcro and he's not wearing any belts. I couldn't figure out why he was having such intense opinions on what seemed like unimportant issues. Then I noticed that he can put on his own shoes, but only if they Velcro. And a belt makes it too hard for him to use the potty on his own. So both decisions are based on his need for independence. It made me think about what I maybe doing just because it's easier. It was something I was thinking about on a recent video shoot, 2 hours of documenting limos for a promotional DVD, and I was wondering if I'm not putting enough effort into any of my video work, professional or personal.
Or maybe, I need to be focusing more on the video work over other hobbies because I'm rusty. I just don't know.
Well, I'm still trying for my 4 contests in 4 weeks, and here's number 2:


I don't think there is any audience voting, so o e-mails to friends about this on. It's a trailer for the upcoming movie Australia, the contest supplies the footage and some audio and then you cut on your own. My main complaint with the footage was that it was pre-edited for other purposes, which made re-pacing it a pain. Oh well, I could still win a trip to Australia or NYC. A free trip to NYC is less exciting though.

Finally, here is possibly the funniest thing I've seen this year. If anyone has an idea close to this funny, let me know and I'll do whatever it takes to make it into a movie.

Happy Halloween

Lots to do, but I thought I'd throw up a clip from my son's Halloween parade at preschool this morning. He's standing with his best friend, I think that they coordinated their costumes. They both picked them on their own and the costumes are a little out of character for both of them.

AMC video contest

So, AMC is having a video contest where they're asking for a 1 minute video illustrating your greatest fear. I pulled together some old footage and got a submission in, it can be found here. Go watch my video, vote for it, if you want to you can register and leave a comment. You can watch the other videos too, but I'm mostly concerned about mine.
So week 1 and I entered a video contest, a little cheating because I didn't have to shoot new footage, but I think it still counts towards my 4 contests in 4 weeks.
Well, tomorrow is Halloween, so I should have video and pictures up of that soon. Depending on how crazy my weekend is.

happy trick-or-treating.

Halloween Week

So this week is going to be mostly Halloween prep.

Tonight was Pumpkin carving. I carved an Optimus Prime for my son and a Megatron for myself, as my son gets to pick what goes on the pumpkins. So this years theme is Transformers. The carving was interesting, because my son lost interest when we got to the pumpkin gut scooping, a little too messy for him. And his excitement about watching someone else carve a pumpkin was understandably low, and since he's three he's not allowed much unsupervised knife use nor is he ready to carve a transformer face into a pumpkin. So there was some friction over him not wanting to be a part of the family pumpkin carving. In the end a Halloween episode of Go, Diego, Go! that could be watched from the carving table solved most of the problems.
So now we have to get ready for Friday, which is his day to bring snack to pre-school, and then perhaps three rounds of trick-or-treating. There will be piles of candy by the time we're done, but not for snack at pre-school, they sent home a note asking us not to send in candy for the class.

On a side note, my goal is to enter 1 web video contest a week for the next 4 weeks. Updates here as a meet or miss that goal.

So little free time

So I think my next free weekend at home is in December. Not that I don't have some fun activities planned, but I'm also itching to get started on some video ideas I have, and sooner rather than later is better.

On the plus side my weekends include things like:

Pumpkin shopping at Iron Kettle Farm:

and an another trip to Chuck E. Cheese:

On an unrelated note, I've begun plans to overhaul my home theater and I've found a television I really would like to get. But it's a bit out of my price range (I think it was a 45" LCD) and I'm not sure if it only looked as good as it did because of the demo reel the store was playing on it. Oh well. More thinking is required I guess.

Hopefully my next post will have at least one link to a video contest I've entered.

Family Weekend

So last weekend we went to the zoo in Syracuse and the science center in Ithaca. Pictures and Movies to follow, but I think the camera went to Texas with my wife for her conference.

But I do have more comic pages:

New Project

First I'm going to try a new project, a comic book. I really didn't grow up watching a lot of movies, I grew up more with television and comic books. And since making television shows would require a bit more crew than I have access to I'm going to take a shot at a comic book. My goal is to put three pages a week up here. I'm cheating with the first three and counting the cover as page one.

(click on pictures to see larger/readable versions)

On the second subject, fall brings new network television. There's lots of good shows out there and more than a few guilty pleasures (I'm a fan of the sitcom, almost any sitcom).
The best part of television right now is the amount of science fiction show that are being aired. But it's frustrating at the same time too. Because the only way science fiction works is if you don't violate actual known science. The best show right now is Fringe, very good storytelling and a trust that J.J. Abrams knows how to build an intricate conspiracy without stooping to stupid writers tricks. Like what X-Files devolved into. The show that's frustrating me the most is Heroes, a combination of bad science and lack of trust earned by using some of those stupid writers tricks at the beginning of last season. Plus they also pushed one of my hot button science issues, that humans don't use 100% of their brain. We do use our entire brain by the way. But It's nice to see science fiction taking a place in popular media. And though I still miss Journeyman from last year there's plenty in the middle between Fringe and Heroes to enjoy: Eureka, Knight Rider, Lost and Chuck to name a few.

That's all for now, I'm off to watch some television.

Football Sunday

Got to go to the Giants game on Sunday with my dad and brothers. It was a great game, Giants won in overtime. It was funny, because I will ALWAYS stay for the whole game, and my brothers are much more "leave when the game is out of reach for one team" kind of people. So I was told that if there was more than a 20 point disparity with less then 4 minutes to go, we were leaving. Or rather they were leaving, I was free to stay and walk home. But since there was never more than 4 points between the two scores, we were there until the game winning field goal in overtime. Great day.

I'm having trouble focusing this week. I need to get some specific projects started so that I can give myself some deadlines. One of the things I realized at the football game is that it would be fun to run a camera at sporting events. Maybe I'll look at getting a job with one of the local minor league hockey or baseball teams.

So last week we got a package in the mail, and my wife let our son play with the packing peanuts. He had fun, but picking up was murder:

Brisk Autumn

Summer turns to Fall and I'm reworking what I'm trying to get done.
Looks like I may not be fighting in crown this October, but spring still looks good.

Production: Hoping to get a short film out to festivals by the end of October.
maybe even going to try and get a script worked out too.

Going to try to keep posting here, even if their short.

Finally here's a song my son learned at school, I think it's supposed to be set to "I'm a Little Tea Pot."

Crazy August

August was jam packed, actually September doesn't look much better. But I'm going to try and get back to posting here, as I've gotten no personal production work done since my last post here.
On an SCA note I'm trying to focus on getting ready for crown tournament the first weekend in August. But work is crushing my ability to get to as many practices as I would like to right now. I'm getting about half of the fighting training I want right now. Hopefully I can make a push over the next couple weeks and get at least to point where I'm comfortable.

One of the big events of August was my getting knighted at Pennsic. I don't think I can explain what being knighted, especially at Pennsic, means to me.



Production-wise I'm hoping to get some projects started and be able to update my progress here. But for now I think produced movies with my son are on hold for now. However, I will keep posting home movie style clips, like our recent release of about two dozen salamanders my son caught on Saturday.

And then it was July

As predicted there won't a new Atomic Boy episode until next week. With the holiday and long weekend, I'm still not sure what day of the week it is.
So, July 4th was fun. Got to see family and set off fireworks. Fireworks are fun, the finale was great this year, mostly due to multi-shot packs that fired off what I would call display or professional quality fireworks. Next year should be even better.
So my son has been very energetic and cute this week. Last night in an attempt to get me to stay and snuggle while he fell asleep we had this conversation:
Him: I have a better daddy.
Me: What?
Him: I have a better daddy.
Me: Who's your better daddy?
Him: You, I love you daddy.

Yeah, so he got extra snuggling.

Work stuff has been light this week, I think because I'm not chasing / pushing real hard. We'll see if that results in stuff getting rushed next week or and overall slow down. I'm betting on a rush next week, especially since I'm thinking about 3 SCA practices. Ah, now everybody's excited because it's only an month to Pennsic. Attendance at practices is up and I'd like to take advantage of having different people to fight. Variety is a great teacher.

So not to go without any movie this week, here's a bit of what my son's been doing all this week:

As a note to the closing of the video, my son and I got matching shoes yesterday. And we have this routine we do where I say "I like your shoes" and he says "Thanks, I like your shoes too." And my wife hates that we're using different colored laces in the right and left shoes, but we think it's cool.

Busy Weekend

Very busy last week and through the weekend. First, here's the next episode of Atomic Boy:

So last week was full of deadline production work, which is good. I also had a SCA scroll deadline, which we (my wife and I do scrolls together) almost missed. Fortunately through careful scheduling and lots of left-overs and delivery food we managed to get the scroll done, and delivered on time. Which is very good, scene we've had to push a bit to get scroll assignments and not missing a deadline at this point is important. Also, I requested this scroll, as it's for a local fighter who I am a big fan of.
Saturday was a SCA event, melee practice for war. Overall it went well, but I'm a little concerned that there seems to be a division in the kingdom that people aren't traveling across. But, perhaps that's something that's fixable if I can get my act together and win the Crown Tournament in October.




Sunday was a lot of fun. My parents came down, they actually came down Saturday but I was at the SCA event most of the day. For more on what they did on Saturday see my wife's blog. Sunday we went to a B-Mets game, AA farm team for the Mets. It was Superhero Day and Kids Eat Free Day. The superheroes turned out to be park employees dressed up. It was really funny to watch the Flash and Captain America running camera during the game (special note for me: the B-Mets use basically the same camera I have for their on the field shooting). I think my son really enjoyed the game, chasing superheroes between pitches probably helped. But tonight at dinner he spontaneously commented on the game, "Remember we went to the baseball game with Nana and Papa? That was fun." Maybe we'll try and get another game in this season.

Well this weekend is a holiday and should be slightly more busy, so perhaps I might be another two weeks before more Atomic Boy.

Super Movie Series

Posting problems put me off deadline, so it's not really Monday anymore.
But here is the first of the next series. Hopefully this will get me focused back on production.

It was a good weekend. Got to see the Hulk for Father's Day. We also had and SCA event this weekend. Great fighting and some other interesting drama, but even that may end up turning out for the best. Finally, my wife and I made an award scroll for the event. It's nice to get to do some non-video art. I suspect my wife will post more about the scroll on her blog, but I wanted to post the picture:

There is no charge for Awsomeness . . .

Is there anything better than sitting in a nice cool movie theater on a hot summer afternoon?
I say there is not.
My son and I went to see Kung Fu Panda. The movie was fantastic. It had a great message, which was made even better by the subtlety with which it was delivered. The playfulness of the characters and comic timing of the movie made for a magical combination. It was also nice to see a kids movie where the hero is able to win on his own rather than finish an honorable second behind a friend (Cars, Surfs Up).
Rating: 4 out of 5
On a side note, I sit through the credits to the end of the movie, at every movie I go to. And what's be great is that my son will sit with me and watch the credits (or dance in the case of Speed Racer). Well, we got an unexpected bonus scene at the end of Kung Fu Panda. My son was very excited about this, "We got more movie" was his comment when he realized we were then only two in the theater who stayed for the credits.

Well, that's it for now. Plans are to see Hulk on Sunday and have the next movie series posted by the end of the day Monday.

Summer Movies

Back from a brief trip to Vermont. I went to a science center with my son. There were a TON of kids there, I'm guessing it was a mandated state-wide field trip day. But we managed to move around and get some time at most of the stations. Apparently there is a similar museum about an hour from where we live, which we may try and get to at least once this summer.
Here is a movie of my son playing at the Vermont science center.

So, I'm about ready to start another series of movies with my son. I've got a noir mystery sort of scripted, but I'm going to need some actors besides just my son for it to work. So, maybe I'll collect footage for that and edit / post it later this summer and do a quick series with just him for now. Also, I've been looking at some on-line video contests that could be some fun. But with those I usually need voting help. Get ready for mass e-mails. I was going to start with a Ben & Jerry's Birthday Video contest, but they state in their rules that no one under 18 can appear in the video. And since my idea involves my son, and he's still a bit under 18, I think we'll skip this one.

Movies I've seen recently (over due):
Iron Man: Another addition to good superhero movies being produced. It's not as good as Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, but it is close to the level of the first Sam Rami Spiderman (which get bonus points for re-establishing the superhero movie as a viable franchise.) Iron Man works due to an excellent selection of enemy that works for the non-comic fan (Mandrin would have been a disaster). It also only updates what needs to be changed to work as a current story (IED in Iraq rather than a landmine in Vietnam, for example). The humor and playfulness was fantastic as was the feel that the armored characters were really there not a CGI paste in (see Ang Lee's Hulk). However, I think the movie spent too much time on the build process and not quite enough with villain development. The War Monger seemed to be there just so that there could be a fight at the finale of the movie. On a serious note, movies don't all have to be 2 1/2 hours long for me to feel like I got my money's worth.
rating: 3.5 out of 5

Speed Racer: Okay three things. 1, there was enough racing from my son (good). But, 2: there was too much monkey for both of us. Seriously the three year old was unimpressed with the monkey sidekick. 3: Too much close-ups. I know this is because of pressure to make movies more accessible and enjoyable on smaller screen (phone, ipod, ect) distribution. It's just disappointing to see what I assume is studio pressure effect artistic decisions in film making in a way that detracts from the overall quality of the film. For Speed Racer, there was the potential for a good movie there, the Wachowskis just didn't quite get it to the screen.
rating: 2 out of 5

King of Kong: Documentary about the world record high score on Donkey Kong. I remember making my dad get me past boards on the Atari 2600 version of Donkey Kong so that I could play the later levels. This is a fantastic documentary. There is a wonderful story arc, characters emerge develop and evolve. There are heroes and villains. As someone who as a hobby that falls outside of the normal range of leisure activities, I found a lot to identify with in this movie.
rating: 4.5 out of 5

Finally, on my leisure activites. I'm helping to train an army for Pennsic. For those of you who don't know what the large scale stuff we do looks like. Here's a link to Blackstone Raids, a much smaller event at the end of April. If I remember correctly there were 180 fighters on the field that day, about 80 on one side and 100 on the other. Pennsic will have numbers closer to 400 on a side.

Finally, here's another movie of my son. Doing a sword fighting drill he made up:

Hopefully I'll have a new movie up Monday.

Back to Blogging

A month with no blogging. So, lets update:

SCA. I feel like the Buffalo Bills of AEthelmearc. Crown tournament is every 6 months. If you win you sit as Prince and Princess for 4 months and then as King and Queens for 6 months. Over the last two years, or the last 4 tournaments we've (my wife and I) finished second 3 times. Here are the finals from this year:
Spring 2008 finals
Pennsic is 12 weeks away. Time to focus training on that.

Production. Without the deadline of the puppy movies, I haven't done any work on personal projects. I have been getting work, which is good. But it's time to get back to some personal stuff. So, let's say I'll start another series with my son in June, and get my short film ready for festivals by June.

Movies. We went and saw Iron Man as a family for Mother's Day. And I'd say we all enjoyed the movie. The next few months look like they'll see more of my son and I going to the theater to see movies. So far he's been very good about sitting through the movie with minimal fidgeting. We're seeing Speed Racer on Thursday, I'm hoping for lots of racing scenes. That seems to be what my son is expecting. And with a 2hr and 15min run time, racing and action will be important to keeping him interested. Though Iron Man was almost that long, and Water Horse was too. And he got through those, so I suspect we'll be okay.

Well, I'll try and get back in the habit of posting again.

Double Movie ( Driving my Puppy )

First, previous episodes of Puppy Rescue:
episode 1
episode 2
episode 3

Now the next (last) chapter of Puppy Rescue.

Next week I'll start another series of movies with my son in them. So, if you have an idea for what we should do next, or even just a genre to suggest, you've got until Thursday to influence the next series.

Things are crazy here, so I'll try and post tomorrow about everything that's going on. But at th etop of the excitment list is my son's new electric car. I'll talk more about getting it later, or link to my wife's blog if she beats me to it. But for now, here's a movie of him driving. I used our digital camera to take it. I really like the way it has an old 8mm feel to it, especially how the lens flare gives it the look of scratched film.

More later . . .

Travel and Plague

Behind on blogging, and personal projects due to spending a weekend traveling and then bringing back a sick family. Not me though, just everyone else. As a result production was delaying again on the Puppy movies, cast was sick and crew was busy taking care of them.

Trip was great. Got to see a ton of people that I usually only get to see once a year, so it is always a treat to get in an extra visit.

Off topic: I found out today that MMA is not legal in New York. I find that somewhat disappointing, because I think the sport is a money train and that local events, promotion and associate TV could be lucrative.

Movies I've seen since I posted last: Kung Phooey! , I Robot, Rize, Invincible.

Kung Phooey! Was pretty funny, but I was warned that the dubbed version is no good, so stick with the subtitles on this one. If you enjoy classic Hong Kong cinema I think you'll also enjoy this movie, I well put together satire that doesn't stoop to parody. 3 out of 5.

I Robot. Good movie. A little predictable for the most part, but a very unexpected reveal at the end. However, it falls kind of short of the Isaac Asimov stories that it is based on. I'm not complaining about character or plot changes, but a loss of the central theme and message of the material. 2.5 out of 5.

Rize. Documentary about Krumpping. (spelling question: 1 or 2 p's in that word?) Krump is a style of dance, let's say urban or originating in the African American neighborhoods of LA and Oakland. However I would say the style has gone mainstream, as it was one of the styles on FOX's So You Think You Can Dance last season. The documentary was very well put together and featured profiles of people who live in a very dangerous place and choose it put their passion into dance rather than violence. The story was very powerful in a chicken soup for the soul with a edge of depressing realism sort of way. There was one sequence that I was somewhat unhappy with where a visual comparison was drawn between Krump and primitive African dance. With no context for the comparison I felt it was a bit too risky to leave it so open to the audience to interpret what the film was trying to say. But, still 4 out of 5.

Invincible. The standard fell good, based on a true story, sports movie. It was put together well, but other than the a-list cast, it wasn't anything that rose above movie of the week. It was entertaining and while I could get in the effort that was put into making the film stock match the look of movies from the 70's, and the energy of the football scenes, I think that if the ensemble cast was paired down and we were given a little more about the hardships the city of Philadelphia was going through. I'll say 2 out of 5.

Okay. Final chapter of the Puppy Movies should post Monday. But I'll post before then, I think I have a funny story, for later.

Making Movies, Puppy 3

Okay, I'm putting the "done" stamp on the third instalment of the Puppy Rescue series.

Wow, I'm really not a visual effects guy or a sound guy, though I will try and fake it if necessary. But what this project, and the infomercial shoot, have thought me is that I work better when I have a focused plan for a shoot. The infomercial turned out okay after edit and the client is very happy, but the shoot could have been done smoother and more efficiently.
Finally got to an SCA practice tonight. It's been just over two weeks. I'm way off pace for my training, at this point I guess I'll have to buckle down next month and see how Crown Tournament goes. We will see.
I used to have three hobbies: SCA, video production (unpaid), and D&D. Over the last 6 months, I'm down to the SCA. On the plus side, paying video production has replaced hobby video production. I think my wife would like it if we could get back to some D&D, but my drive in that area is low and there aren't many opportunities to pursue it around here. And I guess I can always get back to my own production projects when the paying video work slows down. If it doesn't slow down, then I suppose I'm doing alright with just the paying work.
Movies I watched last week:
Fantastic 4: Rise of the Sliver Surfer. Tough to review, as I slept through the middle. Not a reflection on the movie, I was REALLY tired. From what I saw it looked better than the first Fantastic 4, which I did enjoy. Overall I think it's most likely a 2 or 3 out of 5, depending on what happened while I was asleep.
Horton Hears a Who. My son and I saw this on in the theater. He was very excited about the previews for upcoming movies (Kung-Fu Panda, Wall-e, Ice Age 3, and Speed Racer). Horton was a very good movie. It did an excellent job of staying true to the Dr. Seuss style and the type of message that he tried to convey with his stories. In some ways it was an improvement of the story, as the characters had more personality and depth. With the playfulness of the story and some excellent voice actors I would definitely recommend this certainly adaptation as a movie worth seeing. My son stayed awake for the whole movie, which was not a lock as he was a little sick and nap usually starts about half way though the movie's run time; and he's talked about the movie several times in the days since. So my best guess is that he enjoyed it as well.
So, I'm thinking 3 out of 5 for adults and 4 out of 5 for children.

So Tired

Blog is suffering from being at the bottom of the do to list. If you're waiting for episode three of the Puppy Rescue, it should be up Monday, as I am actually home all weekend with no jobs or events planned. Well, we are going to an egg hunt on Sunday and maybe a museum on Saturday, but with the evenings free I should be able to finish the editing.
Also, I could deal with some project that aren't rush last-minute jobs. Infomercial shoot on Sunday that had to be delivered by this morning (Thursday) and then prep on year two of a documentary jumped up out of nowhere. On the plus side, the infomercial was good money. And after the shooting of the event for the documentary I may actually have enough footage to cut together an interesting feature. But for now, I'd like to sleep for a while.
Oh, my son has no school tomorrow, so I think we're going to a movie.

Hopefully I'll be back Monday with the next Puppy Rescue movie ready to post.

Audio Fix

I went back a watched the second episode of the puppy movie and I realized that it is missing dialogue for the villain. This was due to an odd stereo to mono audio compression problem that ended up taking me WAY too long to figure out how to fix. But I have fixed it and am reposting the movie with the audio it was intended to have.

Sorry, but the next episode will be a week behind, since I've obviously missed the Monday deadline.

In the meantime, my son's birthday party went really well. I was very nervous about the size of the party (12 children under 6, 20 adults). But the whole event went very smoothly, I think in part because we let my son open his presents as people arrived. It prevented the forced group activities that make everyone crowd into one room and gave the children exciting new toys to play with. My family stuck around for the weekend, which as nice. Full family get togethers are always fun, though somewhat sparse at this point. Though I had to cut out a little early on Sunday due to daylight savings time and a regional SCA practice. Overall, good weekend.

This week, I've seen three movies. First I watched Magnolia, which I apparently didn't get. I was really disappointed by this movie. It felt like it stumbled forward under the weight story with no plot and a lack of connection between the characters. I could even find a theme that tied the stories together beyond a mundane 6 degrees of separation. In the end I felt that it accomplished what the TV show Seinfeld wanted to be, a story about nothing. I know that I'm probability in the minority on my view of this movie, but I'd give it a 2 out of 5.

The second movie I watched was 3:10 to Yuma. Now I'll start by stating that this is a remake and I have not seen the original. That being said, I really enjoyed this movie. It accomplishes a truly epic feel without large gaps in the movement of the story. The characters are rich and the photography beautiful. The actions and consequences of the characters make sense and the action moves well with a very realistic feel to the events that transpire along the journey. Even the end, which I felt a little odd about at first, brings both of the characters to an understanding of how their journey has brought them to a moment of redemption without forcing the audience to endue a heavy handed moment explaining the moral of the story. I'd definitely recommend this movie, 4 out of 5.

Finally, I just watched Beowulf. The story was good, but really they only get partial credit for that. Though I'm not surprised with the involvement of Neil Gaiman. He is one of my favorite authors and had always impressed me with his understanding of mythology and ancient cultures that I'm interested in. Now on to what I think is the main creative challenge of the movie, it's attempt at photo realistic computer animation. The advantage of animation is that it allows for complete control of the visual environment. And Beowulf uses this to it's full effect; in the gore of fight scenes, illustration and powers of the monsters and the vividness of the medieval norse world. The down side is that I felt like I was watching one long cut scene from a video game. Computer animation has come a long way, but the photo realistic aspect still falls a little short. Bare skin in full light looks fake, there isn't full articulation in the facial expressions of the characters, and in the end it doesn't live up to what I consider the test of great photography in a movie. Could you take any frame of film and turn it into a still that would be presentable as a picture. I think the master of this aspect of film making was Conrad Hall. But, rather than getting side tracked with praise of the late Mr. Hall, I close with: If you control EVERY aspect of what we see because you've literally created the whole world, then every moment of that movie should be as close to perfection as your medium permits. And if this movie is as close as photo realistic computer animation can get right now, then I find it to be a little short of where it needs to be to be on an par with live action or even hand drawn animation. Still, good movie, 3 out of 5.

Birthday

Well, my son had his birthday, so now he's 3. It was a nice night home with the family, which will be contrasted by his party this weekend. The party is going to be a little larger than I was planning, but I'm sure we'll manage. Just a lot of prep and cleaning left to be done that's got me worried.
Someone asked me recently if I missed my son being a baby, and I said no. Because I don't, I really enjoy the level of interaction we have now and what he's capable of doing. But, him turning three makes me more aware of how fast time moves and makes me look back at what I've been doing for the past couple of years. It's been almost as long as I spend in college and I wonder if I'm pushing to more forward as much as I could, rather than settling into a rut. Because I don't think Ive made enough progress to find a rut yet.

Now, on a lighter note, here's an outtake from the last episode of the Puppy movies:

More Puppy Movie

Okay, I'm getting this one in under the wire. But I am getting the second instalment of the Puppy movies up on Monday. It's been a crazy weekend and start to the week. But it helps me to pretend that I actually have an audience out there somewhere that is watching these movies. It keeps me from completely blowing off my deadlines. The question is, am I going to get another episode up next Monday with one of the craziest weekends of my year coming up. But perhaps I can turn it into an opportunity to get some interesting footage for next week. We will see.
Well, now for this weeks episode:

Still Winter, Thanks

We had a nice snow yesterday that resulted in work getting canceled and also has me thinking of skipping SCA practice this week (long drive + dicey roads). But it did given me a chance to get ahead on some production work, play in the snow and watch a movie.
We also spent about a hour playing the snow as a family; made a snowman and went sledding in the back yard.
I guess February is going to have a relaxing end. And then it's on to serious work and training as March comes in like a lion.

The movie we watched was Crash. Overall it was a good movie and would be an interesting conversation piece. But I think as a whole the movie tried too hard to connect too many people and ended up feeling a little artificial as a result. I am big fan of events drawing diverse characters together, like Thirteen Conversations About One Thing or 11:14 or even Traffic. But in this case there was no event to link the the characters, as in Conversations or 11:14, but more of a theme like Traffic. Both Crash and Traffic have serious social themes, racism and drug abuse respectively, but while Traffic wove a tapistry of characters together into one story whose themes were expressed through use of lighting and color, Crash felt like it had scenes more set up to talk to the audience then to create a narrative, and used conicendience to force the viewer to look at themselves rather than organically reaching a new understanding, which I think would have been more powerful.
End result: enjoyable, important, but could have been better and done more.
3 of 5 stars.

Puppy Movie

I finished a short movie, about 1 minute, that I shot with my son last Thursday. I was going to edit it over the weekend, but ended up spending my free time at a martial arts festival. The festival was great, I got to do some animal Kung-Fu and then some other stuff on movement and power generation that I hope to be able to bring over to my SCA fighting.
So I spent about half of today cutting it together the 1 minute movie. It was nice, but it also got me thinking about film making. I think that my main stumbling block is the collaborative nature of making a movie. I'd like to do some more movies with my son, perhaps a short series. And while I can write a script, direct and run the camera I would need more actors. I'd thought I was on to something when I found a local list-serve for amateur film makers but after a week there are three members, not very encouraging.
So, I think that at this point I'm going to give myself the goals of generating footage for very short movies with my son on Thursdays and having it cut together by Monday. Of course I'm also about to start gearing up for crown tournament in May, so that means more rigorous training, exercise and focus on SCA.
Anyway, for now here's the movie:

Big Shot

Okay, I'm way behind on personal projects because of paying clients and the SCA. Paying clients are good and I have some short turn around stuff that has to get done, but hopefully I'll be able get Drake to cooperate with me so I can get some footage of him for a 30 second movie I want to do. Post that Friday if I can get it done.

As for what I have been working on, here's something odd. The guy who owns the event company where I get most of my freelance work right now wants to be on this show called Big Shot Live. So he had me put together a video for him so he could enter. I've tried linking to the video: here, but the site is horrible and the link seems to dump you on a front page where you put in your zip code so it can direct you to your local station hosting the contest. Then it sometimes goes to his video and sometimes dumps you somewhere else. So if your on the wrong video you may have to click over to the TV Host section and find the KMotsko video. Then you have to register before you can vote. Overall, a lot of work to ask of people when I'm not really getting anything out of it.

For the videos, there seem to be two types; the most pathetic and desperate people I've ever seen and people who are already professionals in their field are looking for a break to get into the big time.

But if you're really interested in seeing the kind of stuff I'm getting do to right now (when it's not a wedding, birthday party or school play) here you go:

You can't make me learn the alphabet!!

Okay, I was going to try and make a short movie with my son today, but he ended up spending more time at the library and shopping for valentine's day gifts than I had anticipated. So, perhaps we'll do the movie over the weekend and I can post it Monday.

On another note, the boy doesn't know his alphabet yet. And at this point I'm starting to think that he's actively refusing to learn it. Nine months ago when he knew EVERY car from the Cars movie and most of the Thomas the Train trains, I thought well it's because they're exciting and he's been exposed to them for a while. Then it was christmas and he got some of the Ultimate Marvel guide books, and within a week he had learned 20 new Avengers and X-Men (who he can identify in color and black & white). So I thought maybe if I paired the Superheroes with letters then they would be exciting and he would start to learn them through association. That project has stalled out, because I stole images to make it and now I need to find a place that will ignore copyright to print the book for me. Yes, I could just draw the superheroes myself, but at the pace I'm working now, I would finish the book until my son was in high school, and that's really a little to late to be working on the alphabet.

But the thing that's really gotten me recently is that he's gotten in to Transformers (since the Superbowl) and has learned about 20 Transformers. And he's been watching the Star Wars movies with his mom and has about a dozen characters from those movies.
How is this different from the superheroes? Well, first he will learn songs (for Spiderman, Batman, the Transformers, Row Your Boat, Twinkle Little Star, Lollipops) as long as it's not the alphabet song. That seemed a little odd to me. But the final straw was the droids from Star Wars. Their names are just letters and numbers. Well, my son will combine them into words, like "Free-PP-O" (C3PO) which makes him sound like he's protesting the unjust imprisonment of Protocol Droids.

Playing the Fool Trailer

Here's the trailer for the short film "Playing the Fool" that I'm working on. I know this isn't a new project, but it is a new trailer, and I think the project is just about done. The audio needs a little work, mostly in sync and I'm going to need a score, but I think that the pace and edit are pretty much done.
If anyone wants to see the film as it is right now, I'd be happy to send you a copy as I am looking for input before I start sending this out to festivals.

The more things change . . .

So, I've been away from the computer for about a week. This has resulted in my being way behind on my self imposed deadlines for personal projects. At this point to meet the first deadline I'm going to have to neglect a work project with a looser time table.I'm not sure, but I think I'm going with the personal project on this one. Work is good, but since it's about three steps away from what I really want to be doing, I think I'm going to need to keep pushing the personal projects. At least until what I've got has succeeded or failed.

That gives me 1 short film, 1 documentary that could be feature length and 2 scripts.

If I can meet my deadline on "Playing the Fool" then I'll try and get a trailer cut together too, so that I have something to post.

Lots of video work this weekend and lots of SCA next week, so it may be about another week before I post again.

On another note:

Superbowl = Incredible

Also, we're going to push the Cars theme through my son's birthday party, but Superheroes and Transformers are now his dominate intrests. Superheroes for books and pretend play and Transformers for toys (thank his uncle for this one). Not that he's not still excited about Cars or abandoned the toys, but what he talks about "needing" is more Transformers. And at the toy store, he'd rather pick through the Transformers than visit the Cars aisle. Well, on the bright side, I should be able to pick up a large crate of my old Transformer toys from my parents' house (the same uncle has donated his old ones to the cause as well). And if I ration them out, I should be able to give my son a "new" Transformer every week for about a year and a half.

Drake's Cars

I found some tapes of my son playing from back in November. He loves the movie Cars, not as much now as he did in November. Cars are being trumped by superheroes (see batmite post).

But he still has ALOT of Cars toys, that he plays with quite often. I felt like I needed to do something creative and quick, so I cut the footage of him together to get a three and a half minute highlight real of the movie. Enjoy.
(Note: You really need sound to get the full effect of this clip.)

SCA Combat

Over the weekend I took a trip to a huge SCA tournament Birka. I ended up fighting for the better part of 4 hours. It was a very surreal experience to walk into a tournament with about 150 fighters and really not know any of them, in fighting style or experience. The fighting was run continuously with the fighter feeding into 10 pits. Then after the fighting I had to leave to get back home almost immediately, so I had no idea of where I was in the standings at the end of the day.

Here's a picture from what I think is about mid-day, notice the sweat soaking through and darkening my tunic (I'm the one in Green).

So today I fond the tournament results posted on-line. And it turns out I finished 9th, which I happy with. (Actually ranked 8, because they didn't do ties right)

magnus Tindal

Wins 75
Losses 49
Double Kills 3
Total Fights 127
% of Fights Won 59.1
Rank 9

But at the same time it makes me wonder if I the drive and time I've dedicated to the SCA serve me better if directed to say, my film making. I looked at me schedule over then next few months and see it divided pretty equally between work and SCA. Is that too much hobby?

However, the SCA does keep me motivated to keep physically fit and mentally healthy. I get fairly lackluster and depressed if I go for more than about a week and a half without fighting.

Anyway, I'm going to try and get back to my project goals and accomplish something this week.

Projects

I'm having trouble getting to work on my personal side projects, and I think it's because I don't have a deadline. So I end up doing contract work that has to get done and then relaxing, housework or something else instead of working on some editing or a script.
So I'm going to set some goals for next month:
By Feb. 11 - have polished cut of short film (Playing the Fool)
by Feb 29 - have rough script for feature (Last Season)
Maybe the blog will help keep me on track too.

On another note, it looks like I'm going to be involved in the production of a local television show again. A televised Karaoke contest, but this time instead of being a Camera Operator and Editor, I'm going to be the Director and Show Runner. I'm not sure I want to let go of the hands-on creative control I had last time, but it will give me more time to continue work on other productions I'm overseeing. Overall, I think it's for the best.

Finally, here's another picture of my son combined with a picture he painted at preschool.

Superbowl

Okay it's overtime in the NFC title game and with that Giants' interception, I'm guessing that this pic from this morning may have been more prophetic than intented.

Yup, we finally get the Manning vs Brady Superbowl. I think the story (and game) would have been better with Farve and the Packers, but this is still going to be an interesting rematch from the last week of the regular season.
Should make watching the game in NYC with my brothers interesting.

Go Giants!

Bat Mite

So like magic as the year has flipped over, my son has turned from a toddler into a little boy.

I appearance, attitude, communication and imagination. The following is a video from a few nights ago, he has become quite obsessed with superheroes.

Starting Again

Okay, I'm going to try and start my blog again.

I plan to post pictures of my son, video (home movies and projects), perhaps talk about movies I've seen and any particularly exciting projects I'm working on.

I'll start with a picture I took of my son yesterday combined with a painting that he did yesterday as well.