Adventures Of Atom Smith

The Internet just hunkles me some days. You see it there, a fine series of tubes, and then kersplow! All orderly and comprehensible, except that some parts of it defy common sense. So, I only actually have like two or three readers. Despite this, one of my posts has now generated comments from seven different people. I feel very slightly famous.

Neither of you probably remember this post:

http://www.forkforge.org/forkblog/?p=28

From back when I had talked to some production company in New York that wanted me to pay them to produce a pilot for a cooking program. They didn’t really have much interest in who I was or what i would actually do in the pilot. Consequently, I decided that they seemed slightly shady and blogged about it and considered the matter pretty much settled. I imagine that if I had spent all my money on making the pilot, it actually would have gotten made. I just wouldn’t have been able to sell it. They seemed a bit shady, but probably not stupid enough to do anything overtly illegal. (Like just stealing the money.) So, I didn’t feel any need to warn people about them or anything. I was just blogging about what had happened to me, like any self important public diarist might. But it’s the post that just won’t die. I just got another comment on it. I only have 18 actual comments in the whole history of my blog.

This is just about enough to convince me that I should use me incredibly crappy second hand webcam to shoot myself cooking dinner for a few nights, just so I can say I’ve done a cooking show and hope to get that post behind me. Of course, if I distribute a show about me cooking dinner, it’ll no longer be my private secret that I cook in my underpants…

I just find it weird that there is like a whole little community that considers that post important enough to comment on. They just hang out in that one ought-to-be-forgotten little spot on the Internet. It is a community that doesn’t even exist anywhere else.

Come one, come all to the Clean Comedy Contest. Seriously, everybody should come because part of my competition score comes from audience response, and I want to stack the deck as much as possible. Also, don’t laugh at anybody but me.

http://danmcgowan.com/CleanContest.html

5665 Olde Wadsworth, Arvada, CO. Show starts promptly at 7:00 pm. Well, maybe promptly. I don’t control these things.
Wednesday, the Festival Playhouse in Arvada. FREE! I’m up against Matt Baca, and I’ve seen some of his work before. He’ll probably kick my ass.

Also, I corresponded with the guys at thestream.tv — they used my cheesy animated open for the Weakly News, and I asked if they wanted me to do any other pieces, so they have asked me to do a couple of other little animated pieces that they can use.

Perseids are tonight. I’ll be in the middle of nowhere.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/08/09/12-things-you-need-to-watch-the-perseid-meteors-sunday-night/

I’ll be in the middle of nowhere so that I can be someplace dark enough to see magnitude seven stars. I looked this shit up on a night time illumination map, so it must be true. Peak is around midnight, so I’ll head out around 11:30 and stay there for a long time.

I moved my desk and and dresser into my new place today with my Dad’s house. He also scored me a kitchen table, so I finally have a place to eat. This suits me, as I like to eat.

Last week, I was brushing up on some titling and compositing in preparation for the 48 hour film festival in case I needed to do any of it. As it happens, I didn’t. But, I was watching some clips of the Weakly News at http://www.thestream.tv/ because it has Iliza, and I’m a fan of her. Anyhow, I made an animated version of the Weakly News show open because they use a still frame, and it was somehow more logically simple to be doing titling and time killing at once if they were somehow related. I made this: http://forkforge.org/files/weakly.mov

I hadn’t really intended anything to come of it, but I emailed it to the folks at thestream.tv, and they are going to use it to open the show tonight. I find this amusing. I may donate some other title sequences to the mini network so I can use it for bragging rights while looking for work. (“My work is on seven weekly programs… (that nobody watches…)”)

I got to see the student short I was in most recently. We shot it two weekends ago. I turned out decent. It’s first year student level work, but it was dramatically less terrible than most of the other things made by the class. Hint to the competition: the stage where they do the plays is not necessarily a good place to shoot your scene. Especially if you clearly have no idea how to use the lights.

The 48 hour film project never happened.

Well, time to watch the Weakly News…

We made a Western Musical.

My Shake Fu is strong. I have done tests keying green screens. I have done tests with blue screens. Like the karate kid waxing Miyagi’s car, I have done mask premultiplication on – mask premultiplication off. I have prepared node graphs for color correcting. I have tracked and I have corner pinned and I have rotoscoped. I have done all that I can do, really. And, it may all be for naught.

The 48 hour film project starts tonight. We will draw our genre and elements at 7:00 pm. Until then, I have no idea what kind of movie I’m working on, or what kind of character I’ll be playing, or if we’ll have any effects work, or what sort of effects I’ll need to do. So, I’m idle. It’s annoying. We are going to meet tonight by teleconference rather than in person to discuss, which means we won’t have any chance to shoot anything tonight.

The guys came today to take away the extra furniture in my apartment today. I can finish moving in next week. I need to do laundry.