Shocking

This wasn't funny when it happened. These things never are. And when version 1.1 is iterated to you in hysterics, laughing is out of the question. It wasn't funny. I was really concerned. But when it's retold, it's hard not to laugh at what happened as a result of it. This is a story from The Queen and her day.

She was helping out at school as part of the PTA in getting ready for their fall book fair by making copies of some flyers to be sent home with the students come next Monday. With her in the copy room was Sassy Pants, and Sassy Pants was going to be bored since this would take awhile. As such, The Queen had her bring some things she would want to play with to keep her occupied while The Queen made her copies. 

At this moment, nothing in Sassy Pants' backpack held any interest for her, and she was being generally difficult, and rather than do anything The Queen said while she was stapling notes to flyers, Sassy Pants decided she'd lay out on the floor under the table. Not to be frustrated, The Queen said fine, and went on with her stapling. 

Something came up, and The Queen left the room for a second to talk to the secretary (she was in the school office making the copies; you know, home of all the high power school folks who don't hang out in classrooms). Suddenly, an electrical pop sounded, the alarms went off, and the power went out. When The Queen went to check on Sassy Pants she held out her thumb because it hurt.

You see, apparently Sassy Pants got bored on the floor, and without mommy, she decided to explore. She found some staples on the floor and subsequently found herself a power outlet which I suppose functioned as the lock to the princess' castle and she held the keys in the form of those staples. The key went in the lock, and as you can imagine, no door opened. However, she did blow the circuit breaker for that part of the school, leaving the office personnel momentarily without computers or phones, and the alarms went off. I sure hope they saved their work.

Once the breaker was back on, computers and phone systems rebooted, Sassy Pants was left with a burned thumb, but no worse for wear any other way. Yes, I asked several times if she was ok. She did spend a fair amount of time in her room once the Queen got home, so she would not strangle the child in sheer frustration. 

The Queen had a meeting back at the school at 11, and she wasn't sure they'd let Sassy Pants back in the school, but that meeting went off just fine, and Sassy Pants stayed quietly strapped into the stroller. She was not allowed out.

Re-Affirmation Again

Wow, you know, everytime I get a good start on the blog, it gets away from me again. I had tons of ideas last months when I started again, but sure as I began, I forgot about it. Something shiny drew my attention probably. 

I know I've been busy in other areas. It's hard to say everything without totally divulging too much information. I have quite a few interests outside of my workplace, and my time tends to be almost completely monopolized by them.

For instance, I've played quite a few video games since I last noted anything. Star Wars: Force Unleashed for the Wii is quite fun. It actually wore me out working my way through it due to how physical you can be with it in how you react with the game through the Wiimote.

Also played the new Guitar Hero: World Tour. Found out that while the Rock Band microphone works with it (which I predicted since it's just a basic USB mike), the Rock Band drums do not (which I also predicted). But that games a lot of fun, and not only does it have a lot of songs in its gig lists, which are more surfable than Guitar Hero III, but it's got some huge hits in there. I got a kick out of playing and singing through Hotel California. And I managed to get through enough of it to play the Dream Theater 'hit' Pull Me Under. I don't recall whether I've gone over my top music artists, but Dream Theater is one of my favorites.

The job continues much as it has for the last year. They cut our overtime through the economic crisis, but hey, I'm still employed. That's what really matters.

But in the end, all is well, and I'll thinkof something to write at least during the week.

Principal Photography Done

Ah, we got it. At 1:30am on the morning hours of the 2nd (which thanks to daylight savings time, means we get home by 1am), we completed principal photography on my movie. Now is where the real fun begins (and the real magic happens). Of course, I'm a little shy on hard drive space, so before I can load up the 2 hours I got on Saturday, I have to cut together the footage I got on the 18th.

Not that this shoot was without its shortcomings, but my experience from day one helped me get through day two with fewer problems, so my 2 hours probably has more usable footage than the 3 1/2 I got on day one. Of course, it seems that some people have difficulty learning lines still which created additional frustration among the cast, and I think he was feeling even more this time around. While I expected issues, the tension rose as the shoot wore on. However, I'm hoping that the multiple takes of his lines will yield enough to make him look like a solid upstanding amateur.

Some things that went well, though, had to do with my desire to rehearse the scenes first and walk through it without the camera in hand. It allowed them to solify their lines and actions, and allowed me to see where they wanted to be without forcing them into a hole within the lens. We did that for Scene 33's reshoot, and I managed to get a single take that I think I'll use uncut, since I enjoy one shot takes.

We will likely have sound issue with the outside shots, however, since we got all kinds of miscellaneous sounds out there that can't be cleaned up such as wind, dogs, church bells, and traffic. Yeah, the pickup on the Engineer's mike is so good that he was getting traffic on the expressway at least a half mile to a mile away. We'll have to get everyone together in the room that we did our initial read-through in to re-record a lot of the outdoor sound. I really hope that goes well, as one person did not like acting along with a recording of another part that needs to fit together seamlessly in a single uncut take. I can only imagine how she'll do trying to re-act with herself.

Now the issue is getting an NLE that I can use easily enough and has enough features to warrant bothering with it. I'm still syncking up the sound in Windows Movie Maker and I plan on doing the rough edit in it, but need something more robust to make it look consistent in color and sound, as well as doing some minor effects on the video here and there to either clean up some pixels or lower the light to make it look darker. That sort of thing.

It's kind of a long road, but there is a festival deadline on December 16 that I want to make if I can. So we've got to get this sorted out as well as finding a way to either extract the sound from the final video or it'll need to be worked before hand, which is kind of silly since why work 6 hours of sound when you're only going to use 90 minutes of it. Haven't got it all worked out yet, but we're going to have to soon cause I want to get editing here.