this lossy codec

Friday (11/7): As the days have gotten colder the times when I can bear to take my gloves off to type a blog post on my iPhone has decreased. Today though, is not so bad. The sun is shining and, after a few shots outside, we have moved into an old farmhouse for the rest of the day. At least something to feel good about (even as the 5th day gloom of a 6 day work week lingers).
Back at home we awoke this morning to an inside temperature of 47′F. YIKES! Ah, winter in Golden.

Yessirreebob. Apparently, Val Kilmer has a ranch 30 minutes north of Santa Fe. Nice place. Still, for me it meant waking up extra extra early (4:30) to make it there. The first scene of the day was people on horses crossing a shallow stream. Pretty wide though and not much I could do but provide some ambience. In my spare time I reflected on the date (a semi-personal holiday) and researched what else had occurred on this day in history (10/23). Of course, there is the Creation of the World. Then there is Introduction of the iPod. Both significant. Connected? Hmmm.

Later in the day was a little more eventful. More strong winds and dust blowing. And me chasing Paul Sorvino and Terence Hill with the boom while they ride horseback. Near mayhem.

In midst of first week out on a western called ‘doc west’. I’m booming and we’re filming outside of Santa fe. Lossycodec.com/blog for more.

Greetings, fair readers. The voice of YHN (Your Humble Narrator) here, in case you wondered who was driving this word vessle at this point.  I cannot apologize enough for having left you all in the dark about the adventures that I have been having. Even the previous post sat waiting to be published due to the bandwitdth limitations that are currently a part of my everyday existence.  I know I know. It is no excuse.  So I pick up the tool and begin again.  

In the interim that has past I got offered a gig booming (yea!) and then had it subsequently unoffered(boo!) and then, a few days ago, had it reoffered again (uh..yea?). SO. Today I helped load the sound equipment on the camera truck with a new mixer, Eddie Santiago, who I will be working with on this picture for 8 weeks. Oooooeeeee boy. Did I mention it was a western (ie. mostly outside)?  I’m booming though and it is sure to be a vast learning experience.  If I make it through the entire shoot w/o getting fired (or keeling over).  So, it is sure to be an adventure. I can do this though, right?  You folks followed my adventures while pursuing the orca around Puget Sound. Surely this cannot be very different than that right?  Heheh. Well.  Perhaps very different.  But not as wet, I presume.  Every day will be different, for sure.  Eddie has got a very tight cart of gear and seems to be a very astute guy.  I’m feeling up to the task. Even ran into an old compadre from Bellingham who is a 1st AD on this (Phil Seeger).  Wonders never cease. Small world. 

So. Stay tuned fair readers. For this blog is about to get interesting!

(oh, and btw, the world is in fact undergoing a massive shift which will tumultuously alter the very fabric of our lives…to the core. and i’m not talking about politics OR the economy!)

Seems like everday I think about how what is going on in my life is actually interesting and worth blogging about.  I even ran into people recently who mentioned that they’ve been keeping up with me by following this. Well, they have probably given up by now. oh, well…

So, I did a bit of travelling this past month. I was in KS for a spell visiting Orson. That was great.  Sure do miss him.

I wasn’t back in NM for long before I flew out to WA to load up a moving truck and drove it back down.  Saw some old friends back in ‘the Ham’. Short but sweet. I picked up brother Lare at the airport and we made it all the way to Boise, ID that night.  Explored Boise in the morning. Pretty neat town.  Good thrift!

Next night we made it to Price, UT (not far from Salt Lake).  In the morning we checked out Arches National Park, near Moab, because Lare had never seen it before.  Even hiked in a bit.  Turns out Arches is only 6 hours away from Golden. Go figure. Planning on going back already.  Think I’ll take Orson next summer.

So we made it.

Not much work happening right now.  Short (11 day) tv-movie happening near the end of October. Looks like I might be asked to mentor the film students again for SFCC’s film program shoot the second week of November.  A little Mac-tech work pops up here and there so that is good.  As for now, I’m unpacking.  Records are done(!!!).  I’ve got to start selling some them though To Be Continued…

In Bellingham for a few days. Ahh Bellingham.

“That’s hollywood for you,” Steve Buscemi remarks, peaking around the corner of the bathroom stall (the picture shows my view). I was planted in the rear stall of the Route 66 gas station outside of Albuquerque while Steve acted out a phone call with Sarah Silverman. As Sarah had finished her bit last week, I was playing her part (no easy task…). Seriously, though, it wasn’t too hard. After finding out what the best take of her end of the phone call was I imported the track into Sound Studio(a decent enough little sound app for most purposes). From there it was just some inserting silence here and there and (most importantly) inserting markers before and after all of Sarah’s lines. The segments of her dialogue were then selectable on their own with a quick double click. I played each line back in response to Steve’s dialogue. The result was a kind of digital audio ventriloquism. At times it almost felt like the conversation was really happening and in fact several people told me later that everyone (the director, Steve, producers) was really impressed with how smoothly it went.

Ah well, don’t I get to feel good about something?

Only a few more days of this project and then I will have to find something else to blog about (uh…and make some $$). I’m sure something will come along, although the guys I’m working with, David & Cole, have told me they are planning on taking September off. Oh well, there is plenty to do around the house.

Here is a pic from my hotel bathroom featuring one of my three telephones. This is the only one that is red. I guess it is some kind of emergency line that either goes to the front desk or… a plumber(?). It has my room number printed on it so maybe it could be to call one of the other phones in the room (??). I don’t know. Still, I should probably create a new tag for this post (and the one of the paper towel dispenser in the cactus) called ‘bathroom oddities’.
If anyone has a clue to the purpose of the ‘bat(h) phone’ please lmk.

Recently (as recent as 2 hours ago) I have been waxing philosophic tobithers about the good luck I seem to have inherited in this life. Well, the Universe is always listening and just waiting for this kind of hubris. As of right now I am sitting in my car with a damp seat (I left the sunroof open, forgetting we are in the monsoon season here and it rains almost every afternoon) on the side of the hiway with the 2nd flat tire this week. Due to the circumstances of my first flat I have still not fixed it because I need a new rim as well and these European cars require special rims that must be ordered and take several days. In fact I was planning to go to the salvage yard tomorrow morning to find one. Meanwhile, I’ve been driving on a little donut that just wasn’t prepared to handle the 50 mile commute from Golden. And tonite it proved it at a most inopportune moment. Funny how that happens. Oh well, here is the tow truck.

Today we moved inside the panoptic fortress that once was the New Mexico State Penn. This place (not surprisingly) has an odd air about it. There was a massive riot here back in the 80s. Pretty heavy duty stuff. There are all kinds of gruesome stories of what happened here during that riot. Some 33 were killed, some dismembered, some incinerated. Makes even filmmaking seem benign.
Today it seems we may get off a little early (only a 12 hr day) and instead face some ridiculously long day tomorrow. Oh well. Perhaps I’ll get some time to go explore cell block 4, the most potentially haunted place here.

Man, weekends can sure be nice. Especially when working 60+ hrs during the week. This weekend was a godsend of peace and recuperation. Let’s reflect:

2:30am Friday night (Saturday morn) Finally got out of work. Much too late to attempt the drive back down to Golden. I get a cheap motel and crash.

9:00am Saturday I join Jason for some serious record digging and an explosive lp blowout garage sale. Unreal. I will post some album covers soon.

2:00pm I am introduced to a recently opened slow food cafe in Sant Fe. This place is fantastic and is the first real quality breakfast place that holds a candle to most of the places in Bellingham. Can’t wait to take Dani.

6:30pm After jaunting down to Albuquerque to return/buy a new pair of shows (at the mall…egad!) I finally make it home and proceed to take an incredibly overdue nap. My body nearly goes into shock. More sleeping follows the nap.

Sunday

4:00pm After sleeping in and tooling around at my own pace I am back up in Santa Fe to lead a workshop on film sound for the Talking Stick Film Festival. That was cool as I was “the expert” as compared to the rest of the week when I am just “junior” (that is literally what I am referred to as, often). Most of the time I was dealing with post-production questions like, “how do I fix this?” to which I often replied, “sorry, you’re screwed.” Still, it was good. I have been out of the post production scene for a while.

6:00pm I go directly over to Body (my old regular gig) to setup and run movie night. The movie this month is Zeitgeist, a movie I was actually interested in seeing. Indeed, it was a pretty mindbending movie experience. Basically, the ultimate conspiracy head trip movie of our time. I can’t really say I buy everything it lays out but I don’t doubt much of what it reveals. I recommend it (you can watch it online for free) but be prepared to have your paradigm shaken to its foundations (or at least stirred up a bit).

After the flick and a brief discussion with the small audience I head south to Golden and am welcomed back home to twinkling stars, a very nice cool breeze and crickets. The house is empty as Dani is still up in the NW. Man. Sure felt good to be home in such a beautiful place.

I had a chance to research a bit the background behind the story of this movie. It is, of course, based on a true story. The story of casino mogul Ted Binion whose family owned the Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas. Binion’s death was a controversy followed by several court cases (which we are recreating here).According to the wikipedia entry on Ted Binion, an episode of CSI was made about the original case (in which a murder charge is brought against Ted’s girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her lover, Rick Tavish). Binion died of a drug overdose but it was claimed that the two “burked” Ted Binion. The twist is that the episode originally aired years before the case was overturned by the Nevada supreme court and Ted and the girlfriend were retried. In the end they were found innocent of the Binion death because the jury found the forensic evidence didn’t meet the standards of the television show.

Pretty strange turn of events. Guess you have to be careful what you turn into a tv show.

Though feeling perhaps a bit like the walking dead at this point. The sheer number of hours I have been working is nothing less than mind-bending. Though, for one who hasn’t really been employed full time in any real sense for quite a while, perhaps my perspective is skewed. We even got called in to work on Saturday (only an 8 hour day!) and that after working from 7am Friday until 3:30am Saturday. Good god. To tell the truth though, there is quite a bit of standing around. I think the sound crew may be the most envied/detested because we sit around while waiting for the shot to be set up and we get there last and leave first. Yes, indeed. A Sweet Gig.

Working with a crew of folks so utterly wrapped up in the perfecting the visual image, the whole contrast of aural perspective really comes into relief. For starters it is simply up to the sound crew to negotiate working around the camera, lights, shadows, blocking, costumes etc. in order to capture quality levels. This happens after everything has been set up. For this shoot we have out of necessity been required to use wireless lapel mics because there simply was no way for the boom to get close enough. Meanwhile, the entire rest of the crew negotiates and perfects the visual diorama. Those of us on the sound crew are like priests or mediums in touch with subtle energies beyond the realm of normal perception.

Well, that may be a bit of a stretch. Culturally, sound is such an afterthought. As McLuhan pointed out numerous times, the visual orientation has some self-contained blind spots (!). Primarily, he pointed out the visual orientation tends to influence rational thinking.

Groping for models of contemporary space that evade or pervert the Cartesian coordinate system, we would do well to recall Marshall McLuhan’s distinction between visual and acoustic space. For McLuhan, “visual space” did not refer to the sensual dimension encountered through human vision, but specifically to the linear, logical, and sequential perceptual and cognitive array constructed by Western Renaissance perspective, linear type, and ultimately alphanumeric characters. We know it from Descartes and from William Gibson: a homogenous space organized by an objective coordinate grid that simultaneously produces an apparently coherent individual subject who maintains control over his or her unique point of view. Not only do we “naturally” overlay this panoptic grid onto the far more ambiguous field of actual vision, but we have embraced it as the dominant conceptual image of space itself.
-Erik Davis

So enmeshed are we in the spacial paradigm that the above quote might seem too far out to even grasp. But think, McLuhan made the point that when Plato first came up with the idea of an abstract visual space it probably was as foreign then as it is all pervasive now. A few hundred years ago the amount of visual stimuli was negligible. The number of paintings an average person might see in his/her lifetime could probably be counted. Thus, the soundsand tactile information coming from the environment was probably more important in daily life. Compare that with today, when most people probably couldn’t keep track of how many images they see in one day. When asked to describe what he meant by ‘acoustic space’ Mcluhan replied:

MCLUHAN: I mean space that has no center and no margin, unlike strictly visual space, which is an extension and intensification of the eye. Acoustic space is organic and integral, perceived through the simultaneous interplay of all the senses; whereas “rational” or pictorial space is uniform, sequential and continuous and creates a closed world with none of the rich resonance of the tribal echoland. Our own Western time-space concepts derive from the environment created by the discovery of phonetic writing, as does our entire concept of Western civilization. The man of the tribal world led a complex, kaleidoscopic life precisely because the ear, unlike the eye, cannot be focused and is synaesthetic rather than analytical and linear. Speech is an utterance, or more precisely, an outering, of all our senses at once; the auditory field is simultaneous, the visual successive. The models of life of nonliterate people were implicit, simultaneous and discontinuous, and also far richer than those of literate man. By their dependence on the spoken word for information, people were drawn together into a tribal mesh; and since the spoken word is more emotionally laden than the written–conveying by intonation such rich emotions as anger, joy, sorrow, fear–tribal man was more spontaneous and passionately volatile. Audile-tactile tribal man partook of the collective unconscious, lived in a magical integral world patterned by myth and ritual, its values divine and unchallenged, whereas literate or visual man creates an environment that is strongly fragmented, individualistic, explicit, logical, specialized and detached.
– Marshal Mcluhan

did I say death? I meant ‘sex & lies in sin city’. Probably sounds even less interesting now, eh?

first day on shoot of ‘sex & death in sin city’. Not fired yet.

If you’ve never been to White Sands you might not recognize these. I think they are pretty cool looking. Probably the most retro-futuristic picnic table spot I’ve ever seen.

Outside the bathroom at the campground at Whites City near Carlsbad.

Visiting UFO museum in roswell NM. Apparently a lot of folks take this stuff pretty seriously. 200k a year visit the museum.