A Gathering of Gamers in Guelph
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The time is rolling over midnight on the eve before Day 1 of what will undoubtedly be a rigorous, sanity-testing production. Hmm, shall I call it a night, get some good rest and wake up bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to tackle the day? Or will I blog about it first?
Evidently, I chose the latter. But I will keep it brief as each hour of sleep will be invaluable over the next few days.
This feels like the Avengers assembling: Zombie Orpheus has flown many of its cast and crew members (including Scott C. Brown, Christian Doyle and Trinn Miller of Gamers: Hands of Fate, not to mention Ben Dobyns, Matt Vancil, Andy Dopieralski and Tony Becerra) as well as some other familiar faces (Joanna Gaskell, Daniel Johnston, and Vanessa Driveness from Standard Action) into town to work alongside Synndicus Studios (Thomas Gofton, Tom Brown and Aaron Soch, with whom I worked on Mind's Eye: The Series) on two spinoffs in The Gamers universe: Natural One and Humans & Households.1
That was a long collection of names to list off. And I doubt there are many people who would recognize any of those names (unless you happen to be a fan of web series). But it was worth typing each of them out so that one could see the scope of this production. It unites many different groups of actors and crew members under one tent and is funded primarily (and generously) by a devoted fan-base through Kickstarter.
Some of these faces I haven't seen since shooting Gamers: Hands of Fate in Seattle last fall. Some I'm meeting for the first time (I creeped out Daniel Johnston with the line "I've watched you many times." He didn't know I was referring to both the vfx work I did on Standard Action Season 3 that put his face on my monitor for many hours at times as well as the reviews of the show I did for the Limited Release podcast...and it was more fun that I let him believe I was a creeper). But all are a super talented bunch in their own right, so to bear witness to this gathering gives me goosebumps.
Not since The Expendables have I been so excited.
My roles on set will be camera operator (occasional steadicam operator), visual effects supervisor (consulting on shots that I'll be doing visual effects work for later, ensuring that we shoot what I need to do the effect properly) and otherwise assisting with some lighting and cinematography wherever needed.2
Well, time to head off to bed and rest up for tomorrow. It's going to be equally fun as it will be energy draining.
1 To know who any of these people are, you should be listening to my podcast Limited Release. Go subscribe and catch up! I'll wait...
2 I'm sure at some point somebody will try to ask me to also get them a coffee...key word is try.
The one thing I love about Smartphone photography is the ability to take pictures of anything, anywhere at anytime and post them instantaneously. If there was one downside to the simplicity of this process, it's that it makes it difficult to touch up any of these photos to really make them stand out.
It's too tedious to snap a picture, transfer it over to the computer, fire up Photoshop and then go back to the phone to upload it to Instagram or Tumblr. The filters that come standard with photo-sharing apps are okay, but there's really no creativity to picking a "look" with little wiggle-room to be had.