We begin filming “The Green Machine” on Friday. Should be… interesting.

I just ran a test tonight for syncing sound recorded on the external recorder with the video from the camera. It works pretty easy. The clapboard (slate) is essential.

I also grabbed a frame from last night when Mike and I threw up some quick lighting. I think we made the right choice with this camera. Click on the image to see it in full 720p glory.

I just realized that nobody has mentioned the camera. A quick note is in order. We were originally going to go with the Panasonic DVX100, the original 24p DV camera. However, for a bit more cash, we ended up with the JVC HD100. The JVC is an HDV camera which is high definition. It records in 720p30 and 720p24, as well as DV modes of 24p, 24pA, and 60i.

For all you non techies out there, 24p is is 24 frames per second, which is the rate that film is shot at. 60i is normal TV video; it’s what makes the news look different from movies (or at least one of the big things). DV resolution is 720×480, whereas 720p is 1280×720. The JVC records in 16:9 widescreen in the HD modes and is capable of 4:3 or 16:9 in regular DV mode.

It’s a shoulder mount camera and it has a detachable broadcast style lens. When Mike ordered it, he also got a free $800 professional battery system. It’s a pretty amazing device. Hopefully we can live up to a fraction of it’s potential.

Protozoius! Theology Girl, at [http://www.theologygirl.com](http:// www.theoloygirl.com), has just put up the first installment in her new podcast, Love Widgets. Host Adrienne Kisner guides her listeners through a wide range of off-beat topics, ranging from geek love to RPGs. It’s savvy and whip smart, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll tune in now. Here’s looking forward to episode number two!

Click here to visit Theology Girl.

Click here to listen to Love Widgets.

This weekend we held our rehearsal for Ameviathan: The Green Machine in Chestertown, MD. The rehearsals went extremely well. Our cast is excellent and I can’t wait to shoot.

We also built the Green Machine according to the blueprints Dragon posted, here, on Protozoic. However, you’ll have to wait until to the movie to see it.

Finally, we scouted Camp Fairlee Manor’s facilities for the buildings we’ll be using for the shoot. Camp Fairlee is more than going to provide ample space, room and structures for the shoot.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll continue script breakdown, blocking off dialogue and deciding when and where to shoot what. The biggest hurdles to overcome in this next stage will be day and night scenes and mother nature.

In the meantime, here’s a goodie to tide you over. The music is courtesy of our producer, DJ Webb.

Click here to watch a treat

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

1927, 1930

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
    to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
    mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
    to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence;
    and home to the mother.

You making haste, haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it
    stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
    shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the
    thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there
    are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
    insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught -- they say --
    God, when he walked on earth.

1925