Fairly low key Halloween this year- am I the only one noticing this?  There just doesn't seem to be many decorations abound or as much going on in general as usual. As  a matter of fact it "crept' up fast in my opinion.

Usually for weeks leading up to Halloween I take the opportunity to dust off some movies that I cant normally find a reason to watch other times of the year and make a sort of countdown to Halloween agenda. I didn't really do such this year. I usually start off with the fun and campy and top finish up the days before Halloween with genuine creepy terror (ten back to campy and fun to cleanse the palette).

For some reason I didn't get into the genuinely scary movies this year. I set cruise control though the fun and campy. Usually I cannot stand reality TV. It has to be something real interesting to pull me in, which brings me to the candy corn of camp and fun in Halloween 2010. I found a reality show that promised to entertain while they were "Finding the Next Elvira". At the length of only four episodes I found it to be perfect, not overstaying its welcome like most of all other reality TV. The four part show dripped of bad horror movie puns and evaluations of the would be mister or mistresses' of the dark - from two fellows in Elvira impersonating drag. Upon losing the Elvira costumes, was revealed an over catty pretentious judge, and the second was like the type of friend that seems to spend all night trying to come up with a witty setup for a joke only to fall flat of his face upon delivery. - They both should have stayed in drag for the small batch of episodes it would have been a lot more fun. My personal rapture came with the winner, of which I predicted accurately from the beginning of the series and felt really deserved it (no spoilers here). Other guest judges included Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise) as well as world famous Rick Baker (special and make-up effects artist and consultant)

Then I decelerated the Halloween train though a camp quagmire entitled " Zombie Campout (2002)". This was the perfect palette cleanser as it seemed to capture the essence of the "c" movie peppered with guilty enjoyment but logic confusion in a world where people wear bikinis instead of their clothes for every occasion and zombies are defeated with ordinary frozen water in bags we like to call ice cubes. (that is a spoiler, and you heard me right - you'll see when you watch it). R.R, Moore gets on me occasionally about my intake of B movie vitamins, to which I swear every time that I do I have a weak spot for some killer B's but I still wriggle in pain (but a fun pain) over obvious lack of  technical logic or "bad" production decisions. He abruptly hits me across the cheek with  "the gauntlet of pretentiousness" and we duel a mental game of uno with examples of movies and debate the motivations for going through the trouble of making them.

Picture above - is from last year (better late than never huh?) and about 2$ worth of make-up bought after Halloween was over and the stores were getting rid of stuff for just pennies on the dollar. Now (by the time that you may be reading this) it is a good time to take advantage of those 75% off fog machines, and paint, cream and liquid latex for whatever you imagination can think up without breaking a 10 dollar bill (in the right store that's including the fog machine). Shop smart ... shop.. well you know the rest. feel free to pick up woman's make-up at a 1 dollar or everything's a dollar stores when you have the chance if you can find one's without glitter. Get a small clear tackle or pencil box, grab yourself some black pencils (feature emphasis and wrinkles), browns, pinks (for skin discoloration cuts etc) and several shades of blue, green, and  purple (for bruises and various shades of decay). Word of advice -" get some photos to use for comparison to prevent you from becoming a dollar store drag queen (unless that's your bag - then have at it) But movie make up will be covered in the future  in the No Budget Film School.

I have been noticing that haunted houses use Chomadepth (chroma-depth) to add fun to their fear factor. That's one of the reasons why I love this particular type of 3D - Its easily to learn and fun to figure out how to use it in "other" applications- in this case something that is different than a moving image or 2d graphic. I would advise you to get some cheaps pairs of chromadepth glasses to play with to see how they work. Im excited to see this type of 3D pop up in the most seemingly unlikely places lately. I'll pop in a link below for you guys to get some glasses and try your own thing. The biggest plus side with these things has always been being able to control an infinite number of distances (well thousands if not millions anyway) between the observer and the art object (greater control over depth within the rules of the spectrum).

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, FANGS for POPPING BY,

TJParsons

 

That's correct. You heard right. TJParsons was not asked to be a guest star on The Simpsons yet again. The picture at left is an approximation of what my character may have looked like. For the most part I believe that it is fairly accurate. I can't believe I wasn't asked again, but it might have helped if they knew of my existence  - not to mention some notoriety or fame would help -   that I will leave up to you guys let the emails to fox commence! If selected to be a guest character on "The Simpsons" I promise to be as understated, forgettable neigh disposable as possible.

In other news: If you have a Nintendo Wii and subscribe to Netflix, the disc you use to get the movies you can now just throw away - as a Netflix application is available for download for free through the Wii shopping channel. No fuss , no muss. And if you don't have Netflix, what are you waiting for? I can't blame so many people for dropping their cable companies for this service it ends up being up to a sixth of the price of a month of cable or satellite. If you see a banner on this site for Netflix click it and sign up, it will be the best decision you ever made as well as helping us out on future projects with a few needed pennies. Take control of your media intake, say no to commercials! (does anyone else see this statement as tad bit ironic?)


Interesting movie Buzz for this week: Trollhunter. A buzz worthy new film - A Norwegian mockumentary from director André Ovredal. This movie reads to me like a hybrid of Spiderwick Chronicles meets District 9, and The Blair Witch Project. I mean who doesn't like Trolls, right? Not the Internet trolls, but the ones of a more mythic variety.

 

Thanks for dropping by,

TJPARSONS

No mouse, no keyboard, no pen, no touch screen. No tangible input devices of any kind. Just an electronic ear - more simply known as a decent off the shelf headset microphone. Believe it; its here, and has been for quite some time. It may be lurking in your current OPERATING SYSTEM and you may not even know it.

Right now, I am sitting in my chair, talking to you via an amazing invention called voice recognition. Part of my new year's schedule was finding time (it ended up taking approximately 20-30 min) to teach my voice recognition software so that I can be a little more productive in the coming year. There's quite a lot that I can get done by speaking rather than typing. If only I had a wireless headset. So far I have navigated this Website and created this news element without so much as touching one key on the keyboard. Hard to believe isn't it? It's not to too hard to train the sucker. For instance, when I just said the word sucker, it typed the word soccer. But you can correct the word and get it to recognize more words you typically say just through a simple set of voice commands. If you are currently using WINDOWS 7 or VISTA for that matter I highly recommend poking through CONTROL PANEL under SPEECH RECOGNITION and trying it out. You will be amazed at how far things have come. Who knows you may like it.

Thanks for stopping by,

TJPARSONS

     Many years ago,  fifteen to estimate to the best of my ability, there was this weirdo that worked at a rapidly going out business grocery store in Woodstock, Virginia. Between customers he would advance a foot or so of  blank register tape, write down notes, observations or draw designs for ideas. After work he would drive home, open up a shoe box and throw the ideas inside (fuel a project another day). Eventually he came to pull out every tape that he wrote upon  and proceeded to organize the cryptic data according to subject. The drawings and designs would be firmly placed between cellophane sheets of a photo album to be scanned into a computer. Over the course of two short years he had enough ideas for 5-6 screenplays, a few novellas, and ample material left over countless character designs. Years went by and these notes were attempted to be interpreted by OCR programs (common for converting text to type) to no avail. However, each drawing had to be meticulously scanned into the computer one by one and tweaked, edited, and so forth.          
        He was stuck in his old ways until years later, much like the story of  Rip Van Winkle he awoke to a future that took him by surprise: not to mention the fact that he found himself to be TJPARSONS. In this future and all of its endless possibilities for media artists its good to know that companies are experimenting with peripherals that help directly input ideas digitally into a computer. Upon financing and receiving my new studio computer, I decided it was time to attempt to bring myself into this future.

I bought a Wacom: Bamboo model. A wacom is a device that uses a drawing tablet (hooked through usb) with a wireless pen device to to interpret in real time drawings, sketches, and drawings into a computer. This is done most popularly through Photoshop. However technology is also there to interpret handwriting into type.

The verdict is still out on this product but it has been fun so far. I have found that in most instances it feels more natural than clumsily dragging a mouse across the screen then attempting to draw or augment digital photography.
 

It was a little hard to get used to because circles are kind of as hard to draw as they were on an etch-e sketch (remember the etch-a-sketch?). It may be  due to the fact that pixels are square (or maybe rectangle depending).  The picture above was the first attempt at drawing with the Wacom. And upon having an epiphany in a local Walmart (kind of a odd place to have an epiphany because I can't stand the place) I decided to attempt to design some of the graphics for this very site in kind of a beat down sketch fashion (see no budget film school). I figured practice a little, but at least do something worthwhile.
       
The practical side of the Wacom acquisition was to speed up the storyboarding process, digital effects, digital mats, and character/set designs. Up until now I had to storyboard them out on paper, scan them, color correct them, re-size them, then save and reorganize them. Now you just open Photoshop, use your storyboard template and add a transparent layer, and save immediately with a corresponding number and name. The picture files can then be renamed and organized through windows and with just a click or two on any computer: You may chose to see the storyboard in the form of a slide-show... or even better import them into your editing program to bridge the gap between things that are not filmed or composted yet ( scenes yet to be shot  or digital/ special effects that need to be added).

At between $40.00 and $80.00 typically, can you really afford not to at least try this? Well I guess that's only if you are truly serious about media design.

Thanks for dropping by,
TJPARSONS
 

I am really happy to have recently purchased Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium. Just the smell of pulling it out of the box got me excited. I thought that I could resist installing it at least until  I created the new studio computer, however It was like looking at a very tempting beautiful stranger from across the room , there was a high degree of animal magnetism , and in the end I finally gave in.

Then I began to digitally  finger paint (see image), and noticed how smooth and instinctual the controls were. My heart began to beat fast and I knew I was in love. The great thing about Adobe Photoshop CS4 is that there are several ways to do any one thing, and beyond being easily accessible its highly intuitive , you can use it for years and learn something new each month that goes by.And after I get my new machine, I read somewhere that it will actually make my coffee and throw me highly uplifting compliments to boost my self esteem. I mean really who could ask for anything more.

I highly recommend this series of programs the the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium for anyone starting out in film or media design. And if you follow that recommendation, I feel that you will begin to do incredible things, I cannot fully state how powerful and essential this tool is. 

And try digital finger painting if you get a chance, it can be highly therapeutic.

Thanks for dropping by,

TJPARSONS