Holy Boners

Brooklyn, New York

Greetings friends,

It’s been 3 months since I started these updates, and I’m ready to expand the audience a bit. For those of you who are connecting to the updates for the first time – welcome! Please read the rules. We are still in the monoblog phase, which means it’s about me talking to you. As DOG gets closer to being done we’ll be transitioning to a more traditional blog format where everyone can contribute.

Why document this process? It’s good for goosing my morale and motivation for starters. This could also become a resource for the rest of the nutcases out there who aspire to make movies.

It’s almost a cliche to say that the means of (media) production is becoming more available to the average joe and a bit of a lie as well. You’ve got to be a first world upper middle class joe to even think about it. The entire world pays a big price for first world toys since ubiquitous computers and digital cams require copper and gold mining, oil for plastics, all that packing styrofoam – the mind boggles.

My strategy for redeeming these inherent digital sins is to use my gear to educate and enlighten first world humans – a tall order even for a supra genius such as myself.

Let’s face it, first worlders are pretty darn confused. Just one example is the widespread acceptance of the term “consumer”. That’s basically a plutocratic euphemism for slave. Ask an actual person what they do for a living and they’ll answer in terms of production – fix cars, heal people, cook food, build knowledge, make movies. To take without giving is no fun, who want’s that? Only the people on TV. Accepting a consumer identity enables the wholesale translation of the natural world into junk and toxic waste, paraphrasing Alan Watts. Somehow that’s got to stop.

Making movies is one way of waking people up. Art can inspire. So can mistakes.

I think mistakes are great. That’s why I made so many of them on this project. Without mistakes we’d all just remember that we’re GOD (or DOG) and then – game over dude! Back to eternity and total boredom. Mistakes are the grease of the mortal machine. What I am trying to say here is that mistakes are what I’ve got in spades and they are the basis for most everything I don’t suck at. If I can share my mistakes, other artists can have a good laugh and think of better mistakes to make, more ambitious ones.

At some point this update monoblog thing will be available to the general public, a great mistake for everyone to share. It might even be a revenue stream. A marketing scheme. A happening scene. My transcendental meme.

The rotoscoping saga is not over yet! I’ve been working with Pete O’Connell’s Advanced Rotoscoping Techniques for After Effects. Did someone say Pirate Bay? Stand by for late breaking news on this and other stories.

Brooklyn, New York

It’s been a little over a month since my last update. After returning from Wyoming and setting up at the Artist house on Crystal Lake, I cranked out a solid week of roto work, focusing on – yep – replacing the water in Christina’s cabin. For those of you just joining this scintillating series of posts, that’s the scene I’ve been working on for lo these past couple of months. Of course, much of the early effort involved not only doing the work but figuring out how to do it. My After Effects chops are coming along nicely, thank you.

I’d say I’m a little more than 1/4 of the way through this scene, 7 of the 13 shots facing the cabin window are complete and of the 6 remaining only 4 are challenging. I’ve yet to fully analyze the shots looking into the red hall but only about half of those require serious intervention.

The next week was dedicated to the cruise ship. Here’s the background – DOG takes place after a series of apocalyptic events – climate crisis, militarized plagues, earthquakes, atomic war, alien invasions, divine retribution… you name it. I want to communicate all this in the first 90 seconds with a montage of “still life” scenes. It’s kinda pretty what with nature reclaiming the land and all – not so many mountains of bleached bones. I cut an earlier version using found footage from crumbling factories, broken train tracks, abandoned highways… Upon testing with various audiences i got the impression that these shots just weren’t hitting the mark. The post apocalyptic earth can be bucolic but there needs to be a dash of the sublime, of the epic. It’s got to feel like shit happened. And of course, it’s got to be fun!

I was somewhat inspired by my friend Kai. Some years back a cruise ship almost ran him over on his solo sail from Cal to Hawaii – coming within 90 yards before the crew finally responded to his radio calls. Not to mention that cruise ships are the epitome of toxic consumer culture. I figured a wrecked one would be appropriate for DOG.

Enter the exciting world of special effects and talented nephews! Jonathan had been working with Blender, an open source 3D modeling application for a couple of years. In April of 2007 I asked him to build a cruise ship for me. The basic model was completed over a year ago but it wasn’t until last week I started work on painting the rusty texture map. After spending some time refining the model so the texture could be applied without distortion, we tested the model on various backgrounds including some that I’d shot on North Manitou island – part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan.

The original cruise ship circa 04-07, modeled in Blender by Jonathan Kelly

Though the results were encouraging, I lusted for something more juicy. The two shots preceding the cruise ship feature scattered bricks and water prominently, implying new beachfront courtesy of rising oceans. The cruise ship scene has to relate to these brick shots. The spectacular North Manitou beach scenes were not quite on, I thought perhaps because the color palettes were so different or the light. Something.

The cruise ship with partial texture applied, on the Hudson river near Kingston, New York. 09-21-08. This is a really spooky
scene in motion, the fog and the draping foliage suggest a swampy bayou. Unfortunately it’s not bright enough to match the
light on the bricks. Cool though.

Again partial texture only. This is one of the North Manitou backgrounds with the ruined dock of Crescent City in the
foreground. This shot is still a contender if the rusty ship could go a little more towards the brick palette. 09-21-08

Here are the bricks that the cruise ship needs to match. This opening shot is lovely with a stream cascading over the bricks
which are more saturated and richer in color than can be shown on the web. It also a little ambiguous, sparkling water,
bricks, an old tire… what’s this all about?

Pulling back a bit – it’s a beach made of bricks! kinda odd, right? In motion the waves lap gently, the water sparkles.
What comes next has to have some of that brick palette, water, lots of sun… read on.

This week ended with my flying out to Arizona to hit the third phase of my Swim Across America Tour – (1) Lake Michigan and Crystal in Michigan not to mention the Betsie River, (2) Fremont Lake in Pinedale, Wyoming and (3) Utah’s San Juan River. I was invited to do the San Juan by my brother and his wife, but I’ve got to hand it to Jeff Gibbs for making sure I didn’t piss away all that jet fuel for nothing. I waffled on whether I should really drag my camera along and maybe drop it in the water, but he got my mind right. Thank DOG, drifting down a river for 5 days with nothing to do but listen to my cranky brother and bossy sister in law, fagk!

Anyway, I digress. I returned from the trip with lots of shots, and 2 or 3 that might actually work for the cruise ship.

Now for some crazy DOG magic! Last night I went to dinner with Kai’s brother Dirk. He had just returned from a family outing on a cruise ship and (get ready) the ship that they were on was likely the one that almost offed his brother. Clearly this is a sign.

So now I am back in the Brooklyn digs and will be alternating between the roto and the opening montage just to keep it all fresh. More next week.

Here’s a series of random shots on the San Juan. It’s shouting bricks!

Finally, here’s Jonathan (not my nephew) and Alan of the York clan with my brother Mike (middle) on the mothership.
Ok, he wasn’t cranky the *whole* time