May 31, 2006
Judgment, 48HOUR, Bad Music
I think it's a judgement against the people I hang out with/read that I get an email at work titled "Sash clamp" and think, "Who the hell is talking about a Slash Camp? And what would it involve, anyway? Some sort of fan-fic writers' get-together to discuss the ins and outs of writing stories where characters of the same gender from their favourite TV shows get to have hot, hot makeouts?"
A judgement against other people, is what it is. Okay? :)
Speaking of a judgement against other people -- if pesky teenagers with their too-loud music and their hip-hop clothes are scaring off your customers by hanging around outside your shop in the mall (because there's nowhere for them to go, and nothing for them to do), why not shift the problem where you don't have to look at it by using a Mosquito Ultrasonic Deterrent? You too can take advantage of the progressive hearing loss associated with age in order to make public spaces unpleasant for a particular subgroup which you don't like!
And to tie things up nicely -- how about an anti-global-warming ad? Tagline: "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life." Grr. So... annoyed!
But to bring it back to hope: the Colombian mathematician and philosopher who decided to become mayor of the capital, and the ways he actually made things better -- like hiring mimes to follow people and mimic them if they broke the road rules, for example. Thanks to Morgue and Dreadbeard for pointing this one out.
***
As I've previously mentioned, I was involved in the 48 Hour film competition again, with the team Jenni's Angels. You could tell we were more professional this time, because we had t-shirts with our team's name on them -- and on the front, we had "T+2:41", to remind ourselves of how we missed the deadline by less than three minutes last year.
This year, we were nearly twenty minutes early, and were able to have the people who ran the tape down back at home base in time for the countdown. And it was a really, really good little film -- having been in the editing room, there are certain tweaks I wish we could make (most especially fixing the credits to spell the wonderful Director of Photography's last name correctly (sorry Michaela!), and to shift the logo of the guys who lent us the stunt gear to be in line with their credit, and not over the names of two hard-working Angels (d'oh!)), but what I think of as the climax of the movie has yet to fail to elicit a reaction, thanks to a judicious sound effect.
Quick summary -- the mandatory elements were the character Robin Slade, eternal optimist; the line, "That's what I'm talking about."; and a mirror. Our genre was "Monster Movie", and the movie we made was "Monster Hunters IV: Beyond Repair", featuring the touching reunion of the two heros of the franchise as they and their teams go up against the Mysterious Melty Man of the Woods. Given that at least 75-80% of the people who appear in the movie are killed, I think we stayed pretty true to the genre. And we ended up having a pretty good soundtrack.
Hopefully you'll be able to see it someday. :)
***
Because I was in charge of sorting out music & sound effects (though I mostly offloaded the latter job to my lovely henchperson, Rachel), I've been more aware of what's available on the web. Unfortunately, that means that I ended up stumbling across things like "Punk Rock" baby lullabies, where "lullaby" apparently means "get a crappy midi-file version of a song, and change the instruments to glockenspiels and stuff". Or there's the most embarassingly bad white rapper ever, Blazin' Hazen. (And look, he's still blazin'.) I mean, even random Asian dudes mouthing along to the Pokemon theme tune are better than that.
That seems like enough. Here you go, blogosphere.
Posted by svend at May 31, 2006 9:57 AM