fuzzynormal

Hours and hours of diffraction.

I have a 10 year old werewolf horror film that's absolutely horrible. Always wanted to re-edit it. I've also always wanted to create some stop-motion for it, or something similar to make the film more campy and silly than it already is. I wonder if I could make 3D CGI to look like Harryhausen character animation? Any advice from anyone that dabbles in that realm? Seems like with all the apps out there right now it might not be too difficult. BTW, I actually tried to do old-school stop motion, went as far as creating a foam werewolf with bendable armature and shot scenes with it, but it looked too trashy and lousy to be campy, if that makes sense.

I do think it's naive to assume people are not being manipulated for ulterior motives across the board. Somehow Americans think they're immune to this while, ironically, being the most vulnerable to it.

It's kind of crazy that I could easily pull quotes from Ronald Reagan and it would sound as if Bernie Sanders delivered the lines yesterday on some podcast. I could probably paraphrase the Declaration of Independence, post it on Facebook, and start a flame war among half of my friends that would disagree with what I typed.

The last time I was in Cambodia was on a tourism shoot and I was driving through small rural villages. The communities seemed to have more fat white western males in it than actual villagers. It really made my skin crawl. There's one guy I really can't get out of my head. His pudgy visage hit me the same time as the epiphany of what was going on. Not great.

Ha! Fair enough for pointing out the redundancies in that sentence. Like I said, my English teacher was a jerk. 😉

If the EOSHD site was solely about cameras, and that was it, full stop, then I say a ban on politics is fine. However, Andrew's site has always been a place that is non-corporate and "unsterile," if you will. He's not afraid to drop his opinion and that's why I stick around. If I want bland regurgitated information, there's plenty of on-line options for that. Crossing the line is something all of us but the most rhetorically disciplined have been close to doing, but erring on the side of staying respectable isn't too hard to do. And, ultimately, EOSHD is a site that prioritizes gear, but also exists as a refuge for aspiring filmmakers. Filmmakers should have passion. Otherwise, what are we? Just content creators? That's okay for some I guess, but standing for one's ideals with integrity and rationality should be a filmmaker's or artist's ethos. One of the most influential people in my life was a high school teacher that was willing to engage us students. He would talk about the world and encourage us to participate in it as productive citizens. His lectures were fascinating revelations about his value system and why it worked. Often times we would stray from that semester's syllabus and spend the whole hour just chatting about ideas. We were a room of equals simply by the way he behaved and respected us, a bunch of dumb high-schoolers that really didn't deserve such treatment... but there he was giving us agency when every one else in the system, it seemed, wanted to make sure we stayed in our place. Funny thing was, he was an auto-shop teacher. The other funny thing was that he was a staunch conservative. An 'all-in' Reaganite; can't even count how many times he went on about Thatcher either, to give you an idea. I thought his ideas about society we're complete and utter rubbish. Still do. But the fact that he didn't beat me down with ad-hominem attacks because I disagreed with him, and encouraged me to debate made him the best teacher I ever had. I still can't do a valve job properly and fix a timing chain, but he let me realize how important it was to have integrity, a slightly more important lesson. Meanwhile I had a liberal English teacher so far up her own ass you couldn't say one thing to her sideways without her feeling insulted. And she was teaching writing for god's sakes! So there you go. My anecdotal response. Whoopie-de-doo. Bottom line, conservatives ain't all bad, but some are. Liberals ain't all bad, but some are. Be kind and try to ignore the true jerks that just don't want to respect you.

Fine options if you just want your work to be seen. Making money doing it? You need to put a lot of work into marketing. In order to make modest money with sales on Amazon or Vimeo, you'd need to make a product that 10's of thousands of people would be willing to pay a few bucks for. Easier said than done.

Taking your film into a movie house. You pay to have it screened in their auditorium with 4 walls. You take the film to the next town and do it again. And so on. The old fashioned way of doing indy film distribution.

There are ways to get into the black doing a "4-wall", but the numbers are modest, so the realistic idea is to just use theatrical release as promotion.

I got a POTUS that's saying 15 days. Or are you asking who (among actual serious people) believes this will be over in four weeks? In the meantime I'm absolutely upset at myself for not having a fire sale of my gear this past November, to sell it during Christmas time. The re-sale value of gear is going to be a disaster for a long long time and I have too much sound equipment and cameras just laying about.

In the midst of the most impactful global event since WWII, what exactly should anyone here expect to happen? Our careers are tied up in this mess. When people in power make things messier, it matters. Also curious that an argument you're making is essentially telling people that trying to be informed is a big problem. Ignorance is hardly an effective refuge at this time. I wish people were more informed, not less informed. It could have saved us weeks of inaction. But you did say "turn off the news" which implies television media, and yes, that's pretty much nonsense. Are you watching FNC much? They've been on the "gosh, this is serious" side of things for only about a week. Coincidentally, someone named Donald has been as well. Coincidentally again, some FNC talking head made the same complaint you made about "the media" last night, criticized Dr. Fauci in the process, and then DT hit caps lock while repeating the same sentiment online. And here we are mentioning that same sentiment in a camera forum the next day. Checks and balances indeed.

And the resolve to do what's just for the greater good. It's a level of integrity that's in short supply when you build a society that often seems to shun it. This is not going to be easy. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

For many of us here in the United States, it's been, "Oh man, it's going to be so much worse." Which is why the dismissal of the threat has been so frustrating. Even the rhetorical push back, the cruel jokes, or the claim it was all some sort of hoax was, sad to say, completely expected. This is who we are. Which makes things especially scary when one starts to think about the virus mutating and causing contagion wave#2.

Dang, nice library of international images. I don't have near as much impressive travel stuff in the footage I shot from past years (most of my travel was over a decade ago), but this is a great idea and I have been wanting to consolidate/organize my footage that I do have. Right now it's just laying about on random hard drives. And HDV tapes, ugh. Your work makes me think that if I went through it all I might be able to pull something similar together. Not as good what you did here, but at least it's a project that would have a bigger purpose than just tidying up my media.

I agree to an extent. I sincerely doubt that the culture in the USA will awaken to facts over myth. We have a system here built upon a foundation of nonsense, where what we want to hear is more important than reality. Europe has felt the sting of that attitude to an extent, we have not. This American culture has helped create a health-care system built for the affluent, not for everybody, and that's a system I fear will probably not withstand the crush of contagion. I pray that I'm wrong about that, but there's nothing I'm hearing from the current administration that allays my concern. The USA is going to be in the thick of COVID repercussions Mid-May and not back to anything resembling normal until mid summer. That's a long time to reflect --and 33% unemployment (that's a "new normal" that I'm not happy to face) will shake some marbles lose, so maybe attitudes will shift somehow...but... man, I just know people here. Many are family. I see how they think and behave. The attitude is a blessing and a curse. These people I live with are not outliers, they are average Americans.

Honest assessments of the process here in the USA have it unfolding well into June.

Facts, man. They don't work here anymore; if they ever really did. We're a society of self-aggrandizement and myth. Don't believe randos like me on the internet about the virus? How about listening to Larry Brilliant, epidemiologist: "Is this the worst outbreak you’ve ever seen? It's the most dangerous pandemic in our lifetime. We are being asked to do things, certainly, that never happened in my lifetime—stay in the house, stay 6 feet away from other people, don’t go to group gatherings. Are we getting the right advice? Well, as you reach me, I'm pretending that I'm in a meditation retreat, but I'm actually being semi-quarantined in Marin County. Yes, this is very good advice. But did we get good advice from the president of the United States for the first 12 weeks? No. All we got were lies. Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax. There are still people today who believe that, to their detriment. Speaking as a public health person, this is the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. But what you're hearing now [to self-isolate, close schools, cancel events] is right. Is it going to protect us completely? Is it going to make the world safe forever? No. It's a great thing because we want to spread out the disease over time. Flatten the curve. By slowing it down or flattening it, we're not going to decrease the total number of cases, we're going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine—which we will, because there's nothing in the virology that makes me frightened that we won’t get a vaccine in 12 to 18 months. Is there in any way a brighter side to this? Well, I'm a scientist, but I'm also a person of faith. And I can't ever look at something without asking the question of isn't there a higher power that in some way will help us to be the best version of ourselves that we could be? I thought we would see the equivalent of empty streets in the civic arena, but the amount of civic engagement is greater than I've ever seen. But I'm seeing young kids, millennials, who are volunteering to go take groceries to people who are homebound, elderly. I'm seeing an incredible influx of nurses, heroic nurses, who are coming and working many more hours than they worked before, doctors who fearlessly go into the hospital to work. I've never seen the kind of volunteerism I'm seeing." https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-interview-larry-brilliant-smallpox-epidemiologist/

Jurassic Park sequels still happenin'. You ever read his books? Might as well just be publishing them in the Final Draft format. Not necessarily a bad thing. They're breezy reads, they just feel like a movie script even as a novel.

It's been a weird century for America, Andrew. We were tempered by the mid-20th for obvious reasons, but we're pretty much back to our standard MO. As for the facts of the article and the author's assertions, there's no doubt history has shown us that health, food, shelter are the pillars of society. When one of 'em wobbles, so do we all.

Good 'ol Michael Crichton. Still dealing with his storytelling impact on cinema all these years later. Quite a populist's legacy with that guy.

Societies are taking drastic measures, not because it's a virus of dangerous mortality, but it's a virus that of dangerous mortality to people that are medically vulnerable. Taking steps to protect the most vulnerable in society is reassuring.

Been to that store I think. Is this the one below the JR line?

Knowing the culture of the USA and that we're on a 2 week curve behind you guys. Well, doesn't look like much good news will be coming into the USA over the next 2 months. However, many actual citizens in the nation are pretty noble when things get difficult, so that's the hope I'm holding onto. In the meantime, I'm thinking I might actually might film a person I know -- as it looks like they might go into the healthcare system at this time. Risky yes, but the journey needs to be documented. It's a big decision involving my whole family weighing in. It's odd. Decisions like this in developed nations haven't really been around on a large scale for over 70 years. If nothing else, this new-normal may usher in a wave of pragmatism that's been lacking. Be good people (to everybody) y'all.

It's a truth that's self evident. All men are created equal.