journal page 9

may 31, 2000
suddenly everyone is in a really bad mood
last week i saw five lizards
11:17pm
just wrapped up the stereo mix for dolby, and i think we're all done now. will throw everything to digital next week to send out to the lab, and now it's all just a matter of lab work. i know none of you will appreciate the vast amount of stunning layered soundwork we have going on in the film's last three minutes, but please *pretend*. one of the best sound mixes i've ever heard in a cartoon. but i swear i would keep tinkering with this soundtrack for years on end if i could. not healthy. it's time to take it away from the captain. THAT'S NOT LOUD ENOUGH EITHER. i don't think i'm ever going to be able to watch this film again. ooooog. the part of my brain that processes all information regarding this film has become all purple and wheezy and shrivelled up. that was a visual for ya. i write about something else now.

hmmm everyone asks about the future of 'temporary anesthetics', next week being the last of the strips on icebox and all. conclusive info on that coming soon. well, maybe. umm. i move on.

i had a story to tell but now i totally forgot it. wow the pressure's on and i'm totally blanking. how embarassing. what's worse is not knowing how to spell 'embarrassing' at the current moment. embarrrasing. rrr. rrrrraaa. this is going nowhere fast. i'll promise i'll write again soon with story. meanwhile, click here and frown in startled wonder

may 19, 2000
11:27pm
oops
dead shrimpy things
film is off to the neg cutter and all done. we 'finished' sound again last week but i've got a few more things i want to toy with further on monday, and then we just need to stereo mix a bit and finish it up. spent the week writing and rewriting a long project again while meanwhile organizing pre-production on, well, the next short. yes, it never ends. sort of feeling logey tonight tho and i'll be getting absolutely nothing done.

so after running errands yesterday afternoon, smoke comes pouring out of my steering column. that's not a good thing for a car to be doing. bad electrical smokey. time to roll down the window. so i make an about-face to the auto shop and decide to bring along a bottle of water just in case anything on the dashboard bursts into flames. such is the extent of my automotive reasoning. the flaming instrument panel will be perfectly safe to drive across town as long as you bring water to douse it out. auto people declared it to be $300 worth of electrical short circuiting naughtiness and once again, the broken car renders don motionless.

so yes it's a whole lot of boring tonight. such is the downtime when the film ships off to lab and as rob puts it, 'the cartoon is in the oven.' meanwhile, here's another slice of something-something that somebody sent in. after you see it you will say i guess that was really something

may 7, 2000
5:56pm
groggy
burning
a quick hello. over the weekend, my happy innocent blinking newborn in the dewy sunshine computer was attacked by the wily "i love you" virus you have read so much about, which was an interesting lesson in anger management. it ended up destroying every single jpeg on my hard drive, though i was very thankfully able to rescue all of my beloved rare mp3's. got to spend an evening individually singling out and deleting 3,500 corrupted files. so that was not fun. altho bitterfilms.com was not directly harmed in any way (which is good), many of those jpegs now lost were photographs and drawings that were gonna make their way over here (which is bad).

more production updates this week. we should be wrapping up sound mixing with technical polishing.

may 2, 2000
2:58pm
india
teethcavedin
wrong drawer
watched a documentary the other night about researchers who compiled thousands of medical cases involving reincarnation theories and biological embryo defects. for instance, if a fellow dies by a gunshot wound to the neck, he will be reincarnated as a newborn with an exact, corresponding birthmark on his neck. countless pictures and documents of death and birth dates and deathmarks and birthmarks. a guy hacked up with a knife with toes cut off is reincarnated as a baby missing the same toes. lots and lots of these cases that are supposed to outweigh coincidence. very seriously compiled and studied. interesting but all the theories go down the drain after five minutes of thought. for every million births and deaths going on every day, is it that hard to search through them all until you find corresponding marks? statistically, it seems more unlikely to *not* be able to find corpses and babies that match up in some way. and why are these people only being reincarnated as people again? and how come life is always reincarnated to the same planet? the universe is teeming with life to recycle. no reason to keep it all local.

i was waiting for a case documentation of someone who died blown up and was reincarnated as a baby in parts, but that wasn't on the show.

more sound mix last week and last night and more tonight. getting really close now. i think we'll be 99% wrapped up with the very last technical things to complete by the end of next week. watch me eat those words in ten days, but we're almost there. still polishing up the very last shot which is sorta difficult and delicate, then more fleshing out overall to do.

ok here's the latest from rob - i'm not sure how many staples he had to eat to come up with this, but i think they were chemically treated. this is his official latest news regarding the production which is really interesting because the last cut he saw was, well, a couple of weeks ago:

=======================================================
Lately ive been speaking in long division. some one askes me a question and i answer with the remainder. i met a man in the street who only spoke in fractions. "889989.4?" 27%!!

eee. this of course means that the captain has finally begun the final descent. thank you baby jesus! He has recoverd but please dont ask him questions about his injuries. The healing will take a long time and if you pick he wont heal. when don has finished our beloved film (untitled cocoon sequel) we will load the velvet bus and take the act on the road. there will be free pet signings and if your under ten you get a lolli. I in response to the current craze for knee length jean skirts will be packing heat. the captain always packs a boat load of love and a armful of kittens.

rob
=======================================================

april 19, 2000
8:27pm
scratching carpet
logey dogfood pony
(pounce pounce)
had a very productive sound mix last night, with more again this thursday and friday. tackled the big end sequence for the first time and got through those first few shots with surprisingly good results. i say surprisingly because everything fell into place very well w/o the usual experimentation and jiggering to make things work. the layers we've got going are pretty amazing and it should be lots of work but smooth sailing from here. rob will pop in on thurs to marvel at it all and offer thoughts but i can't imagine too much more headache. i can't believe the record amount of hours we've logged mixing this thing. don no think about it. luckily, the sound and pic have largely reached the point where it throws up its arms and says stop screwing with me and its time to let it be.

did you see the 3 hour dinosaur documentary on the discovery channel? it was kinda dramatic. poor orphaned t rex babies. poor old pterosaur who could not mate... 'temporary anesthetics' seems to be going pretty well. last week i wrapped up the final strip of the 12 i'm supposed to deliver, after pretty much finishing the other 11 many months ago. not sure if there's gonna be any more after that or wha... hmmm reading what rob wrote last week below and i just have no idea what he's talking about... and for the sake of the SAG thing i still think ya need to change your name to "robert may bee." it is both ecological and pensive. onlookers are startled. i move on

i just dug up a pile of 'rejected' editing notes from only a couple months ago that already seem very alien to me... "we are missing 6-8 frames as the blobby comes out"... "shave 1/2 second off very first shot of flying piggy"... "first 2 guys shave one second off very first c/u tail (end with his mouth closed)"... good god.. so there is your sneak preview. if i have to unlock picture one more time i will make this face ---> : O !!! and my little bow tie that i am not wearing will spin around in a circle and go, woop woop woop woop

i go over here now. my rhythmic dance will be interpreted through the following symbols:

$#^%!$# !#$^!@&^%*$#^%@!^$#% ..with a pretty little wiggle near the end.

don

april 12, 2000
1:55pm
sugar plum
sho' nuff
(filling in again for don is robert may...)

Hello, Hello.
Our dear friend Cap'n Don is recovering from a rather desturbing incident and has asked me to fill in briefly and update the crowd. "Rejected" is moving along like a rhino in traffic. With the latest cut from Rebecca this week we'll begin the final stage of sound mixing. (sigh)

Memphis was a blast. We met Karin out there and all shook our grove thang. Hopefully soon we'll have pictures to share. For all the Memphis folk out there Thank you again. I have encouraged Mr. Don, ("Pickles" if you've known him long enough) to abstain from parasailing from this point on but...... well theres only so much intervention a friend can try. For those of you following along at home heres some answers and fix all advice. #1 check to see if its plugged in. #3 the color blue #4 dance offs are only a good idea if raining outside and kevin bacon is on your team and #5. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

thanks
Robert.

march 29, 2000
9:45pm
sweet
the film is strutting like a hot shot with big glammy boots. many improvements. it is going to be quite a ride. things are running much smoother with the dead scene gone, and though becca is re-editing little things a *bit* more for me, i think i will finally be ready to stop screwing around with repeatedly unlocking the picture and wrap up the rest of sound. next week we may be able to polish up the bulk of the pic and start focusing on the big finale thing. no more worries from here on out.

heading out to the memphis shows tomorrow, which should be a good time. it will be the first time rob, karin, and i are in the same room since... probably san francisco over a year ago, and the first time we've all been at the same festival. those two transform into goofy three year olds when placed anywhere near each other, and you sort of just need to sit back in awe and not get in the way of the inspired playful. hence 'lily and jim'. i am as always convinced that the plane either going to memphis or returning is going to plummet out of the sky in flames so my writing this down is my way of ensuring that the odds of the damn thing actually crashing are now multiplied even less, just because i predicted it would. see? because planes only crash when people don't expect them to.

ok i will be back on sunday, and i will see you memphis people at the show..
take care-

don