Mike's and Geocaching

Yesterday was spent sitting around the house recovering from my trip. I ate some delicious mangoes and pineapple (the fruit here is amazing) and sat under the air conditioner.

Today however we had our first day out on the town. Mom and Dad had some errands to do in the morning for which we stayed home but when they got back we piled into the van and drove the 1o minutes into central Chiang Mai.

We ate lunch at Mike's (hailed by some as the best American food in town) and then walked down the street looking for the Geocache that we had looked up on the Internet that morning. What? you don't know what a Geocache is? Well, then you had better read this because I don't have time to explain it myself.

We found the cache with out too much trouble as it was in plain sight in a store (no I won't tell you which one). We were hoping for more of a challenge, but it wasn't to bad for our first one. Hopefully we can hide our own later.

oh yeah, pictures...


Mike's! (proud supporter of Comic Sans)


The GPS unit leading the way past a taxi parking lot and a building that is several hundred years old.


Detail shot of a really old wall (taken from the car as we were speeding past)


Steven navigating with the GPS unit


Sam, always happy to be photographed.

More stuff later!

A safe arrival

I made it! After many hours of flying and waiting I have emerged victorious in my battle over the airport monster. The Internet monster, however, is another matter. The night I got here the odds were stacked against me as I tried desperately to find a connection. As you can see it was only a matter of time before I conquered that as well. (I have to make all this stuff sound dramatic or it is not as interesting to read)

Well, I had better introduce the family so that when I mention them later you will not be confused. First off we have Sam. Sam is my little foster Thai brother who my parents will be keeping until he is 2. Right now he is 7 months old, and very photogenic.


Next we have Steven. After being the youngest for 13 years he finally has a little sibling.


Then there is David. With the older siblings off to college in the States, he is now the oldest one around.


Next is Mom (LeaAnn). I don't know if the fact that I can't remember her age is a good or a bad thing.


And finally Dad (Bill). I'm not even tempted to ask him how old he is. (Why I chose age as the defining factoid that you should know about my family is beyond even my comprehension.)



There they are. Now you know. Everything. There. Is. To. Know...
Jet Lag...
brain...
shutting...
down...
writing...

getting...

stupid...

mosquito...

eating...

me...

goodnight.

Sitting in LAX

As you can see I am sitting in LAX right now waiting to board my flight. This leg takes me from LA to Taipei in 13 hours and leaves at 1:15AM. Then there is a 3.5 hour layover before continuing on to Bangkok (which takes another 4 hours). Then I wait another 6 hours in Bangkok in order to take the 50min flight to Chiang Mai. So... there is lots of flying and waiting ahead of me. I'll see you on the other side.

Transition Tuesday

Today I am leaving to visit my family in Thailand. I feel bad leaving Sam and Malachi to finish the film on their own but I am confident that they will do a good job. So as of now I will be mostly posting about my trip. Hopefully I can get some good pictures and video to show you all. I will also be emailing a bunch of people to tell/remind them of this blogs existence so that all can share in the insanity that will be my trip.



UPDATE!!!
Did I say insanity? That was stupid.

The cantina scenes are complete!

After two weeks of working and shooting every night (and all day for the last 4 days) we have finally completed shooting and editing all of the scenes inside the cantina. This puts our official footage clock at 7:00 so far. Already it is more than double the length of the last film and we haven't even finished shooting. All we have left now are the scenes on the pirate ship which are the flashbacks that Stonefish experiences during the cantina scenes.

Stuff is happening.

Over the last week we have been working diligently on the movie and things are slowly but surely coming together. Yesterday we continued to film the interior of the cantina and started to work on the opening titles. This morning I finished the titles and we are now waiting for Sam to get here so that we can continue filming. The other day Sam and Malachi's parents (Bruce and Melissa) delivered the pirate ship set that they have been faithfully working on for the past 8 months (since August). I had not seen it yet and was dumbfounded by the craftsmanship and beauty of this genius piece of set building. (as soon as we put the final painting and set dressing I can post some pictures)

Sam is here now and we are discussing our plan of attack for the next few days. I am leaving to visit my family in Thailand on Tuesday and will not be back until the 20th of this month (a little less that two weeks). This leaves us with only 3 more days (including today) that I will be able to help with the filming. We have a lot of work to do in that time. The cantina scenes need to be completely shot and edited so that they can be given to Robbie for sound editing. The ship set needs to be be painted and dressed with props. The rest of the crew needs to be built. The backdrop system for the sky and horizon needs to be designed and constructed. And the end titles need to be added after the lighthouse scene. Plus I have packing and shopping to do before I leave.

The idea is that we will get everything ready to shoot the scenes on the ship before I leave. Then Sam and Malachi will shoot and edit those scenes while I am gone. The entire film needs to be turned in to the festival people by the 16th so... we'll see how it goes.

(new record for post length!)

Production Photos 6: Misc. Characters

Production Photos 5

More pictures of the cantina in progress. These are from this weekend and show things coming along nicely.

Production Photos 4

These are the beginning stages of the set for the interior of the cantina. The base is about 30" by 40" and the walls are between 12" and 20" tall. The set is designed so that the walls can be removed and shots can be made from any angle. I am pretty proud of the stairs.

The Storm After The Calm

As most of you have noticed it has been a while since I had a post on this here interweb thingy. There is no excuse for lackadaisical behavior. Since I last posted I have been busy with many things, most (but not all) of which have been centered around my friend Stonefish.

In order to make up for the lack of posts in the past weeks I will be presenting you with a tsunami of posts today which hopefully will keep you satisfied until I can get back into the swing of regular posting.

Well, here it goes...

Construction has commenced

This morning I started on the set for the interior of the cantina. before she went to work Brit.keiko helped me by taking me to Home Depot in her RAV4 to get the wood for the foundation. Since Sam and Malachi and I had already designed and measured most of it out last week all I had to do was figure out how to build it. Easy right?

Well its 2:30ish and I am taking a food break. Hopefully I can keep working for the rest of the day and make some more good progress.

I'll post some process pictures as soon as I take them.

Photos/Comments

I hope you enjoy the production photos that I have posted. I can promise that there will be many more to come. Also, please make some comments on any of these posts so far. I would love to know who is reading this (I have almost no idea) and what you like to see. All you have to do is click on the "Comments" link right below the post. I have changed the settings of this blog to allow for annomous comments so please post your name. Or, if you have a Gmail account you can sign in with it on the comments page and post that way.

Thanks for reading,

Paul

P.S.
Special thanks to Paul Ward for posting the first and only comment so far.

Production Photos 3

Production Photos 2: The Exterior of the Cantina

Production Photos: The Beach

well, maybe we wont be busy with those things.

night has fallen and we have started to work on the scene that we set up last night. We did a lot of things today but most of them were not the things I said we were going to do. Sam made the wise observation that if we worked to hard during the day that when it came time to light and shoot the scene during the evening then we would be to tired to do it properly. So after the design work was done and the band practice was completed we:

- Ate lunch (Del Taco)
- Played cards (crazy 8's, memory, and speed)
- Watched movie trailers (Grindhouse)
- Joked about seeing a movie (Reno 911: Miami, or 300)
- Played scrabble (Malachi beat me with "PITY" on a 2x word score)

Now that it is dark, work has commenced on the scene. Malachi and I got the lights set up while Sam worked on putting finishing touches on the characters (Stonefish and Dio). Now that the lights are up there is nothing much for me and Malachi to do. So I am writing this while Malachi goes with Brit to get dinner. Sam is still working on the characters but when he is done we can shoot this thing and be done. Hopefully we will be done at a decent hour.

(wow a post of record length)

Before and During, After to follow

These are some panoramics that I took of the Art Wedge. The first one is before the construction started and the second one is during the construction. Construction is now complete for this stage of the expansion, but I have yet to take a panoramic of the New Wedge.





I tried to make these pictures bigger but I think blogger has a maximum pixel width that isn't so compatible with these really long pictures.

Tomorrow, another busy day...

Today we finished putting together the set for the lighthouse shot which will end up being the final shot in the film. Tomorrow night we will light and shoot it. But before that can happen Malachi and Sam have band practice and I have to finish some design work. Then we can finish planning the set for the interior of the cantina and go to Home Depot to get the wood so I can start building it. After it gets dark we can light and shoot the scene that we set up today. A lot of different things happening in a short ammount of time and it doesn't help that Malachi got sick last weekend and Sam and I are getting it this weekend. Fortunately "it" is only cold and not the flu that has been going around.

Shot two complete, fatigue sets in

Last night (or early this morning) we completed the second shot for Stonefish. It took a while to make the set but we were all pretty happy with the results. It is an establishing shot of The Drunken Fish cantina that will only last something like 12 seconds. For the rest of this weekend we we are working on planning the interior of the cantina and building the set for the next shot which will take place after the interior of the cantina. We are tired and kind of grumpy. Sam however denies it. I don't know how much more work we will get done tonight, maybe none...


...maybe we will watch Science of Sleep.

Video Sketch 001

Paul