february 27th

this evening i shot two scenes of my upstairs neighbors. i haven't looked at them yet but they were fun to film.

above are a few sketches of john harrington. yes.

february 24th

hello.
yesterday we shot a 1:30 scene at the knotty pines motel in salisbury,ma
it turned out really good. i spent about 3 hours today editing it and adding sound.
above is my character being afraid of what he just saw in the bathroom.
my film will only contain only mature, grown-up material and will be completely free of potty humor.

promise.

this is the first half of the script for the animated "history of the plunger"
this describes the birth of plumbing and creatures called "gloans" and "dunnys"
i was planning on reading this at the motel last night but i changed my mind.

these two are sketches for road trip movie posters which will be movies inside of my road trip movie.

here is a shoebox of timmy tomatos. they are upset now because i didn't use any of them, but i brought them all
in case i was inspired to which i wasn't. oh well.

this is some of the camera equipment i brought

there is some more in this bag

these are props and clothing

this is a shot of the wall at the motel. we were disappointed that it wasn't as trashy
as the room we had stayed in before. this room was pretty nice. around the room in at least 3
places that i saw were punch marks. two of them had been patched up but this one looked fresh.
people like to get upset at the knotty pines motel and punch the walls.

this morning we ventured up to seabrook, new hampshire.
you cannot buy fireworks in massachusetts and i need some for the miniature highway scene.
when we went into the store the dialogue with the gentleman walking about went like this.

him - "hello"
me - "hi"
him - "have you ever been here before?"
me - "no"
him - "have you ever bought fireworks in new hampshire before?"
me - "no"
him - "okay, here in new hampshire we have everything EXCEPT firecrackers and bottle rockets"
me - "oh"
him - "were you looking for anything special?"
me - "yeah, firecrackers and bottle rockets"

i ended up buying a small brick of jumping jacks and "color crackling balls"
he said they were close to firecrackers but i don't believe him
i don't know what they do, but i bet they are about as fun as they sound
which isn't very much.

february 19th

hello.
today i picked up a pair of pajamas. this friday i am going to shoot a scene which i have entitled
"the most disgusting motel room on earth"
this will be the scene where "the history of the plunger" branches off from

the above is a cutout of england and somerset. somerset is where john harrington was from and most of the story
takes place around there. it will be tons of fun.

february 18th

hello friend.
today i spent a fair amount of time recording bollywood music and gutting it for miniscule sound samples.
if all goes well, which i hope it does, one of the scenes in the beginning twenty minutes will be the "annual poetry pancake breakfast"
it will probably be the most difficult scene of the whole picture to put together, and it'll feature a giant brawl between puppets, people and animations.
i will also get into a nasty fistfight with margaret potter. it'll be very very funny hopefully.

also in air organ news.
the organ i bought a few months ago was broken, but i went on a hunt and was pleasantly surprised.
on the internet i found a soundfont (which is sort of like...a file with many different samples/sounds in it which can be used
with midi/sequencing programs) which contained the entire range of air organ sounds. this way i can program the song prior
and just play along to the song. not only will this provide a crisper more perfect song but it'll be easier for me to adjust
vocal levels over it too. the only other time i've ever tried to sing and play a piano of any kind it took HOURS
because i cannot play the piano. this will take mere MINUTES and it'll sound great (hopefully)

february 17th

yesterday i added teeth to three timmy tomatos and worked on fixing two of them i wasn't keen on.

i also spent a bit of time giving my pralines individual behavior.
as of now, one vomits. three jump up and run away messily and one just sits there and shakes.
only..a gazillion to go. geez louise.

oh yeah. there were two similarities between my idea and the science of sleep. they may be minimal but i'm still using them

1) and this could just be a theory, but if you've seen the movie there was a scene where he ran into his neighbors door and messed
up his head. on some things i've read they were talking about him perhaps having a concussion. my character gets a concussion.
this is a very important part of my film so it's going to stay in there. i swear i didn't copy gondry.

2) in stephans dream studio he had a little piano/keyboard that he plays for very short times. i bought an air organ to play a little
ditty on in the film. perhaps i'm completely nuts about it but i don't want people thinking i'm ripping gondry off. yeah! i swear
i bought that air organ weeks before i saw the film. it's not like gondry is the only person who had someone playing a keyboard
in a film anyways! YEAH!

february 11th

hello friends.
i've been writing up a storm at work. i feel like things are really solidifying.
i'm becoming more and more sure about this picture every day.

more good news.
a friend from work had a jam session with his friends a while back and they recorded it.
it sounds absolutely wonderful. i asked his permission to use some of the tracks in the film and he agreed.
they fit perfectly for driving. oh my do they ever. i was listening to it in the morning and i fell in love.
that was a gap that needed to be filled and now it is.
the music in this picture is going to be so diverse. it's making me so happy.

february 8th

i was told today that i have access to a large green screen which is going to make
certain scenes a whole lot easier (and denser). that is todays good news.

this is the tiniest piece in the model set i built tonight. good golly miss molly.

and here is the model. it's the last building in a factory set i bought a long time ago. i'd been putting it off
because of that little piece up top. it scared me a little. NOT ANYMORE IT DIDN'T!

this is a secret santa gift my pal rory sent me. this is exactly what i needed for my film. thank you rory.

the set i built tonight had a little walkway so you could connect the bigger building to this smaller one.

here is a better picture of that. i also re-asphalt painted the ground. i am looking forward to working on this set more
when me being in the basement doesn't hold the threat of catching a cold.

and here is a shot of the script. classy stuff. top notch.

february 3rd

today i began working on my factory set or at least i thought i was going to.
i had purchased a very inexpensive model train set many moons ago. i found it at the supermarket.
it was very very cheap and looked cool. i was going to incorperate this into the factory set.
i had one more big board to use but it was under alot of stuff because i was working on it.
i cleaned it off.

then i took the gray felt off of it. it then looked like the picture above.

when i put the model train track together i was unpleasantly surprised that the track was alot larger than i thought it was.
the one piece of wood i had would not do. i will need to purchase another bigger piece.

i decided that i could use this piece of wood for something else so i painted it gray. i used black paint and gesso.
i like using gesso like white paint because it's alot less expensive than paint. i used glaze to thin out the paint and gesso
to make it easier to spread about.

this didn't produce a solid gray but i knew it wouldn't i guess. i used this method to paint the backrounds
of the state paintings i did. a strip of white, a strip of black and so on. it gives it a neat look which is definitely
not solid. i put a fan up to dry it and then went out to watch the science of sleep. i was very frightened of that film
because the trailer led me to believe that we may have had some of the same ideas. i am very very pleased
to find our visions were completely different. it was nice.

february 1st

hello.
i did a few small things today on my little city. i added one line (woo hoo) to the road.
i painted the curbs white and added sidewalk lines and some spots and things.
the thing i had the most fun with was from the picture above. this is the back of two buildings
which i decided to vandalize with various paint and a screwed up car. as i was painting the curb
more shot possibilities opened up for me which i thought was really cool.

my one line. thank you, thank you very much.

and the second crosswalk.

a teeny bit of bad news for today. there is a song i really like which was recorded by the george school chorus back in 1973
it was called "the journey of persephone". my friend mike wrote them asking to get permission to use it and we are very very close.
the bummer is they are interested in what the film is about and where the basic plot is very basic and not risque at all, the happenings
in this film could be seen as inappropriate. there is one scene in particular in this film that nobody would want to be associated with.
i was caught in a pickle. remove the scene and get this song i love, or forfeit the song and stick to the vision i had.

i have chosen to stick with the vision i had. my friend anthony who is helping me make this film said something to the effect of
"stick to your vision and make this film exactly how you want it to be made because in the future when you get more money
to do things, things will change" and that's what i'm going to do.

the track is really sweet though.

:(