Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

A good friend of mine, Dave Delaney, comes over to test some gear he has for a wedding he’s planning on shooting in July that Bill and I are helping out on. It turns out that Dave hasn’t shot a wedding video before, even though I would’ve sworn on the Good Book that he did.

I finally take the Brevis off my camera, worried that I’ll have to go through the entire setup process again to put it back on. I take it off now, because it’s a good a time as any to see if it’ll line up again when I try to put it back on. It lined up great and made me super happy that I don’t have to go through the excruciating process of setting it up again.

With that off, I try to match up the colors on my camera to Dave’s, and I save the Scene File. While I’m doing this, Bill and Dave are running around testing out Bill’s wireless system and Dave’s. I’m not sure, but I think the consensus from Dave was that we would use Bill’s system. Probably because it’s much more expensive.

Also, to my surprise, Dave brings over a bag of lenses I can have for the taking, provided they fit my Brevis (Pentax K-Mount for any potential donors out there). It turns out that two of them do; a 50mm F2.0 and a 80-200 F4. Yay! Two more lenses to add to my collection! I’m pretty pumped about my new, free acquisition. To repay him, Dave said I have to do something, but I pretty much stopped paying attention after he said “you can have them but….”

My Mom drops by again with many coffees for Sue and I, and we decide that tomorrow I’ll go suit shopping. She knows me enough to know that I won’t go shopping for clothes by myself; that I have to pretty much be dragged to these places. She knows, and I know, that I need a suit, for these weddings coming up, and she knows I hate it so much that I won’t go on my own. Mother’s are really great to get you to do stuff you really don’t want to do.

Bill rushes off for work, and Dave and I sit around for awhile and shoot the shit. Mainly we talk about things we don’t understand in the universe, and the conversation gets too deep for Dave and he takes off. I immediately start trying to find out the status of my gear again.

Finally, finally, finally, I get a tracking number for half my shipment, which will arrive tomorrow, and the other half on Thursday. He gives me another deal to make up for all this bullshit that I’ve gone through trying to find out what the hell’s going on, and therefore, his excuse to this whole mess seems more plausible. However, because of all this, I will not be mentioning him or his website anywhere in this diary, or on the Rebels site. There were better ways that he could’ve handled this, mainly letting me know what the hell was going on with my order. Also, I’d like to make sure that I get everything, nothing’s missing, and it’s all in perfect working order.

I also decide to work on Episode 4 today. I got the two fights that I haven’t written solved now. I’m going to go the way of South Park, and have the two characters re-enact the fight from They Live, a great Carpenter movie starring Rowdy Roddy Piper that I loved as a kid and still love now. The same two characters fight again later in the episode, and for that fight, I’m going to use a fight from the third season of HBO’s Deadwood when Dan fights with Hearsts bodyguard. It’s a vicious fight and I watched it again tonight, and I think it’ll translate well to what I’m looking for.

The really great thing about our online series is that it’s somewhat “out there.” We like to pay homage a lot in the series to other things, especially influences. I’m not just doing these fights as a cop out, but a way to show my appreciation for these great things that gave me entertainment. And yes, They Live is a great thing. Best movie ever made starring a wrestler. Pure. Awesomeness.

I found the two fights on youtube and sent them to the two actors involved, Alicia, and Bill so they know what we’re going to do. The rest of the night I’m going to adapt those fights into the script of Episode 4.