Rotoscoping

For those that don't know, and lets face it that's probably a lot of you because I have the weirdo picture job, rotoscoping is when you painfully trace around the edge of something/someone so that the background can be replaced with something else. You see, if people don't shoot stuff on a green/blue screen, and you want to replace the background you have to roto the stuff. Its like drawing a mask in photoshop, except the pictures are moving. This makes it about two hundred million times harder.
And it fucking sucks giant donkey cock.
You see, roto is usually something given to juniors when they are working their way up the food chain because why the fuck would a senior want to do it. Its shit.
The lone rose in the devils bum guts that is roto, is that at the end it can be quite satisfying looking at how well you have cut shit out. But its a minor victory. You see if you are roto'ing something, that usually means you're not comping it. So you cut out all of your shit (in my case at the moment, full football team, roving camera, full HD plates, motion blurred to buggery = cunting nightmare) and then you don't get to put all the elements together. Some other smug cunt does. And because this is for a commercial that smug cunt is gonna be all like "Yeah I worked so hard on this" to the clients, even though he probably did fuck nothing. Oh wait. He might add a lens flare and some grain.
Now I have roto'd for anyone in about 4 years I think, but due to this fucking, shitting, ball ache of a recession, I have to do it for a couple of weeks till a bigger job comes along.
I don't know how I ever did this shit.
Sure there are worse jobs, like being a sewer cleaner. But you know this is my story, not a sewer cleaners.
I mean if a sewer cleaner was doing this roto marlarky, he'd be writing in his blog "Fucking hell man this shit is so sweet. I get to sit at a desk and I'm not all covered in human turds and flushed used condoms and tampons etc. Its like I'm a king"
But I don't think sewer cleaners have blogs.
Maybe Swine flu will kill off some of the overabundance of compositors in London and there'll be a shit load more work to go round.
I'm not doing anymore roto after this.
See how I mentioned the recession and swine flu?
Ranty and topical.

Gravenhurst in a church

St Giles In The Fields is a church near Oxford st in central London. I didn't really know what to expect of the church itself, I thought maybe it would be a semi-abandoned, used mostly for gigs type affair, but it wasn't. It was a full on, big, Majestic London church of the type you don't get in New Zealand.
We ventured in and got ourselves some (communion?)wine out of a cask which you didn't have to pay for, but could make a donation, but to be honest they should have made a donation to us for actually drinking it.
Inside all the pews were still in place and everybody was sitting facing the front where the warm up band were just finishing up. It was deathly quiet when the music stopped and the whole thing had a really strange atmosphere, not helped I guess by the slowly colour changing lights that were faced directly into the performers face so that they cast a massive shadow on the back wall of the majestic church.
Gravenhurst came on (by himself, no backing band) and was really really good, and uber talented in a way which is slightly annoying. He played a lot of familiar songs off Fires in Distant Buildings and The Western Lands in a somewhat unfamiliar way.
The thing I liked most about it was the way it kind of felt like just a guy, having a jam in his bedroom. It was intimate. You know how people say they went to a gig and it was at this intimate venue and really they just mean small? This wasn't one of those. It actually was.
I really like how he rocks out so hard in the middle of such quiet songs.
I didn't really like the seats.
Are Church pews made, hard as granite in a bolt upright position on purpose? Does it make you feel closer to Jesus' suffering?
Possibly. Its fucking annoying at a gig though.
Still. Great gig.

Two gigs and a Stripper.

On the one hand, I went to Matter. Its like Fabric (owned by those guys too) but bigger and dumber....if that's possible. Anyway it was a Cocoon night, so Sven Vath was doing an extended set. Not that I wanted to see him, as I'm sure some earlier posts in this blog will attest to. I think he is a shit dj. I really have to stop seeing him, but somehow I always manage to catch him. Its like a bad smell following me around. I really wanted to see Oner Ozer and Chris Tietjen....maybe Extrawelt too.
Well we got there, and Tietjen had finished and Oner couldn't get into the country because of Visa issues. I had a little bit of fun for a while (when Extrawelt were playing), but those big super club situations aren't really my cup of tea these days, and the fact that Matter was so busy didn't help. Also. Its FUCKING MILES AWAY FROM ANYTHING. Too far. Far in a kind of I wanna go home but can't be fucked because its so far. Anyway I saw lots of Vath (again fuck it) and he was doing his usual play a track all the way to the end, no matter what it is (like think of the most boring M_nus track you can and imagine doing a one bar mix at the end of 13 mins of it) and then no real mixing at all. Now if there was an awesome amount of flow to his track selection that'd be good. But there wasn't. It was rubbish.
Anyway so that was that.
On Sunday night I went to go and see Bat for Lashes in Shepherds Bush.
It was awesome. Really good sound and a nice mix of slower stuff and really up beat stuff.
I wanted to dance so much more than the night before. I liked that she had a deer head on stage with antlers that lit up for one song.
As a performer she is a funny one. She sort of has this way of appearing like she lacks confidence when she talks and that she is really bashful. It seems like a kind of an act though. A sort of look how coy and cute I am stage show.
Which is fine, because she is cute and even if its an act, its a good one, and for some reason, even though it sounds annoying, when she does it, its not.
It obviously worked to because this guy yelled out every-single-time there was a silence
"You're so hot" in a real Queer eye for the straight guy gay mans voice.
This also sounds annoying, but after he had done it five times it pushed through annoying and into funny.
After the gig, Lyndall and I were catching the tube home and what I can only assume were a group of strippers got on the tube. I assume this because they were skinny, overly made up, tanned woman with massive fake nungas. We sat down next to an Asian couple.
One of them who seemed more drunk than the rest, came over and started pole dancing on one of the tube poles and waving her ass in the Asian couples faces, and yelling
"Have you ever seen an ass like that.....no because you Asians have pan asses"
I guess she is talking about flat like a frying pan? Any help on that one would be good.
She also screamed out when the driver called out what the last stop was going to be for the train, "This train terminates at Pussy lane."
After this she continued stripping for the whole train car, got her knockers out and screamed
"If anyone of this train got me a vodka my pussy would be theirs for the night"
She then got off the train with her stripper friends and walked off down the platform, top still flapping open, boobs everywhere.
I wonder if all strippers act like this on nights out.

I am working on a commercial at the moment.

I had really forgotten how bad it is. I went down yesterday to watch with producers and clients and the like. They told me "Oh this is gonna be such a fun project!"
We watched the ad, which is an ad for juice.....a really shit ad for juice with 3d creatures interacting with real people, and they all turned around and said, "Isn't it great!" and smiled and patted themselves on the back. I smiled along too, and felt a whole bunch of dirty inside.
It wasn't great. It was seven hundred shades of shit. I don't give a fuck about it, and neither will anyone when its on TV. Its a shit, but expensive ad, for what is probably a shit product.
The really fucking annoying thing is that all the advertising cunts were talking about it like it was the most important thing in the world. They thought I was a freelancer brought in to work on it, and when I told them I was actually from the film dept, they were all like "Oh well this is going to be really fun for you then!"
Why?
I prefer working on things that people actually want to watch actually.
I worked in ads long enough. I thought maybe one day I'd like to go back, but I honestly don't think I could handle the egos. Its like the world is reverse. We have people like Del Toro(Pans Labyrinth fella) come in and be all down to earth and not up his own ass at all and shit, then you go down two flights of stairs to meet a director making an ad for dishwashing soap who thinks he is full on shit hot.
The difference is this. Geeks make films. Fashion victims make ads.
Even the awards shows reflect this. There are a million of them for ads. I am probably 200 times more likely to win an award for doing this ad cause there are 200 times more award shows than there are for ACTUAL films or ACTUAL television.
The plimsoll, skinny jean, wayfarer, stripy tee-shirt, 80s hair, suit jacket wearing cunts sure do love patting themselves on the back. Vanity to the max.

For some reason.....

I find the actor Michael Cera the most likable of characters. I haven't particularly liked anything he is in (except a Tim and eric show...which was fricken funny) but every interview I see him in, I just like the guy. He is so damn likable. Watch this interview and see if you agree.