Some of the family at Thanksgiving this year

Trying to use my annoying little camera as much as possible. Still doesn't handle well but the image is okay. I especially like inter-cuts of bickering while trying to get directions to the place. Also amusing (to me) is my youngest nephew watching a Jaws videogame montage during the dinner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItFrpXZ5_4A&feature=youtu.be Excuse the cropping of this blog when it comes to "HD" content on youtube. You may want to just click on the title of the video and go right to youtube.

The Payment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV6W_MnEbxE This is a little video experiment that was done when visiting my home town at Thanksgiving. I went to the bus station early to make the rush of lining up less complicated later. While at the station I mentioned to my friend I was having a coffee with that I had a new Rebel 3 that shoots video and I hadn't shot much with it and maybe something could be made up on the spot. He mentioned the tunnel between the mall and the terminal and that we could do a scene like in The Six Million Dollar Man which I understood to mean the bit where walls of a circular tunnel spin and the light or energy cause Col. Austin to lose power and fall unconscious. The technology to make the tunnel turn did not exist so I just suggested this or that shot as we go and Rob improvised as we went from point A to point B and I suggested a concept that might make use of the sequence. It has to do with memory and karma catching up. His verdict upon seeing it was "fun to watch but still makes no sense." Fair enough. A script is a good place to start, but all things considered I have seen stories that are crazier. At least it is one more exercise to use that camera, although I regret buying it because while some argue that an LCD screen is not as true for photography as an eyepiece this camera does not offer the option of shooting video that way and you MUST refer to the LCD screen regardless of whether conditions -- but it is inexplicably one that is built in or set in and can not be flipped out to make for more comfortable handling during lower shots. Along with the fact that it does not offer 24 frames per second, it has just about inspired me to revert back to my more expensive but HDV cassette utilizing HX-A1 despite its size and lack of discretion. But all things considered, I like knocking off a little movie every now and then as recreation. It's only the editing that can be annoying, since whether it is my Dell laptop or my Premiere Elements 8 there are some quirks that make previewing and seeing clean cuts almost impossible until the file is created. So it make for a few test uploads. But this seems like the end of that journey for this imperfect whim of a short, The Payment. If you don't like it, at least it is over in two minutes. I'm including both the embedded version for a visual and the link to its youtube page. Sometimes "high def" (broadly defined) crops too much in the blog, so you might prefer to just paste the link. Actually after looking at it just now indeed it does crop the film. In the beginning it looks kind of interesting to be so off center, but then someting important in right frame at the end is totally lost, a Christian fish symbol on somebody's car which provokes the only line of dialogue (improvised).

investing and wasting time on this earth

When I feel a pinch inside my head somewhere I am reminded of the coil procedure that has filled one of my aneurysms and left one with a few leads and the fact that blood pressure is the main thing to worry about. I think okay this pinch might be a bit like when it happened in November 2011. That was the time when I felt a sense of surrender and looking at life as very unfinished and was just happy that my family and some of my friends came to visit me. Then I was outraged that either a paramedic or someone at one of the hospitals had walked off with my cash and TTC pass from my wallet. Not to take anything away from the excellent medical staff who looked after me. ____________________________ The other day a guard I had worked with two days ended with a diss. It is easy to say he is yet another flake who shares the same job, which is a crackerjack box of prizes when it comes to the people it attracts. Great people and functional sociopaths. And I'm mindful that I could swing to either side of that spectrum without knowing it. We share war stories, we compare notes on experiences at various places we have worked and certain bosses and how things are handled. And yet, officially, there is discretion. I am not anchored my my job and would rather not be. I am anchored in a daydream of unfinished business in my vocation. My next few blogs may be more detailed and I may swing for the fences. I may alienate people with some of the themes I want to pick through. Some people choose a side and damn all who dare challenge it. I think that if I am close to getting to the bottom of some controversies it is worth annoying people who chance upon it. Who am I to say what's what? But who is anybody? The experts are their own kinds of crackpots. Journalists are taking their lead from internet blogs and gossip sites - the bottom of the barrel. ____________________________ I m taking a course Thursday nights in directing, mainly to either re-charge my identity as a director or to make myself angry enough to defiantly take on a major project again. I have several on the backburner. I need the youthful full-of-beans insanity as the wind in my sails. No doubt about it. Instead of being angry about mediocrity I should put my non-existent money where my mouth is. Hey, I did do a Bravo!Fact short. On 35mm. Wrote and directed it. I did have an Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artists Grant and used it toward a 20 minute musical satire on super 16mm film. And so much has changed in the 10 years since that having shot on film might not be an advantage. It will look old. And I will sound old. But a lot of the stuff I want to do is going to seem out of step. I see what the trends are, and I don't know if it's my turn to remake Endless Love or Carrie or anything else on the approved-remake list. I argued a bit with my teacher about coverage and recklessly used a term like "coverage hacks" even though that isn't quite what I meant. I think it creates bad blood. I'll cover a scene, but nothing I write would or should be just covered for dialogue. I know where most of the cuts are before shooting. That isn't hip, and may not be professional. But it IS what is necessary to convince ME that a movie is worth doing. There are some great deal-makers and improv geniuses who can just cover the actors and do a documentary on their improvisations and be satisfied with that. I like the way the frame is used and a new world can be created. I am told "a storyboard implies a cut" and now I bite back my thought and keep it to myself (The director might very well know where the cut should occur. It's not just to be found in editing.) I like the idea of collaboration and that everyone contributes, but I may never be political or detached enough to get hired as a director and paid in whatever time I have left. I am going to know what the frame looks like before there is a camera to set up. I am going to know what lines and moments will be seen from what angle. Fucking period. And the angels and excellent people on my team will be eager to see how amusing it all turns out. I'll keep my head down and agree that master, close-up single for each character and over/dirty of each are the necessary shots. But it is also part of the real world that sometimes an actor can't make it through a full take and that sometimes only one or two lines or reactions need the close-up, as was the way with Hitchcock, or only a certain moment needs the perspective of the wide shot. __________________ My first video that got aired somewhere was in December of 1984. I was 16. I have directed countless shorts and videos since then. I graduated Humber in 1994 - after ten years of placing cameras and dragging portapaks around. 2004 I did the additional shoot for Big Babies and its final longer cut, but then also joined a co-op and made a kind of ill-conceived short ironically about a support group. At least it had some good visual gimmicks in it, and it may be remade in some form in the future. I tried to make a feature 3 times in 2005. I did get 3 shorts made, but the unrelated feature intended to be done on Super 8 ended up being recast and re-started three times and losing momentum or having just one important person be a problem I failed to get around. I also discovered I had type 2 diabetes that year, which explained sleepiness and loss of energy. 2006 I made a tribute video for my family when my dad passed away. That event kind of sharpened my view of a few people. I was in a screenwriting circle run by a character that was politely reprehensible. It turned me off of screenwriting discussion with random strangers and certainly cultivated a jaundiced eye toward leadership that seeks to perpetuate itself in a cloak of helpfulness and faux community. In 2007 I realized that a weird character Porno the Clown was right under my nose and wrote the first of several short videos around that satirical and whimsical idea. I've done other things since, but I think when I joined Raindance it was just a month after my aneurysm and my left eye had not yet opened. I am feeling a bit more energy and fight in me lately. I got started with Herbalife shakes and I'm trying to lose weight and keep it off. But the white whale for me is still to get my scripts made into movies, regardless of anything else I might accomplish. Family is important and it might be nice to have a girlfriend but the axiom is, "to thine own self be true" and for me that means get up off your ass and stop addling yourself with random internet bickering and get your movies shot. I can't control anything to do with acquiring money. That's another world. But what I can control is what I write and what I storyboard and prepare. The actors will be important but the movie itself will be the star. Celebrity culture is toxic, and I understand even tax credits for Canadian films are drying up largely thanks to PM Stephen Harper and his cronies. At least the rest of us can keep minding what little sand castles we shape together. ______ I'll rant more on that kind of thing in other blogs. I have a constant grinding of psychological gears, like the grain of sand necessary to create a pearl. Or maybe that is mumbo jumbo. I have lots to prove, and waste far too much time being distracted by the internet and so many must-see shows to keep up on. Dialing that back. Too many transitory debates. :)

Organic Raw video of Queen's Park Rally Against Monsanto and GMOs

My video of wandering around the demonstration at Queen's Park in Toronto turned out more raw than I normally like. Many shots are allowed to play as is because either there was a stretch of speech or a bit of a song I didn't want to chop and my computer is making my Premiere software glitchy enough that it was just barely possible to assemble the clips into one file and get rid of a few more scenic shots. Like the tendency to see a statue and mindlessly have to shoot it. Also if the video looks like it is strapped to a monkey at times, this is my first use of a little Canon Rebel 3 that I found on sale and which has no flip screen and the glare of sunlight on the LCD viewer is enough that I was literally just pointing the camera wherever at times without actually composing a shot. I would walk around and cross my fingers. Admittedly this video should be about 4 minutes and it is over 16. All that aside, it pretty much conveys what it was like to be there. There are a few presentations and musical breaks, the last one here being "The Monkey Bunch" which appears to be performing for kids and which has the unintended result of making it sound like those present are all just learning our ABC's. Afterward, I was able to hit a matinee of Machete Kills which was a welcome relief after visiting the rally and picking out the marks on my free apple. I may in the future attempt to make a shorter file of this, trimming out some of my sloppy camera work. I will attempt to improve my comfort with this camera, but I would have been better with my larger and more conspicuous HX-A1 -- and a tripod. EDITED TO ADD: I have tightened up and improved my slapdash video so that it is still sloppy but there is less of it. I was able to cut away about 6 minutes of fat. Certainly not to take away from the seriousness of the topic itself. I am thankful that Monsanto's private army did not have snipers on the rooftop to pick us off.

Breaking Good

Breaking Bad ended well, appropriate, all of a piece. 'Nuff said.

Dexter, Deb, Death, Done

Dexter TV series ranked for storytelling: Season 2 Bay Harbor Butcher Season 1 Ice Truck Killer Season 4 Trinity Killer Season 5 Jordan Chase and Lumen Season 6 The Doomsday Killer Season 3 ADA Miguel Prado and The Skinner Season 7 Isaak Sirko and LaFuerta closes in Season 8 Brain Surgeon Much of what was wrong with season 7 and 8 comes from Season 6 Where a therapist we never hear from again manages to steer Deb Into believing that the reason she has “chose the wrong men” or “unavailable men” all her life is not because her father spent so much time either at work or off with Dexter on projects or hikes but because deep down she is romantically in love with her foster brother Dexter do to his being a perfect man. This was a jump-the-shark moment. As Henry Winkler has often clarified, his own show Happy Days continued to have episodes he was proud of and had great ratings even after he literally jumped the shark on water skis, but the term survives. Dexter continued to have many high-points despite the distraction of this Deb-loves-Dexter element which did not feel organic. Show runner for seasons 5-8 Scott Buck claimed that it was going in that direction and had been talked about, but I suspect it is the kind of punchy thing a writer’s room would interject to make each other laugh especially since actors Jennifer Carpenter and Michael C. Hall were married for a couple of years so the issue of them together might occur to the writers but it is also insane and felt imposed. Was Harry Morgan more attentive to young Dexter than to Deb? Yes. Did she dream of earning his respect? Yes. Sigmund Freud session done. Now, just how unavailable were the men Deb chose as boyfriends? Were they married, gay or none of the above? Agent Lundy appeared to have control of his own time and ultimately offered her a chance to come with him when he got an assignment up North. Saying no to the snows of the Arctic is not a self-destructive rejection of intimacy. And when she med Bryan Mosier as Rudy in season 1, she was choosing a man who appeared in all respects to be a successful and kind person who helped the handicapped. When she fell for her CI the musician, that was simply a woman in her twenties having a sincere moment with a guy and then only breaking off once her job actually put him in harm’s way. The thing with Joey is perhaps poor judgement but Joey is a fellow cop like her father and only a bad choice because he was her work partner as well. Finally the question is whether Dexter is indeed perfect, even as perceived by Debra in any of the 5 seasons that preceded Deb’s “breakthrough” in therapy? Most of her interaction with Dexter is snark and scolding and arm punching common to siblings. Even in seasons 7 and 8, this is reverted to when it suits the script – boilerplate brother-sister banter. This element made the show too busy and alienated much of the audience, no doubt offending adoptive or foster families which would psychologically – especially as adults – have people categorized in their unconscious as to the level of trust or nurture they belong to. I don’t know if novelist Jeff Lindsay has weighed in on that departure, but it compromised Debra (spelled Deborah in the books) taking her from real person with ambitions who was going through therapy as a condition of work after a shooting to a professional and skilled actress reading a script because Scott Buck said so. The appeal of Deb is her earthy sanity in contrast to Dexter’s control, his facade, and his mental illness. That he could hide in plain sight is not a blemish on those around him. I don’t think Deb needed the layer of sudden high school crush tension to make the other plates she is juggling dramatic – being promoted to Lieutenant, finding out her brother is a serial killer, helping to cover his crimes, finding out he loves Hannah who is herself a serial killer, surviving Hannah’s attempted murder of her, trying to stop her brother from killing her boss who has evidence that links her to murder, deciding in a pinch that she has to shoot her boss, feeling unexpected grief for killing someone who has sabotaged and talked down to her for years, having a breakdown from guilt, finally – for once – actually choosing a fully undeserving lover and learning to snort coke, deciding to kill her brother, saving her brother, meeting a new psychiatrist friend of the family she now has to have sessions with, and eventually having Hannah as a houseguest and helping to facilitate her escape. Pretty much all she went through seemed like an organic human reaction to insane circumstances few people have to absorb all at once. But that “in love” switch was just a case of bad writing infecting otherwise good material. Monday Morning quarterbacking of TV and movies goes on indefinitely. I like Dexter, enjoy the novels and the series, and appreciate the production quality and performances. Much of the writing has been solid, but that will be the focus of my unsolicited remarks here. The show goes off the rails from time to time but its cast and crew are so game that we might be distracted from the idea that Dexter has been at his game for some time when we first meet him and he is supposed to be smarter than most of us. The initial concept is that he is a serial killer who targets serial killers who have slipped through cracks in the justice system. But the show strains our patience from time to time by pushing beyond those sympathetic stated objectives and having him often discover a culprit previously unknown to the justice system and failing to give police a crack at prosecuting that person first. It is after all Florida, as Dexter takes eight seasons to finally admit, and the state will administer the death penalty to any serial killer it can convict. He has managed to phone in crimes, like the houseboat and poison gas incident in season 6 without disguising his voice and with nobody questioning the source of the report. He could cleverly submit names. In season 3, he stabbed Miguel’s brother by accident but at least he made the effort to get some information to Debra about Frebo’s relation to a female victim. Ideally, Frebo’s address could have been quietly supplied and he would have avoided any partnership or complicity with Miguel when caught red-handed after personally killing the guy. Travis Marshall/DDK was allowed to go free early on for babbling about The professor, but Dexter could have fed the name to police and maybe Taken a photo of him. As someone supposedly close to the apparent Big bad (as it seemed at the time) he would have been of interest. Arthur Mitchell/Trinity could have been killed in the woods by Dexter, And did not have to be saved from suicide by him, and early on the Name, as well as that of his church and this charitable home building organization could have been supplied and would have saved lives. When he thought to get Rita out of the country for a second honeymoon it would have harmed nothing to spell out the urgency and respect Murphy’s law by telling her that a serial killer learned his name through the precinct and may be stalking anyone helping investigate his case, so he is taking some sick days. The lie of most story structures is that you can have an all-bets-are-off level of crisis. If the most nihilistic thing happens, or it is sustained, people can tune out or numb to it. So they can float the jeopardy of little Harrison, but he will be okay – otherwise what is at stake but the more abstract good Dexter and company might still do for as-yet undetermined characters down the road we may not care about. The death of Rita was a shock, and it is good to see her still alive in the books. But its aftermath changed the defining qualities of Dexter as a character. Season 5 is about a disoriented Dexter babbling and feeling blame, exactly in the condition that he claims in voice-over in the final episode, finally being able to feel but wishing he was numb again. Well, that arc was already met at the start of season 5. Meeting Lumen and the plot structure provided by the barrel girls and rounding up each of the rape-club members ending with Jordan Chase has built-in gravity and trajectory. I would have however liked to see Michael C. Hall host SNL and make a skit spoofing the locker room scene where Jordan leaves him alone and he has time to open his kit, sample blood from the vial in the locker, and then PUT IT ONTO A SLIDE??? Before Jordan returns. Why not pull out a microscope or a computer and run the DNA right there? I liked Jonny Lee Miller as Chase, though I understand from Hall’s Kevin Pollack interview that “one guy Lumen and I had to kill couldn’t stand being on the table and kept saying I hate your show. . .” and that could only have been him. When he was announced as the new Sherlock Holmes on Elementary I was unsure I could get that villain out of my head. But Sherlock is a different kind of jerk and Elementary is quite good. Season 5 seems very self-contained and there is closure of a sort at the end. They at least got close with Dexter and Lumen kind of getting a break from Deb without her seeing them. But at least the season has a theme of healing versus letting go. Season 6 appears to have a theme of faith, true to the tradition of a detective struggling with something personal that aligns with the caper or case at hand so that one counterpoints or informs the other. The Doomsday Killer has a twist that some people claim to have seen coming. I admit I did not. This is owing to the fact that I was also reading Jeff Lindsay’s novels and in those the Dark Passenger gives Dexter a sense of who someone is. In the series he chalks it up to lizard brain or predatory instinct. But there is a moment where Travis Marshall is let go and Dexter from then on believes him whenever they meet. I feel that is a cheat. Even though Travis might be so deep in denial that he believes the Professor is calling the shots. The episode was well timed with some of the hysteria that was leading up to 2012 and the Mayan December 21 whatever. If not for Deb’s psychiatrist and the “in love” nonsense, the season would have been pretty solid if not entirely cohesive. It seems to be about Brother, then Brian taking over for Harry as a conscience/hallucination, which should have reinforced even more the special problem of Travis, and then it was onto the politics of Deb’s promotion amid the investigation of DDK. The altar being used as Dexter’s “table” for DDK is great, as is the cliffhanger of Deb walking in and seeing the stab. Season 7 is already a hodgepodge as Deb helps burn the church and Dexter in his haste for the first critical time since his “waking up tired” sequence from season 3 fails to be anal retentive and his “idiot check” which should have the blood slide as the number one priority seems to allow him to bump it into a floor grate. This is a little too easy, as is LaGuerta finding the slide after the fire. But the old rule is that if something makes life easy for the protagonist then it is wrong but if it makes him squirm then it is an okay coincidence because it is Murphy’s Law in action. The game-playing between LaGuerta who we intellectually know to be right and Dexter who we understand to be the criminal is fascinating because we maintain our sympathy for Dexter even when he plans to kill LaGuerta. We know she is being underhanded and baiting him, and for all this time I have wanted Deb to kill her but when the moment of truth comes it is a mark of good storytelling that while they give us what we want we can also feel the great remorse of Deb which according to the writers really came as improvisation by Jennifer Carpenter. She gave it a depth and morality that I wouldn’t have demanded. I see that I have come to the end of Season 7 without mentioning the gay Russian mobster who is referred to as a “Terminator” and who is in fact a memorable character. He is used well as an unexpected confident for Dexter as the notion of a relationship with Hannah McKay is considered. But even as he opens his mind and there is “hope” for him, he still chooses the unromantic path of turning her in. Debra is yet again in the hospital, and although Dexter goes to the trouble of running a test on the water bottle that caused her car crash and finds it tainted he only turns her in for the poison pen the crime writer chewed on. In the next season, when Deb mentions that Hannah poisoned her she means that she knocked her out in season 8. It is not made clear that Dexter ever let her know that Hannah allowed her to almost die in a car crash by passing out. Hannah is great looking, but is not someone that fans warm to. She is duplicitous and an opportunist. I would not be surprised if she got her own spin-off, but her influence on Dexter in terms of priorities is disastrous to the appeal of his problem-solving character. Her escape is cleverly done but I feel like the season is so fragmented that it may have a “hope and love” theme but she either has too much focus or not enough. I almost think that she could have been combined with the stripper Joey is interested in so she is at least connected to the club and its mobster owners and there could be more direct antagonism with Joey. It does not seem of a piece. Season 8 starts out well and with shocks and high stakes for those who have been following. For anyone just starting to watch, it would not have anything to pull them in. You have to know what a straight arrow Deb was before giving up and sinking to the motel and coke level. There are excellent twists and turns, and Dr. Vogel is a fascinating new angle. I found myself looking up the Mama Cass song that Oliver Saxxon listens to, and even trying a sing-along version which turned out to be harder than it looked. And yes, I did that alone with no witnesses to my horrible singing. Why I would look for and listen to over and over a song that a psycho listens to over and over, I’d rather not know. How many times has Deb ended up in the hospital on the show? Season 3, then season 7 when she passed out behind the wheel thanks to tainted water, then the gunshot in 8. I wonder if it is true that “Spyware works both ways” and someone can hack into the drive of the computer sending it and download files. I wonder – like most people – why Dexter couldn’t stick to his epiphany that someone the POLICE HAVE can get the death penalty in Florida. His confrontation with Saxxon is excellent, but unlikely. Why couldn’t Dexter just legally decide the plug would be pulled, and let Joey know Deb had made her wishes known when Camilla from records was on life support. She had said if she is ever hooked up don’t leave her like that. I expected that clip to be all over youtube but it wasn’t. There is no logical explanation for Dexter surviving hurricane Laura. Nor for his belief that everything wrong happens because of him. To believe in a curse is to believe in fate, which is the same as miracles. If he knows he doesn’t have to kill again, he might not meet shady characters. How much of the damage was purely because of serial killers? How much better off would Harrison be as he is raised by Hannah, a serial killer with no code of her on and whose only ethos comes from her love for Dexter and the promise of a future? My prediction and hope is that there will be a movie in which Dexter is plagued by a new hallucination, in the form of Deb instead of Harry. I would have ended the last moment of the series with her voice-over saying, “Hey, fuck-tard” and him whirling around and—cut to credits.” That’s if he was in the woods at all. She should persuade him to abandon the lumber and go to Argentina and look in on Harrison. Autor Jeff Lindsay when asked said if he had to pick it up Dexter would ditch the lumber and sell Insurance in California. Clyde Phillips show runner from seasons 1 to 4 said he would have ended the show with Dexter getting lethal injection while the ghosts of his victims watch from the gallery. Compared to those options, the show ended better than that. I think it would be nonsense to feel the need to kill Dexter after rooting for him through 8 seasons. Dexter is largely us. Vicariously. Unless he is doing stupid stuff like those that end the series finale. I mean to read Dexter’s Final Cut by Jeff Lindsay, which is about a movie being made at the precinct and having to advise on it. I don’t think it is intended to have the meaning of “final novel.” Jeff Lindsay also has a Marvel Comic version of Dexter on the go, which I mean to snap up soon.