New TV

My new television showed up on Friday. Of course working 33 hours over the weekend resulted in little time to enjoy it. But yesterday my son and I spent a little time relaxing on the couch and watching the new television. It's great, like being at a movie theater. Now I just need to finish hooking up the speakers and I'll be set.
I started training for crown, and discovered I'm much farther from in fighting shape that I though I was. I went to a large tournament in New Hampshire a few weeks ago and my endurance was okay, but I'm not sure I was doing as well as I need to against the top level of fighters. And that's who (in theory) I'll need to beat to win crown. Well, there's an event at the end of March in New Jersey that I think I will use as my next benchmark.
On a work note, I may have a line on a job running camera for a local minor league baseball team over the summer, but I'm not sure how that will work with my SCA plans. Winning crown comes with certain implied responsibilities, one of which is activity level. More production work is more money, which is good, but with a new baby scheduling may be difficult, after my wife's maternity leave is over that is. And I'd really like to get into running camera for sports teams, but baseball games are all the time and I think it's the weekday afternoon games that will end up giving me problems. I wonder if they have a cameraman rotation, or if they expect you for every game. I guess I'll try and get the job and then find out.
I'm sure everything will work out, I guess I just want too many things and I'm not really willing to choose which one to give up on. It's very disressing, like trying to walk around with 3-D glasses on.

Busy, busy, busy

Last week was very busy and the next two look to be just as packed. But I did get a mostly relaxing weekend at home, which I won't see again until the middle of February. Work last week was a rush job putting together a video to run during an inauguration party (up on my YouTube account), getting the score together for my short film, getting ready for the official presentation for the launch of the STAP media campaign, and helping a friend get a demo reel together so he can try and get a job at a local television station.
On the SCA side, I went to two practices last week. A bit closer to what I'll need to be doing for crown training, just different practices (need more challenging opponents). BIG tournament this Saturday, that will be a good measure of where I'm at training-wise.
Finally, we started the longest craft project ever. Okay a small exaggeration, the project was to excavate a plastic Brachiosaurus skeleton from a "plaster block" using a plastic knife-hammer and a small paintbrush. The "plaster block" could be better described as a brick. And the "tools" you were supplied with would be great if you were proceeding at a paleontological pace (SLOW) but if you were an actual child then the "tools" were mostly inadequate. After about 6 hours of work time, spread over 2 days, produced the pieces of the skeleton and a brick sized pile of dust spread over WAY too big an area. But we do now have a completed Brachisaurus skeleton and know that next time we should just buy the loose pieces to assemble, as that's what my son really wanted to do anyway. Here's a little video of the start and end of the project.

Where did the week go?

Okay, I've been meaning to post about stuff all week. And I haven't even had time to put the pictures and video on my computer. So, I'll talk about work instead. I've just finished a video project for the Southern Tier AIDS Program's 25th anniversary media campaign. It's basically interviews that they're going to incorporate into their new web site for fund raising purposes. I've uploaded most of them to my youtube account as a playlist. Here's one I think turned out fairly well:


Well, it looks like the next moth is going to be fairly work heavy. But my hope is to get a short film done by the end of February. I am getting the score done for "Playing the Fool" next week, then that goes out to festivals. And I need to get a feature script done enough that I can get help with it from an editor.

Oh, well. At this point I just want direct a feature. Nothing epic, just something that runs about 90 minutes. I've got about 2/3 of a script for one done and an idea for another that I just have no idea how to start writing. The video contests (back in November) got me moving back in this direction. So let's say the goals are short film 1 is done and out to festivals by February 16. Second short film done by April 15. Feature at least in pre-production my May 2010.

That is if I don't get this job and move to Australia for 6 months.