movie stuff

Oh hey, I forgot to mention the movie shoot I helped with this week. My good friend Rusty Pietrzak, an incredibly resourceful microbudget filmmaker and photographer who specializes in underwater work, has been in the Philly/western Jersey area to work on a pair of short movies featuring a vampire mermaid character named Destiny. The character has apparently been around in the comics for years and has quite a following, and an actress who goes by the name of Debbie D, who makes the rounds at fan conventions as the official live-in-person incarnation of Destiny among many other fantasy-related pursuits, plays the bloodsucking mermaid in these two shorts. Also starring in the first, Crimson Currents, are Laura Bongiovanni as a swashbuckling pirate captain and legendary B-movie scream queen Debbie Dutch as the captain's first mate. (Laura's pregnant, by the way...they even wrote that into the script. Let's all wish her and her young 'un well. Thanks also to her and her very nice husband for being such great, patient hosts.) The second, Something in Common, is a crossover between the "Destiny" series and Rusty's own "Dolphin" series, which I've also been involved with over the years. The two Debbies also star in that short, this time with Ms. Dutch as one of the "aquatics" of the Dolphin universe.

Where does humble little me fit in to this glamorous stuff? Well, Cherie and I created the wood backdrop for the pirate-ship cabin set, although Cherie deserves more credit than me for the final product, which looked absolutely phenomenal. My contribution was more the physical-mechanical aspect of it--after totally striking out finding suitable cardboard, I switched to a folded 1/4" blue Styrofoam insulation sheeting from Lowe's that I cut into 4'x4' interlocking panels and Cherie painted using three colors of semi-gloss latex house paint. I added the lines between the "boards" with a Sharpie, and we packed the whole thing into my back seat before driving to Carneys Point for the shoot. In no time Cherie, Rusty, and I turned a suburban attached garage into a movie soundstage dressed as a pirate ship. Everyone was stunned by the quality of the backdrop. As I said, Cherie deserves every bit of the accolades she got for that set.

Yesterday was a pool shoot with Rusty, Debbie D and Debbie Dutch at a very secluded house out in the country near Milford, NJ. This was familiar territory as I've assisted with a lot of Rusty's underwater shoots over the years. My role here was setting up the black plastic sheeting backdrop, acting as safety diver, handling the weight belt on Debbie Dutch's legs each time she went under for her shots (Debbie D was in her mermaid-tail outfit so obviously she didn't need any assistance...except when the swim-fins built into the tail decided to work their way loose, which was often), and basically just assisting wherever assistance was needed. Later when Rusty did some more typical out-of-character underwater posed shots of the two Debbies, I helped rig up a deck chair on the pool bottom, and shot video while Rusty shot stills with his classic Nikonos/flash setup (yup, he still shoots film, and is therefore awesome). Tons o' fun. Nice pool too, though just a bit cold. Debbie D kept joking that it was December. Maybe she wasn't joking. I was fine, personally.

Rusty had one more shoot today, I think in Philly, but I couldn't make this one. Sucks.

Can't wait to see how these two movies turn out. Also can't wait to work on another one.

wispir-design.com

Domain is now registered! Whoo hoo!!

in with the soft

Yesterday my copy of CS3 Design Premium arrived. It had just the CDs, or DVDs or whatever they are these days, in a little plastic clamshell box.

Today my copy of Fireworks arrived. It had the full retail box, slightly bent but basically okay. About the only difference vis-a-vis the clamshell-only package is a Quick Start Guide and a bunch of extra cardboard. But I guess it did protect it a bit.

Also today UPS left the slip for the iMac. I should be getting thecamera very soon as well.

I M EFFIN POMPED, BEEYOTCH.

tossing coins on the Cha Ching

Whooee, baby.

I just did something I was threatening to do, dreading to do, dreaming of doing, for ages.

I just placed a large order at Amazon.com. By my standards a VERY large order. Here's what I ordered:

1) iMac 24" -- Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 gHz, 1gb RAM
2) Adobe CS3 Design Premium -- includes Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Acrobat
3) Adobe Fireworks CS3 -- rounds out the web capabilities of the above
4) Nikon D80 digital SLR camera body -- not only for those occasions when a client may need photos taken, but also for photography as a potential side career, and definitely as a serious hobby again, one I drifted out of after it became too expensive to constantly buy and develop film

Why did I just blow nearly $3500 of my retirement fund payout on this stuff? Simple: Because I need it--I've been needing it for years--and now, for one rare chance, I'm able to get it.

Let me elaborate. In my opinion, the last 7 or 8 years of my life have set my career back in certain ways. I suppose I did well from an experience perspective, compared to the cruddy layout work I was doing for the magazine in the '90s; I mean, I got to do a lot more different kinds of design projects, even if after a while the work got boring, stale, and I got tired of the job environment. But there were two big problems.

The first problem was initially an advantage for this longtime blinkered Mac snob: the place was all PC. After a year of unemployment, I figured that it was probably a hindrance to not be able to claim PC proficiency on my resume. Thankfully, the scales fell from my eyes after I actually got to use PCs instead of simply bashing them. No, by the Windows XP era, PCs were demonstrably not automatically pieces of crap. My Windows 2000 machine at work was in fact the most stable, trouble-free computer I'd ever used, and it worked great for graphic design. Best of all, I was able to build my own reasonably powerful PC for home, for about $600. I'd intended to eventually use it for freelance design.

Meanwhile, I got left behind by the rest of the design world. Mac OSX had been introduced right around the time I was laid off from the magazine, so I never got a chance to use it at work, and I could never afford to buy my own. My old beige G3 Mac from the magazine (I inherited it at the liquidation sale, intending to use it for freelance design) soon became obsolete. Being a Mac whiz doesn't have a lot of pull when the last version you used was OS 8.6, and in the meantime you've forgotten almost everything. Those rare times when I fire up the old beige G3, I forget that the Apple key is not in the same spot as a PC's Ctrl key.

The second big problem is that, in a decade when the web is the place to be if you're a creative professional, I got to do no web work at my most recent job. None. The organization hired two other guys in succession to do their web work. I have nothing against either of them--the current guy is amazing and I'm very lucky to have him as a friend and mentor. My beef is that I was never given the opportunity to even try to work on web stuff...even to help. I was kept on the print side, getting more and more frustrated and bored, my growth stagnating.

I have several threads of jumbled thoughts at this point, but let's flash (no pun intended) to the present. I quit my job and relocated to New Jersey. You know that. Once again, I have my mind set on freelancing. But of course, that takes time. I need to find a job in the meantime. There are plenty. But, as luck would have it, they all, with rare exceptions, list Mac OSX and web experience as job requirements. If they're in a more specific mood, they want people who know Flash and Dreamweaver, sometimes Fireworks. All requirements that I don't meet. How do I meet those requirements? Gotta do it myself, on my own time. Only one problem: I don't have a Mac. I don't have CS3 (includes InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks)--so not only can I not teach myself all the web software that will make me marketable, I don't even have the software I need to do freelance work to try to make ends meet. And up until very recently I didn't have any money with which to buy all this crap. Yeah, I was set up real good.

I'm sure no one really did think this, but it's tempting to believe that someone, somewhere, was satisfied that another lower-middle-class riff-raff got run out of the design business due to lack of money and lack of the right job/connections/savvy. All is yet right in the world. See, I think there's a reason why designers love Macs so much, and why Macs and graphics software are so expensive: they're gatekeepers to The Club. There's no one that hip people with money like to hang out with more than other hip people with money. And there's no one that hip people with money like to hang out with less than the unwashed masses...the kind that use PCs. The kind who only think they're designers because they figured out how to add flower borders and twenty different fonts in Microsoft Word. Real Designers Use Macs. So it was Written, So it shall be done.

Okay.

One good thing that did come out of my last job, however, was that I built up a decent sized retirement fund. Screw it; I'm cashing out. It's my money, and I have a very good mind what I want to do with it.

So basically, I see this large purchase as an investment. We poor folks aren't supposed to be able to invest anything in anything--we're just supposed to slave away for peanuts and look pathetic compared to the hip trust-fund babies who ape our look. I see this as putting the jump on The Man...a little bit of payback, chewing the rope around my wrists with my teeth in order to start hammering at the other guy's balls. I'm tired of being a penniless peon. If I have to make a little sacrifice in order to take control of my life, so be it.

Besides, Macs aren't bad computers. But neither are PCs. And that's okay.

Note, by the way, that this huge purchase also represents something of a return to my roots. After all, I've spent most of my creative years on various Macs, and my first and favorite camera was an old Nikkormat FT2 with which I lensed many wonderful images.

UPDATE--I had to put off finishing this rant till today. My CS3 has already been shipped, and the iMac is supposed to be delivered today. I'm also in a slightly less vindictive mood. Maybe I was ranting a bit above. But dang, did it feel good to get that shit off my chest.

I feel ucky

Nothing more needs to be said about that.

I hope to hell I can get sufficient cardboard in time for my friend Rusty's movie shoot next week. He needs enough to cover an area 15' x 7', and to have it look like a wooden wall that you'd find inside an old-time ship's cabin. It was my idea to go the cardboard route, and I'm having a hell of a time finding an appliance store that will save shipping crates for me. It's stressing me out. I have to think of a backup plan. Cherie had a bit more luck calling around than I did; I just hope that place isn't pulling her leg like one of the other places did with me.

I need new strings for my guitars. Better yet, I could use a new guitar. And a new amp, one with tubes. I need to refill my prescription for Pexeva. I want to go to McDonalds and buy a half dozen regular hamburgers, and then eat them.

One other thing: tubes are cool

Except when they're being overdriven. Ha! Geddit? I so want a tube amp. My Bandit is okay, but after playing through a Valve King 212 at Sam Ash a fer weeks ago, I'm smitten with genuine tube tone. The gear geek in me also thinks it's just the neatest that you can customize the sound of your amp by switching out the tubes, and that different brands and vintages of a given tube type can (supposedly) radically alter the tone. There's no shortage of New Old Stock tubes dating back to the Golden Age of Radio, right alongside current production samples from China and the Soviet diaspora. Old technology rules!

It just occurred to me that this post reads almost exactly like one of my grade school journal entries, both in terms of subject matter and style. It's uncanny. Maybe my mind regresses a little when I'm sleepy. I must sleep. While I dream, tubes around the world will randomly burst. No one will connect the dots.

I want a motorcycle

In addition to all the other toys I want. Something relatively unpretentious and small, a '70s-'80s UJM* of 250-500cc. I have a hankering for Hondas in particular, an old CB series bike. Yeah. I'd love to just find one somewhere, some guy selling one for like $500 or something. Good luck with that, especially now that SUVs are rivaling HIV-positive lepers in popularity.

* Universal Japanese Motorcycle, ie those somewhat generic, all-purpose bikes that Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha used to make before they got carried away with plastic sportbikes and fake Harleys.

Oh yes, I forgot...the first thing I'm going to do...

...is register wispir-design.com (clever, ain't it?) before anyone else nabs it again. Some guy had it and all its derivatives registered a while ago, preventing me from using it. And what for? Some nothing personal site. Some guy has my original idea, spirographics.com, for his KISS-fixated t-shirt business. Spirop-Art is cute but seems maybe a bit whimsical, and might make people think I'm some frou-frou arts & crafts shop, but as far as I know it is still available...I dunno. Someone else swiped furthermoredesign.com for some shit. Okay, well there is a wispir.com, but they're some kind of movie post-production house, so I'm not competing with them. I'm telling you, absolutely every other clever, creative combination of random words has been appropriated by either a design agency or some hotshot 21-year-old art school student/web designer. Believe me, I've checked. There's probably a Blue Tomato Mao-Mao Design out there somewhere.

So all I'm left with are a couple of cool spins off of my name, and dammit, no schmuck is gonna swipe those. Ya hear?!

So basically, my freelance business will be either Wispir Design or Spirop-Art, with a .com domain to match. Thus shall I establish my counterfeit kingdom on Earth, receiving my power directly from the ghost of the bastard offspring of Paul Rand and Reid Miles, who was baptized by Hipgnosis.

the design group at Yahoo!

I've begun actually posting to the "Graphic Design" Yahoo! group, after lurking silently for who knows how long. For me, this is being proactive. It actually feels kinda good. I need to make sure I keep doing this, mingling with others who share my interests, profession, and all that. Once I get an iMac, I'll feel even less isolated! Maybe I'll even be considered marginally cool! Woo hoo!

Speaking of which, I found out that my retirement payout check was mailed today. Double woo hoo! I'm sure it'll disappear quickly, so I need to make sure I spend it wisely. Definitely besides all that design related gobbledygook, I'm going to try to pay off as much of my outstanding debt and unpaid bills as I can. Not to mention I should probably stash away at least one month of rent. We'll see how this works out.

I'm going to start shooting my resume off to potential employers on Craigslist as soon as I write a decent cover letter. We'll see if I really am as unmarketable as I hope I'm not.

design

Why is it so hard anymore? Perhaps sitting here for 2.5 months without doing any serious work has turned my brain to molasses.

My check should help, hopefully. Things I want to do with it:

1) Dedicated iMac-based workstation, including Adobe CS3, scanner, and printer.
2) AIGA membership. I'm sick of being isolated.
3) At least one design magazine subscription.
4) Domain registration and hosting for a professional website.

God, I feel depressed.

new blog coming soon?

I want to start another one, yes. Devoted to design.

What am I doing in New Jersey?

To quote the late, great George Carlin, who moved on up to that great stand-up club in the sky since I last posted. RIP

At the moment, I'm sitting here unemployed, and hoping to hell my retirement-fund payout check comes this time, dammit. The notary public made a mistake the first attempt, so they sent it back to me with a clean copy: Try again, dumbass. Any alterations or corrections make this document void. RTFI.

I have a lot of unpaid bills that I could use that money for. My stomach curdles into little lumps thinking about what my credit score must look like now. Like swiss cheese, I'm sure, shot full of holes. Ha! Credit Suisse! Get it?

I haven't taken the train into NYC yet. Another thing on my to-do-after-cashing-check list. Explore till you feel like you own the city, a friend told me on the phone recently. I live right next door; my goal is to be able to go into the city without feeling like a tourist. Maybe if I got a job there. Unlikely...

Until I make good on my plan and buy a good refurb iMac and Adobe CS3, woodshed with said setup (particularly Flash and Dreamweaver, to a lesser extent with Illustrator--I'm already a whiz at InDesign and Photoshop), actually do some productive crap with it, and thus be able to walk confidently into any potential employer with the necessary skill set to nab a nice, cushy job with a paycheck worthy of me and a complement of hip coworkers to share ideas with over lattes. Does such a job exist in this market...in this job market? Fuck it, I'd rather freelance anyway. Or would I? Decisions, decisions!

Other than the stress caused by lack of steady funds and sufficient creative outlets*, I'm adjusting to New George** quite well. I didn't think I'd be doing this good emotionally, to tell you the truth. I have had some lapses, I admit, a few depressive episodes. I just need to make sure I take my pills regularly. The place is nice. And not a single person who gives two shits about the OSU Buckeyes for at least 100 miles. That by itself is halfway to heaven.

Well, that answers that question, roughly. I'll write more later. Did I mention that I have a DSL connection now?

* I still want to join a band, get involved in local microbudget filmmaking, shit like that. But at least I have my music stuff set up, and I've actually started doing some recording. I've also switched from n-Track to Reaper for multitrack recording; Reaper is much nicer overall. I've had lots of fun playing with free VST effects and especially softsynths. Daedalus is a great analog style softsynth.

** My mom's thick-Greek pronunciation.