Better Bitter

I'm bitter. I feel like I've been burned.

What's my beef? Really want to know? Warning, the truth hurts...

Instead, and on a completely different topic, let's enjoy the NIN video that is thematically similar (but stylistically divergent) to something Bentley and I did for Decahedron. Shelby Cinca: spotted this and forwarded it:


Aaron, you're a fuckin rock star, bro

No Good Deed

Well, I thought it was awesome- I've been excoriated roundly for my efforts. While normal business models don't usually apply to creative fields, episodic television production often parallels the cubicle farms of "Office Space" and Dilbert:



I learned an important lesson- if it's not in your contract- don't do it.

Checking in on the road not taken- one of my music video competitors just completed the new Darkest Hour video-


It looks great, and includes a singable chorus that's pretty tuneful. Doug Champion's going out to LA to shoot Dillinger in the studio. David Palmer just signed with CAA! Sweet.

More fun facts: Mike Phyte, who played the lead in our Krnak episode, does not appear above the neck anywhere in the current cut.

Hypnotiq

This week, our team did something new and "fun". By fun, I mean extremely difficult, unusual, dangerous and with a high degree of stress and possibility of failure: we raced police cars and rental cars around a police training track while discharging weapons and rolling three cameras. In the dark. Good times.

Our patient and long-suffering hosts stayed way past midnight as the inevitable lateness of our schedule caught up with us- we had more coverage than could be obtained in the few short hours between when it gets dark and when nice people need to get home to bed.

The footage I saw looked great, but I only had a monitor about half the time- Stefan and I were crammed into the back seat of a training car with our A cam plus a lighting rig, and having the monitor jammed between my knees was creating an inguinal hernia in my lower ab region, so I threw it out. We also strapped a DVX-100 to the side of the pursuit vehicle and had PA/APs shooting pick-ups, so I haven't seen that footage.

It's going to look really cool- our police driver was as enthusiastic as is humanly possible. I accidently stepped into an elevator with the show creator who peppered me with questions while I was insanely sleep-deprived, and just exiting an exhausting meeting about another show, so I didn't do well in the de-brief.

Here's what I want to say- It's fucking awesome! The location, props, actors, lighting and camera work melded together into a symphony of visual form that will not only look extremely cool, but contain the essential building blocks to tell the story in a compelling manner that EVERYONE is going to want to watch.

Best show ever!

How annoying

What if a television crew pulled up to your house, came inside while your six-month old baby was sleeping, and started moving your furniture around? What if they then started plugging in huge lights, setting up camp at your dining room table and rehearsing scenes where people argue in loud voices, as if unaware an infant is napping?

Sounds pretty rude, doesn't it? It gets worse- the director encourages the actors to "escalate the emotional temperature" and doesn't dissuade them from swearing while the crew searches the area for interesting items to put into the scene for visual effect.


If that sounds like fun, we'd like to use your place as a location.

Fortunately, there are some friends of Tara's who welcome us in regardless. Today we returned to the scene of the Great Pizza Mishap (also known as the antique table debacle) and asked to use the beautiful children who live there as underage actors to help us build a sympathetic backstory for our character. Thanks Beth, Ruby and Maddy!

This episode (Number 9) saw its share of miracles, but the most amazing are the shots of Robyn with the children, which just leads me to believe that somebody up there likes us.

Great performances from Robyn Mincher who luminesced as our missing heroine, and all our bad guys and red herrings, Fernando and JD, who is going to be a caveman in a Geico ad (!) Nice job dude.

Deep Scone Pact

If my body is a planet, scones are the comets hurling through space on a path to destroy it. Let's consider the scone's component parts, shall we? It's flour, which my body reacts to by building fat around the midsection, butter, yum heart-y goodness, sugar- the white stuff, and salt. No salt related maladies, except it raises blood pressure.

Not as bad as, say, a frosted cupcake, right? Sure, but nobody is pedaling cupcakes as breakfast food, brunch fare, a substitute for lunch, and an after dinner treat.The phrase coffee and a scone are now starbucks tatooed onto the collective consciousness. Conjugate it with me: let's get a scone, you wanna scone? I need a scone.

Have an apple, for goodness sake. Stop it with the scones already. Unless there's some trace chopped fruit in there, especially apricot. Yum. Let's go get a scone.

+Late news: The MPU2 Drama team are producing and directing an action sequence for a
new show pilot, and confidence is high that it will be some of our finest work yet.. more as this develops. This shooting set will be a scone-free zone.

Mein Kampf

Oh, the struggle. Good versus evil, day versus night, interior versus exterior. It never ends.

As the season rolls on, we're finding new highs (and lows). We shot last week on Blue Mountain, a place I lived for a while, and the experience of being up there sent me into a slight flashback of life on the mountain: it takes an hour to get anywhere, and even then you're still nowhere. There are 2 general stores up there, and their merchandise is identical. It's desolate and shady and people who live there are hiding from something or trying to escape civilization for reasons that will remain unclear.

We spent day two on more even ground, back around my neighborhood where we created a rural Texas landscape, had a fun Harley scene and made a deserted building into a sketchy area for a drug deal.

The picture above is something I found on my run, and it haunted me until I went home, showered, got my camera and went back to find it. It's sad and beautiful, and I looked like a lunatic trying to photograph it, with my cheek pressed into the gravel as cars whizzed by. One person stopped to see if I was okay. I'm fine, but he's not.

Hump da Bump

We're halfway through our season- Yippee! The episodes are flying by to the point that I feel like a serial dater- I kinda remember the faces with the names, but I have to stop and think sometimes..."Miller, yeah, I remember her... sort of..."


One nice aspect is that the network has decided that more of our footage should be included in the shows, so in case you noticed that one minute out of 21:59 was our work, that number should be expanded. Maybe we'll get two minutes!

I'd like to mention two episodes worth of gratitude at once: Bill from Galaxy Hut looked great as killer Shawn Doyle, and gave his all for the part, as always, illustrated by him falling down an embankment. I hope we can use that take.

Heather Smith was radiant as a casino tart- Andy Morgan cleans up real nice. Stephen Guidry is not only a bayouriffic fisherman, he plays a mean game of texas hold-em.

I'm really glad we shot at the Hotel George in DC- it has a great look, accomodating staff and was just an ideal location in terms of decor, sightlines and attitude.

PLus everybody else dammit! Especially resident psychologist Tara "the Rock" Chia.

So let's get together for drinks and nosh to celebrate! Monday nite, 5:30 at Town Hall