The Dance

It seems I'm never too busy to have a little fun when the opportunity arises. Glenn Rawson is a radio and television personality and author in Utah and Idaho. As I was putting together the promos for his show I noticed that, using some of the shots between takes and the magic of television editing, I could actually loosen him up a little. Here's the result:

The Annual Post

Once per annum around this time, I turn a year older. I can't seem to stop it. It just keeps coming. This year is no different. It brought with it no epiphanic fanfare or any type of life-changing realizations (unless you count that, fun as it was, I'm never taking the whole family to Tepanyaki Steak House again--too danged expensive!) In fact, it kind of sneaked up on me. It didn't hit me that I was having a birthday until just a couple of days before it happened. This may be due to the fact that my side business has taken off this year and I've been holed up in my cave for weeks concentrating on projects and deadlines and other people's lives.

Most of the projects I get on the side are retrospectives. This year I did three videos for the University. Two of them were for year-end events: The Athletics Department's Senior Banquet and Hall of Fame, and the College of Ed's Convocation. I spent days focusing on the lives of the Hall of Fame Inductees and the graduating seniors, examining their stories and getting them ready to be presented to others. The other video was for the the poli-sci dept. The department was honoring a local celebrity, a well-known pollster--and professor at the U--with a scholarship named after him. The video included appearances by an austere group of leaders and politicians, including US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt.

I have done these kinds of retrospectives for years and one thing I've noticed is that they usually present a larger-than-life version of the person they describe. All of the interviews are with friends and family and the spectrum of their responses to the subject ranges from respectful admiration to downright gushy brown-nosing. Occasionally there will be a critical comment (and I'm not talking about the "Dean Martin's Roast" type of comment that's usually kept in for comedy) which is squelched immediately. In other projects I've even had to edit a few of those out of the raw video just in case it ever fell into the wrong hands. Sometimes I get to meet the subjects of these videos and get to know how much the video differs from reality. That used to shock me but now I realize that it comes with the territory.

This year was the first time I've been immersed in other people's personal history for so long, though. And it's made me lose track of my own life. Made me put things on hold. I can't tell you how much I looked forward to working out again. I couldn't do it because I was working around the clock and I was too exhausted to do it. But I'm back at it and it feels great!

Car Commercials

I'm an artist and a video editor, but not necessarily in that order. The two aren't necessarily interchangeable either. Rarely is there any artistic value in my day job putting together television commercials. I've done many commercials over the years and many have been for car dealerships. I'm doing one right now, as a matter of fact. This one is for san diego used cars . The internet has really added a new dynamic to the whole process of buying a car. I can't stand dealing with sales people so the prospect of doing all the research for a car online, away from the pressure, is appealing. You certainly can do a lot of things online these days. I've rented movies, bought a camera for my business, bought books and music and a lot more. I haven't tried buying a car online, yet. Maybe someday I will. Like I said, anything that gets me away from those awful high-pressure sales people is a good thing, right?

And Another Thing

Speaking of this whole probate thing, there seems to be a lot of firms out there who make it their business to help. For instance, the orange probate attorney. It's not something I've really thought about much, as I said. But there is a need. I think the thing to do, though, is to thoroughly research several companies online and what they really offer. Personally I wouldn't go for the advance. I'm more conservative when it comes to money. I think my mother did the right thing when she put most of her inheritance into investments. If there's a way to do that and shelter yourself from the taxes, that's the way to go, I think. That's where a good attorney might come in handy. I certainly want to be better prepared than I am so that my kids will be taken care of. It's something to think about.

Grabbing the Future Now

I never thought I'd have the opportunity to even think about dealing with an inheritance. Then my grandparents died and my mother and her brother inherited a tidy little sum. I watched my mom and dad decide what to do with it and they made some good choices and some that didn't go the way they wanted. But for the most part it's worked out. My parents are going to live a long time--they'll probably outlive me--so I most likely won't have to worry about what to do with an inheritance. But there are firms out there that help with the probate process. If only to help you get your cash more quickly. I haven't done all the research so I don't know what they entail. I suppose that if you need your money fast and don't mind paying a fee for it, there's someone who's willing to help get you and some of your cash connected right away.

U2 3D

So I saw it yesterday at the local IMAX theater. From the very start I was blown away. And I'd already seen it a couple of years ago, sort of. I went to a pre-feature content conference in Los Angeles at a historical movie theater in Hollywood and met the 3ality folks who showed us part of the film that they shot with U2 to pitch this film. They disclaimed the lack of quality, saying it was only a trial run but it was astounding. I felt like I was at the concert.

And that's the way I felt yesterday, during the first song, only more so--and, later, less so. The first song is Vertigo, a track that will get anyone jumping. The speakers were cranked, as the elderly theater manager who admitted me warned. (It had to be a warning, although he worded it as a promise of exciting things to come.) When I say it's better than being there, what I mean is that thanks to the cameras we go places that even the most high-priced ticket couldn't get you into. We hover directly over Larry's drum kit and weave around through Edge and Adam and Bono on stage. And though these are the same shots you see in a "regular" concert film, regular shots don't come anywhere near this experience. This is an entirely new vantage point. Being a drummer first and guitarist much later, I wanted to stay locked in that position over the drums. The 3D technology disappeared and I was actually there, watching Larry smack those drums in his easy style. Cliche though it may be, I really felt like I could touch them. The being there sensation took a back seat after that song, though, and I'm trying to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I forgot about it and just sunk into the concert itself. And that's what you do at a concert that's really in a movie theater in Salt Lake City. I looked around at the other U2 fans sitting around me, and no one was singing. One guy way below me in the first row was dancing a little and mouthing the words, but other than that no one was moving much at all. I saw a few foot taps but not even any head bobs. I wanted to jump up and start shouting but everyone was so subdued that I even felt self conscious when I noticed myself tapping out all the drum parts along with Larry on my knees. At one point I stopped this and then I thought, who cares? I'm listening to one of my favorite bands--in fact I'm not just listening, but I'm there with them. I can move around if I want to. Another factor that let me loosen up was the fact that the glasses are like blinders on a horse. They're blocked off on the sides so you can only see straight in front of you unless you turn your head. You tell me...is this a Utah thing? Would theater-goers/U2 fans in other cities be so quiet?

Other than the surreal notion that you feel like you're actually at a concert but only virtually that made it seem less like I was actually there, was the film editing. I wonder if I'd feel this way if they had cut from shot to shot rather than using slow dissolves. The latter technique broke the fourth wall and let us know we were watching a movie. On the other hand, the word graphics animated on flat screens for the actual audience were flying at us in 3d space, even, at one point, swirling and weaving around the band members. It was so well done that it seemed like a possible effect at a concert making you wonder why they don't do it at venues. This is something the concert goers missed out on. Neener, neener.

The concert itself was amazing. Much of the content was edited out, I'm sure, to get the film down to an hour and a half, but I didn't go home feeling like they should have played this song or that. It felt complete. One of the reasons for this, for me, was that they played a completely unexpected Passengers song. Bono was even arrogant enough to try Pavarotti's part. I was part turned off by this arrogance, and part amazed that he actually pulled it off!

There are things you can get from this film that you can't get from the concert and there are certainly things that you can get from the concert that you can't get in a theater. Maybe the answer is to go to both. We all know that U2 need the money.

Rebirth

I mentioned earlier that I turned 40. This has a different effect on people online than it does in the real world. While there are pictures of me on this blog, there's no way for people who meet me exclusively in this realm to really see me, how I dress, talk, behave (or misbehave) so there's no surprise factor. When I say I'm 40, you have no reason to think otherwise. In the real world, however, people are utterly amazed when I tell them. Many of them don't believe me. They think it's some kind of joke. Thirty seems to them the more logical scenario. This has always been kind of fun. It's why I don't mind telling people. The fact that I didn't get married until I was 27 and my kids are all very young reinforces the whole thing. It's all made turning 40 a tad more bearable but I'm waiting for the big switch to my appearance like when I turned 30. Around six months after my birthday I noticed I was 50 lbs heavier. I'd been 135-140 lbs all my life but six months after turning thirty and ever since, I've hovered between 190 and 195. And then there's my hairline. Every day the top of my head is just a little more visible. It looks like the stubbly field in back of my parents' house where I grew up. This concerns me because I swore that my full head of hair would not suffer the same fate as my dad's which, except for a long combover, was completely gone from the top of his head by his late twenties. I have no plans for a combover myself, nor to repeat his disastrous attempt to hide the barren scalp with a wig which was such a drastic change for him that those who recognized him just laughed in disbelief. (Mom, if you're reading this, there's no need to let him know what I've written.)

So I guess what I'm trying to say is you don't know what getting older is until you experience it yourself, and I suppose if I asked my parents or someone in the twilight years, I still don't know. As I said before, 40 hit me broadside but I recovered quickly with the help of an author friend of mind. I was feeling like 40 was the end of the line because I hadn't realized my goal of writing a novel before then. I told her this and she had some very encouraging words to say. For one thing, she told me she was going to check up on me periodically to see if I've been writing everyday. And she gave me a book, Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamont. After reading that and writing nearly everyday for the last few weeks, I feel reborn. 40 is the beginning. And I'm learning more about writing by writing everyday than I ever did in school or from all those books and magazines that I bought. In the trenches is where it's learned. You read other books and other writers' advice but you don't learn it until you write for yourself. It took me 40 years to learn that.

A Doodle for my Birthday

I've been getting some nice feed back about my drawing on YouTube so I thought I'd draw another one on camera to show a little of the process. You can see it here. This one's a lot more involved than the last one I did. Click on the drawing to see it on a much larger scale. I have a writer friend who thinks I should illustrate childrens' books in this style. It's an interesting idea.

I let my 40th birthday slip by back on May 14th without posting anything about it here. It was a rough day: The day I could no longer deny that I'm old. My body won't let me deny it either. A couple of days ago my car died and I walked the 8 1/2 miles home from work. When I got home 2 hours later, my knees and my left ankle were killing me. I used to do 20 miles in the mountains in a day!
On the up side, I still look young. I was editing for a client a couple of weeks ago and she asked how I could work so fast. (I think I was using photoshop at the time). I said I'd been doing this a loooong time, to which she replied, "How long can you have been doing it? What are you, all of 25?" So at least I can pretend I'm not old when I'm out of the house. My 3-year-old daughter won't let me forget it, though.

Back from the Dead

Last night: The clients are talking amongst themselves so I go in the other room to watch the DVD burner do its stuff. The video is 52 minutes long so the copies are going to take awhile but maybe if I watch it it'll go faster. OK, I don't believe that, but it's something to do. It's midnight and so much can go wrong still. I've already been up for three days straight to make the deadline and it absolutely has to be done tonight because I'm leaving for Idaho and my brother's wedding. We checked and re-checked the DVD project but when you change segments created in other programs and then re-import them into DVD Studio Pro, there's no telling what problems you can miss. This is week 3 of my work on the project and I don't want anything to be amiss.

Every day I've gotten up at 5 am and worked on it until it's time to go to work and every night I've stayed up late working on it. Then I pull the two all-nighters in a row. But it's still not as bad as last year. There were four all-nighters. I figured I was up for 102 hours straight with two 15-minute catnaps in all that time. It was interesting to see how my body reacted to it. Throughout that period my mind was clouded with a light haze, like looking through a dirty window. Most of the time I handled it just fine. I went to work and then came home and worked through the night until it was time to go to work again. There were times when my judgement was impaired, as if I'd downed a six pack in ten minutes, but most of the time I was able to function pretty well. My wife drove me everywhere because we never knew when my mind would shut down. It was like having epilepsy and waiting for the seisures to come. The problem with working like that is that there are invariably mistakes being made. I think I gave them four different disks before all the problems were finally resolved and I gave them the perfect one. That was delivered at a 7-ll at 1:30 am in the rain. It must have looked just like a drug deal. They were showing to the video to the parents, players, and coaches of the 15 teams in the club at 10am that morning. I waited all day for them to call me and tell me it was a disaster. But they never did. I finally called them and was told it was a raging success--be sure to send the invoice.

This year I was determined to get it done in two weeks with no all-nighters.

Whatever.

A large portion of the program is a collection of videos produced by each team. They are all of questionable quality and all on different formats. This year most of them were on DVD and that was great. But one was on High 8 and one guy even sent me a powerpoint presentation. In those cases all I can do is scramble to find away to convert it to what I need.

So I got the thing finished yesterday and gave them the disk, crossing my fingers that it would be perfect the first time but knowing down deep in my gut that it wouldn't be.

Sure enough I got a call with a bunch of changes. This time they wanted to be there with me. I'm all for that because we can get it right the first time. So we meticulously examined each segment after we waited for 45 minutes for one of them to render. Then, satisfied that all the changes were good, I opened the DVD menu project and examined them in there. They all looked good so we burned the disk and then made copies. That was another hour.

When it was done, we didn't even watch the disks. We were that confident.

I went home to crash. I wasn't going to get up for hours.

At 6am the phone rang. Two of the segments (which just happened to be the ones we changed) cut off at the end and would I please get down there right now and fix them.

I worked through my own personal fog and found the problem: The changes made the segments longer but DVD Studio Pro doesn't automatically adjust running time of the segments. You have to do that manually. I think I knew that but when you're drunk on no sleep the synapses just don't connect properly.

Well, the corrected DVD is in their hands and I'm in Idaho right now and the presentation is tomorrow.

I'll send the invoice on Monday and then I'll have peace until next March when it starts all over again. Only this time it'll be double: I have an almost identical project that I'll be doing for the University at the same time. I'm not sure how I'm going to swing that. But, hey, the money's good.

Vans

Not the shoes.

Ok, so you heard me crying a few weeks back about somebody throwing a fire extinguisher through the window of my car. I had plans for that car. We were going to go places. (Sorry about that. Puns just happen sometimes.) Well, we bought a new--to us--van that the six of us can all ride comfortably in without having to strap one of the boys to the roof. (No matter how much they beg me to, I'm not gonna. Imagine what the neighbors would think when they flashed their winning bug-toothed smiles!) It's a silver Ford Windstar and we're all thrilled with it. I guess the neighbors aren't, though. The other day I came out to put the new license plates on only to be greeted by "Go Emo Kidz" and "bitch" written on the back door in black sharpie ink.
Now, I'm a peace-loving individual and I outwardly restrained myself. But I'm 99.3% sure who did it and in the recesses of my mind, I was taking my Louisville Slugger to their braided heads. I was able to get it off with some effort.

As for the Mustang, we're getting rid of it. We're keeping our other van, a green monstrosity that sucks gas but is useful for hauling video production equipment. The fact is, I'm too lazy to get a new window for a car that is drawing it's last few breaths anyway.

The green van has another useful feature: Ever since we took it to Jiffy Lube this last time, it stalls while idling. But it doesn't stall just any old time. It's only when the light you're waiting for is about to turn green. So you always know when it's time to put it in park, start it off, and get going. Of course, the people honking and swearing at you for not going soon enough are a great help, too.

Going Back and Back and Back and...

I've decided one of the reasons I don't write very often here is because whenever I get an idea for a post, a thread of thought, a glimmer of something I could begin to be passionate about, I think that with all the blogs out there, it's probably already been covered--and much better than I could.
In the 70's when I was making my way through childhood, the fishbowl didn't seem so full. There were voices everywhere, but it didn't seem so hard to be heard if you wanted to. I know now that there were still plenty of sets of vocal chords out there, all trying to make their particular points of view known to the world but all I really have to go on is my perception then and it's as if the aquarium has suddenly become so crowded that not only can I make my little cry audible to the world, I can barely hear it myself. Some days I think I have no opinion or thought to begin with.
Then I begin to think about why many writers write--because the enjoy the process, or, if they don't enjoy it, they find that they have to just to feel alive. About ten years ago I set out to get an English degree because I thought it would make me a writer. Since I was in grade school I wanted to write and when I had to decide what to study in college it just felt natural to study English. People who know me might find that strange and say, "What about music? That's all you ever talk about!" I'd have to agree with them because there are a lot of things I'm passionate about and I've tried over and over again to get away from this insane dream of becoming a writer. But I always come back to it--not, actually, to the act of writing, but to the subject of writing and my becoming a writer. I know this doesn't make sense, but this is my blog and it doesn't have to.
The point is that I always come back and one day, I think, I will actually do it.

The Trolley Square Incident

As you've probably heard a pretty horrifying event took place here on Monday. I sat down to watch TV and instead of Heros, a local news special report was on. I instantly recognized Trolley Square, a mall downtown here in Salt Lake, from the helicopter shot on the screen. There were several SWAT officers hunkered down with their weapons as herds of people were escorted past the mall. I soon learned that, as I watched, someone was walking through the mall shooting people.
My first thought was that I was glad my family and I weren't there. We don't go downtown very often but we've gone to the movie theater at that mall and we've spent time nearby. I just can't imagine trying to protect my children from a gunman or seeing one of them shot.
My next thought, like a lot of others here in Utah, apparently, was, "I should go get my concealed weapons permit." Of course I won't, but I thought about it. Like I said, others are thinking about it, too: There's been a surge in the last couple of days in requests for the permits. I'm not an advocate for gun control, but I decided a long time ago that I'd never own a gun myself. For one thing, I get so mad in traffic that I'm sure I would pull it out and shoot someone on the road for cutting me off or not letting me in to traffic. My 29-year-old brother has his permit and he almost always carries his 9mm around with him. I guess it gives him some comfort but I couldn't do it. Then there are the kids. I would never forgive myself if they shot themselves or someone else because I had a gun around.

I don't like talking about gun control and I didn't want this to be about that but I heard another point from a gun control advocate that got me thinking: If there are several people there with guns out, who do you shoot? When I first heard the report that interrupted my TV show, they were saying there were two shooters. We found out later that one of them was an off-duty police officer. So that comment makes a lot of sense to me. One of these times someone's going to shoot the wrong person.

When I heard that the shooter was Bosnian, my mind began to race. I hoped it wasn't someone I knew. A few years ago, when we were managing apartments, I became friends with a Bosnian boy who'd be around the age of the shooter now. He was a very nice kid who liked to help around the complex. He even tried to teach me his native language. I got to know his family, too. They were ostracized from the other people in the complex who hailed from that area because of their ethnicity. I remember thinking how sad it was that those people were missing the chance to get to know this family. So I listened intently for the name of the shooter, hoping it wasn't Slobodon. It wasn't. I was relieved.

My heart goes out to the victims' families and to the family of the shooter. It's awful that these things happen.

Worst Case Scenario: Goolies

A friend of mine from work, Joe Borgenicht, has put together a very informative video that should help millions of people who suffer from being hit in the Goolies.
Watch it here.

A nice Suprise

At 4am I was having some kind of adventure dream--you know, where you're Indiana Jones or somebody like that and you're on the track of some hidden treasure and you're in your underwear...you don't have that kind of dream, do you? Well, anyway, in my dream this alarm sounded. I figured it signaled some kind of trap and I pressed on in my pursuit. Then the alarm became the ringing of a phone and I woke up. It was my neighbor calling to tell me he saw somebody drive by our houses half an hour earlier and vandalize our cars as they passed. His car hadn't been damaged but the window in mine was shattered. I asked him if he'd call the police and then I went back to bed. Strangely enough, I wasn't angry or even disappointed; just tired. Soon our bedroom was filled with flashing blue and red lights. I put on some clothes and went out to see three Sherriff's Cars in front of my house. I walked over to see the damage and found a fire extinguisher sitting comfortably in the front seat, covered with glass. The deputy took it to see if he could trace it but I don't have any hope of that turning up any results. So I don't even have a fire extinguisher that I could sell on Ebay or something.
It was pretty heavy duty, the kind you find in businesses, so it was probably stolen.
I still wasn't angry at all today about it, not like I was when my stereo was stolen. But when I began cleaning it up a while ago and cut my hands on the glass, that's when I started getting pissed. I keep thinking I'm going to get some kind of motion-sensing camera for surveilance but I never do. I can't even say I hope they enjoy whatever it is they took because they didn't take anything. Completely senseless.

A Quick One

Are you getting sick of these yet? I did this one really quick and videotaped the process.
You can see the video here.

Temple Hill Videos

My friend, Dennis Lyman, has produced four historical documentaries on Utah and some of the Mormon Temples. I edited and directed three of them. Click here to learn more.