You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Adjectives on a typewriter

I watched the directors commentary on Hellboy the day before yesterday; very enjoyable. Thanks, Matt & Debz, for lending it to Puggle - I suspect the wealth of material on the disk will defeat my attempts to watch it before we should give it back to you. Another DVD for the "to acquire" list, I think.

I often find it interesting to listen to the director's comments, since they'll often point out things that I noticed without realising, or that went completely over my head. (For example, one of Hellboy's first fights has an obvious to the fight between King Kong and the Tyrannosaurus - well, obvious once it was pointed out. :) However, another thing that these commentaries makes abundantly clear to me is that, just like writing a novel, making a movie is one of those things that sounds like a good idea in principle, but in reality sucks away years of your life. I've read various quotes about only writing if you can't imagine doing anything else - while I think I've caught glimpses of that while programming, I don't think I even want to strive for that. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind about that. ;)

Another thing that came up for me while watching Hellboy was the whole controversy about use of CGI in movies. I've read a number of different complaints about CGI - some people feel that only practical effects should be used for aesthetic reasons, while others simply feel that they still look good enough. Another complaint is that it encourages laziness - if the director can show it, they don't have the same pressure to cleverly imply it. Brian Carrol who's currently writing Instant Classic's Genrevouz Point, has strong views on the subject.

My general feeling is - it's a tool, just like silvery boards to reflect lighting and fake blood. It can be done well, it can be done badly, and if it becomes the focus of the movie, the movie tends to suffer - just as if the focus of the movie becomes the landscape, or the lighting, or the props. (It can be the focus for a while, and I guess you could have a movie that was all about the CGI in the same way you could have movies that are all about watching a construction site, or watching a car race around and around... but I'm not likely to buy that movie on DVD.)

***

I got in on Tuesday at about quarter past eight, and left at quarter to nine last night. Wednesday was more reasonable, though I left about an hour after I meant to; and tonight isn't going to be any better. The thing that I find vaguely scary is that I could quite easily do that every day for the forseeable future if I wanted to - and I would still have plenty of things that need to be done ASAP. (And then there's the whole "but you're not doing the thing I want done"; I do sympathise with people whose jobs molder at the bottom of my priority pile, but becoming surly isn't likely to encourage me to try to bump those jobs up the list.)

And don't talk to me about documentation and wiki maintainence. Bah. :)

The thing is, hardly any of it is tedious slog or repetitive - most of it is relatively interesting and engaging. There's simply a lot of it.

I'm looking forward to the 20th, when things close down for a while.

***

I enjoy giving cool stuff to nice people - which is one of the reasons I like Christmas. The fact that I'm not a poor student anymore doesn't hurt, either. I managed to get a number of nifty presents from the Thorndon fair, as well as a number of bottles of interesting Celtic fruit wine. I've tried one of the black doris plum wines - it was interesting, since the Country Harvest version is a dessert wine, whereas this described itself as being close to a pinot noir. (It was nice, but more of a "unusual" than "wow, really good".) I've actually given Dad a bottle of it, but as far as I know, it's still in his wine cellar. :)

Anyway - I'm pretty sure I've still got a fair few family presents to go, as well as not a few friend ones. And at least one birthday - hi, Ming! I'm pretty glad that I've got a few weeks to go. :)

Posted by svend at December 9, 2004 6:24 PM