late night

just finished doing the sound editing and final sound mix for rob and david's documentary demo trailer that they will be showing and then pitching an idea for at the whistler film festival.

all 3 of us leave tomorrow. morning-ish, i think.

yes, it's no lie. it's 2am.

rob is watching a copy of the final demo on a dvd for quality assurance. if it's okay, then we start burning more dvds, baby!!

still don't know if i'm gonna snowboard. i retrieved my snowboarding gear and even packed it but i'll take a look at the forecast tomorrow morning before deciding.

also, i spoke to the co-producer of Sidekicks at the audition today and he said i should have no problems going up to whistler in my mom's car. if i use my mom's car, i won't be telling my dad. i know, i'm such a rebel.

2 more sleeps until whistler

do people over grade 9 still say that?

yesterday i was visualizing myself snowboarding down whistler. i could just imagine the special thrill it is to coast down powdery snow. but today i checked the forecast and there's a wind and freezing temperatures warning.

so now i'm visualizing myself skidding down the frozen mountain with terror griping my lungs.

i think i'll wait until tomorrow night and see what the forecast says.

in the meantime, my dad has expressed grave concerns about my driving my mom's 13 year old integra to whistler. which is his passive-aggressive way of telling me not to drive mom's car to whistler. which is just great.

so i spent a good hour tonight looking and comparing all the alternative transportation options available. i'm leaning towards the one with the best website www.snowbus.ca over www.perimeterbus.com

in other news, i'm gonna leave work as soon as possible tomorrow and speed towards auditions for Sidekicks and Miss Julie. then home to pack and decide if i will bring my snowboarding shit.

holy snows

spent a pleasant saturday being slate girl (and is it the script supervisor that records all the info on the takes? ok, and that one, too) for ken's shoot where he was the assistant director. it was a small but tight crew that walked around in a gorgeous looking ravine in the surrey area.

the ravine had all these steep pathways, a stream (yes they still let those things exist), tall trees, old trees, and lots and lots and lots of leaves.

after it wrapped yesterday at 4pm cuz all the light went away, it took me 1.5 hours to drive from surrey to vancouver. the length was a combination of a)snow b)rolling stones concert and c)canucks game. anyways, it was brutal.

the shoot was supposed to continue today but the snow kinda killed the continuity so it was postponed. wish i had known sooner as a friend had invited me to a comedy show for tonight but i thought i would be too busy a) thawing out from a 2nd day of 'blair witch project' and b) working on the wedding video. well, the second part is still true.

i've been trying to fit in a haircut for, oh, 2 months and finally got a last minute appointment at this cute salon on main called barbarella. my hair is so crazy looking right now. i've never had this curly stuff. and it only took a difuser to make it happen. very cool.

sitting at work

it's just after 6pm on a friday and i'm sitting at work. well, actually i'm waiting for my ride. my gorgeous and lovely boyfriend has taken use of my car today for one of his documentary shoots.

and i'm bored. everyone has already gone home and i'm all alone.

so i'm wandering through the interweb and can recommend two well-written blogs; both of whom are women writers living in the seattle area.
http://breakupbabe.blogspot.com/
http://odiouswoman.blogspot.com/

in other news, i have developed a troubling addiction to ebay. specifically for 1950s russian film cameras called Lomo and "Diana Camera." Oh, man they are so pretty and they take unpredictable and vibrant photos. for the past 2 days, i've been tempted to buy them but i've decided that i shall delay satisfaction and go to salvation army's and pawn shops.

i guess that would require willpower and discipline? anyone have some extra to loan me?

committed

::: producing :::
last night, rob and i spent some quality time with terry and kelly. we talked about film projects and watched some very funny stuff from mitch hedberg who, unfortunately, passed away last year.

as we were about to leave, i remembered (with some embarassment) that i had promised terry i would offer assistance as a producer on his next project. but i couldn't remember which one.

so i asked him in a sly but cute manner "terry, which project did i promise to produce for you?" i hoped that he wouldn't be too mad at me for a)forgetting about the promise and b)forgetting which project. plus rob was there to protect me if terry got out of control. kidding.

we chatted and he's really looking for help on his tv series pilot: sidekicks.
comedy + superheroes = great concept

go to terry's website www.ashleypark.net for more info on this guy. terry's a very creative guy and i'm spending time on this because i believe in his talent. if you are at all impressed with this dude please consider financial support. you won't regret it.

::: production assistant :::
i just got off the phone with ken, another talented filmmaker, and agreed to spend my 2 days off work this coming weekend being his grunt on his friend's set. i don't even know what the film is about but again, because i believe in my friend, i gotta support him.

sound problem on macpro

there's this major problem with the audio manager on our new macpro. it's this: at any given moment, the sound that is coming out of the computer will suddenly (and without warning) turn into massive white noise.

it's totally horrible when it happens and we gotta shut down the application that's running (i.e. itunes, protools or quicktime) and restart it. but the white noise can strike at any time.

i finally had time tonight to do a proper search on this problem and found out that this is a real problem for many macpro users with protools installed. now it's a real problem for me. when you install protools, the apple soundmanager is replaced by protools' coreaudio manager. it's this coreaudio manager that's freaking out.

meanwhile, i hesitate to listen to music on the brand new $3000 computer. oh well, at least it's a handy internet browser.

are all lessons painful?

rob and i usually only need to capture 1 or 2 miniDV tapes for a project. so with the 18 wedding tapes we decided to rent a miniDV deck.

we've been plugging in tapes since 5pm Friday and as of this posting we have 3 more to go.

some things we learned along the way:
1/ if you want to break up your 1 hour tape into four 15 minute segments for easy backup, make sure you're working with tapes that have already been striped. otherwise, final cut will throw a hissy fit and stop capturing.
2/ if you want to break up your 1 hour tape into four 15 minute segments for easy backup, you'll need to spend about 15 minutes setting up the in and out marks. this adds precious time to the whole capturing process.
3/ a deck is a valuable piece of hardware
4/ babysitting a deck isn't the most useful part of your day

so, this morning i thought i would check out ebay and see if there were any decks out there for sale. we saw one that was expiring in 15minutes and it was at $600 US. we bid on it right away and won it. it's a Sony GV-D900 Mini DV Digital Video deck.

it'll not only be great for capturing miniDV tapes but it's good for reviewing tapes in the field as it has a screen and also plays sound.

our debt load continues to rise. i hope rob finds some editing work soon.