Check out the band Dash Eight, their tunes and their slick looking website. They are, in my humble opinion, one of the better bands to come out of Salisbury, MD in a while.
All posts by Mike
Man vs. Machine
Man vs. Machine represents the first professional project that Tim and I were commissioned to make. Unfortunately, the piece never aired because the TV show it was intended for did not get off the ground.
Originally, the video was going to be broken into three segments and interspersed throughout the program. Accordingly, the first two parts had a “To be continued” after them. For the web version of the video, we’ve cut out the “To be continued” bits and linked the three segments together.
Special thanks goes to Joe on this one who was an integral component in the brainstorming process and was the one who suggested that we consider the premise of Man vs. Machine.
Book Review: Digital Filmmaking 101: An Essential Guide to Producing Low-Budget Movies by Dale Newton and John Gaspard
If there is a bible for anyone making a low-budget feature-length movie, then Dale Newton and John Gaspard’s, Digital Filmmaking 101: An Essential Guide to Producing Low-Budget Movies (2001), is it. An update of their previous book, Persistence of Vision: An Impractical Guide to Producing a Feature Film for Under $30,000 (1999), the newer version, as its title suggests, stresses tackling the feature-length movie in the digital medium as opposed to film. Whereas only several years ago hopes of distribution for anything not shot on film would have been virtually non-existent, today’s aspiring moviemaker needs to give serious consideration to the digital format as his medium of choice. Fast, clean and incredibly economic (to the tune of about 20,000 dollars less than shooting on film), the digital medium is the future of independent moviemaking, according to Gaspard and Newton.
Quizard
Hey people, I'm the Wizard of Quiz I know all the answers to make you flip your lids. Smoking toadstools or drinking dry limes I'm the Quizard who quizes your rotting minds. Non-stop, my questions for fetid thought under the bazar, Ooo! Look! What's that trinket on the blanket to be bought? But please take care and do beware: for this is just one fun question of mine, among 10 zillion for the brain's fizz cauldron.
Squidicus Leviticus
Squidicus Leviticus stayed up too late looking at the clock one eyed when rather lurid he decided the clock was a plate. Then he slept, and while he did, all the roman numerals loosened and trickled Leviticus past, I, III, V, just about that fast. Till from his slumber he jarred eyed wide to stop his watch in a tear cried, "This plate is Death, for goodness sakes!"
L RON
I M L RON from ancient stars, now may I borrow your IRON for my new blue shirt, I am serious not IRON IC (SIC) for I dream from B-YOND B-WARE what the seer sees in false light, for the Solar System is Solar Powered.
Egg Mountain
With Dragon’s most recent post about eggs, I thought I would briefly plug a sort of “egg experiment” that I myself was involved in.
While I living in Essex, my friend Russ (Rebelli0n) told me about a feast he and his friends used to make called Egg Mountain. I was so utterly intrigued by the monstrosity that he described to me, I made him swear that he would show me the art of cooking it. One evening he did, and the now infamous Egg Mountain movie resulted. The video, if I recall correctly, was rather fittingly shot over Easter vacation. Russ’s girlfriend (Caroline) and our friend Tamara helped out with the cooking.
We’ve posted the video on our site in a small format, but it can also be download on Russ’s site, in a larger avi format. Regardless of where you download the video from, I encourage all to check out Russ’s site, Tactical Syntax, which always has insightful commentaries (most recently about the newest incarnations of Dr. Who and Capt. Scarlet) and features the many projects that Russ is involved with. Russ has indicated that he will soon be posting his movie Eldridge (2004), which when he does, I encourage anyone at all interested in independent movie productions and science fiction to watch. It is stellar in every sense of the word.
Finally, for those who watch Egg Mountain, pay close attention to the end of the video where a picture of Dick Van Dyke and a cartoon version of Van Dyke are featured. Russ explained to me that he did not place Dick Van Dyke into the video to be funny and campy. Nor is it a coincidence that both a real picture of Van Dyke and cartoon picture appear. Rather, Van Dyke, and what might be labeled as the meta-Van Dyke, are placed in the video to alert others to what might be Van Dyke’s more problematic connection to the advent of the DVD. At some point, I hope that Russ will elaborate more just what this connection is.
In other words, check his site regularly.
The Employment Mouse
When the mouse costume arrived today, the thrill of exhilaration that surged through me must have surely been equal to that of Ben Franklin’s when he discovered electricity after being zapped by a lightning bolt. At some point however, during my frenzied celebration of running, foaming, leaping and shouting, it dawned on me that the things which were giving me ecstatic glee were perhaps only doing so because I was, rather sadly, unemployed. It had only been five minutes earlier that I’d been amusing myself by belching into an empty milk glass and trying to waft the fumes into my face. Silently cursing the particularly pesky milk fumes that refused to come out from the bottom of the milk glass, I was certain that the belching-wafting entertainment was a symptom of my unemployedness. The question was though, was my jubilance over the mouse costume? When Tim got home, I got my answer. I hadn’t even gotten one word out of mouth before Tim was fully garbed in downy mousey attire and making series of arcane mouse-ing motions with his arms. It was then that I, like Franklin perhaps, was privy to my own little piece of the light, and knew unemployed, or employed, that the mouse costume was timeless.
Morty the Mortician
Morty
the
Mortician
was a kind
of a beautician
who
slurred
his words
cause he needed of
a SpamSieve,
not a liver,
to filter the
whiskey rye,
and when grandfather
died,
my mother
was
absolutely
mortified
when old Morty said,
“No one gives
two hoots
about stuff like nutrition
when you go to the
palace in the sky”.
A Return to Pants
My
pants
don’t
fit,
but
I
don’t
give
a
shit,
cause
I’m
unemployed.