Well, not really. And only in the US. And only if you read the credits.After more than a year of sales meetings and several months of post post-production "enhancement" tweaks by the distrubutor, my friend John's movie "Fugitive Hunter" (which has nothing to do with the game of the same name) is about to be released on DVD by Lion's Gate Films! Woo! And thus my first ever feature film screen credit is realized! Yay! Plus, woo!Originally titled, "End of the Law" and renamed by LGF's marketing, the micro-budget film marks John's feature directorial debut, and co-stars my other friend, Roger! The movie is available now for pre-order on Amazon.com, BestBuy.com and dozens of other online retailers, and will be released September 13! We found the best pre-order pricing on DeepDiscountDVD.com.My screen credit for the movie is titles designer; I designed and produced the main titles and end credit crawl. I also did a simple but essential visual effect for the film, creating a series of muzzle flashes that were composited with the live action to enhance scenes with gunfire! BANG!As if that wasn't cool enough, barring any last-minute snafoos (I have not seen the final DVD master), my short segment of the audio commentary made the DVD! Yay! I'm right on there with the composer, director of photography, producer and director! For some reason, LGF marketing material doesn't mention the audio commentary, or the 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL mix (only the 2.0 mix is listed). But they're there!The only bummer is all the marketing graphics I made were completely redone by LGF. Looks like they just wanted a bunch of color, and a helicopter, which my versions of the posters didn't have. Seems like they stole some elements of my concept, using the same main photo I used for the teaser poster, and putting the badge in the background (mine) (theirs). Oh well.Be sure to check out Fugitive Hunter when it arrives 09/13/05!
This morning I was doing bills at about 2-freakin'-AM, inbetween (get it?) watching eCritiques on AM. I don't appreciate APRs higher than 4%. Like many people with decent credit scores, I get a bazillion credit card offers in the mail every month (yes, bazillion; I counted as I put them in my "To Be Shredded" bag), usually with some kind of teaser rate that's still too high and for too short a time period (less than 1 year). I always keep a look out for offers that are actually good and one recently caught my eye: 0% for a full year, NO annual fee and NO FEE for balance transfers.So early this morning I applied for the card online. Hopefully it really is secure as they say. I entered balance transfers from 2 other credit cards with rates that I don't like. The scary and downright dangerous thing is how fast the process was...I was approved in about 8 seconds (the site said "within 60")! It's scary that they're handing out credit so readily these days...maybe I wouldn't have been approved if I were less responsible, but it's not like I need another credit account, I'm just doing it for the balance transfer. But a person could conceivably apply for waaay too much credit in a very short time this way and then actually use all that credit--like some credit rookies often do--as if it were actual cash. Yikes.Well the 0% APR will save me at least $340 over the next year, maybe even more if purchases are also at the same rate. Tuition is coming up again soon. (If not I'll just use my lowest rate card to pay for school). In another year I'll have hopefully had numerous other offers and when the 0% expires I'll transfer again to another low-interest card. Hey, as long as they keep making me offers I'm gonna save whatever way I can. Of course, if I somehow come up with real money to pay for school I'll just use cash. Until then, eveyrthing over a few hundred has to be credit. Still, it's just scary how easily they approve people now.
I made my planning sketches into a pencil test (avi, 5MB) to look at the timing, see if I might want to change something.
At 9:15 this morning I returned to the reception counter at my mom's doctor's office because of the sign that said, Please inform the receptionist if you have been waiting for you doctor longer than 10 minutes. The receptionist informed me my mom's appointment was actually supposed to be at 3pm, not 9am...and she appologized for not telling me when I checked in. Grr. The doctor was in meetings this morning so they couldn't just fit us in, and the next available appointment would be 1 or 2 months out. WTF? 2 months out?? So after waiting there for a useless 30-minutes, I helped my poor mom back to the car and we will have to try again later today. Grr.
It woldn't be so bad except I had about 40 minutes of sleep since the morning before. I was up until early this morning doing AnimationMentor homework. Then my mom was having one of those bizarre, as-yet-undiagnosed attacks, so I gave her some meds and had to watch her status for about an hour. By then it was 6am. I was stressed and couldn't sleep so I played DRIV3R on PS2 for about thirty minutes. That made me hungry so I made myself some Eggos(R) and then tried to get a few minutes of sleep before leaving for my mom's appointment at the incorrect time. Grr.
This week's assignment at AM, which we started last week, is to block out the timing of our short scene showing Stewie (the model we're given) going through four emotions; relaxed, alert, engaged and our choice of either disgusted or dejected. Since I'm always making up words and abbreviating them, I call 'em four emos (EEmohz). I had been inspired by two great new videos on AM, a shot walkthru by Jason Ryan, and last week's video lecture on force by Wayne Gilbert, so I had plenty of motivation for this assignment. I shot some reference, then sat on the idea for a day or two. Last night I went thru my reference footage and drew planning thumbnails, studying how Stewie will move to get from each pose the the next, each feeling. I'm spending time thinking about the thought process he would go thru as well, and how to animate that. It should look like he's experiencing those thoughts that correspond to the four feelings in the scene, not just indicating them. Wednesday I will start adding in the many key poses that happen between each emo and hopefully get something decent to turn in come Sunday.
