Hell Patch / Prosperous Times

Things have been busy. No particular order.

Yesterday, I picked up my First/Definitely-Not-Last feverdreaming shirt designed by the (seemingly) effortlessly talented Laurence Laufer.

click here to see detail

Now I finally have something gamey to wear for this month's Pulsewave show. I'm always reluctant to buy any mass produced video game tshirts because the odds that one or two other people in a room of 50 will be wearing the same thing are too high. Because I live within 30 miles of a Hot Topic (who doesn't these days?), having a shirt custom made seems to be the only viable solution. I know it's silly to worry about Indie Cred once you've reached your 20s but with this crowd, a good shirt is like a flag. It's memorable (if it's unique) and invites conversation. That comes in handy when you're looking to meet potential subjects for a documentary you're working on.

At the very least, I can spread drum up some business for Laurence.

Speaking of Pulsewave, I can't express how good it feels to be attending tomorrow night's show as an audience member for once. I'm sure I've talked about how covering an event with a camera really removes you from the actual experience so I'll leave it at that and move on.

What else...? Like every other film-person-with-a-blog out there I feel compelled to mention that Sven Nykvist passed away the other day. I lack the eloquence and authority to deliver a fitting eulogy so, in the true fashion of my generation, I will link you to his bio page on imdb.

PA GIG

Jason got Owens and I spots as Production Assistants for the camera crews covering this year's Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo Village (Stanhope, NJ). I'll be leaving next Wednesday on the 27th and returning Oct. 1st with a nice chunk of change in my pocket. Rural Setting + Fall Weather + Contacts + Money = something to look forward to.

Of course, it means that we're really going to have to work around the clock on cutting stuff for Video Games Live.

VGL

I may or may not have mentioned this ealier but my external drive had a brush with death the other week. I was able to recover all my important Final Cut Pro project files (which preserves all my editing) but lost ALL the actual footage associated with those edits...this means hours upon hours of re-importing everything...an arduous task I'm not exactly thrilled about. I could have paid someone to do a full retrieval but that would have cost me about $1,300 since they price according to the size of your drive and I have a 250 GB drive. Thankfully, I'll be able to afford a new one with the money from the poetry PA gig and use my current one as a backup since I no longer consider its firewire 800 ports reliable.

Anyway, back to VGL. Owens is coming back to NY tonight and we're going to cut the remaining 2-out-of-3 "Webisodes" for promoting VGL. The trailer we put together will be released Oct. 1st and the 3 Behind The Scenes shorts will be released one at a time over the following three weeks. This will all lead up to their UK show in November. Best of all, he will put "2 Player Productions" front and center for this stuff so we can expect some more myspace friends over the course of the coming month.

Talking about this next part may be a bit premature so I'll keep it brief. Tommy wants to put an actual DVD of the performance together for distribution. 5 or 6 cameras, cranes, jibs, the works. Long story short, he wants us to be involved in some capacity.

So yeah that's pretty cool.
I really need to get to work.