[subego]

Originally Posted by andi*pandi 

But what smarmy ad copy can you put about FLOUR? How do you spin that? OURS DOESN'T HAVE WEEVILS?

A diet of bread fashioned from our competitors’ flour eats your good-looks, strength, and even in time, your life

[reader50]

"Many people have eaten our competitor's bread for a lifetime.
We have noticed a lot of them are dead today.
Give our bread a chance for your lifetime.
Perhaps you will have better luck.
You will definitely enjoy fine bread all your life."

[subego]

It suddenly became T-minus 6 days to the production resuming.

I’m terrified.

[reader50]

Are you recasting the two young girls? Reshooting their scenes?

[subego]

We only have one key scene left with them and rewrote it so they can be older.

Surrealism to the rescue!

That’s actually the scene we’re shooting on Friday.

[subego]

Well, we somehow survived! Aged girls were great, and it was officially their last shoot.

[reader50]

Good news.

Did you consider solving missing shoots with CGI? ie - cast body doubles matching their old sizes. Then edit in the faces & voices?

[subego]

Not sure if serious, so I’ll give two answers to cover both possibilities.

1) That’s well beyond our means.

2) We’re not going to deepfake 14-year-olds. Jesus, get your mind out of the gutter.

[Laminar]

If I were you, I would have just hired ScarJo to play both the girls, Lohan Parent Trap style.

[Thorzdad]

Hiring Scarlett, even for just one day, would probably swallow their budget three or four times over.

[subego]

Originally Posted by subego 

2) We’re not going to deepfake 14-year-olds. Jesus, get your mind out of the gutter.

I’m worried this joke landed badly, and want to make clear my mind is in the gutter, not reader’s. Apologies if it looked any other way.

[subego]

One of the few remaining props. I’m not thrilled with it, but it’s probably good enough.



A saying the director uses often. The elf character with the black eyes is going to be drinking from it.

[Laminar]

w e l l

[subego]

Y e a h, yeah… like I said, not thrilled.

[andi*pandi]

It's no effing birds, but with the space you had that seems acceptable. The weight is properly on the second word for enunciation... I don't care for the kerning between the E S but without making a ligature not sure how else you'd manage with that font.

[subego]

That also bothers me.

If I was 100% on my game I would have gone through all my fonts, but I was being kinda lazy and instead just worked with what I had installed at that moment.

I showed it to the director and told him I wasn’t thrilled, but I wanted to see if he was bothered by the problems before I junked it. He was fine, so I moved on.

Luckily, it’s not supposed to get a closeup.

[ghporter]

At least the “S” kerning is consistent. The O-S kerning is wide too. Not as obvious as with the E, but we were looking for that.

The real question is how much screen time the mug will get. The lettering is clear, bold, and easy to read, so if it’s just a brief time, the message will be there and viewers won’t have a chance to really critique it.

But as you say, it’s not ideal. I’m sure there are a bunch of fonts that look like they fit your setting that would kern better. Or that you could manually kern better.

Remember, films are never “finished.” They just escape at some point.

[subego]

I decided to pitch the idea the mug sucks again, but got back an “it’s fine”.

The big issue the director has is he would rather the mug was black and the letters were white, but the place I got it from only has white exteriors.

Said place, Vistaprint, I can recommend. They’re cheap, no minimum, and a rush order only takes a few days.

[subego]

We have an audience today.

[reader50]

^^^ Post-credits scene. Revealing the new masters of the world.

[subego]

I asked. She’s union.

[subego]

Production is wrapping up. We’re officially out of the house that was our exterior location.



It’s kinda sad. I really love this place.

[subego]

On the final shoot!

I’m glad it’s over, but I’m going to miss it too.

[andi*pandi]

so how long for editing etc before it's released?

[subego]

6 months? A year? Maybe more?

In hindsight, this project was way too ambitious.

[reader50]

By any chance, are you the editor? The one everyone will be leaning on to finish it already? Begrudging you every bathroom break?

[subego]

I’m the one the editor leans on to finish the effects work so he can get back to editing.

[subego]

Just took delivery on an M1 Mini! Not for me, since After Effects isn’t native yet, but Premiere is, so this’ll be the core of our editing setup.

No autocorrect… not our “edit it img” setup.

[subego]

Unboxing highlight:

[subego]

Late to the party, but Big Sur is kinda ugly.

[ghporter]

Yeah. I upgraded just because one app I need will be updated, and won’t work with Mojave anymore.

[subego]

I’ve got the new Mini right next to a Mac running High Sierra, and I’m going back and forth between them. It’s really driving the ugliness home.

[subego]

My only complaint about the hardware so far is it could use a couple more ports. Four isn’t enough.

[subego]

My new server home in my laundry room.



The rack enclosure kinda sucks, but was only $250, so I can’t complain. It’s designed as a wall-mount box, so no way to get at the back. Also not very deep, which is why I need the dual UPS. The magenta things underneath the UPS are stacks of post-it notes I’m using as cribbing.

Will ultimately hold 6 Minis as render nodes, but I’m stuck with Intel at the moment, and don’t want to max it out with legacy hardware.

[reader50]

Originally Posted by subego 

My new server home in my laundry room.

I'm tripping on the "Laundry Room" part. That looks like a few thousand, and I wouldn't want water anywhere near it. Not even clean, soapy water.

[subego]

As laundry rooms go, it’s relatively large. More a “utility room”. It’s also has HVAC, cable/telecom, and the boiler. Last one is a water hazard too, but at least the server box is off the ground.

Both water sources are a good 7 feet away. Here’s a wide-angle shot (so it’s kinda distorted) with me in front of the washer. That’s the dryer on the left.

[ghporter]

I’m with reader…I’d feel very anxious about that cabinet being on the floor. Where is the floor drain in that room? It could be that where you have the cabinet is so far from the drain that room flooding is not an issue.

[subego]

It’s on casters, so the water would have to be over 2½ inches deep before it reaches the bottom.

Not counting basements or FEMA-tier disasters, does that happen?

[reader50]

Generally not, unless there are kids in the house. Then all bets are off. Rolled towel under the closed door (to stop drafts), plugged sink (to fill it), teen on phone. Or teeny bopper re-enacting a Great Flood.

These all seem unlikely in your house though. Unless you're in a flood-prone area.

[subego]

Basement floods are a big hazard in the city, but thankfully not flood floods.

[andi*pandi]

Originally Posted by subego 

It’s on casters, so the water would have to be over 2½ inches deep before it reaches the bottom.

Not counting basements or FEMA-tier disasters, does that happen?

Do you live in a sitcom world where your neighbor who has never done laundry before puts the whole package of soap in the wash, thus causing the entire laundry room to fill with suds until it comes bursting out the door in a tidal wave?

[subego]

I do… but that also means there’s a long piece of tape dividing “my side” of the apartment from “their side”, and the washing machine is on my side.

[Waragainstsleep]

The thing about server cabs is they are very expensive if you need one, but utterly worthless if you have one you don't need. If you're patient, you can usually find one not too far away for peanuts.

[subego]

The selling points with this were:

1) On Amazon, so no hassle
2) Cheap as server boxes go
3) On casters
4) The perfect size to fit under that shelf and not get hit by the door
5) Vented
6) Has two cooling fans on top

Unfortunately number 6 was a bust. They were server room loud and I yanked them.

The only real complaint I can make about it is it claims to be 15U, but it’s really 14U because of the shelf, which looks like it’s necessary to keep the rails from warping. It worked out though. Gives me a platform to take the strain off the hanging UPSs.

[subego]

Our two girls return.




We shot some quick-and-dirty footage last weekend for TikTok. Our idea is to use it to keep some form of Internet presence going while we finish the main project.

[andi*pandi]

so are you going to make us wander around tiktok or are you going to post the link?

[subego]

Oh, absolutely!

This is still in the early stages. We don’t even have a channel yet.

[subego]

My python script works!

[subego]

That was from during testing, but the final product is also (barely) working.

We’re dubbing in all the dialogue, spaghetti western style, so I need to make one Logic file with the right clip preloaded… per actor, per shot. It’s over 500.

I managed to do 40 by hand before it made me want to blow my brains out. Python to the rescue!

[ghporter]

Excellent work. Python is easier to learn and use than Java - and that’s from someone who had (and aced) formal classes in C. Java is based on C and C++…don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.