2006 in review

What a year it has been!

For me it started with an intense four months of work at Mobile Infirmary as the company prepared to annex another hospital. Up until 2006 the job had been a breeze, with overtime a rare thing indeed, but during every week of the big conversion we were on mandatory overtime. The intensity built until the weekend of my birthday, which ended up feeling like one long episode of ER. Whoever said the IT field is boring has not run at full speed through a hospital to a mainframe terminal in post-op to frantically unlock a pharmacy cabinet so that a life could be saved with the proper meds. Okay, that's probably dramatized a little, but it was enough to make me glad to leave the health care industry behind when R was reassigned for her job in mid April.

Yes, that's right--it was time to move. We said good-bye to southern cooking, the friends we Mardi Gras'd with, the church in which we were married, and warm winters to settle in an unexplored land known as Delaware. We bought a townhouse in Wilmington and have been enjoying a more urban lifestyle since.

R began her second assignment with DuPont as the mechanical engineer supporting the ethylene co-polymers High Pressure Unit (HPU) semi-works as part of the packaging and industrial polymers business. It sounds pretty technical, and it is. In fact, I had to ask R to write this paragraph for me. Her assignment is located only a few miles from our house at DuPont’s central research and development center, the Experimental Station. Most new polymer products developed by DuPont get their start in the HPU. R does great work and has been recognized by her manager as raising the expectations for her role in the unit.

I was unemployed for a few months after the move, which was like a dream come true for me. Disappointingly, however, a good chunk of the extra time I gained was spent developing my job seeking skills and seeking that next job. Still, it was a good break. Not having to go to work every day makes settling into a new house in a new city quite a bit easier to manage.

There was one particularly exciting thing that came out of my temporary hiatus: the opportunity to work on an independent film. I joined a crew and helped with the lighting for a family film called Jack of Clubs, which will be premiering in Wilmington in April of 2007. The shoot lasted 6 weeks and required many long days of satisfying work for no pay. What I got out of the deal was a lot of contacts in the business and some friends too. It was an experience I won't forget.

A series of events (well-documented in the archives of this blog) led to me find a Business Analyst job with a small, but quickly growing software company in Pennsylvania. I'm constantly surprised by the fast pace of the company culture and the amazing work ethic of my coworkers. It's been challenging and demanding, but the valuable skills I am learning and some perks from the company make it worth the stress.

R and I like to explore, and moving around the country offers us the chance to do just that. In addition to our week-long road trip from Alabama to Delaware with detours along the way, we also took getaways to Virginian wine country, the Jersey shore, New York (city and upstate), Winnipeg, Montreal, rural Vermont, and, of course, our beloved Minnesota.

So ends another eventful year. I can hardly wait to see what the next one brings. Happy holidays to all of you out there!

A night in New York

The city was hopping this weekend, and we faced the hustle and bustle head on. We sardined it in Rockefeller Center, browsed the window displays on 5th Avenue, caught a glimpse of Alec Baldwin on the street while eating dinner, and spent the night at our accommodating friend Ben's place in the East Village. Oh, and there was one other thing...

David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (he prefers it typed in all capital letters) was playing in one theater in the entire city, and we were there Saturday night. It should come as no surprise to anybody that I liked the film. It is bizarre and uncompromised, beautiful and haunting. Only time will tell how I rank it among Lynch's other work. I remember finishing my first viewings of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive with a similar feeling. His movies leave me in awe, yet somehow unsatisfied. They come close to making sense but purposely do not. That's what leaves me wanting more. I'm anxious to see IE again--to literally feel it projected on the screen (the volume was so high, the entire theater vibrated to the opening shot of a needle grinding on a record), to refresh my fading memory of the hallucinatory visions, to try to figure it all out.

A lot could be said about the movie--a lot has already been said--but I'm not going to go into detail here. There are plenty of reviews online that discuss it at length, if you're interested. Try to see it for yourself when it gets a wider distribution, and then let's discuss it over a cup of coffee or a Heineken.

This means I'm pumped

INLAND EMPIRE. NEW YORK CITY. THIS WEEKEND.

The further adventures of Bread Man

Here is a little follow-up to the first Bread Man clip that has been online for some time now. Technically this one was created before the first one, but I haven't given it as much play because it is so deeply flawed. The spatial relations are off. You don't get a sense of where the three characters are positioned in the room. I blame it on a lack of pre-production. Maybe I'll remake it one day, this time mapping it out better beforehand. Actually, no, Bread Man has evolved since the first incarnation you see here. Some new adventures lie ahead for him, and there is no need to go back and revise the past.

The Bud Light Film Crew shoot on Wednesday was a success (I think). I'm about wrapped up with editing my footage. The most difficult part was keeping it under the time limitation. It's tricky to cut 50 minutes of footage down to a minute and a half, yet still cover all of the necessary moments and keep it from looking choppy. To be a good editor you need to be able to sacrifice terrific, but slightly less necessary, shots for the sake of the whole. Web videos are good practice for me because they need to be short and lean in order to hold the fickle audience's attention (no offense). Don't use the Bread Man videos as examples because they were edited three years ago for a TV screen, but my first Bud Light video, due out in January, will hold up on that front. I dare you to find an ounce of fat on it.

Some blabbering and links

The weekend flew by as always. It was off to a poor start on Friday night when I got stuck at work until 11:00pm--such is the life of an IT professional, I guess. On Saturday we raked and mowed the yard, which actually didn't take that long because, hey, we don't have a very big yard (and I'm perfectly fine with that for now). We also picked up a Christmas tree, did some browsing at the shipyard shops, enjoyed a nice dinner at Toscana, and watched Nacho Libre on DVD, which I liked more than I expected. On Sunday we did the usual chores around the house and had some time to relax. I took inventory of some of my older videos and realized I have a lot I want to post online. From the Cottage Cheese files alone, I could go on for quite a while. As a matter of fact, you can expect to see another clip posted here by the end of the week. Hopefully, I should say. Before I commit to anything I should let you know that I will be shooting the first video in the "Bud Light Film Crew" series this Wednesday night. I'll have about a week to do the editing, which is not a lot of time for something like that, but I think I've cleared my schedule enough to get it done. I am a little nervous about shooting something I don't have complete control over. It has been a while since I covered any sort of live event, like the upcoming Best Bartender Contest. This will be more simliar to my Campus Scope work than anything I shot in my own house with me as the only actor (i.e. probably any video of mine that you have seen). It will be nice to shoot something without me in it for once. I should have a lot more freedom if I can remain behind the camera. Okay, I'm blabbering. I wonder if anybody even read this whole paragraph.

I got a kick out this--the two commercials I was paid to help with last summer have finally been posted online. If you look really close, you can see part of me in both of them. Here's a hint: you can probably identify me best by my watch. The rest of me is laying on the cutting room floor somewhere. Oh well, my primary responsibility was to assist with the lighting. If you want to see the results of an 18-hour day of work, go to this website and click on the links in the left column called "Thanks, Mom" and "Thanks, Dad."

Lastly, the trailer for Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE appears to be online, albeit on YouTube and in really poor quality. Regardless, the trailer is absolutely fantastic. Watch it here. I was just thinking how all trailers look the same these days. You've seen them--any preview for an action movie or thriller builds to a climax of extremely quick shots... then the title, set to some dramatic music, comes in before the one final blurt of a demon child or an explosion with some dude hanging off a cliff... you get the idea. Lynch's trailer has nine shots in it, yet he manages to lay on the dread and build anticipation masterfully. I'm so going to love this movie.

Well, that's the news from this corner of Wilmington. My life may not be interesting, but I'm going to write about it anyway.

A brief review of The Fountain

We saw the enthralling The Fountain the other day. I'm not sure why some critics adamantly dislike this film. The visuals are amazing; the acting, superb. The structure is inventive and daring. No, I do not recommend it to the mainstream public, who might be looking for a cookie-cutter plot or some neatly packaged ending. This is an all out art film, but one that is surprisingly easy to watch and absorb despite its complexities, its serious tone, and some heart-wrenching scenes. Seeing it in the theater was so much more satisfying of an experience than my previous one in the theater--watching the funny, yet somewhat boring Borat movie. In fact, days later, I can't stop thinking about it. That is what makes a film a good one.

Viva la Montreal

The above photo was taken by my ultra-talented wife during our vacation in Montreal, Quebec. It is undeniably the most astonishing photo from our trip.

So about our trip... we left Wilmington last Saturday and drove north, spending the first night in upstate New York and the next three in Montreal. After that we made our way to rural Vermont where we spent the holiday with some relatives of R’s. We returned home on Saturday night, giving us enough time to prepare for the upcoming work week.

Montreal was cool—figuratively and literally. We spent our days exploring the city, drinking coffee, touring the bio-dome and Olympic park, finding excellent places to eat, and eating a lot. R was able to practice her French when we interacted with the locals and I was able to embarrass myself a bunch by knowing very little French at all. We spent our nights drinking wine and warming up by the fire and in the jacuzzi tub at a great little bed & breakfast located in the city's downtown. Overall, it was worth the drive and a wonderful escape.

Thanksgiving was everything it should be: eating ‘til you drop, rowdy family (three kids between ages 3 and 9, as well as three dogs), and relaxing. R’s uncle is a professional chef, and he cooked a good meal. I’m still partial to my mom’s cooking, but it’s difficult to not enjoy a grand turkey dinner. On Friday we worked off some of our caloric intake by hiking up Mount Elmore and enjoyed a wonderful view atop the firetower located there.

Tomorrow it’s back to work. December has the makings of a busy month. There’s so much to do at work and at home before we head back to Minnesota for our Christmas vacation. Yikes!

Drunken Laundry

Stationary camera? Yup. Starring Jeff Finc and nobody else? Check. A Wilford Brimley impression? You got it. It could only be one thing -- another movie made by me. This one I actually shot a few years ago and recently re-edited for the web. I cut it a little bit shorter and changed the music from a Modest Mouse song to one by EmptyGym. I hope you enjoy it.

How to disappear completely

One night last week I met with a group of four guys from Out-and-About magazine who, I believe, are in key roles to shape Wilmington's image or at least the image of its night life. I've been in contact with one of them for a while now and even created "PC vs. Me" with his purpose of getting people out of the house in mind. Well, I think we may have finally decided where I fit in with the publication of their magazine. I agreed to shoot and edit a 60-second segment each month that will be posted on their website and do the following: (1) show people in local bars having a good time and (2) advertise for Bud Light. We're going to do things like cover the Best Bartender Contest at Kahunaville or tape people giving the camera their favorite pickup line and then whittle the footage down to a minute for each segment. There are more details, but I don't want to share them yet. The first video is due by the start of the new year, so you shouldn't have to wait long to see what I'm talking about.

On Saturday I had another opportunity to pursue my hobby. I traveled down to Maryland to help a friend, who I met on Jack of Clubs, shoot a faux commercial for a video production class he is taking. The project is about at the level of "PC vs. Me," which you know is not too high, but I enjoy working on small projects like that. My friend had some expensive equipment at his disposal, courtesy of his school, so that increased our production value right there. I'm not going to be involved with the post-production process for this one, so I'll be curious to see what the finished product looks like, especially since I did have some input into it. I contributed to the concept for the commercial by suggesting the use of a very simple--yet impressive looking--technique I once applied in a short video that I included on my Cottage Cheese DVD. If you have half a minute, take a look at the experiment I'm referring to. It is titled "Disappearing Act."

Prestigious movies

We saw The Prestige over the weekend, and it was every bit as good as I had hoped. When you see a movie about two rival magicians that was directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento), you have to expect some twists and surprises. This movie delivered. After being terribly disappointed by the latest Shyamalan film, I was relieved to find out it is still possible for a filmmaker to pull the wool over an audience's eyes. It's not all about the twist either. The movie was well acted, well shot, and engrossing throughout. And tell me, how cool was it that this period piece had a Thom Yorke song playing over the closing credits? I'll answer--very cool.

While we are on the topic of movies, let me tell you that R, C, and I are two-thirds of the way through Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs trilogy. These art films, from the early nineties, are surprisingly fresh, slightly inaccessible, and very rewarding. Hollywood doesn't make films like these, at least not anymore. Films like these need to be absorbed rather than simply viewed. Blue was painful, yet poignant. White was less serious but more entertaining. Red is up next. We will watch it as soon as our guest, C, returns from New York. My preceding thought is that it will be the best of the three.

Has anybody else out there seen any good movies lately? I hear The Departed is worth checking out. Any others?

Happy belated Halloween!

It is our Halloween tradition to take a photo of ourselves trying to capture the essence of what we carved into our pumpkin. See last year's photo for another example. I think we reached a new level of interpretive genius this year.... Uh, as you can see, Halloween itself went by without much of a bang for us. 15 kids rang our bell and left us with a truck load of extra candy. We didn't even get to watch a scary movie because I got stuck working the whole night. That's okay though--we celebrated on Saturday night instead. Wilmington has this epic "Halloween Loop" each year where 20,000 people get dressed up and ride a bus to 14 or so bars. I went with my wife, my sister-in-law, and my mother-in-law and had a great time. Our costumes were thrown together in the last minute with props we had around the house (I went as Bread Man, in case you can't tell from the photo below), and we spent most of our time in the tamer bars, specifically the Crimson Moon, the Iron Hill Brewery, and Dead Presidents, which suited our style pretty well. But, man, this was the party of the year. There were a bunch of wild people out there and, based on their costumes, a bunch of creative people too. My favorite costume was Bernie, as in Weekend At Bernie's. The guy looked the part, and he had his friends propping him up and hauling him around the whole night. They even formed a smile on his face for him when we took this picture. Other highlights were the family Double-Dare team, the men's Olympic figure skating team, Wayne, Waldo, Fred Flintstone, male bunny bartenders, and bunch of others I can't remember right now. It was a fun night out and a good weekend all around spent with the family we had in town.

Biz-Z

Hello faithful readers. This is just a quick note to let you know I'm swamped with work this week and probably won't be writing a formal blog entry for a few more days. I haven't forgotten about you; I just really need to concentrate on making some deadlines right now. We had a fun weekend that I can't wait to tell you about. I've got some photos to post and the whole works. Stay tuned.

Reflective

Guess where we found ourselves again over the weekend--in Minnesota, of course, celebrating at our final wedding of the year. This time it was one of R's friends from college getting married. We spent both nights at a hotel in downtown St. Paul, a few blocks from where I used to work. Fall is a few steps ahead out there; the city seemed notably quiet and gray. We didn't see any family over the weekend. Ironically, R's sister was waiting for us here on the east coast, and her mother is flying out tomorrow to visit for a few days. Anyway, I had a lot of fun at the wedding reception. We ate a lot, drank a lot, and danced up a storm. My stomach didn't even give me problems until the skyway walk back. You can bet it felt good to plop down on the Sleep Number bed that night. Yeah, I said Sleep Number. I couldn't decide how firm I wanted it, so I set my side of the mattress to 50. That's pretty typical of my middle-of-the-road personality.

My employer bought a popcorn machine--one of those big, carnival-style popcorn machines--and they set it up in our break room. I don't think they thought it all the way through, however. There's been a huge mess of popcorn crumbs on the floor every day since.

Speaking of work, I've been about as busy as the poor janitor who needs to sweep up all of those crumbs. I think I'm developing some good habits on this job, like how to focus, for example. There's always a commotion going on around me (remember how the low cube walls are supposed to facilitate communication?), but I'm getting better at tuning it out. With having so many things to do and time always against me, I don't have a choice but to concentrate on the task at hand. The days speed by, which I guess is good and bad.

I was thinking the other day about how the older you get, the tougher life gets and the more you appreciate the little things, like a cup of coffee at your desk or a walk in the woods or relaxing with your spouse on the couch. When you're young, you don't believe those things will ever be enough. And maybe I'm not old enough yet to not fully appreciate them either, but I see this starting to take form. Maybe some of the excitement of living drops out and the little things stand out more in their new relativity. Maybe the excitement of new experiences is eventually passed on to the next generation and the familiar is welcomed by weary parents. No, I'm not done living yet. I'm just appreciating free time and thinking about what it might be like to one day be a father. Don't read to far into that statement. I'm not hinting at anything. Seriously.

Trailer time

Wow. Talk about an exciting week on Jeblog. I have another video to share with you. This time it's the trailer for the movie on which I worked over the summer. It can be seen here:

http://www.jackofclubsmovie.com

Yes, the card-playing metaphors in the narration are a bit cheesy, but doesn't the crispness of the lighting look nice? This should be a bright, colorful kids film. It was a lot of fun to make, and it might be a lot of fun to watch, hopefully for adults as well as kids, although I give you no guarantees.

R and I were at the director and his fiancée’s condo last night for a dinner party. That guy really knows how to tell a story. He's an exciting guy to listen to, and he has this way of generating buzz for this projects. According to him, there are a total of five premieres planned for the movie in April 2007. One of them will be a formal event with a lot of Wilmington's movers and shakers in attendance because of an appearance by one of Delaware's senators in the movie. I'm sure they'll all be driven to tears by my masterful performance as a customer in a tuxedo shop.

That's all I have time for right now, folks. We need to run up to the airport to pick up my sister-in-law who will be staying with us for a while. She will be our first guest since moving to Wilmington. It could be fun to have somebody here who we can show around a bit.

PC vs. Me

Without any further ado I am finally posting my new web video. After all the build up I’ve provided you with over the past month and a half, you’re probably expecting the next Lord of the Rings. Well, please set your expectations a bit lower. This is a modest little movie, the first I made specifically for the web.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the future of television and home video lies on the Internet; the idea of needing a disc to watch a movie is already starting to seem old fashioned. Everything is changing: marketing, distribution, the studio system. I’m excited to witness this merging of technology and to be able to participate, at least a little bit, in such an early stage of the transition.

I also want to take this opportunity to plug the band whose music you can hear in my video. They are a group consisting of my brother, my cousin, and my uncle; and they call themselves EmptyGym (one word, not two). This marks my first collaboration with them and definitely not my last. Having access to terrific-sounding, royalty free music for my movies is a treat. I hope they keep up the good work.

That's what I'm talking about

By the way, this is my 50th post since joining Blogger.com in May. I'd like to thank all of my loyal readers! Here's to you, Matt.

Home Dep-no

The above title is a play on Home Depot, in case that's not clear. It sounded good in my head, but I guess it didn't translate to text very well. The alternative title to this entry was going to be "We fought the garage door opener, and the garage door opener won," but since we were in fact successful at installing our garage door opener over the weekend, I guess such a title does not apply. That doesn't mean it wasn't a challenge. It took us about 7 hours and included several trips to the dreaded Home Depot. I have yet to develop a fondness for working on home maintenance projects, although I do enjoy the satisfaction of completing them. R and I make a good team. She's got the brains, and I've got the brawn (well, at least out of the two of us).

Speaking of the brains of this operation, she's going to be out of town again on Tuesday through Friday of this week. There will be no steak this time, but I've got a hamburger planned that's gonna kill me (although not literally, I hope). And as long as my job doesn't steal the nights from me, I plan to get some editing done, so keep your eyes open. I managed to get rested up over the weekend, and I'm feeling ultra amibitious.

Chester cheesesteak

My boss took me out for my first official cheesesteak on Thursday. I've had similar sandwiches at Subway and Quizno's, but I hadn't tried the real thing out here yet. Of course there has been some debate as to whether or not yesterday's sandwich qualifies as the "real thing" because it was actually made in Chester, PA and not Philadelphia. My coworkers further qualified that a cheesesteak needs to be eaten at 2am after a night of heavy drinking (that's one requirement that would be hard to fulfill during the work day) and it should be made at a place that refuses to serve you if you order it wrong. My boss is already talking about how we are going to drive into the city for our next cheesesteak. That's the plan as long as in the meantime we don't die of heart attacks from the first one.

Another weekend, another wedding in Minnesota

R picked me up from work on Friday, and we hopped on a jet plane bound for our home land. We spent that night and the following morning visiting R's mom, who was then kind enough to take us on a tour of our old neighborhood in St. Paul before dropping us off at my cousin's wedding. It was a very nice wedding and equally nice reception at the luxurious St. Paul Hotel, where R and I spent Saturday night. The next morning we grabbed breakfast with my parents and made our way up the 26th mile marker of the Twin Cities Marathon to watch R's good friend E pass by -- way to go E! We also met up with her and her family at the end of the race to hang out for a bit. Next, we had coffee with my friend L (are you getting tired of all these initials yet?), who later brought us to the airport. Yes, the weekend went by in a flash, but, man, it was great to see everybody we saw, and we really enjoyed the fall weather. Minnesota can be an attractive place to be when the weather is right.

Those of you still waiting to see my new online video, hang in there. I'm disappointed to say the magazine decided not to use it for their ad campaign. I might still work with them on another project, but the magazine staff "would like to have more say on the message that is going out there." Their response was pretty positive otherwise. In other words, they seemed to like the video, but it was not what they were looking for. That means I'm free to release it to the world on my own, albeit without the wide distribution it would have had through the magazine. I'll need to remove the magazine references from it before I post it on YouTube, so give me a weekend or so to do that. You'll be seeing it soon. I've also had some rejuvenated enthusiasm over the "Wrong Number" project during the last few days, so I hope to get that wrapped up relatively soon as well, although I know I've said that before. None of these projects require much time, but lately it's been difficult to find any time at all to dedicate to my creative life. Yesterday I didn't get home from work until 9:00pm! It also doesn't help that I'm addicted to a few TV shows (by the way, Lost starts up again tomorrow night).

Wine hop

I am not above seeing something done in the movies, being influenced into thinking it's cool, and wanting to participate in such an activity myself. When Sideways was released in 2004 and it became the hit hip movie of the year, everybody--me included--wanted to drink pinot noir on the road with their friends and live out various misadventures. Well, the little muse of mine you see above and I had a little taste of such a cinematic experience over the weekend. We spent it with our friends T & C, who live in Richmond, VA. On Saturday the four of us and another couple drove out to the northwestern part of Virginia, near the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains, and visited four very distinct wineries. My favorite was the small one that was our last stop. By then the sun was low and somebody strummed a guitar on the porch. The owner, a proud new father from South Africa who seemed very content with his life, was generous with the tastings. All of the guests seemed to be in high spirits as they shared bottles in the picturesque locale. What a life. We probably didn't encounter enough "misadventures" to make a popular movie out of our day (you can't expect anything to go wrong when five out of the six people in the group are engineers with impeccable planning), but we enjoyed a nice picnic, good conversation, and a heck of a lot of wine.

Back in Richmond that night, we went to the late showing of The Last Kiss, which I liked less than I expected months ago, but more than I expected a week ago after hearing all the negative press. It's quite a different movie from Garden State, to which immediate comparisons are drawn, but that doesn't make it a bad movie. It conveyed feelings a lot of people my age can relate to, and it was surprisingly dark. I will say, seeing all the troubled relationships in the movie made me glad to be in such a happy one with my wife.

On Sunday we had brunch at the Tobacco Company Restaurant, said good-bye to our friends, and made the four-hour drive back home. Somehow we ended up getting on the wrong freeway near Washington and got a nice pass-by of the National Mall, especially the Washington Monument. I'm still getting used to the idea of having all of that so close to us. We're saving the D.C. tourism for another weekend. There's so much to see in this part of the country.

Anticipation

I'm sitting here with R in front of the tube, so this blog entry only has one third of my attention. That being the case, I'm going to keep it simple. Below are the five movies I am the most excited to see this fall. I'm also including the director and some favorite films from their past work, which should be enough to explain why their new ones are so highly anticipated.

1. Inland Empire by David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Dr.).
2. The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream).
3. The Prestige by Christopher Nolan (Memento).
4. Marie Antoinette by Sophia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation).
5. The Science of Sleep by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

Weekend recap

Greetings. Another weekend has passed. We spent ours doing the following:

• Eating a six-course meal at a Moroccan restaurant called (what else but) Casablanca. We ate the whole works with our bare hands. Dinner included entertainment from a stripper-like belly dancer.
• Attending the Oktoberfest in Newark, DE. It's a big deal around these parts. They even had carnival rides, which we rode by the way.
• Painting the inside of our garage. Actually, we only got as far as priming it over the weekend. Painting is next, and then we can finally install the garage door opener I bought three months ago.

So there you have it. Sorry for the lack of enthusiasm. I had one of those life-draining days at work today. In other news, my new web video is done! Well, I might still do some tweaking, but generally speaking, it feels complete, and I'm quite happy with the results. Unfortunately, I can't unveil it to the public yet. I'll be optioning it off to the magazine this week. If they accept it, it will probably be distributed to their online newsletter subscribers on something like YouTube. It will definitely be posted here as well. You can help rack up the play count!

'Shroom fest

I never really ate mushrooms until a few years ago when R introduced me and they won me over with their unique texture and taste (no, we’re not talking about the hallucinogenic type here). Who would have thought that one day I would attend an event such as the annual Mushroom Festival in Kennett Square, PA, which was held over the weekend? We spent our Sunday afternoon taking an educational tour of a mushroom farm, purchasing a variety of mushrooms to take home with us, and walking around the festival generally soaking up a celebration of the finest of fungi.

It was kind of a low-key weekend, but I'm not complaining. On Saturday morning I had a few hours to do some reshoots for my web video and continue with the editing. Later on in the day, we attended the Brandywine Arts Festival, where we found some gifts for the remaining weddings on our schedule this year. On Saturday night we went out to Feby’s Fishery so I could splurge on king crab legs and a hunk of filet mignon (as I have not been able to get last weekend’s steak out of my head). Then we burned off (some of) the calories on Sunday morning when R and I walked three miles for the American Heart Association’s Heart Walk along with some other DuPonters. All in all it was another good weekend. The weather was nice, and it was fun to stay close to home and enjoy what Wilmington and the surrounding area has to offer.

My new movie is coming along, although there is at least one problem--it looks like I'm trying too hard. I shot the action from so many different angles and have so much footage to choose from that, in the current cut, each shot last lasts a maximum of 2 seconds and you never see the same framing twice. It can be a bit disorientating to watch and difficult to follow the action, so I decided to tone it down a bit. The video still needs to move at a fast pace (you don't have much of a choice if you want to keep something like this under a minute in length), but the editing needs to be simplified and the setting needs to be more firmly established. So that's where it stands. I can't wait for you to see the finished product. Give me another couple of weeks.

The Hic-Cup

As mentioned in this blog before, when I get the hiccups, I get them BAD. My thoughtful mother-in-law recently sent me a device that she heard is supposed to be a miracle cure. It is called The Hic-Cup. I've tried just about every trick in the book already, and this one looks similar in concept to the one where you drink a glass of water with a spoon in it, but I'm willing--and hopeful--to give anything a shot. I will say I’ve never tried one that claims to use “sub-sensory bio-electric therapy to quickly re-establish proper function of the Vagus and Phrenic nerves for instant treatment.” How could something like that not work?

A night like this

There it is, folks--your first exclusive peek at the short web video I shot this afternoon. I have almost an hour of footage for a movie that should be about a minute long. That means editing will be no simple task, but I'm already working on it. I hope it turns out okay. The footage never looks as good as I expect; I guess something gets lost in the translation from imagination to video. I may have also messed up the lighting in a few shots, and even one misstep like that could ruin the whole thing. But, hey, viral videos aren't meant to look too polished anyway.

My weekend has been going well. I ate a steak last night that was sent from heaven--eight ounces of a New York strip grilled to perfection with a beer and a baked potato soaked through with butter. This is the kind of meal where you have to shut off your phone to avoid any chance of interruption. It's become a tradition for me to fix myself a steak dinner whenever R goes away for a weekend. If I had them any more often, I wouldn't appreciate them this much.

After dinner last night, I sat back with another beer and watched Sin City (which was awesome by the way) before falling asleep early on the couch. It was a good night, but this time, tonight, I need to get more desk time out of it. Call me a geek, but I could just sit here at my computer, with some atmospheric music playing, by the glow of my monitor, all night long. The real world's schedule has been doing its best to tear the night owl out of me, but once in a while, over a three-day weekend when I have the place to myself and nowhere to be, I can let it hoot freely.

Tomorrow is labeled "chore day" on my schedule and the weather is clearing up, so it would be good to get a jump on the day, get some things done, and get outside for a while. I hate to say it, but that's what's going to get me into bed at a somewhat decent hour tonight.

One last thing: the second in the series of articles on Jack of Clubs has been posted. Read it here.

Intensity rising

I can’t sleep. That’s probably a good thing because when I walked downstairs at 2:30 AM to get a glass of water, I found the front door of our house wide open—locked, but open, swaying in the wind of the hurricane… err, tropical storm… err, tropical depression. It must not have latched and we didn’t realize. It’s times like these I’m glad we live in a somewhat suburban-looking neighborhood.

For those of you who don’t know, R is still at home. She was supposed to leave after work for Minnesota (another wedding), but the weather was responsible for a delay that would have caused her to miss her connecting flight, so she's grounded and rescheduled to leave at 7:30 this morning, which means for an early morning trip to the airport. I should be in a good condition to drive her there as long as I don’t try to go back to sleep until I return.

I’m blaming my current state of insomnia on the stress of my new job. I can’t get into too many details about it here, but it has been quite an intense week. I worked extra hours every night. The one night I had something else planned (the Sneaky Peek on Wednesday), I had to come home afterwards and put another three hours in. This is the kind of job that can take over a person’s life. I don’t want that to happen, especially not this weekend. I’ve got a to-do list a mile long for this weekend (no, it’s not the list from four entries ago), and a few of the items do involve relaxing. For instance, I just added “take a nap” to the schedule for today. I feel like I can’t quite relax until I have all of my job-related work finished off. My boss did give me an assignment for the weekend, so I have that hanging over my head. I should log on right now and get it out of the way, but I don’t want my coworkers seeing my ID next to any early morning timestamps and thinking I’m some kind of crazy workaholic. So I’ll use this time to get caught up on my web surfing instead.

I love my wife and spending an extra night with her this weekend was wonderful (we went out for Mexican food after the attempt at the airport), but I’m really looking forward to having the rest of the weekend to myself. I’m still planning to shoot one of my viral videos, but I pushed it back to Sunday because I need more time to prepare. If all goes well though, I should have a rough cut edited by the end of the long weekend. Yes, that’s right—I said long weekend. My new company, unlike my last one, actually recognizes holidays. I worked the last two Labor Days in Mobile because I chose to save my earned time off for other vacations. Now I don’t have the choice. Well, I take it back—there’s work to do if I want it. I’ll do the one assignment my boss gave me at some point this weekend, but then I’m closing my work laptop and hopefully keeping it closed.

One last thing, a plead to Ernesto: you're a big, scary storm and all, but I'm begging you please don't make the power go out for any extended period of time this weekend. I'm going to be needing electricity.

Sneaky Peek

On the last Wednesday of every month, Theater N in downtown Wilmington holds an event they call the Sneaky Peek. How this works is they arrange a happy hour at a nearby bar/restaurant, where they give out some free wine and appetizers (although not enough so you don't want to buy your own anyway), and then everybody walks over to the independent theater and watches a movie, the title of which has not been announced ahead of time. Last night the surprise movie was Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her. Although it was a decent choice, R and I were a little disappointed because we had already seen it on DVD a few years ago. The idea that this might happen was not entirely unexpected, but if I'm going to rewatch a movie on the big-screen, I would hope it would be a movie that makes use of the big-screen. Talk to Her is about two men and the relationships they have with women who happen to be in comas. The cinematography really wasn't anything remarkable; in fact, I'd say the visuals were rather stark, sometimes even drab. There's no comparison to be made to a vibrant film like, say, 2046, which I would be thrilled to see again in a theater. It also didn't help that they just projected the DVD on the screen instead of rolling the actual film. The difference was quite noticeable. But that's enough negativity--the Sneaky Peek is a fantastic idea, a good way to expose people to movies they might not otherwise see, and not knowing what is playing until the title card comes up definitely adds some excitement to the experience. I'd go back for another one.

Number one fan

R and I had our first experience installing a ceiling fan today. We got the job done and are quite proud of the results. That is why I took 18 photos of the fan this evening. Above are my two favorites. Yes, we are taking domestic dorkiness to a whole new level here.

Last night we saw Little Miss Sunshine. It was a quirky little movie that got funnier and funnier as it rolled along. I didn't realize until a few days ago that it was directed by the same duo that made what has long been known as my favorite television commercial of all-time and also my favorite music video of all-time. In fact, I didn't even realize the commercial and the music video were directed by the same people until then. When I found about this amazing coincidence, you can believe I was really pumped to see Little Miss Sunshine. It also didn't hurt that I'm a big fan of Steve Carell. Well, the movie was a lot of fun to watch, but, no, it has not become my favorite movie of all-time. That would have been something.

"What wall is the door in?"

That's a quote from Brick, a movie with a lot of great quotes, a movie my wife and I watched tonight. The main character, a teenage detective investigating his ex-girlfriend's murder, just woke--sans his glasses--from a blackout caused by the pounding a of drug dealer's thug, and he's looking for a way out of the basement in which he finds himself, the basement of the dealer's mom's house. Film noir meets high school in this highly stylized, low-budget, hidden gem of a film. Check it out at your local video store today.

Okay, I'll break from the critic talk. Seriously, it was an entertaining movie. Part of the reason I liked it so much is probably the reason I should dislike it: it reminded me a lot of the movie I wanted to make. They stole my idea! If you know me then you probably know I had an idea for a movie that was to be called Dreamer. It originally manifested itself in a short script for a 10-15 minute video that I fully intended to shoot. In fact, I even got a cast together for one night of shooting on the Leonidas Overlook (forever documented in this over-played clip) before they all went so far in their separate ways that I could never round them all up again.

I didn't let the project die there. I spent many hours bulking it up into a feature length screenplay and submitted it as my final project in my senior year film class at St. Thomas. The instructor was a professional movie critic, and he did a very thorough job of writing notes in the margins (and gave me an 'A'). I always meant to go back and make another revision using those notes, and I figured if the opportunity presented itself one day that I would get a crew together and find some real actors and bring my labor of love to completion. Well, now it seems too late because somebody else sort of beat me to it, and to be honest with you, I think Brick is better than Dreamer would have been, especially with all of its snazzy dialogue.

When did I become somebody who just talks about doing things but doesn't get around to doing them? I feel like that's what's happening here. I get projects in my head, but then I leave them there so long that my passion for them drains away. The obvious excuse is the lack of time due to full-time employment, but even when I was between jobs the days went by so fast that I could never really dive into a project. I didn't even have the chance to dive into flossing my teeth. Still, how can I sit at a computer all day, every day for my job and then expect to come home and type up a novel? Well, maybe a novel isn't the best idea right now. Maybe I should concentrate on my ideas for some short web videos. Yes, I'm going to set my mind to them, even if it means giving up some TV and some blogging. I promise you this: over Labor Day weekend, if not sooner, my camera will be rolling.

To-do list

1.) Create a to-do list.

Opp knocks and Blue Rocks

After work on Friday I met up with a guy from Out & About to discuss a promotional campaign for the magazine. He wants to produce a series of viral videos to promote going out and giving local establishments (their advertisers) some business. Apparently one of the contacts I made in Wilmington gave this guy my resume, and now he wants to contract me out based on the humor of the Cottage Cheese clips he saw online (!). He probably also realized I would work for cheap--an accurate assessment--which would put me ahead of more professional videographers. The nice thing for me is that this is a project I could work on in my spare time, rather than having to quit my day job. The bad thing is that I am very low on spare time these days. My day job has been requiring some overtime, including almost a full day yesterday and a few hours yet to come tonight. Still, I plan to be a part of the video project. I have a few short videos I was planning to make anyway. Maybe I'll be able to incorporate the ideas with the promotional work, and who knows, if I'm given a deadline maybe I'll actually get them done. There is potential for some wide exposure of my work through Out & About. I'd be crazy to pass up such an opportunity.

R and I went to a Wilmington Blue Rocks minor league baseball game this afternoon with some local engineers. It was fun to sit in the sun and eat some junk food. I hadn't watched a baseball game in a while, but I have to admit the game today was rather entertaining, even though it wasn't a nail-biter and our team lost. Who knows--maybe I'll become a huge sports fanatic yet. Maybe.

The season of the wedding

(photo by Bob Finc)

We were in northern Minnesota over the weekend to attend my cousin's wedding. The picture of us above was taken at the reception, which was a good time despite my suffering from a bad case of the hiccups that eventually built up to a fit of dry heaving. Okay, you probably didn't need to know that, but, man, those hiccups can be deadly. Teach your kids how to prevent them. Anyway, my cousin and his new bride are a nice couple, and I wish them all the best.

The aforementioned wedding was the first of five to which my wife and I were invited over the course of the next three months. I guess we're getting to that age where a lot of people we know are tying the knot. It's a bummer they are all taking place in Minnesota because there's no way we can make it to all of them, let alone the bachelor/bachelorette parties and showers. Missing out on some of them is one of the sacrifices we make when living so far away in an exotic location like Delaware.

We touched down at the Philly airport around 10:30 on Monday morning. Instead of putting in a half day of work, we took a drive to Cape May and spent the afternoon at the beach. R's aunt and uncle are renting a place down there for the week, so we visited with them between thrashing sessions on the waves. The night -- and our enjoyable extended weekend -- ended with a fajita dinner and a drive home.

Buying some time

Hey. Sorry for the lack of posting. My next entry will explain. Until then, you can chew on this--

Now reading (just finished, actually): Good Night, Everybody... and Be Kind by Dennis Anderson (this is an autobiography of a Duluth newscaster; it's interesting to read some stories about northern Minnesota, but the writing is only so-so).

Now listening: Hop High by Crooked Still (I can't believe I'm listening to bluegrass), Fox Confessor Brings the Flood by Neko Case (I can't believe I'm listening to country... well, this is definitely alt-country), Disintegration by The Cure (this is more typical for me), Funeral by The Arcade Fire (after a year and a half I still can't get enough of this one, the most recent addition to my all-time favorite albums list).

Now watching: Entourage, Season 2 (this show can be a little crass, but it's a guilty pleasure nonetheless.)

The new grind, part 2

Not only do we get free coffee at my new job, but we get to choose between coffee from Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, or Wawa. They also have this machine that apparently can make a wide variety of blends, not to mention hot chocolate or tea. Oh, and if you want soda, they have a wide selection of that too. That's just the beverages. They provide lunch as well. Each Monday they stock a fridge full of all kinds of deli meat and cheeses. They also have yogurt, chips, and cookies. And get this: on Wednesdays and Fridays they bring in lunch from a restaurant for everybody. Last week we had Mexican one day and pizza on the other. This is a great deal. I'm psyched about the food.

Another perk about this new job, as I mentioned before, is the casual environment. I started out the week wearing my nicest khakis with a long-sleeved, buttoned-downed shirt tucked into them (this was already a step down from my previous job, where I had to wear a tie every day). By the end of the week I was wearing cargo shorts and flip-flops. I wouldn't have done it, but I thought I would actually fit in better if I did since even the co-founder of the company was wearing that garb the day before. I definitely didn't look out of place. To be honest though, I didn't feel that comfortable wearing shorts. I think I'll bump my own dress code up to at least jeans for the time being. Sure it's convenient to wear whatever, but I feel more professional and productive with shoes on. Plus, most of the clothes I own are khakis and polo shirts anyway, so I might as well wear them.

Now, about the cubicles... In order to "facilitate open communication," they built the cube walls to be about three feet tall. When the guy who hired me sits at his desk, he is staring right at me. When I sit at my desk, I'm staring at my project leader, from about four feet away. There is no privacy at all. It could take some getting used to.

I think the job will work out okay. I'm a little insecure about my abilities and still not convinced a job like this plays to my strengths. It also doesn't help that everybody else at the place appears to be a workoholic. I think they are expecting a lot out of me; that can be a little daunting.

So begins another week. I'm looking forward to getting back into a regular workout schedule this week. I'm going to try to hit the gym in the mornings, before work. I also plan to set up a wireless router in our house this week. That way I can update my blog from my new laptop while hanging with R in the living room : )

Jellyfish city

We drove over to the New Jersey shore (as opposed to the Delaware beach) yesterday. The traffic was really bad and it took us three hours to get there, but some excellent Boogie boarding conditions made the trip worth it. One thing that was new to R and I was the multitude of jellyfish we encountered in the water. These translucent, hockey puck-sized creatures were teeming around us. We were worried about being stung at first, but then we saw kids throwing them at each other and collecting them in buckets. One little kid enlightened us by saying that only the red ones were poisonous, and we were only seeing white ones. We were still leery to spend too much time under water in fear of getting one in the face, but we did our best to ignore them otherwise. It's funny--they do actually have some weight to them. When you are kicking around in the water, you can feel when your legs hit them. Sometimes they'll be on the sandy bottom and your feet will squish into them when you step down. It freaked us out a bit, but we weren't about to pass up "shredding" the bodacious waves over some harmless invertebrates.

The new grind, part 1

The drive to my new job takes about 35 minutes. So far commuting hasn't been so bad. It's a good chance to listen to music, if nothing else. My biggest problem with spending so much additional time in my car every day is that sooner or later I'm going to get a flat tire or stuck in heavy snow storm traffic or side-swiped on the freeway. Those are things you don't need to worry about when you are reading a book on a bus or walking to work with an iPod, both of which are nice situations I had going for me at one time, in other states, in other lives. I probably needlessly worry too much. I think it runs in my family, the Finc family of Delaware that is.

Working for AdmnServer (the "i" is intentionally left out to avoid being picked up by search engines) relates more directly to my job with Minnesota Life (aka Securian) than anything I did at the Infirmary. Actually, as far as anybody from AdmnServer is concerned, the two years I spent in Mobile didn't exist, and it would be just as well if they didn't, at least professionally, as they seemed only to make me a lazier programmer and put more distance between me and any memory of the insurance business. Everyone who works at AdmnServer came directly from either a college or an insurance company. I fall into the latter category, with a little detour along the way.

The new employee training program and just about anything else at AdmnServer is much less structured than any other job I've ever worked. I received a half-hour orientation and maybe a collective hour of job-specific tutorials during the five days I've been at the place. Otherwise they just showed me where my desk is located, introduced me to my team leader, and told me to get started. The question "Get started doing what doing what exactly?" came up in my head a few times.

Despite all of the unclarity and lack of training, I had a relatively productive week. I'm learning (mostly on my own) some things that will look really good on a resume. Those of you with an Information Technology background will know what I'm talking about when I say I've been maintaining stored procedures in a Microsoft SQL Server database, altering some Crystal Reports, and performing system testing / QA on change control. That's one half of the job. The other half I haven't really started yet, but it will involve configuring the XML business rules in the AdmnServer system to match our clients' needs.

That's it for now. Next time I'll write about the food, the cubes, and the dress code (or lack thereof).

Episode III

This is the final installment in my lightsaber photo trilogy, starring my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Up next, I'm going to add a lightsaber to a live action video. Are you as excited as I am?

Reading material

Yeah, I started my new job this week. Let me put in a couple more days before I give you the full report. Overall, it's going fine. The best part is the daily free lunch. The worst part is the low cube walls.

My real reason for writing tonight is to post some links to articles and sites related to Jack of Clubs. You may want to check back on some of them again as the Spring 2007 release date gets closer.

• Celluloid Siblings -- Here's an article from a local magazine focusing on the producers of the movie. It is the first of a four-part series of articles, with the next part to be about the production process of our movie.
• Evan Krape Photography -- This photographer took a bunch of nice shots during five of the days we filmed.
• O'Ferrell Productions -- This is the site belonging to the production crew. It hasn't been updated in a while, but expect a complete revamp soon. I know they have been taking a lot of photos to post on it.
• Film Brothers -- The producers' website. This one is also out of date but should be updated soon. Consider checking out the 10-second film, "The Lesson," posted there.
• Dani Englander -- Our lead actress's website.

Wrapped

Our last day of shooting was bittersweet. We could have filmed the scenes we needed in half the time, but nobody rushed. It was a rare day when a lack of time was not the driving force, when we had the opportunity to shoot some extras for the DVD and revel in the lingering sense of accomplishment. As good as it felt to be done with all of the hard work involved in making this movie, maybe nobody wanted it to end. Or maybe it was just me.

If I'm sounding particularly sentimental, it's probably because of the wrap party on Friday night. We met at the Crimson Moon in Little Italy for drinks, and I had a great time. Everybody seemed to have such a positive experience with this project. The way we gushed about each other and the results we achieved, you'd think we were being taped for one of those self-promoting, behind the scenes documentaries where everybody says "this is the best movie ever." It's easy to think that before you see the finished product (and when you have a few drinks in you). I can soberly say, however, that I am proud to have been a part of it. The cinematography, for one thing, should be outstanding for a low-budget, independent film.

I was a bit disappointed that a few of the crew members were not able to attend the party. They were already moving on to their next projects and didn't have time to take a break and look back at this one. Most everybody involved is freelance and going their separate ways. I guess the same could be said about me, at least the separate ways part. My new job with AdminServer starts tomorrow; I'm going to give it a fair chance.

Now that I'm going to be employed again, R and I felt justified to go out and spend some money on Saturday. We bought some things for the house, including a Dyson vacuum cleaner, which I will say has been most impressive so far. Our carpet sighed in relief after a much needed cleaning.

We also went out for a seafood dinner and a movie yesterday. We saw Lady in the Water, and for the first time, M. Night Shyamalan disappointed me. The movie was imaginative and had the potential to be a clever critique on story-telling, but the pieces just did not come together. It was dull and unemotional. I was left underwhelmed.

Behind a scene

A member of the cast, Joe Clipper, made this short video on the set of Jack of Clubs. Check it out for a quick look at what goes on behind the scenes. Oh, and you won't see me in it -- I was in Minnesota that day.

The future and things

AdminServer called me over a week ago and told me I could still have business analyst position that I earlier turned down due to the scheduling conflict with my filmmaking internship. It seems I had called their bluff on the "now or never" ultimatum they originally gave me because it turns out they are fine with a start date of July 31 after all.

Although I haven't signed any papers yet, I did verbally agree to take the job. I feel the need to justify this decision to you because as you all know the internship is going well. It's clear I enjoy working on movies, but just because someone enjoys golf doesn't mean they can realistically run off and join the PGA Tour. Here are my reasons for accepting the job:

1) AdminServer gave me an attractive offer: my own laptop, an on-site gym, profit-sharing bonuses, an annual company-wide cruise. I was even able to negotiate a slightly higher salary, making the offer just a little bit sweeter. If this was my only reason, then you could say I sold out, but there's more.

2) The work might not be that bad. This is not mainframe programming we are talking about anymore. I'm going to get some exposure to XML and Java, and some increased interaction with users will help improve my communication skills. Also appealing is the fact that the company has a very casual environment with a lot of people my own age employed. I'd like to try working at such a place.

3) I don't have anything else lined up. The D.P. did say he would like take me on for jobs with pay after the internship is over, but that would be only part-time work at best. When I do work, it would include nights and weekends, and it would involve a lot of travel. The crew is based out of Bel Air, Maryland and works mostly in Baltimore and D.C.. In the filmmaking business, they call starting with a crew "joining the circus." That doesn't sound right for me at this stage in life. Maybe I can help with some weekend shoots if they need me, but otherwise I'm looking forward to more stability and a regular schedule.

4) I can still add my internship / grip work to my resume. Who knows what will come up in the future. The biggest sacrifice I'll be making by working for AdminServer is just losing the time and energy that I could otherwise spend looking for alternate jobs. I probably won't continue trying to break into the world of independent filmmaking, but that was never my goal in the first place. I've been looking for a corporate desk job all along; the thing is I want one in a creative environment. I'd like to be on the end that develops the ideas, maybe writes a script, and hires out the freelance film crew. My internship might give me an edge in the running for a job like that. If I don't like my new job, there's no reason I can't continue looking for something more along those lines at ad agencies or whatever.

5) The Minnesota connection with AdminServer is nice. There's a good chance I will be assigned to some Securian projects, which means I would be working with some old friends from back home over the phone and taking business trips back there. Also, if R and I decide to move back to Minnesota in the future, I would be a shoe-in for a job at Securian since I will have helped develop the software that they are learning.

Let me debunk an assumption some of you might otherwise make. I am not accepting this job due to pressure from my wife. She is very supportive of me following my dreams, even if it means I never earn another dime. In fact I think she liked telling people she was married to a filmmaker or a starving artist. Accepting the offer was my decision. This very well might be the path to fulfilling my dreams.

If you remember, I almost passed up my internship all-together to work at AdminServer back when I received their original offer. Now I'm getting the chance to do both. I would be feeling a lot of regret if I hadn't worked on the movie, but I did, and it was great. There are five days of filming left, and after that it will be a lot easier moving on.

Foreshadow

I just got back from a radio station where we were shooting a couple of scenes from the movie. It was a fun night. Those of us involved with the project are developing strong sense of camaraderie for the simple reason that we are spending a lot of time together if not also because we all share a common bond -- the aspiration to make a movie. I've struggled to find people with that interest in common with me in the past, but now I'm surrounded by them. That's so awesome.

There's been something going on in my career situation that I've been keeping on the down low for the last week. I'm going to continue to avoid discussing it tonight because it requires more explanation than I care to get into now. Later on this morning R and I will be traveling up to Piscataway, New Jersery for a family reunion and spending the day there. On Sunday I'll be helping shoot the climactic BBQ scenes for the movie. Let's make a date for early next week to discuss why and how my hiatus from work is ending. Okay, it won't be much of a discussion. Rather, I will write and you can read, as usual.

Latest from the life of a grip

For those readers of mine living in the Baltimore area (yeah, right), keep a look out for me on your television. I'm being prominently featured in two commercials to be aired on Baltimore cable. They needed somebody to play the clerk at a pharmacy while a customer places some products on the counter. I didn't have any speaking lines, but I did have to give a good smile and look friendly. We were advertising for a company called Caregivers Marketplace. Part of the process involved aging one of the actresses by 40 years with make-up and unflattering lighting. That was pretty cool to witness. The producer of the commercials was a big-time perfectionist, and it meant for a really long day. We had a 7:00am call time and worked until 10:00pm, followed by a 3-hour drive home. That was my Sunday.

We had another 7:00am call time this morning in Claymont, DE where we shot a couple of scenes in a moving city bus. It was a really fun shoot. We strapped a generator to the bike rack on the front of the bus to power our lights. I felt like I was on the set of the movie Speed. We also had to take some exteriors of the bus and the actors inside through the windows. Of course the bus had to be moving in these shots, so we had to close down a street and have the D.P. stand through a sunroof in a vehicle driving next to the bus. I can't wait to see these results. I keep hearing that the DVD will be available in Blockbuster, so you'll have the chance to see them too... in Spring 2007.

North Country

We encountered many lakes during our sojourn to the north, which I guess is pretty typical when you visit the land of 10,000 of them in mid-summer. Minnesotans love their lakes, and they love to share them. Lost Lake, pictured above, is found on my father-in-law's property. It is probably the most natural-looking one of the bunch we visited, which is charming in its own right, but not as welcoming for a swim. We did, however, take a dip in Pleasant Lake, Ely Lake, and Lake Itasca over the course of our vacation. We also pontooned, jet skied, and tubed thanks to the hospitality of our parents and some excellent weather.

The weather was great in Winnipeg as well. Highlights from the Folk Festival include watching Neko Case bring on a rising (and then passing) storm at sunset, napping in the prairie breeze, walking across a moon shadowed campground to the perpetual cadence of multiple drum circles, and just generally soaking up the free-spirited Folk Fest atmosphere with some good company.

Aside from the perfect Neko Case performance in the perfect concert conditions, a favorite act of R's and mine was Crooked Still, a contemporary, "alternative" bluegrass band that brought the house down. Their CDs sold out before they even played their main concert, but R and I were able to order one online. I'll be happy if it's half as good as their live performance.

As nice as it was to visit family and old friends and to listen to some outdoor music, by the end of our trip, I was more than ready to come home. Ten days is a long time when you are away from your bed, your computer, and a shower (for the second half). The travel really wore us down too. On Monday, we woke up at 5:10 am, packed up our campsite, drove for eight and a half hours, and were still only in Minneapolis. By the time our flight brought us to Philly and we drove home from there, it was 12:30 am. Subtracting an hour for the time-zone change, that's 18+ hours one way! Ah, but it was worth it.

Speaking of being worn out, I'm signing off for the night. Have a good one.

Commercial

And we're back from our trip. I'll give you a longer write-up about it soon. Things are still a little crazy around here; I haven't even had the chance to unpack yet. For now, I just wanted to share the news that I received my first paying gig in the filmmaking business. I'll be helping shoot a television commercial down in Chesapeake, Viriginia this weekend. Our main movie shoot continues in Wilmington for another two and a half weeks; the commercial is just a side project. The pay still isn't great, but it should be another good experience and, hey, getting paid anything at all is nice. If you're curious as to what we'll be advertising... I don't even know yet. I guess we find out when we get there.

Bring on the vacation

Double post tonight! Check out the photos from the beach shoot below. I ended up spending two nights down there, one of which turned into a very late, drunken bonding session with some of the people involved with the production; when else do you get to see your director throw handfuls of goldfish crackers into the air after he unsuccessfully attempts to steal the bowl of them from the bar? Anyway, I'm glad the trip didn't last much longer because I had to come home and catch up on my web surfing (and get packed up) before leaving again on our 10-day Minnesota/Manitoba vacation, which starts early tomorrow morning. I've had a long shoot every day this week, so I'm starting to feel it. In fact, I need to cut this blog entry a little short on account of me being low on free time. Enjoy your 4th of July holiday, and remember to check back here for more updates after I return in about a week and a half.

Photos from the beach shoot

Our D.P. shooting handheld, strapped to the back of a go-kart:

The crew sets up for a scene at the mini-golf course with the director and D.P. discussing the shot in the background:

Me playing around with the Canon XL2 (I want one):

The director discusses the crab dinner scene with the cast while the steadicam looks on:

Background artist

I made my acting debut on Friday night as an extra in the movie. You'll be able to see me in two shots standing at the counter of a tuxedo rental shop with my onscreen fiancée (who I later found out is only 15 years old!). It was a fun night. I'm really enjoying working with people who have a broad knowledge of movies and feel the same satisfaction as me when making them. These people have a lot of great stories: our D.P. was telling us about the times he met director John Waters (a Baltimore native), our key grip worked behind the scenes at last year's Academy Awards, and the actor standing across the tuxedo counter from me was an extra in Sex and the City. Software developers don't have experiences like that.

This weekend turned out to not be as much work as I expected. It's been raining off and on since Friday night, so the big BBQ/picnic shoot we had planned was rescheduled for a weekend in July. I ended up with a couple days off.

R. and I drove up to Philly yesterday for the Manayunk Art Festival, which was surprisingly smaller than the Minneapolis Uptown Art Fair and the Fairhope Art Fair in Alabama. However, they handed out free samples of food/beverages at this one, which ranks it ahead of the other two, at least in my book. Otherwise it was a pretty typical art fair. R. found some jewelry to purchase.

On Saturday night we went to see the movie version of A Prairie Home Companion in the theater. I recommend it if you are a fan of the radio show or if you are from Minnesota. It was a cute movie with some dark touches, and it contained a lot of clever observations about Minnesotans. Seeing some St. Paul landmarks and hearing the accents made us a bit nostalgic for home. Good thing we'll be heading out there next weekend.

I've got a 15-hour day of movie making scheduled for tomorrow. The other notable schedule irregularity for me is a two-day, midweek shoot down at the Delaware beaches. As a little perk, the producers are taking us out in the party town of Dewey Beach on Wednesday night and setting us up with a place to stay for the night. I look forward to it!

Cleansing the soul

Shooting a movie attracts a lot of attention. When people see us lighting up a neighborhood at night or closing a street downtown, they are interested in what's going on. I'm glad I'm on the other side of the crowd control for the first time.

This job has been very satisfying so far; funny how the work is the polar opposite of that from my previous jobs. I used to sit at a desk, make it look like I'm thinking hard, and earn a nice paycheck; now I'm on my feet continuously, frantically performing physically-demanding work, and not earning a thing, except my name in the credits and maybe a copy of the DVD. As you all know, participating in the production of this movie was not a financially enterprising decision for me, but I feel like my soul is being cleansed. Even if I do go back to some desk job after all this, at least I will always have this experience to look back on and talk about. I'll have a DVD on my shelf that I can watch and remember how much sweat went into each shot of it.

I, along with two other production assistants, have been reporting to the director of photography or the two technicians under him. We have to meet up at the different shooting locations (so far a courthouse, a home, an intersection downtown, a coffee shop, a bar, an apartment) by a certain call time. Then we unload the vehicles, set up lights and/or reflectors, cover windows, lay dolly track, and throw sandbags around. The D.P. takes a look and directs us to do some tweaking, usually adding or subtracting filters or gels from the lights. The D.P. has a really good eye for sizing up shots and recreating natural lighting on camera. I have a new appreciation for color temperature and cinematography in general when I turn on the TV these days. I'm anxious to go back and watch some of my favorite movies with this new knowledge in mind.

Tonight is looking like another late night. After this we are switching to mostly day shoots until my and R's Minnesota vacation starts on July 1. I'm going to need the break by then, after working 13 days in a row. Spending the 4th back home should be fun, and then we head up to Winnipeg for the folk festival. There will only be three weeks of shooting left when we return. I'm going to try to make the most of it because I still don't have anything lined up for when we are done.

Production begins

I worked for 15 hours yesterday as a grip on Jack of Clubs. Some of the time was spent in training where I learned how to roll cable, set up lights, and identify a bunch of clamps and things. Production crews have their own names for everything -- a light bulb is a globe, an extension cord is a stinger, a clothespin is a C47, etc. It's like learning a new language.

We had a meeting over lunch to discuss some the ground rules and administrative issues. I ended up sitting next to our lead actor, who will be appearing later this year with a small speaking role in Rocky VI. Yeah, there's my big celeb story. Anyway, it gives you an idea of what league of independent film we are in. One movie's background actor is another movie's lead. That being said, I was impressed with the acting ability I saw during the courthouse shoot last night.

The results on the technical side were equally impressive. The crew is a tight-knit group that seems to work very well together. They certainly work hard, as did I last night. They have a ton of equipment, enough to fill multiple vans, and it needs to be moved around A LOT. This job is not paying me, but with all this exercise it will be like receiving a free gym membership.

Tonight we're meeting at a private home for another shoot. I believe I will be mainly working as a script supervisor / continuity checker this time, but I'm sure there will be some grip duties as well. That's okay -- I need to get my workout in.

Boogie

...that's a weird word when you look at it by itself. The reason I'm using it is because we bought boogie boards on Saturday and spent the day at Rehoboth Beach in southern Delaware. The waves were big, and they broke really close to shore due to a steep drop-off not far out. This of course resulted in us getting pounded on and scraped along the floor. It was fun! Seriously. I'm anxious to try it again.

On Sunday I had to pick up a cargo van and drive it down to Bel Air, Maryland to meet up with the production crew and help them pack up and haul their equipment into Wilmington. They're spending the next six weeks in town for the shoot, which begins today. We have a meeting scheduled for later this morning, and then we're heading over to the courthouse for our first scene. It could be a late night. I'm already finding that this is very time-consuming work, especially with the amount of set-up involved in a production of this size and quality. Cottage Cheese this is not.

Streets of Philadelphia

In an effort to increase my pavement pounding during my last week before beginning a full-time internship, I took a train into Philly yesterday with plans to meet some contacts I've made at an advertising agency called MBC.

Actually, the first thing I did when I arrived downtown was follow a long, windy hall to a nook in a big building close to City Hall where the Greater Philadelphia Film Office resides. These are the people that helped M. Night Shyamalan arrange for the shooting of all of his films; they are also involved with the TV show Cold Case, as well as a bunch of other projects I'm sure you've heard of that were shot in and around Pennsylvania. Anyway, I walked right in there and got only as far as the secretary. She gave me a brochure and told me to check out the website to see if there were any employment opportunities available. It was pretty much what one would expect to happen, but a worthy stop just to say I was there.

The visit at MBC was more productive. I received a tour of the place and met individually with three very helpful, knowledgable guys. They gave me a lot of hope that I can find a job that allows me to use my technical knowledge in combination with my creativity. One guy spoke my thoughts exactly when he talked about the merging technologies of digital video and personal computers. He showed me an example of an interactive video he put together and told me that Flash technology was where it was all happening right now. He said somebody with a communication/computer background could do pretty well for himself in the advertising industry. All he needs is the right opportunity. Yeah, that's what I need.

Another guy I met spoke with me about the future of the Internet. He claimed the way we surf the web is going to change dramatically in the coming years. It's going to move away from being browser-based; instead our PCs will be more fully integrated with the web, and we'll have these little translucent widgets on our desktops... I don't want to repeat the whole discussion here, but take my word for it -- it's exciting stuff. Take a look at this site for an example of what is to come: www.pageflakes.com.

MBC has a lot of creative juices flowing through it. It's a much hipper environment than anywhere I've worked, full of bright colors, dim lighting, artistic people. Knowing that a place like that exists makes me glad I passed on the AdminServer opportunity. As casual and relaxed as AdminServer looked, it was still in an uptight business without much room for stretching one's imagination.

My visit to MBC was not a job interview -- it was strictly informational -- but I hope they keep me in mind if any opportunities arise or if they hear of anybody else hiring. Commuting to Philly everyday is not ideal for me, but it would be worth it for the right job. I think I'll start targeting some ad agencies in Wilmington too. Also on my to do list: relearn Flash and Adobe After Effects.

Painting a wall

The duties of a production assistant are quite varied. Today I picked up 4000 feet of streamers from Party City and then went over to Buddy's Bar to paint a wall. The bar wasn't open yet, but some guy who looked and sounded a lot like Cliff Clavin from Cheers came in to drink three Buds anyway. It turns out he was still on sick leave having just recovered from a cousin of the E. Coli virus (only he called it I. Col-ee). And guess what this guy's profession just happened to be; he was a professional painter. That would have been fine had he jumped in and helped me, but instead he sat there and observed my every stroke of the brush. Since there was nobody else in the bar except the owner (who was in and out of the place really), he didn't have anybody else to distract him from critiquing my technique. It was a good thing I was in top form after having so recently helped paint almost the entire interior of my and R's house. The wall turned out well, and the unlimited access to free soda pop was nice. Next week the production phase of the film begins. That is what I have been waiting for.

Mason

As a good way to get my mind off of my recent life-changing decisions, we went to a Mason Jennings concert in Philly on Friday night. Mason has the distinction of being the artist I have seen perform live the most number of times (still in single digits, I believe, but quickly approaching double). Friday was not my favorite show of his, but it was decent. Standout songs for me were "Some Say I'm Not" and the wildly experimental "Where the Sun Had Been," both from his new album, as well as the couple of tracks he played off Use Your Voice, "Crown" and "Uylsses." I was happy to hear his new stuff because it had been a few years since I'd last seen him play, but it was disappointing that he played very few older songs, and rather than mixing them in with the newer material, he tacked the obligatory "Butterfly" and a half-hearted "Godless" to the end of the encore. That, along with the new drummer screwing up the end of the latter was an off-putting way to end the show. Oh well, the concert was still a treat. I recommend checking out one of his shows if you ever have the chance.

In other entertainment news, we have reactivated our Netflix account! We already watched The Squid and the Whale and Matchpoint. Munich and Shopgirl are up next. I've been feeling a little movie deprived lately, so this is exactly what I need.

Negotiation, or the burning of a bridge

"Don't trade your dreams for some small change."

-U2

The short of it is, I will probably not be working for AdminServer.

I started out the discussion by telling the C.O.O. that I appreciated the offer and I thought we had a good match between them and me. I listed some ways I could benefit the company and some of the ways they could benefit me. He was ready at that point to write up an agreement letter and get it out to me. I told him to hold up because I wanted to go over some of the details of the offer first.

I started with the salary. I didn't tell him this, but if I'm going to be selling out my dreams I want good money for them, not an unreasonable amount, but enough to make it worth it to me. I told him what number I had in mind and how it was justified based on my experience, and he told me that number wasn't possible. We met not quite in the middle, but closer to his figure. He didn't want to budge much at all. I probably would have been fine with the number we settled on if the rest of the negotiating went in my favor... but that's coming up.

I told him I was happy with the benefits. I did ask if they offered any tuition reimbursement but mainly because I wanted him to tell me no. This way it would look like I'm compromising on something I might want someday in the future. He told me flat out that was something they didn't offer. I told him it wasn't a deal breaker, but the following topic might be...

The start date. I told him even though I downplayed it at the interview, I've been realizing more and more over the last two days that this film project is really important to me. It's something I've always wanted to do and this might be my only opportunity to do it. I also said I made a commitment to it and meant to be good on my word. I told him I couldn't start until July 31, the Monday after the filming was complete. I was firm, and he said this was indeed a deal breaker. Because this is a unique situation and they need me now, either I start right away or I don't start. It was the same spiel he gave me at the interview. He wasn't bluffing.

I told him I could give him a call at the end of July, possibly come in for another meeting, and see if there was still a need for me at that time. He said I was welcome to call, but the impression I got was not really positive. It's pretty clear I passed up my only chance for this job. Even though this is a quickly growing company that supposedly hires a lot of entry level people, some of which only took a single class in Java in college, I think my relationship is now tainted with them and I probably won't get another offer.

I'd like to think that if I was beginning what could be a long career with this company, then it shouldn't be dependent on pushing my start date back a few weeks, but apparently they only wanted me if I could contribute to the Securian project and that window was closing fast. I have no hard feelings toward AdminServer. It was just a case of there being a rush on their end but not on mine.

I've been telling myself I have the rest of my life to work some job but not many opportunities to be on a sabbatical or hiatus like this with the chance to do something satisfying for my creative side. The Minnesota connection at AdminServer was the hardest part to give up, but otherwise I think I can find more opportunities in I.T. if I want them. I just need to see where else I can go first.

I also want to take this chance to say, making the choice I made is only possible thanks to my loving wife who has been more than supportive over this whole ordeal and is okay with me being for a bum for a while longer. She'll be at the top of my thank you list when I win my first academy award.

There you have it. Another door closed, another path chosen. It's been a few hours since the phone call, and I don't have any regrets yet. I wonder how I'll feel about it tomorrow.

On a related note, I officially began my production assistant duties this afternoon by running around Wilmington to pick up some paint, drop off supplies for an upcoming shoot at a dive bar, and find the materials needed to make a wooden sword. It's interesting work alright.

Choose your own adventure

I don't really have the time to write. I thought of the above title and just had to use it regarding my current state of affairs. This decision is killing me (or at least hurting me really bad). Both paths I can take are equally appealing and unappealing. You would think that would make the decision easy, right? Nope.

I'm going to bed. Hopefully my dreams show me some sort of sign before I wake.

Crossroads

I need to limit the amount I discuss this topic at least until I make a decision because my business card, one that lists my web site address, is in the hands or pockets of some people with a lot of influence over my life right now. Blogging is great, but I need to keep in mind that everything I write is open for public consumption. I'm banking on the fact that nobody finds my life interesting enough to actually spend the time out of their busy day to give this more than a cursory glance. Let's hope anybody in a position to steer my career, and thus a good chunk of the rest of my life, sees too dense of a page of words here and decides to blur right over them. If they do instead read this in detail, well, then maybe they will make my decision for me, and right now that doesn't sound so bad.

There comes at least one point in everybody's life when one must decide what is truly important to him. I've encountered one of these points before, right before I proposed to my girlfriend, quit my job in St. Paul, and moved to Mobile, Alabama to be with her. I am faced with a doozey of a decision right now, one that needs to be made by Friday, one that could either bring my professional life back full-circle to where it was before I left Minnesota or turn the last two years and my current hiatus into a departure from the business/insurance/programming/analysis world I have been wrestling with since I entered it. Today's events can be interpreted in two ways: (1) as a sign, saying "this is where you should be so quit fighting it and take this perfect opportunity before the stars stop aligning and it is no longer offered," or (2) a test, questioning what I value more, money or career satisfaction. Please note here that if the decision was as clean cut as that, I would go the career satisfaction route. There are other factors and gray areas in my decision to complicate the process. I don't know for sure if I will be unsatisfied working in the high paying job and vice-versa.

Before I go any further, maybe I should fill you in on what I'm talking about, as I'm sure you are thoroughly confused by now. I interviewed with a small company, AdminServer, that is being hired out by Securian, the large insurance company for which I worked in Minnesota. I was given a very attractive offer on the spot to join them as a business analyst and work with/for the same group of people I called my team at my old company. The idea is I would have instant rapport with these people and already have some knowledge of their business systems, so I could make a good liaison right off the bat. To continue the baseball metaphor, I would need to start this job soon because the project is in full swing. Unfortunately this conflicts in a major way with my plans to be a production assistant/intern on a movie shoot from June 19 - July 28. There's no way I can do both. AdminServer told they can't wait for me -- if I want the job, I need to take it now.

See my dilemma? Either direction I go, a bridge is burned. I commited to the internship and it's a week before the shoot. If I back out now the director will probably yell, "I'll see to it that you never work in this town again!" and throw me out the door. Yet I hate to give up such a great opportunity at AdminServer. The job would be perfect in many ways. Part of the job would include travel. And guess where I'd be going -- to Minnesota, of course. Also, if R. and I ever did move back to Minnesota, I think I would have a really good shot of being hired on again by Securian because of my association with AdminServer and their software package, a major one that is going to impact how the whole company functions. It all fits together so well. There's more to it too. I just need to limit myself here. What it comes down to is if I loved the insurance business and wanted to stay in IT for the rest of my life, I would be set. Because I have been wanting to try something different and I have this yearning for more creativity, I might have to give up the money and stability that is currently up for grabs. Continuing the search for a job in video production is much more risky and has led to a lot of deadends already. There's also no way taking that route will pay half as well as the IT route (and probably not include fully paid, annual cruises to the Caribbean either).

That's all I can do for tonight. This decision weighs heavily on me. Any advice?