05/01/2004: "Year end meeting for video production club"

I met this afternoon with the members of the video club that I belong to for a monster end-of-year-one meeting. We met from 2-8pm, started with a bbq, and then had a meeting to talk about where we see the club going in the next year. Then we watched completed or rough cuts of all 11 projects that we did in our first year together, which was a lot of fun.

I think almost everyone in the group wants to take on more challenging and longer projects this year. We already have more than 4 fairly well developed treatments for potential upcoming movies. We're also starting to specialize more so everyone wrote down the top 3 or 4 areas that they want to concentrate on in the upcoming year. For me it went: 1. Directing, 2. cinematography/camera work, 3. editing (post production) and 4. Writing (screenplays). It's a really good group of people with a lot of different expertise so this year should be pretty exciting all around.

Arlo, the guy who started the whole thing, is having an engineer friend in Anchorage build us a steady cam. He showed us the blueprint and it looked like it's going to be borderline professional. The group also has a dolly for tracking shots, a crane, a mic boom, lots of cameras and high end audio and lighting equipment, and lots of professional editing and other postproduction software. Jeff accidentally bought an expensive Panasonic miniDV camera on ebay by clicking the "Buy It Now" button, he didn't understand that meant RIGHT NOW, he thought it would calculate the shipping and tax or whatever and he's have to verify something before ultimately buying it, which I guess makes sense if you're not a regular on ebay. He's not sure he wants to keep it even though it was a really good deal for the camera. I'm still nowhere near being able to afford my dream camera (the Panasonic AG-DVX100A) but hopefully I will get closer to it this summer if I sell some paintings in July.

Speaking of which, I don't think I've ever worked this hard on a show before. It's going to be my best work, not stuff that I put up wet just because I need to fill the gallery. I'm happy about that, but also nervous, because if no one likes it I'll know that it was the very best I was capable of doing and still it wasn't "good enough". I know I can't think like that but...well, that is how my brain works. I'm just going to concentrate on doing the best that I can but people better plan on not hearing from me for a couple of months if the show is a failure (I'll be cryin myself to sleep on my huge oversized pillow).

I haven't been able to paint in a couple of days now because my back has been hurting so much and I'm taking prescription pain pills for it and it makes me feel all doped up and I can't paint when I feel this way. So I'm really hoping that it gets better soon because I'm itching to get back into it again. It maybe isn't such a bad thing to take a break though, as all the canvases now have a chance to fully dry before I start working on them again. Thanks again to everyone who sent me comments and criticism on the 9 paintings in my In Progress gallery. It was so cool of everyone and very helpful too. I don't have many painter friends here in Juneau, so being able to have a virtual group to give advice and areas that need to be improved on etc. was just incredible for me. Priceless actually.

I read a good article on how to receive valuable criticism on a website called wetcanvas.com. It has a whole bunch of articles in different subject areas, like "art business" or "color theory"...and for the most part they're well written and informative. It also has an interesting pallet color mixing program that lets you mix colors and get an idea of what they'll look like together. For example, you can say that you want to start with a dollop with Titanium white with a spot of alizarin crimson and another spot of cobalt blue and it will show you what that will look like. Plus it takes all the colors you're mixing and puts them in a tonal chart from light to dark, plus gives you the hexadecimal numbers to translate the colors for the web.

The site has a lot of other cool features as well, the only down side is that you have to register, then you have to open your email and respond to a mailer before the site moderator will consider your request and then you don't hear back from them until the next day or so...still, I think it's worth it. There are lots of forums on various art related topics as well. I'll probably be stopping by there regularly from now on.

OK, my pain pills are really starting to kick in now so I'm going to get off here now and eat some pizza and watch one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid, "the Road Warrior". Too bad Mel Gibson turned into such an ass.

ATTENTION
Due to spamming the comments for this entry are closed. If you like, just add comments on this to another entry. Sorry bout that.