Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Prairie PuppetSlam Cabaret

At the end of a very busy day (met with An about her paper, created two soundtracks for the One Take Super 8 Event, wrote notes for another paper, attended first half of "the talkies") we went to the second annual Prairie PuppetSlam Cabaret. It was really good, probably even better than last year. We got in just in time to get the last of the tables, which was off to the side but also meant I never felt self conscious of blocking anyone's view. As it is on the heals of the Cathedral Festival, I was worried that it wouldn't have a big crowd but it had around 100, which is capacity with the table lay out like this. Mooky was a really fun host. She changed wardrobe between every act (and some of them were only 2 or 3 minutes long). She has a solo show this weekend that we will try to see.

Monday, May 30, 2016

17,000 photographs

I just finished scanning the main body of my 35mm photographic negatives. This has taken me a few months, putting a few rolls on the scanner each day. The photos are primarily from 1982 when I started taking pictures to 2003, at which point the lab began scanning negatives for you when you got film developed. There are approximately 800 rolls and over 17,000 images. Each of the envelopes in this box contains one or two rolls of film:
The next step is to scan my slides (probably just two or three days work) and then some older family negatives that I didn't take myself. In time I will be putting larger collections of them online. I've already selected hundreds of images associated with my film projects which I will put on my website when I have time. Of course my archive will not be complete until I re-capture all the videotapes I have sitting here, but that is a job for another day.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Pictures of the huge crowds at Cathedral Arts Festival street fair

I did the walk along 13th, one end to the other, chatting and taking in the sights and sounds. I'd stayed home when Margaret and William went out so I could use the quiet to catch up on some work so I didn't connect with as many people as they did, but had a good chat with John and Brett. The line up at the mini-donuts was at least 20 people long so I skipped them and got back to work. Here are some of my photos:










Friday, May 27, 2016

Friday night Film screening at the Arts Festival

My film "Son of Cthulhu" that I finished in 1991 (although I did most of the work in 1986-1988) screened for the first time in a few years at the Artesian for the 24th annual Filmpool screening event (Screening Under the Steeple, previously the Screening Under the Stars). It has one of my more grating souindtracks that I'd probably have stripped off of it by now except that John McCullough once told me how much he liked that soundtrack (I'd lent him a 16mm print years ago and he watched it a few times at night on a particularly hot Toronto summer). 

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Professor Delusia Live at Cathedral Arts Festival


I did a two hour art garage pop up gallery presentation as my 2008 character "Professor Delusia" this evening. Using William's drawings, copied into transparencies, I told 24 stories over a two hour time period (new story every 5 minutes). I had a randomly generated list of 30 names. I had a list of 24 places in the world that I selected using a randomizer for google maps (http://www.mapcrunch.com/), and a collection of 24 unique dream-like transformation events, 24 emotions, 24 objects, and 24 conclusions. Each story used different drawings, each was improvised using the elements described, and each story was unified by the treat of what goes wrong if  you don't abide the professor. I generally had one or two listeners at a time, although I did at least one with no one and a handful with 3 or 4. Overall I believe I pulled it off with some degree of success.
 

Monday, May 23, 2016

photos of Cathedral Festival in the park













Cathedral Village festival parade

This year's opening parade for the Cathedral Village Arts Festival ended a few minutes ago, turning as it does into a party at the Les Sherman Park (in and around the Balkwill Centre). The parade was of a similar scale as previous years but began three blocks earlier, either to avoid congestion or because of the school construction. Whatever the reason, it felt less rushed. Lots of costumes and colour. William and his friend Xander took the modified go cart along with Gertrud's three wheeled bike in it. I'll be back for the comic jam shortly.




Sunday, May 22, 2016

Akira Kurosawa festival



Over the past 20 weeks, William and I have held our own private Akira Kurosawa film festival. While I did not manage to find every one of his films, I did locate these twenty titles from the university as well as the public libraries. While I have always respected his films, it is not really until this past few months that I really loved his films. Not only his brilliant compositions and stagings, but his sense of time and his whimsical sense of humor. Of course the samurai films are beautiful and amazing, we both found the twisted tales in the contemporary set films to be ultimately more interesting. Here is what we watched (in the order we watched them):
Yojimbo
Seven Samurai
Hidden Fortress
Rashamon
Ikiru
Sanjuro
The Idiot. (Hakuchi)
High and Low
Throne of Blood
Kagemusha the Shadow Warrior
Ran
Stray Dog
Dersu Uzala
Dreams
Dodes ka den
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail
Red Beard
Drunken Angel
Bad Sleep Well
Madadayo

Saturday, May 21, 2016

Teagan and snakes


Leslea, Leif, and the girls are in town for the weekend. I facilitated William spending some time with Teagan by taking them around town, starting with the partially unveiled legislature building copper dome and then to the brand new exhibit of snakes at the museum. Really nicely done. The rounded domes and overall approach makes the snakes look beautiful and precious. 

Friday, May 20, 2016

Go Cart


I've always said that I work on movies with William because we don't be go carts together, which is the natural thing dads do with their sons. Well today I worked on a go cart. We didn't actually build it, but we cut stencils and sprayed patterns into it. In my book, that's pretty much as good as installing the axle.  

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Two Johns in Regina in 1998

Found this image of a breakfast I'd forgotten ever happened: John Porter (world famous super-8 filmmaker from Toronto) whose visit to Regina coincided with John McCullough and Marnie Parrell and their kids, also filmmakers, also from Toronto (but originally from Regina) who were also visiting. The kids did face painting, we probably had breakfast specials. John Porter was in to do a screening on or near Halloween in 1998 at the Filmpool. He also visited with some students at the UofR including Alex Rogalski. I wish Alex was in this picture, that would really  have been something for the history books. 

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

1999 puppets of artists

I'm almost finished scanning my negatives from the 20th century and am reminded about what a crazy creative year we had at the end of it. I've had these puppets sitting in my office since our failed performance in 1999. Margaret built this  Warhol, Christo, Dali, and Pratt and we performed a cooking show that I scripted with them at Neutral Ground one evening... or at least we tried to. It was a gong show and we were cut off about half way through and didn't finish. This was my first puppet performance in front of an audience. 

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Second monitor (again)

After six months with only one monitor on my computer, I finally replaced the small one I gave away for a nice 24" Benq. I had been thinking about holding out for a 4K monitor but the prices, which appeared to be dropping quickly last year, no longer seemed low. I can't get much for under $550. Someone told me that the quality of the cheap ones that were popping up was highly problematic and no one seems to be selling $300 4K anymore. I'll wait. This makes the multi-tasking (editing while scanning or watching Netflix with William while scanning or editing, or writing while capturing, etc) much easier. 

Monday, May 16, 2016

Legislative Building unveiling?

William and I drove around the legislative grounds for a while after eight o'clock tonight to see the promised unveiling of the legislative building. There were large crowds and a thousand cars so we didn't stop much, but we did snap lots of pictures out the window. However, we didn't manage to see any of the new copper of the dome. The weather was great so it was a nice night to walk though. 

Sunday, May 15, 2016

William's super-8 film

Today William and I worked on his super-8 film for the One Take Super 8 Event which will screen on June 9. He has good ideas but the frustrating part of this hoot, given that the whole thing had to be shot in order, was that he wanted to intercut between two locations that there three miles apart. It ended up being a bit too much driving. 

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Margaret's school reunion

This evening we attended Margaret's school reunion for the class of 1986. I know a few of the people there and met a couple people who I've heard mention of over the years. Mike came down from Saskatoon and Corinne came up from the states. People were generally nice and were willing to have conversations about odd stuff like smoking rituals, photos of toilets, car trunks full of booze, super-8 filmmaking, Dualism, foreign films, and quantum physics.
The bar didn't have gin and the music featured only the big radio hits of the 80s until they switched to country so it sucked, but the food was excellent and the venue was quite agreeable. William didn't go but went to Jungle Book with Gertrud instead.