11.28.07
Posted in Film at 11:17 am by Fletcher
I love Premiere parties, and I’m lucky enough to have two in 2 weeks time. Last night was the ‘Wedding Video / The Hitman Always Rings Twice’ screening, down at Sugar, a familiar venue for screening - the Premiere for ‘Like a Springsteen Song‘ was held there. (a cautionary note: in the linked post I cuss like a sailor)
Premiere parties are great because I imagine the camaraderie is a lot like being on a chain gang, serving time or being in the service - its long hours, grueling work, long boring stretches in between fierce frantic bouts of action. And seeing those people in a more relaxed setting, to actually enjoy the outcome of our effort - its all the more enjoyable.
The Executive Produce, Scott Powers, was milling about, taking photos of everyone, setting up the posters I had designed for everyone to sign and have a copy - also quite the thrill, seeing one’s own work in print, as well as on screen. After a while, Mr. powers made a welcoming introductory speech, had our DP Mr. Brooks (to my readers aka Ninjascott) say a few words and started the films.
Its weird - normally I get sucked into a film just because being an artist my eye is inherently drawn to the moving image. When I see something I worked on, its doubly so. I remember exactly what I was doing when I see a scene, so when an actress is onscreen making out with what looks to be a waiter, I remember being on a dirty restaurant floor, aiming a shotgun mic while hoping that some rat or other vermin wouldn’t come scrambling out of one of the dark niches and bite me on the ass, causing me to yell out and ruin the take… This time it was triply so, as several scenes were filmed in my apartment, as well as a couple of my paintings made their onscreen debut. (Ninjascott had decided at the last moment to make the male lead in ‘Hitman’ into an artist because I had so many paintings laying about, and I had to give an impromptu coaching about how to handle a brush)
When the house lights came up, we all jumped into fervent discussion about what we saw, what we liked. Ninjascott’s scripts were praised all around. Capt. Ron’s lighting was amazing (I would have never thought that so much light was needed to make it look like nighttime). There is nothing quite like the discussion of film geeks, especially those who work in the industry…
It hit doubly so, the next morning, when I saw an email from Ninjascott, who had posted my info into a listserve for film and theater types:
A good friend and colleague of mine who is an affordable and sane photoshop wizard has, at my urging, put together some pieces he has done on his web site.
If you are in need of a great poster, post card or invitation, please hang on to Fletch’s info which I will paste here!
Guess I’m in the industry too!
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11.27.07
Posted in Art, Film at 12:43 pm by Fletcher
The Director & I had a MASSIVE email session last night - if you got multiple invites to the premiere and didn’t want them; my apologies - to the rest, I hope to see you there. Hey, for $25, its free food, booze and a movie - who can argue??
The best part is that my gag reel will be the ‘crowd warmer’, and I’ll be filming the party for an update on the Laurel Films site.
These are the latest updates on the latest paintings - I must have the house one done by Christmas, as it is a present - the girl at the window I want done because I have another pose from this set that I want to do, plus a completely different pose that has my artistic imagination in thrall. Damn, I kinda hope that I don’t have to get a job, I’ve got way too much to do.
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11.25.07
Posted in Film at 11:38 pm by Fletcher
There seems to be some complications with the Laurel Site - several readers pointed out that it wasn’t working. After a few deep technical battles it seems to be working, those who couldn’t see it, please try again…
www.laurelfilmsinc.com
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11.24.07
Posted in Film at 4:52 pm by Fletcher
Its official, the site for Laurel Films is up - its the first step in our conquest of the world of film.
The redesign looks great - more trendy, easier to read.
Give some love and check it out.
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11.23.07
Posted in Weekly Texture Map at 1:52 pm by Fletcher
One of the problems I have with most texture maps is the ‘cleanliness’ of them - which in turn is what I think gives most 3D / game work its ‘plastic’ look, which is ok for ‘Toy Story’ but doesn’t ring true for other works.
It’s in that spirit that I submit this one - what is it when you see sidewalks, they never have litter, no gum stuck to them and certainly no garbage in the cracks??
I want realism!
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11.20.07
Posted in Uncategorized, Art at 10:47 pm by Fletcher
I woke up to this in the inbox today:
Thank you for your interest in Gallery X,y,z New York.
We are unable to take your work at this time. If you have other work you would like us to review please forward it to us as it becomes available.
Thank you very much for submitting your work and we appreciate your efforts as an emerging artist.
Floating around in the ol’ Fletcher Archives are a stack of rejection letters I’ve collected over the years - the day I sell a painting for $5,000 (or more) I’m gonna torch that pile with a fifth of rum.
What is it about rejection that is so crushing to the human spirit. As a creative, its tough enough to put any thought, much less feeling into any work, because the idea that it might be laughed at is daunting. I’m quite certain that many a voice over the years has been rendered mute by the fear of humiliation.
A quick internet search brings up many topics, how to handle rejection, psychology behind why we fear rejection, hell even a very funny letter rejecting a rejection. Not to mention tons upon tons of advice about how to deal with rejection by women…
Which is kind of an interestin’ analogy - maybe chasing after the elusive gallery gig should be like chasing after girls… I know that if you offered just about any guy on the street a choice between a punch in the nose or getting rejected by a cute girl - he’ll take the punch at least 90% of the time. Perhaps there is a way to flirt with a gallery and get them to persue, instead of me chasing after them…
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11.19.07
Posted in Weekly Texture Map at 12:23 pm by Fletcher
I learned a really cool trick from the art blog Empty Easel. Since all cameras are imperfect, there will always be some distortion in photos - a tough challenge for those who want to capture images with straight lines in them. There are 2 types of distortions: barrel and pincushion.
I’ve often used the Lens Correction filter from http://photo-plugins.com/ to fix these problems, but it does add an extra step and sometimes the results are less than ideal.
Empty Easel had a great tutorial on how to photograph artwork for online portfolios - and they offered this tidbit:
The solution is to use the “zoom” on your camera, and then back farther away from your art. This will create a more natural amount of depth to the photo and keep those edges from bulging outward.
I wish I had know about this trick sooner. It would have saved me umpteen photoshop headaches and hours spent trying to fix images…
This weeks offering is cobblestones, from deep in the heart of SoHo. Most of the cobbles in NYC streets came from Europe, mostly England. Merchant ships coming to the New World for shipments of goods had to be laden with ballast, hence the stones, which were offloaded to make room for cargo and used to pave the streets.
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11.17.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:02 pm by Fletcher
In the online world, we are all subject to spam in our inboxes. We are taunted with messages of ‘bigger this, smaller that’ all preying on our basest consumer fears.
Then as a blogger, you get even more.
Under each and every post is a place to leave comments, you can call the author an ass for writing such drivel, rail against the state of the world or rant about how alien raccoons are taking over the world, one garbage can at a time.
In these comments, spammers like to throw in fake comments like, ‘great post, check out my site about how you can get cheap viagra to reduce that beer gut, stop premature balding, increase your breast size and stop those alien raccoons!’ and then throw in links to all those aforementioned sites. Which of course, I need to go in and clear out - I’ve worn out 3 ‘delete’ keys since I started writing online.
The ONE post they love to spam is this one: On the Set: Day One. Its a tale about back to back movies I worked on, nothing different from the handful of other shoots I’ve been on - certainly nothing nearly as tawdry, racy, inflammatory or any other words ending in ‘y’ that I can think of… Yet the spammers love posting to this one particular entry. The only thing I can think of is that they zero in on the word ‘porn’ - which is in this line: ‘you’d always catch a snippet of someone mocking a guitar solo, imitating a porn soundtrack…’
Which is fine, but I have 5 OTHER ENTRIES which has that exact same word - not to mention the hundreds of other posts that I cuss like a sailor in. Why this post?? And why are they saying my unit needs to be bigger, when in the next line they imply it doesn’t work anyway??
Bah, its ok - I just ordered the viagra. Gonna feed it to the raccoons.
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11.15.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:56 am by Fletcher
I know I must sound like a little kid with a skinned knee, so I’m taking a break from the increasingly frustrating mess that is online video and why these sites don’t have their $#!+ together and getting back to that which gives me the greatest mix of challenge and satisfaction: painting.
This is the next one in the ‘Girl at the Window’ series - I got a few 18″x24″ canvases cheap, so I may end up doing a triptych of her. Each in a different style. This one I’ve gone for a very thick, or ‘impasto’ look, slathering on paint like I was frosting a cake.
*One of the greatest shocks I ever got as an artist was going to the Norman Rockwell museum and seeing what the man actually created. Having seen his work on magazine covers, I was expecting cute little paintings on small(ish) canvas, blah blah blah… Shock One: They’re freakin’ HUGE, 8, 10, 12 foot monsters, the man obviously had a good ladder. Shock Two: I was expecting a ‘old master’ style of many layers of thin, built up glazes, nope. The man spackled his paint on, must have used a mortar trowel to do it. Which is why it always behooves you to go to the museum and see them for yourselves*
The trick is that nowadays paint is really freakin’ expensive and even ’student’ grade tubes can add up. To paint in such a lavish manner requires additives - I’m using Golden’s MSA gel, a custom product that stinks like an industrial accident and flexes like a tranquilized gymnast. I had a can from my old Pearl Paint days and even though its been sitting in a closet for about a decade, its still good.
I like this style - texture is always good, feels more alive, more passionate. Even if I’m not all that great at it.
Which is my own self-deprecation speaking - and that topic will be dealt with in a later post.
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11.14.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:17 pm by Fletcher
A quick Google search on the phrase, ‘MySpace Sucks’ brings up that many responses.
After my first, decidedly only and hopefully last foray into the blighted realm that is MySpace (from here on out referred to as the huge obnoxious pile o’ $#!^!, or HOPS for short)
I will not mention the horrid layout, which even blind people steer clear of, guided by some mysterious ’sense’ that helps them avoid bad things.
I will not touch on the whole ‘friends’ network, which smacks of the same insincerity that most high school students displayed when signing each others yearbooks.
I am refraining from even hinting at how horrible the advertising is, as if the vultures of the advertising world circle above know that there must be the juiciest rotting carcass of the whole advert kingdom rotting below.
No.
My boondoggle is the simple unusability of the bugger. By request, The Director had me post our latest and greatest, “Sovereignty” trailer to the page. No big whoop, I thought. Went and logged on, hit the ‘upload video’ button, typed in a name, description, added some tags and hit the ’send’ button - waited as 96 megs of video goodness went into HOPS land. *Bing!* - done!
Or so I thought.
I went back a bit later to check on how it looked, being the thorough fellow I am, only to discover that it was sitting in a ‘dead’ video pile next to the one video that did work, proclaiming some sort of ‘video error - try again’ -so I did.
SIX MORE TIMES. The I had the insight to try a new format - Quicktime with mp4 compression, which seems to be all the rage these days. Nothing. “Try our new upload tool!” HOPS declares - I do. NOTHING.
I do a quick search for other methods. Perhaps embedding the YouTube video will work. IT DOESN’T.
I need a beer.
Ugh, after yet another futile attempt at using my dowser’s ability to pull information magically out of the aether, I inadvertently searched for for ‘MySpace Sucks’ and got 22 million hits. 22,100,000 to be exact.
Guess this is 22,100,001.
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