I’d seen actor Joel Huggins’ “Fish Out of Water” web series and fictitious web journal a while back, but the fact is, I don’t talk to Joel a lot. (I do see him a lot, lately in an Intel commercial…) But so I had no idea that he and director Ben Barnes made another ‘Fish’ film and have now scored two years of back-to-back Fish at SXSW.

Fish Out of Water’s a puppet/live action comedy… If you check out this interview just up from Massify, they talk about the evolution of the idea and the puppet itself.

The new short, Fish Out of Water: The Nightmare, is excellent:

I’m perhaps foolishly doing everything myself on TEXAS 1960. Camera, editing, sound recording and final mix. Elana’s doing color correction. The idea is to learn now… and speak more competently to real editors, cameramen and soundmen on future projects.

But Christ! Final sound edit feels like a fog. The internet, usually so forward with advice, is nearly mum. It took me hours to find the following information, which could be described as opinion rather than fact:

1. Dialog voice should ride around -10 to -12 db, with peaks at -6db. (Overridden by a friend at a post house who says they put a hard limiter on all voice at -10db, no peaks above.)
2. Dialog voice should get a boost at 2500Hz (mid-range of human voice) and at 6000Hz (high end, for crispness). (But again, it’s just someone’s opinion.)

And then I talk to some friends who work as editors… None of them have opinions on this stuff. They send their big projects to audio post houses for final mix, professional black boxes where obsessive audio nerds do… Well, I don’t know what they do. No one I know seems to really know. It presumably involves chickens and black candles.

So then I talk to the directors I know who’ve sound-mixed their own successful independent films… Only to discover they’ve all gone by a method of “it sounds good to me”. To be frank, they have something. I’ve seen their films and had no complaints about sound… which is reassuring… But regardless, I’d like some freaking guidelines. How can I go by “it sounds good to me” when I have grave suspicions that rock and roll has permanently damaged my hearing?

Found by pure accident (while searching on a Soundtrack Pro issue) the Eazy Dolly post on Make Film Work.

Have tried building my own dolly using random things around the house. Worked, but only had a range of four feet. Severely limiting.

Don’t have much to say on the Eazy Dolly or their promo video that wasn’t said in that post, but liked the Make Film Work site and his video on shutter speed (see “screencasts” on his site)… which admittedly, is info I already knew but he explained it well… I was just daydreaming about the same stuff yesterday (exposure time in videography and still cameras, etc) and he summed up better than I would have. Liked everything enough to warrant a post.

Wanted to give a shout out here to the new site up at my buddies’ production company Population 1280 Films. I won’t be too shy to say I hooked them up with pal Jacob Winkelman’s design shop temp², who put the site together on a shoestring (though you’d never guess).

If you haven’t seen it, Population 1280’s film Pop Skull was an amazing piece of work also made on a shoestring. It’s a freaky movie that really sucks you in, and received a US premiere at AFI Fest last year. It’s now getting DVD distribution from Halo 8.

Spent real money on a piece of art for the first time. Up till now, the most I’d ever spent was $75 for a Johnny Ryan illustration.

Tell truth, I bought two original pieces of art recently. The first one though, only cost me six bucks. That’s right, only six!

Artist/filmmaker Jim Ether was briefly selling $6 dollar “mystery” paintings. He put up a great video on youtube showing off scores of the random little paintings, and I’m happy to say I grabbed one. He’s taken down the video, but you can still see the paintings at the link above. The deal was, you sent $6, he sent you a piece, you had no way of knowing what you’d get. Great idea. Seems like maybe it was too great (it definitely felt like a steal), so I’m not sure that he’s still selling them. But he does have an Etsy store here.

But then the piece that I actually spent a little bit on was a triptych by artist Skinner, whose work I got sort of obsessed with when I picked up a comic/zine of his at last year’s APE. Check out his site… there’s a recent Citrus Report interview with him… and he’s also got an upcoming show at Minna in San Francisco.

Haven’t been able to settle on a preferred method for sharing fiction online. Here’s the same old story excerpt, printed from a zine-sized (back-pocket) PDF, first with Issuu, then with Scribd.

Scribd on the same document:

The more I think on it, the more similar they are… so I suppose it comes down to interface… and the straightforwardness of Issuu (not having a menu, even the way it tends to railroad you into fullscreen) perhaps makes it the winner. Though both still have issues reproducing my font of choice (in this case, the probably poor choice of Goudy, need to get Janson on this machine).

Last night I read the introduction to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Never read it before, and honestly, haven’t started yet, right now reading Arkansas by John Brandon (McSweeney’s Books). (At the LA Times Festival of Books realized I’d never read a single novel pressed by McSweeney’s—the kids manning the McSweeney’s booth were kind enough to sell me three novels for $10 bucks each (on a cover price $22).)

But so I read King’s introduction and was pleased to find myself in this passage:

“My approach to revision hasn’t changed much over the years. I know there are writers who do it as they go along, but my method of attack has always been to plunge in and go as fast as I can, keeping the edge of my narrative blade as sharp as possible by constant use, and trying to outrun the novelist’s most insidious enemy, which is doubt. Looking back prompts too many questions: How believable are my characters? How interesting is my story? How good is this really?”

Which the basic approach is the same as I discussed in my Accoutrements post, but the thing that really struck a nerve was the implied fear of going back to revise or revisit during a first draft.

And that’s me! I’ve become petrified of looking at finished pages! I lock them in the fire box and, even though the plan was to once weekly pick them up and type them into a computer, revising as I go… too scared. For largely the same reasons King described: don’t want to sit around overanalyzing. At least not yet. Not until the bulk is there.

Anyway, nice to find an affirmation… I’ve read King’s On Writing, and remember a similar relaxation/relief. Kind of a “there, there, it’s okay”.