Hello Pixels!

Moving out

2011-08-28T00:42:00.009+03:00

Hello Pixels! has transformed into EAT US ALIVE FILMS.

Times is slow

2011-03-15T13:20:00.054+02:00

Donna is taking far longer than I thought initially. My own self-indulgent ways are partly to blame here, no doubt, but the studio has been keeping me busy as well. I'm at work right now. I think I'm supposed to be doing something else that's more important. Oh well.

On a positive note, the animation sequences are in pre-production. Hurrah! The sketches and character designes Nini sent me look pretty good so far.

I need to finish editing the damn thing! Damn.

Anda is preparing her 35mm black & white film and we're getting dragged down in the minutiae of rhythm, composition of shots and whether or not we can shoot in Super 35mm 2,40:1 and such stuff.

Late entry

2010-12-29T17:29:00.070+02:00

I just got word from Leeroy a couple of hours ago that The Black Prince Of Nepal is selected for the Filmul de Piatră international short film competition. Along with Hello Says The Devil and Anda's Wait / Help. Unfortunately, they also want pristine copies of the films, uploaded to their servers by tomorrow. I'm not even in Bucharest right now.

To be fair, I did leave my computer back home running a remote app and was able to connect to it. Conclusions, one: there haven't been any power outs, two: the internets was still working, despite repeated threats from the ISP of cutting all service unless payment is received. So here I am staring blankly at the encoding app running on my home computer while pretending to edit something.

I got Ismail on the blower and apparently the Hello Says The Devil music video is gonna be off-competition, because Ismail is not Romanian. Well shit, everything else about that music video is Romanian. Funniest thing I've heard all season.

A couple of phone calls later, though: sorted.

Editing for the modern man

2010-12-23T18:33:00.075+02:00

Admittedly, there are roughly 7 months from May of 2010 to December of 2010. But I am finally cutting Donna Must Die for a couple of days now. Yesterday. I started yesterday. Evening.

Timing aspects aside, it's going pretty well although, as I expected, it's going to be a difficult film to cut: a couple of things were never shot, others don't have good angles or framing and so on. What's interesting is that during the editing process, every little thing that went wrong during the shoot is right there, staring you in the face. The good side to this is that it opens up a whole lot of possibilities for structure and style, and this is just the kind of film to experiment with. It's going to be exciting to see how I'm going to make this all work but most of all, how on Earth I'm going to compensate for all that stuff we didn't get in the shoot.

I'll be heading home for the holidays in a couple of days, but I'm taking the film with me and hopefully, amidst all the food and alcohol (also known as the holiday spirit in these parts), I'll be making some progress on Donna.

Ismail, on the other hand, has graduated to a self-employed music video director, and I do believe congratulations are in order. Cheers, mate.

Winter of our discontent

2010-12-07T10:41:00.171+02:00

Tea is ready! The experimental short film, that is.

There's quite a story behind this. Leeroy shot this by himself, in and around his home, in early-summer 2009. We had a totally different idea of what his 35mm colour exercise should be about, but developing that idea took more than we anticipated and Leeroy just shot "whatever he could".

I remember the first screening of the raw footage, having serious doubts about the way all these shots which made no sense, were gonna cut together. Instead, I did get a strong sense of what the underlying emotion of the piece would be: that nice, warm, 60's psychedelic-meets-nature feel but with a modern touch. Boards Of Canada was the first thing to come to mind.

I put together a different version for Leeroy's exam, mainly because of the limitations of editing film on a flatbed. There's no reversing, no speed changes, no reframing of the shots. Basically, all you can do is make simple cuts. Well, I wasn't satisfied with how that turned out, and when I stumbled upon the project a couple of months ago, I started making things the way I originally wanted to.

As always, I asked the school for a high-definition digital transfer of the original negative, under the usual pretext. I insisted so many times and argued with so many people that in the end they decided to pay for the transfer, just to get rid of me. Standard operating procedure. Of course they wouldn't let the film go unless the original negative was cut, because that's the way they do things in the 50's.

Naturally, the school's negative cutter made a mess of the simplified cut list I gave her, and I wound up with two missing shots that were left on the cutting room floor and presumably thrown away. I replaced the two missing shots, conformed the HD transfer to the offline edit and then colour graded it for about a week. So early-winter 2010, it's ready at last.

The studio's been keeping me pretty busy with the feature. After some long nights at the office I've finished the online edit and right now I'm working on restoring the VHS/BETA picture to an acceptable level. I've also done a bit of visual effects work on a couple of XDCAM shots that were supposed to be Super 8mm, and some DVCPRO-HD shots that were supposed to look like VHS.

My UK trip is being postponed but hopefully I'll start the Film Editing course at the NFTS next year.

The art of indefinite postponement

2010-09-21T22:37:00.010+03:00

The lack of news lately is due to me getting a job with some local boys I know from film school. I'm doing some interesting post-production work on a feature film right now and all sorts of other stuff in between.

That means that my other three unfinished projects will be postponed: the Hugs film, my own short and the 16mil Leeroy shot this summer with me and Ismail.

But stay tuned because stuff is happening.

We are happy to...

2010-08-06T22:28:00.038+03:00

I just came back from the UK on Sunday afternoon and on Tuesday I was already heading off to a remote southern town (and no air conditioning). Turns out it's this theater-festival-slash-workshop for kids. Two days into it, their trainers looked like this:

And while abusing my 5-minutes-a-day internet quota, I come across my letter of acceptance at the NFTS. Jesus H. Christ on a fucking rubber crutch. I'm going to London.

Induction?!

2010-07-30T01:16:00.092+03:00

Sounds like something out of those Alien films. But yeah, brits have a way with words. And in their infinite vocabularian wisdom, they decided to name a downright endurance test, an "Induction Workshop".

I may appear grouchy, but rest assured it's only stress (and a couple of pints) talking. Typing, actually. Because yeah, I'm in London, it's 1:16 in the bloody morning and it's Friday night. And I made it through the end of the NFTS workshop.

And that was quite the experience. Coming in, I had no idea what to expect. Actually, I thought it was gonna be some Avid training or some 16mm cutting. Far from it. No, we had to cut THREE short films in THREE days, each one in under 24 hours. Okay, could be worse. I could be tired from travelling the whole day. Or from not sleeping in 36 hours. Wait, it was worse!

The whole thing wasn't all crazy deadlines. I had some really nice feedback from the tutors there (all of them professional editors) and met a lot of interesting and creative people. With which I got drunk afterwards :)

Fuckin' A

2010-06-30T03:05:00.029+03:00

Can't believe it's finally over. I'm so wasted. Now, I'm an official intoxicated film editor :) With an A paper, mkay?

Sober edit...

Looks like the NFTS interview went a whole lot better than I expected, because I'm going there for a workshop in July. Yay?

Clusterfucked

2010-06-13T22:18:00.059+03:00

I'm in London. I haven't slept in days. My grad paper is due tomorrow. I'm still writing it. I also have an interview at the NFTS tomorrow. Masters in Film Editing or something. Did I mention I haven't slept in days? Weak.

I'm finally done with The Black Prince of Nepal. June last year we were shooting it in a tight, sweaty room behind the main sound stage. We only got through one third of the shots before the school shut us down.

I cut the picture mostly at night, after work. Not having any sound made it very difficult to find the right pacing. About two weeks later, I had a final cut I was happy with. And then nothing happened for almost a year.

Trivia-wise, this is the second film I've cut without sound - the Beauchamp Falls soundtrack went in very late into the process and it just fit in. The complicated part was coming up with a voice-over that would explain what the hell we're looking at but avoid being too narrative at the same time.

I took what Ismail had written at that point, cut out some stuff, went into the studio and recorded his voice. When I got back into Nuendo, the words didn't fit the picture at all. I started changing the order of the lines around, at it sorta became this non-linear, stream-of-consciousness type of thing.

Fuck, it's already 10 at night! Gotta go back to my grad paper now.

Radio silence

2010-05-30T13:08:00.040+03:00

Hidden under a veil of secrecy and maintaining radio silence, I've spent last week of '09 and the first couple of months this year cutting, splicing and dicing the 1080P, 720P, 2K and 4K raw footage from Les Elephants Bizarres' Hello Says The Devil music video. For reasons unknown, they delayed the release so many times and I've messed with it as much as I could. So let's have a butchers then, eh?

I can safely say this has been the most difficult project I've cut so far. Media management issues aside, the raw footage had the dynamics and punch of a Norwegian minimalist feature. I had to do insane amounts of fast jump cutting, speeding-up/reversing some shots, keyframing tons of pans and zooms and not to mention some aggressive colour grading, just to make it look like a music video. On top of that and for no apparent reason, the band's music producer refused to do the sound design for the intro, so I also had that to worry about.

The Black Prince of Nepal, the 16mm short I cut last summer, is now in the audio post stage and I'm just trying to get a decent mix done before taking it to the school studio for some final sweetening. I'm also working on a portfolio DVD for the BA exam, but I'm not holding my breath the exam panel will watch it.

The little things

2010-05-12T01:38:00.021+03:00

I just love manually conforming 16mm at 1:38 in the goddamn morning...

One two

2010-04-29T15:42:00.015+03:00

No cheap champagne. Grad paper + exam though, oh yeah. We have that :) Happy two-years full of pixels!

Tea remix and spring cleaning

2010-04-17T02:29:00.080+03:00

I was going through my unfinished projects last night and found a 35mm colour exercise I cut last year. I remember it being a bit of a rush job, so I wasn't happy with it. Anyway, I started cutting it again.

It just struck me that in a couple of weeks it'll be two years since I've started this. A lot of stuff has changed since. I've put the music side of things on hold, for one. I still like playing drums and I wanna keep playing in the future but right now, I just don't have time for that anymore.

My grad exam in two months is gonna be pure murder; I really hope I can finish the paper and everything else on time.

Going places

2010-03-28T23:05:00.038+03:00

I'm 40 minutes away from London. It's a beautiful place out in the country.

Dōmo arigatō, Mr. Roboto

2010-02-05T22:37:00.067+02:00

We shot Saturday, Sunday and Monday. And I actually directed. Wow. I even got to have my own director's hat. Which I forcibly took from Leeroy. And then lost.

Oh yeah... the batteries. It was really fun shooting with only one battery. Outdoors. That's cause the batteries which I fucking purchased did not charge and the batteries which I fucking stole from school didn't match the camera. Lovely. I actually had to return stolen goods.

But I found another director's hat. Took it from Anda. Pretty comfy while editing, as well. And boy, I've been editing, alright. I remember starting Monday night after the shoot and going on till Friday, on an sleep again/edit again basis. All Coked up on well... Coke and industrial strength coffees.

All your cuts are belong to us

2010-01-27T14:06:00.135+02:00

As any avid reader of these scribblings (or just someone who has the wonderful gift of being able to scroll down the page) knows, this is THAT time of the year. So in usual ninja fashion, I proceeded to execute my mandatory all-nighter and help Anda and her mates edit their video assignment. And eat pizza. Ninja Win.

Wanting to climb the ladder of success, I'm gonna try and direct an interactive movie in the weekend: "People close-up with a wide angle lens, trying to get high". Classic plot-line with a twist.

I kinda drank too much stuff last night, including something called a submarine; its crew didn't make it. I also got some nice sleeping apparel for my birthday and again, ate pizza. We got home (yes, people were following me) and drank moderately priced champagne that comes with those glasses included (thanks Mom & Dad) at 2 in the morning. Leeroy somehow made it back to my place, but I really don't remember how. As per his usual he stayed over and, while everyone else was sleeping, he quietly entertained himself and played all his latest dubstep bangers at extremely low volume.

I think I've kinda developed a whole new appreciation for the genre :)

Next on the agenda

2010-01-08T02:48:00.080+02:00

The Year of Unfinished Projects (YUP... word, as they say) has been a productive one. As in, we started three projects, didn't finish one of 'em. That said, the work that did actually make it past the post-production black hole gets to stumble into the NexT Film Festival and have nice posters made. Lookie!

Even Leeroy acknowledged the importance of this achievement ("Hey, we actually got that shit done!") and proceeded to do the DVD labels. Isn't that nice, he took the time...

Seeing as we're not actually making films anymore, just manufacturing shiny merchandise for our year-old releases, next is customised beer caps. We've come a long way :))

Perfect day

2009-12-26T23:26:00.008+02:00

Fuck me, Ctrl+V doesn't cut it anymore in Final Cut Pro. Thank you, Santa.

Anyone knows the size hammer I should be burying into my keyboard, let me know. I have a 2-pounder. Might not do the trick...

Not quite done

2009-11-19T11:02:00.015+02:00

No no, I'm done. It's done. Zippo has been dug up from the vaults, spit-shined and shoved into your face once again. Introducing... the same film I've been working for the past two years but didn't actually feel satisfied with, yay! Except now it's in high-def.

Yay.

Unfortunately, since my cash supply has been anything but steady since like... ever, means you gotta check Zippo on Vimeo if you wanna roll around in those extra pixels. Unless you wanna get me a really nice and totally unexpected present like Vimeo Plus maybe somehow? You know you want to... :)

Uncut Nepalese

2009-09-15T21:22:00.163+03:00

Just two more weeks left and then I'll be back on the streets, like Bobby Womack. And in case you were wondering if I totally lost it, well... yeah. Well not really... lose it. I'll quit. Really.

Until then, I've gone tear-assing around some South Asian republic, looking for the... stuff. Translation: Leeroy's 16mm masterpiece, which was hastily shot this summer in dodgy surroundings, is cut to bits. On my computer. He's gonna have to do all the dirty work himself this time and splice the film positive together by hand. At the moment he's stuck at figuring out where the keycode's at. But he's getting there :)

Band 2.0 is making progress. We dumped our old practice space for a new (and cleaner) one. And we made some songs about that. But we're not gonna sing them to you.

Proper ear-fucked

2009-07-28T02:00:00.241+03:00

The tropical heat was getting to me. I couldn't help it... Like that guy that was stuck in traffic and in the end goes batshit insane and starts yelling at people. What's that movie called...?

Whatever, point is we spent a lot of time on a lot of trains. A lot. And the tickets were none too cheap. But all that was forgotten once the walls of bass smashed us in the face.

Seriously now, it's a good thing I know my Prodigy basslines by heart, because it was the only way of telling tunes apart from one another. Unfortunately, this knowledge was not mine alone to enjoy, which meant that fifteen thousand other people were screaming along. And then Liam turned up the bass some more :)

By this time it was getting increasingly hard to see the band. And then to breathe. Tons of dust were being raised by entertained citizens of a certain disposition. Then suddenly, we were all commanded to get down. Which we did, in an orderly fashion.

People don't really know that many Nine Inch Nails lyrics. Which is fine, 'cause I don't know all their basslines. Which is great. All that's left now is to hang on for dear life :))

Goldie is supposed to know how to get rid of bodies. That doesn't make him a bad person. Actually, I think he loves us all. That, or the herbal intakes were administered in unnecessary quantities. Anyway, proper jungle riddims all the way. Timeless :D

Choosing a ride home is an art in itself. More so when you can barely hear and have abused certain plants. A limited field of view can only mean you're speeding along at 120km/h through narrow streets with heavy metal at volume 11. Aah, physics...

Making progress

2009-07-22T01:42:00.022+03:00

I'm definitely on to something here. Won't be long now. :))

The other day, while searching the net for used stickers, I stumbled upon filmic.ro, which has a sort of review on Zippo pointing out approximately 3.75% of mishaps and mistakes. That we intentionally left in there, alright?

On top of that, Muuuvi thinks Zippo had the best direction. Like ever. Reaaally...???

Awwww...!

And the prize money goes to...

2009-06-28T20:46:00.029+03:00

AyaHUSKa..? Oh man, I wish we picked an easier title so festival people (that means YOU) know where to send the bags-o-cash to. Anyway, who cares, they spelled Leeroy's name right so at least we got the trophy. And that's all that matters, really. :))

Why is it that a trophy for experimental film looks like a guy who's visually challenged? Hmm...

Anyway, this is what our Muuuvi submission looks like.

Productive days

2009-06-23T10:50:00.021+03:00

Since I've made it to my fourth year in film school (just barely), I thought I'd share a few pointers for those "ain't got no mo' moneys, whatever" type productions.

Speaking of which, ye ole productive days are apparently back: I got band 2.0 (oh yeah), some film stock to cut and it looks like lots of other stuff will go down "this summer".

No, don't do the voice, please.

Thank you.

Back to the Future!

2009-05-21T13:45:00.028+03:00

I know it's been like three months or whatever but... Ayahuasca and Murderer are showing at Future Shorts tomorrow!

However, time is umm... short, and I gotta set up my milk and cookies stand. One vote gets you a delicious cookie. Two votes gets you two delicious cookies and a refreshing beverage. We aim to please. :)

Later that day...

I can't believe this is the same Future Shorts I went to last autumn. The projection was so burned and the sound was so drowned out, you could barely see or hear anything! On top of that, all the cool stuff I'd already seen and all the bad stuff was horribly long and pointless.

At least, the organisers were thoughtful enough not to charge me and Leeroy for admission. Nonetheless, a huge thank you though to everybody who did cough up the cash just to support us. Thanks guys!

MAS*HED

2009-03-08T20:29:00.043+02:00

Relaxing weekend recipe: take two parts of leaving work at 4:00 a.m., add one part sleeplessness, two parts intense sessions with the band and top it all off with playing a live visuals set... Yum!

Oh, this is what sometimes happens when we forget to turn the recorder off and just keep playing. :D

(:

2009-02-04T02:39:00.011+02:00

The adventures of fishbowl astronaut...

Happy fuckin birthday...!

2009-01-26T22:34:00.029+02:00

Due to popular demand (not... really...), we have a special presentation for you today.

It is commonly acknowledged that January 26 is an important day in history; for one, I was born. But let's take a look at what famous people were doing on this day, like...

Sicilian mobster Lucky Luciano, considered the father of modern organized crime and named by Time magazine among the top 20 most influential builders and titans of the 20th century, dies on January 26, 1962...

And let's not forget, India becomes a republic in 1950 and it's also Australia Day in well... Australia.

So what was I up to on this momentous day? Let's start with last year when, after heavy drinking until 5 a.m. I was rushed to Ismail's place to help Flav shoot his masterpiece. I immediately passed out on a couch after which I proceeded to play bass. Then I passed out some more...

This year however, things have certainly improved. I've only been editing for 9 hours straight and I have not passed out yet. In the meantime, Anda is carefully translating all my written essay work due tomorrow and Cătălin had better be shooting a lot of nice, fucked-up stills for the animation I'm also supposed to finish in 24 hours!

Snow and boards will break my bones

2009-01-11T17:05:00.021+02:00

I'm back and with nearly everything in place: knees, elbows... face... In fact, I'm not sure what hurt more: tasting snow in front of 5-year-old ski-gods (or that really nice old man that told me to fight for my country as I was inevitably heading for brain concussion) or the actual physical pain.

I guess it was pretty eventful as far as life-threatening situations go. I mean, besides randomly crashing face-first into snow or other peaceful skiers (oh and that one time I had to spend half an hour suspended 20 metres above ground, no safety, holding my board in one hand and freezing my ass off), I also got to ride an open top truck over really nasty hairpin turns at full speed (also, no safety). Of course, while freezing my ass off.

Snowboarding skills aside, Austria was really awesome and a well deserved break from the chaos that generally surrounds my existence. Plus having tons of snow around will do that to me. :)

Not another hungarian movie, dude...

2008-12-11T23:39:00.035+02:00

There's nothing more pleasant than starting your Monday morning by going through the blistering cold outside to see some crappy student films. But fear not, for we were spared our Monday morning - me and my trustworthy ninja associate Leeroy had other business; like eating... and printing. :)

We got to the fest just in time to see some crap. Luckily it was over pretty soon, and we proceeded to get drunk at other people's expense. The only way to do it™.

Tuesday however, we did go. And this time, we had ordnance: I was packing my Hello Pixels subliminal-size stickers and Leeroy was holding it steady with his British Ninja warning labels. In true ninja fashion, we proceeded to disrespect festival property. Misprint our movies, eh pilgrims?

Having satisfied our thirst for blood, we went in to have a butchers at this year's crop. All I remember is brain cell agony, having to sit through an avalanche of bad-taste and lack of humour, thrown in together and spoken in Hungarian no less! We had to endure almost an hour of this, until some decent flicks (that is non-Hungarian, mind you) started showing.

On the other hand, it appears German people are très good at making student films too, not just porn. Me and those other three people in the theatre say so. :)

I guess it was fun... for like 30 minutes, while I got to do my visuals set on a huge movie theatre screen with Les Elephants Bizarres playing on a semi dark stage. What followed though was the awards screening so I quickly grabbed my gear and left to play drums before the crap-o-rama started.

The End. Now wasn't that nice, kids?

Zippo no more :)

2008-11-23T20:34:00.026+02:00

Zippo is done. Finished. Complete. Kaput. Yay.

Thinking back on all the problems we had shooting this, like crappy camera, lack of decent lighting, faulty mics, noisy power generator and so on, I still think it turned out quite alright. Cătălin didn't even recall shooting this, after he saw the final composite. :D

And in other news, distinctive ninja brand Hello Pixels! has proudly gone fabric! After a late night of intense production, Anda unveiled her creation at our HQ, during a preview of Zippo. The success of her fresh design prompted our staff to order a number of prints for promotional purposes. When inquired, she had this to say: "Yes."

How bizarre...

2008-11-03T19:34:00.041+02:00

I was on TV the other day! Well, for like two seconds. :) I was on my way back from Cluj, on an exhausting 9 hour train ride while the miracle was happening, but who cares. I'm officially... known. To a few people. Hi, grandma.

I have very little time for myself these days (aka time-wasting time). I've been working some odd jobs, one of them with a high-profile director (which, unless queried, will remain unnamed) and I'm still not ready for our school's crappy little festival. Meanwhile, I had two visuals gigs with Les Elephants Bizarres these past couple of weeks.

Chaos, please.

2008-10-07T01:53:00.014+03:00

OK, so I moved out, twice, got new kick-ass drums, school started, got a job, visuals gigs coming my way, jamming with some other dudes in a new practice room...

...well, actually it's the old one, and... yeah, that's about it! :)

Lads in knickers, indecent...?!

2008-08-23T09:47:00.023+03:00

Never leave for next week what you can do today... unless you're too bored to do it, or you have a lax deadline... or both... :P

Given my caveman appearance this morning, it must be happy export-and-I'm-done-with-this-now-I'm-hungry time again. That's cause the past couple of days I've locked myself in and worked on the Boys In Shorts Are Not Decent video for freshly disbanded Hotel Fetish. Mihai had been cutting it for some time now but being the busy dude that he is, passed over the project to me.

Needless to say, I didn't do anything for a whole week. I sat around eating popcorn and watching movies. However, after a very persuasive briefing over a couple of beers, I finally went to work on it. I was itching to try out some new stuff in After Effects, anyway.

After a day's work, I had a not-so-rough-cut done. It still needed some work, but I sent it to Mihai and he was happy with it. So happy in fact, he cried... =))

Summer activities...

2008-08-06T10:24:00.024+03:00

Whoa, it's been a while... but I'm in the process of moving! I have been, for a month now, and currently I'm a hobo, crashing either illegally and uninvited at the uni dorms or at my sis, who has been dealing surprisingly well with my chaotic and weird habits and lazy arse so far, except for the couple of freak outs she had regarding basic household upkeep, or more exactly the failure on my part to contribute to such activities... Duh...

In the meantime, I've been trying (legally, then through the successful process of bribery) to get a room in the dorm with Flav as a roommate and right now we're supposed to wait until mid-August for the room to clear up. And considering that half of my computer (and also my cute mini-fridge) is currently stored in the office where my sis works, I am left playing computer games all day long, sans the refreshing beverages from my aforementioned cute mini-fridge. Damn!

So, my domicile issue aside, my band has a new practice room, shared with these other guys, The Amsterdams, and right now we're trying to get our own stuff like amps, mixer, speakers and my own drum set (woohoo!). In the meantime, we're sitting back kicking it acoustic style... :)

Oh and last Friday's party at the dorms was awesome and reminded me of the wicked bashes we had in first year... Everybody got totally wasted, there was plenty of pogoing and breaking of furniture involved as well, some vodka and orange juice and whatever the fuck Cătălin was trying to drink ended up on my new Drink Sensibly. Don't Spill It! t-shirt and at some point when it was getting increasingly difficult for me to think, let alone move, I crashed together with Anda on a mattress we found on the hallway one floor up...

Post exams rehab

2008-06-17T00:40:00.010+03:00

Gah, finally! No more watching the sun rise while waiting for a render to finish, no more falling asleep amidst scraps of junk food lying on my desk... Not to mention, finally getting sleep every night! Woohoo!

This must have been, hands down, the most brutal exam period ever. I still can't believe I managed to pull through it and only fail one exam... well, not exactly fail, more like... fail to show up for it. :) Instead, I left for Alba Iulia to hang out with Anda and chill for a couple of days... which was really fun and definitely worth running to catch the train and the subsequent 7-hour, seat-less ride. Yay.

I really need to start jamming again with the guys. I haven't been playing drums for a whole month... and I stank then, so... yeah. :)

Exam panic!

2008-05-30T00:53:00.060+03:00

Yes, it's exam time and I've got a lot of assignments and no idea when I'll be able to finish them all. I just hope I can. Strangely however, I seem to be in a very productive mood lately so without further ado, here's what I've been up to instead of having lots of fun in the sun, like regular boys :)

This is an assignment that Cătălin (better known as Leeroy) had to do for his cinematography class. We had been talking about it since winter last year, but he finally got his little sticky notes together and we shot it. With an old Arriflex 35 II camera that was falling apart and just four cans of film on our hands. Plus a special mirror and a couple of macro lenses that hadn't been cleaned in eons. Add to that some live visuals directed onto plantlife and some dirt thrown onto the last 40 meters of unexposed film and you get a pretty clear picture of why his professors got a headache from watching it =))

Oh, and I wanna take this opportunity to thank that very special person from our uni staff that mishandled the already expired original camera negative in the developing process, burning the last two keycode digits on one of the film cans... therefore making it unreadable and thus, utterly useless. Thanks a lot, asshat!

One week before the multimedia exam, I still didn't know what to do for my green screen assignment. So I asked Ismail to write a script and a few hours later in the evening, he came up with Murderer. Two days later, we were shooting it. The blood Ismail cooked smelled like rotten eggs and you couldn't wash it off for like three days or something. We did something like two dozen takes of that single tracking shot (which is basically the whole movie) because of the highly unstable piece of wood on 4 wheels that we called a "dolly" and the tripod which was anything but smooth. The footage was really shaky and I had to manually track the camera trajectory with an added bonus of keying out all the duct tape reference marks I so naively put on the green screen. But the colours were nice... :))

Music, porn and tequilla!

2008-05-12T11:30:00.041+03:00

I'm still a little hungover from last night, so I may not remember everything, but anyway... It all started with the new Hotel Fetish album, The Safest Place On Stage and Mihai and Alex (Gigi to basically everybody) asking me to take care of the visual side of things for its launch party.

It took me a lot of time to get the bits and pieces of footage together, convert, edit, chop up and edit some more, but that was in part due to shooting Zippo in the same week and me being a total zombie during that time. So Mihai and I joined forces, since we're both in editing, and divided up tasks between us, so we could have the stuff ready and in time for the gig. I was half an hour late getting to B52 though, and I was still not done with the footage, plus I had to setup the projectors and laptops. Yep, I had two of each :D

The party kicked fuckin ass to say the least and the crowd was absolutely buzzing! Like when Dirty Amelia came up, someone in the crowd yelled "tits!", and just like magic, that's what they got... and a lot of them! The Safest Place On Stage got the crash and burn treatment, with cowboys and pirates in between to even it out, and My Friend's A Giant Mouse got a disco dude dancing and kicking granny asses for a laugh. :))

At the end, the crowd yelled encore... for which I didn't have any footage left, but I mashed it up and they went with it! Anyway, I was surprised that people stopped by after the show to say they enjoyed the visuals and ask me which bits I used here and there. That was kinda cool.

After the show we all got drunk of course, with Mihai generously throwing lots of tequilla sunrises at me. Woo-hoo-ooo!...

Zippo, take two!

2008-05-08T13:45:00.018+03:00

Ah... I finally finished returning all the equipment I borrowed for Zippo and now I'm ready to chill a bit. Last night was awesome! At first I wasn't confident we'd manage to do all the shots we needed, but we got it together and we pulled it off, despite having some sound problems. Some of the guys took turns sleeping in the van. We finished at around 5:30 a.m. right before the sun went up. Ismail even brought some wine to celebrate. ;)

Getting back home, I had to somehow get the footage and the audio files off the MacBook and onto my PC, but thanks to Flav and his technical genius, I did that very quickly and I even managed to sleep for two hours while the files were transferring.

Anyway, great effort from all the guys and girls involved, it was fun working with them. We only have the dream sequence left to shoot, but I have no idea when that's going to happen (pretty soon, I hope). Right now, I only want to sleep...

Zippo begins...

2008-05-07T06:56:00.027+03:00

Just got back from the first day of shooting Zippo, a short film I've been talking to Ismail about since November last year. Even though I'm a bit tired from shooting all night, it was really exciting to finally see it being made, in spite of a couple of shots being left out because of poor lighting conditions or various other reasons.

We ran into a lot of problems though, and I really hoped the shoot would go a lot smoother than it went. For instance there were a lot of cars trying to pass through the street we were shooting on and although we managed to convince a few people to turn around, most of the time we had to move the lights that took a lot of time to set up. Which was really annoying. Add to that an extremely noisy (rented to us as extremely silent, mind you) power generator which we had to move twenty or thirty meters away, to be able to record decent sound. Or the extension cords that broke down and forced us to bring the generator closer to the sound equipment. Or the drunken people passing by in the middle of the shot. Or everything else bad that happened. :)

Although we didn't manage to get all the shots and angles we wanted and despite all the setbacks, everybody did their best, I had a really good time doing it and in the end it kinda reminded me why I landed at film school in the first place.

Speaking of which, I've got classes from 9 a.m. today. Gotta nash :)

Partying vs. jamming

2008-04-29T15:41:00.045+03:00

Went to Amon Tobin at the Session Club on Sunday and... it was fuckin buzzin! The bass was so deep my clothes were shaking! Anyway, his set was brilliant, moving in and out of different soundscapes, from glitchy electro to dirty hip-hop beats and in the end dropping some unexpected hardcore drum and bass on us! Stuff like Technical Itch and Noisia, amongst other nice distorted breakbeats. End result: I danced till I couldn't feel my legs or neck anymore...

Even got this as an extra treat:

Next day was band practice day. During the daytime, which is a first. It was great, although I couldn't kick the bass drum as fast as I had to from all the dancing I did the night before. During breaks, we messed around a little and it sounded kinda nice.

All in all, lots of fun and I didn't feel as tired as I imagined I'd be after playing drums for 11-something hours. Which is good, I suppose. :)

Hello me!

2008-04-29T15:10:00.006+03:00

Wow, this actually works. Yay!