melba lee

Melba lee is not only suddenly posting like crazy, she also has good comments about The Saddest Music in the World, and Perfumed Nightmare, both of which I've talked about a lot on here. I'm jealous that she's already seen Saddest Music...
I would have linked to the exact articles, but Melba's archive links seem to be messed up.

Liz Magic Laser

This is the photographer Tamara and I posed for last week. Liz Magic Laser (yes, it's her real name... and I get tired of people asking me if Wiley Wiggins is a stage name or something... I can't even imagine what it must be like to be named Magic Laser).

NYT: Guy Maddin and The Saddest Music in the World

The New York Times > Movies > How Guy Maddin Channeled Dorothea Lange in a Winnipeg Steel Mill

back

Thanks to Eric Adolfsen and his friends and Rob Auten for putting us up while we were in NYC. We had a lot of fun: a trip to the Whitney Biennial, a photo-shoot with Eric's friend Liz (wherein we spat opaque pink fluid at each other and generally made a mess). Also, more libations than were probably necessary, we got to see my friends Laura Flam and Mariah Balaban, and Laura's friend Mary, my favorite punk-rock mail-lady... all at Manitobas.
Also: the biodiversity exhibit at the Museum of Natural history is awesometastic.
Tomorrow, back to work. I'm really excited. Hopefully in the summer I will be able to also squeeze in animating on A Scanner Darkly if all goes well.

Apple - Trailers - Godzilla

Did I already mention that Rialto is going to release the real Japanese version (sans inexplicble Perry Mason cutaways) of Godzilla in the US on May 7th?

Apple - Trailers - Godzilla

Alex Jones zombie breaks into SF Bohemian club in superhero outfit, loaded with weapons.

Priceless.


Masked man enters, attacks Bohemian Grove / 'Phantom' expected armed resistance

What Do I Know - Apple Motion

There's an interesting discussion of Apple's new After Effects killer, Motion, over at What do I Know. Crap. Now I'm going to have to get a G5.

"I was there this morning and saw the live demo. Whatever you read on Apple’s website will fall short of what this app can do.

Motion is very Wacom friendly, it plays your clip in real time no matter what you throw at it (the demo included 1 HD clip -720- color corrected, one photoshop file with 3 layers, one logo file, two live texts and plenty of particles and other effects.)"

What Do I Know - Apple Motion

NYT> 600 Macs, 4,000 Lines, One Giant Leap for DVD's

A company in Burbank is rescanning 35mm prints to create DVD versions that are supposed to be 6 times higher res than current discs... A move that will allow current DVD's to actually take advantage of HDTV's and will allow the film masters a little more longevity with future formats. What films are they starting with? uh.... "You Only Live Twice"? Isn't that the movie where Sean Connery puts on some eyeliner to disguise himself as a Japanese man? Glad to know they're preserving the really important films first.

The New York Times > Movies > 600 Macs, 4,000 Lines, One Giant Leap for DVD's: "Walk into the suites of Lowry Digital, the company that Mr. Lowry started six years ago, and the first sight that strikes you is the computer bank — rack after rack of Macintosh G5 computers, 600 of them, holding a combined memory of 2,400 gigabytes...
What he is doing will make a DVD look nearly as sharp and detailed as a 35-millimeter film print. It will produce images with six times the resolution of today's high-definition television sets. In video quality, it could turn home theater into a true rival of the neighborhood cineplex."

New Apple Production apps.

Today Apple released a fistfull of new Production applications:
Final Cut Pro HD, Motion, DVD Studio Pro 3, and Shake 3.5.

And I'm going to learn them all.

We'll see if I have any brain space left over to remember my name and address afterwards.

From an article in Forbes: "The new Motion program allows for interactive animation of text, graphics and video, with an instant preview of different filters and effects.

It also has what Apple calls 'behaviors,' which allow artists to add natural-looking movement to type and graphics, such as gravity and wind, without the use of the traditional, complex method of using keyframes."

Link Apple.com

Yippee

I'm accepting a new full time job next week (well, after a quick trip to NYC to see some friends) so blogging may be sporadic and will probably be more focused on Final Cut Pro, DVDStudio Pro, Shake and DIY film making in general.

Honk, tweet, buzz

I'm doing a little circuit bending with my friend Josh right now using an old electronic baby toy I picked up. We added a 1/4" output jack and a rotary dial that causes six different shorts that produce pitch shifts and glitches. I'm thinking of patching in some reverb or some other effect since there is still plenty of room inside and room for more knobs etc on the surface. This is totally fun... I'm going to start combing thrift stores for more toys to mutilate as gifts for musician friends. Here's a clip of what this one can do so far.

Spoiler: She kills Bill

In a bizarre twist of post-matrimonial weirdness, the two best movies I've seen this year are Before Sunset and Kill Bill: Volume 2. Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman both find their own unique ways of dealing with old flames that have caused them hurt in these films. Ethan has a heart to heart, and Uma... does other, less gentle things to hearts.

It's funny... as much player-hating and foamy mouthed cries of cinematic plagiarism that are aimed at Quentin Tarantino, he has still proved himself as one of the most unique and talented voices in American film today. He can effortlessly bend his style into unreal configurations and never lose his empathy for his characters- a skill that makes even the most cartoon-y scene still feel 'real' somehow.

April Painting Show

Holly Fisher, one of the talented Waking Life animators, will be showing paintings in a group show at Blue Genie on April 16th.

Link

Happy Easter:

eBay item 4160915293 RABBIT FETUS SPECIMENS

Lynch wants to teach TM in schools.

The Globe and Mail:

David Lynch's latest production may not involve talking logs or dancing dwarves, but it is, nonetheless, bizarre. The Twin Peaks auteur, who has been meditating for 90 minutes twice a day for the past 30 years, recently became the spokesman for an initiative called the Committee for Stress-Free Schools, which aims to introduce transcendental meditation into classrooms across the United States as a way to combat the stress of high school and improve grades.

'Meditation is the key that opens the door to a vast ocean of pure consciousness, pure bliss,' Lynch said at an April 2 press conference in L.A. 'When the light of peace comes up, negativity just goes away.'

Send SMS messages from Mail.app

Daniel Browne has made a cool set of address book scripts that enable sending SMS messages via email.

Link

DV Macguyver

Found via boingboing, how to build a 14 dollar DV steadycam out of some pipe and a weight. Whatever works I suppose.
$14 Steadycam

The Cult of Mac Blog

Wired has started up an all-mac news blog. Looks good so far.

Link
RSS Feed

My main website and email are both out for a bit. Should be back in 24 hours or so.

It's been an interesting last couple of weeks. I had an excellent job interview last week and I've done two taped interviews, one about Rick Linklater for a BBC Channel Four film, and another for a documentary about Dazed and Confused that has been going on since we shot the film 12 years ago, directed by Kahane Korn (now one of the producers of The Daily Show) for AMC and possibly a future Special Edition Dazed and Confused DVD. She started the interview with some slightly embarrassing footage of me at 15 and ended it with a car ride down the desolate remains of "the drag"... once a cultural hotspot in Austin, now a lifeless strip-mall. One of the first casualties in Austin's slow and sorry morph into Burbank.

My mail is bouncing right now due to server problems. (as usual)
You can send mail to me at wiley [at] dodgeit [dot com] in the meantime.