Focus Session One For Getting Married.

Focus session one for Getting Married.

C-clamp?

I-clamp maybe.

Critical integrity failure. Thank gods the technician still had one hand on the light.

Standing on the top railing of a scissor lift due to vertical access limitations, upper body wedged into a two foot square crawl space, boxed in by a sprinkler pipe and aluminium L-track with those cheap styrofoam feeling ceiling tiles. Only one small enough to fit, with nimble enough fingers to reinstall blackout curtain motor limit chain.

Venue Head LX (on ground) to Construction Electrician (properly in scissor lift beside me): "Hey, do we have a stud finder?"

I drop down out of the ceiling just enough to double thumb point at my chest and declare "This guuyyy."

ConstLX almost dies laughing. HeadLX's face was sheer confusion. I love this job.

You know the main problem with the “live action” Lion King? Why it looks so lifeless?

The hyper realistic style is actually limiting the animators, rather than freeing them. The style makes it much harder to have memorable character designs and good expressions. Real lions don’t need to do things like emote in a way that humans can understand – but characters in a film do. The original movie was more cartoony not due to animation limitations of the time, but because that style genuinely serves the story better.

To show you what I mean, compare these two shots of Simba, from right after Scar says “run away and never return.”

Here is a clear reaction, with a strong beat for us to connect with before the character makes a decision. Even without any dialogue, even without any context, you can understand the emotion there just by the expression and the mannerisms. Is it realistic? No! He’s bright yellow and has eyebrows. But do we empathize with him? Yes!

Meanwhile, here is… a lion. Turning and running. No expression, no beats, no character moments, nothing. He actually can’t express himself because the animators are locked into the realistic style. If they tried to animate a strong expression as warranted for the scene, it would look terrible. Is it realistic? Hell yeah! Look at those textures! Look at that fur! But do we empathize with him? …nah. Not really.

To conclude: when you’re retelling Hamlet with a bunch of animated lions, cartoonish-ness is your friend, not your enemy.

Niagara Parkway, Niagara-on-the-Lake

Friday April 12, 2019

Majestical.

Ready for Easter!

WORTH IT.

Look at that.

The road to adventure stretches ahead!

Easter Monday, 2019

Got a call to assist my stage manager from “The Orchard (after Chekov)” last year. Raccoon had got stuck in one of her compost bins. Sorted that out, but now I was dressed and in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

The weather was beautiful, all the summer bikers were out and about. Decided since I was outside, I might as well have an adventure. There’s an ATV track that runs parallel to Concession 1 Road.