Category Archives: Los Angeles

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the…

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On Tuesday I headed to Santa Monica. Two dear friends of mine had invited me to a private screening of a film they’d just completed, one as writer+director, the other as producer. The film was a labour of love, and I’d not heard much about its progress since earlier in the year, and so I was delighted to be back in town to go to it. I took a friend along, and we decided to leave early enough to go to the beach for a little while – the traditional antidote to the high heat of the last several days.

To cut a long story medium, at some point I was wading up to my knees in the water. I’d just replied in reassurance that I’d be quite fine still wearing my glasses (with sunglasses attachments on) since I was not going to swim when a larger than average wave surged forward and knocked me off my feet with such stunning force that I thudded to the bottom on my knees, and my face and hands got tangled up in seaweed! Moments later, the undertow pulled everything back I and I was standing back up, fumbling with seaweed, and missing my glasses! This began a period of considerable activity at the sea, with large surges and strong pullback so that it was difficult to stand still to look for anything, and moreover, it was impossible to see anything since the sand was churning around too much.

It all seemed very funny to me. It was clear after a while that there’d be no reappearance of my glasses. No amazing story where the sea threw them back out after a while, twisted, maybe missing the arms, but at least useable for some kind of vision… There were simply no glasses to be had. Luckily, my friend had driven us, so I did not have to worry about that. There was little time to dash back home to get an old pair and return for the screening. I’d have to figure out how to manage without them. Now bear in mind that I am very short sighted indeed. If I was sitting five feet […] Click to continue reading this post →

Well, Can the Physicists?

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Back in Los Angeles, where I can start the process of working colour under the inks and building the images into the pages where they belong. Here’s a panel from mid-conversation.

I’ve been quiet here for the last five days for a variety of reasons. One of them is that I got a bit of a nice routine on some work going (finally), and so wanted to milk that… and another is that I got a bit ill, and needed time to recover.

I’ve lots to tell, but might not get to much of it due to getting on with doing several things. There’s one interesting series of events (amusing mishap, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Red, Gold, and Green

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Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, the garden continues to produce tasty things. (I had to sneak back from Aspen for a few days for some meetings, and a couple of business-social events…) There are still several varieties of tomatoes producing, and I got to spend some time building new stake supports for the various plants as they are much more extended and weighed down than just a couple of weeks ago…

There’s a runaway giant flying saucer squash, ready for turning into something […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tomato Bounty

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I stopped off in LA after Amsterdam, to recharge and to just be home for a bit. The garden is now bursting with tomatoes of various types, I’m happy to report, and you only need to wait a day or two in order to pick a variety pack such as the lovely one above. (Click for larger view.) I brought a bunch of them to Aspen with me, and continue to work through them, in cooking, sandwiches like the ones I’m just about to eat for lunch, and so forth.

I’ve had none of the rodent problems with the tomatoes this year, since I […] Click to continue reading this post →

Valerie Weiss on Women, Science, and Film

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You’ll recall me mentioning filmmaker Valerie Weiss from earlier posts this year about her debut feature film “Losing Control”. Well, she wrote a guest post* for the website Women and Hollywood this week. It was about a recent film made for the European Commission to encourage girls to go into science. Apparently it was awful. (I’d heard about it from someone else too, but did not get to see it.) Valerie shares some thoughts […] Click to continue reading this post →

Voice of God

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With the Aspen Center for Physics film almost completed (see several earlier posts, e.g. here, here, and here), various things get set in stone once and for all, so that other things can be built on top of them. At some point, I had to be certain of the final form of the voice over, so that Dave (the editor) can lay it in and time various transitions around it. This was done on Friday along with a huge rewrite of the whole film script, and lots of work on picking b-roll footage and other material to illustrate the film and create atmosphere. Once my co-producer/director Bob had glanced at it and made some helpful remarks (always good to have more eyeballs to spot any mistakes that could get frozen in) I was ready for Monday’s exercise – recording the final voice work. No turning back, no second chances, since we need to deliver the film this week.

While I’ve directed a bit before, I’ve not ever had the chance to direct a hugely experienced star actor, so this was going to be a blast! A while back, over food and drink at a party, my friend Harry Lennix (who loves contemporary physics – that’s in fact why we met, years ago) had generously agreed to do the voice narration for this project, and I was very pleased since it was his voice I had in mind since late August […] Click to continue reading this post →

Time for Superstring Beans

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Yeah, I’ve made this joke before but I am always impressed when these begin to show up at the market, and they’e been showing up the last few weeks.

They’re very tasty, so I’m pleased to see and buy them… but I do suspect that a tiny part of the reason I get them is that I get to write a blog post with Superstring Beans in the title once again (see earlier posts on this here and here).

Click for a larger view, if you wish.

Anyway, there it is. Some are going into a pan tonight for my evening meal…

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Speaking of Time…

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Just finished a complete redo of a nine (plus one) panel page of the Arena story that was the prototype outing for the graphic novel project. (See some earlier posts, e.g. here, about this redo process.)

I shudder at the horrible drawings on the page it replaced.

To the left are some parts of the new page… Click for a larger view.

In other news, I met our new Dean (of the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences) today, during a short session where a few of us had a conversation with him while someone filmed us. I think it is some film they are doing about the new Dean taking up the reigns, or something similar. He seemed a nice enough fellow, and he seems to be coming with definite ideas for interesting changes… I’m looking forward […] Click to continue reading this post →

Monster Drawing Rally!

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Yesterday was the Monster Drawing Rally for 2012! I’ve reported to you on this event before in previous posts (see here and here, for example) and was pleased to go again this year. It was in a different space again, now co-sponsored (with Outpost for Contemporary Art) by the Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, and hosted there.

Again, it was lovely to see people fully engaged in the business of drawing, sketching, and a variety of related activities, in shifts lasting an hour each…

There was even a father-daughter team or two, given that it was Father’s Day.

My favorite thing though, I must admit, was the fan mechanism at the top of the room that elegantly converted a rotating motion into a gentle side to side motion, moving a large fan […] Click to continue reading this post →

H4 Project – Kickstarter

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I’d like to draw your attention to an exciting project that my dear friend Harry Lennix is working on. It is called H4, and combines the two parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV into a film. I have mentioned it in previous posts once or twice, (I did a few vista to some of the locations), and now it is post-production. There’s an effort to raise extra funds to allow the film to be completed and find its way to audiences where I expect it will be both entertaining and educational, given the goals that Harry has for the project. Have a look at the film below to have it all explained to you, and then head over to the kickstarter page if you want to help out!

-cvj

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Peek Over My Shoulder

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Been splitting my time between being a physicist and being a filmmaker making a film about physicists. It has been an interesting time. Recall from earlier posts (see e.g. here and here) that I am working on getting a film made for the Aspen Center for physics in celebration of its 50th Anniversary. I’ve got rather sucked into the process – a lot more than I intended – and so find myself putting together the script that will guide the editor in cutting the film. This means that I’m reviewing acres of footage of interviews and picking out some great quotes from my awesome cast of interviewees. You might recognize some of them (feel free to try to name them, and their field…).

What you’re seeing in the picture is a screenshot of some of the windows I have open […] Click to continue reading this post →

Before and After

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The last several sessions on The Project have been an exercise in revisiting some older pages. In fact, in the sample you can see to the left the subject is the very first page that I started experimenting with seriously for developing and learning production techniques.

Back then I was doing my inking digitally, and I ended up with work that I did not like the look of. I hate the clean straight lines that resulted. Also it was too slow on the computer to control the brush with the fidelity I wanted…various other things bothered me as well, which I won’t trouble […] Click to continue reading this post →

Don’t Forget the Transit of Venus!

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Hot on the heels of the annular eclipse of a few weeks ago, we’ve another giant body passing in front of the sun tomorrow. Venus! This time the giant body (roughly the same size as the earth…just a bit smaller) is much further away from us, and so is dwarfed by the sun. It’ll be a tiny dot on the disc of the sun that takes several hours to pass across. This’ll give you plenty of time to look. (In the US, for example, it’ll start at about 6:06pm EST and about 3:06pm PST…) You won’t get another chance (at least, not from earth…) until 2117, so have a go!

In fact, you’ll be doing something that is vital for modern astronomy right now – observing the effects of a planet on the light of its parent star as seen from afar. This is the principal method for detecting planets moving around distant stars, the “extra-solar” planets you hear so much about in the news from time to time. Here, we’re seeing it happening for a familiar planet around a familiar star. Although both objects are quite familiar, this transit is still worthwhile to study, since it helps planet hunters learn more about how such processes can help deduce things about the planet doing the transit. So study it many will, I’m sure.

You can just look at it for fun, but remember to be careful. Do not look directly at […] Click to continue reading this post →

Containment Cube

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No, not some geometrical artifact of immense power… It is the containment for my next batch of compost. Click for a larger view. I made it last year out of PVC pipes and chicken wire, and it was a huge success (see recent posts with pictures of the produce that has been appearing from that compost batch….) with one design flaw: It was a bit high so that digging in it to turn the forming compost over and so forth was tough on the back – I put my back out for days one time. So I’ve cut it down to a smaller height and now it […] Click to continue reading this post →