Electrical Fires and Actually Working

I may or may not have had to deal with a small electrical fire this morning, so there's that. Late Saturday afternoon Oklahoma County was under a tornado warning and I'd unplugged my computer and server setup just incase things went absolutely south. It's storm season here and you grow up learning to pay attention to the weather. Luckily the storm petered out by the time it was close enough to us to have done any serious damage, but the power in our neighborhood went out for a few house.

This morning I started to plug everything back in for the start of the work week and had a legit cloud of white smoke rolling out from under my desk. A power adapter for an external hard drive had shorted out and the metal part you shove into the hard drive was getting crazy hot, vaporizing the plastic around it. Luckily it wasn't connected to a hard drive at the time and even luckily'er I was able to put out the small fire that'd started. So, technically – I'm assuming – that'd be (delayed) storm damage and not just me being an idiot for having too much plugged in.

The last couple months were focused on applying to grad school and various "adult/parent responsibilities." Now with that heavy lifting behind me for the most part, I've been able to get back to my rubber stamp doc.

The teaser has been updated after some previous notes I'd gotten plus I added a couple new sections. I still don't have a title for project, but that'll come soon enough. I've also connected with a few new people in the stamp world that I'm hoping can help add meat to the skeleton I've already got. And considering how my last name constantly gets butchered, I bought rubberstampdoc.com and rubberstampfilm.com to help make life easier. Those URLs just forward to the webpage I've been using for months.

More and more people have started asking about updates on the project, so I've also added an email list you can sign up for if that's your thing. No plans at this point to do a regular newsletter or anything, but I do know it's helpful to have an idea about a potential audience. I've been thinking too about possible distribution, film festivals, and all that vs. just putting the thing on YouTube and moving on. There's still quite a lot I'd like to do and people I want to interview.

So far the project has been self-funded with business profits and stock footage sales. At times too I've been able extend client related travel so I'm able to land additional interviews (NYC, San Francisco). I've kept production costs super lean by one-man-banding all things, but that becomes a liability soon enough. Ideally I'd be able to hire out audio (priority) and a cam op (secondary) so I can focus on the interviews. Once we get to full-on post-production I'd like to work with a colorist plus someone who knows what they're doing in terms of final delivery. There's also an aspect of animation and graphic design I'd want to incorporate, but I'm not there yet. There's all the things under the hood of a film that no one outside the industry talks about, but you absolutely recognize them if they're not there.

Oh, and I actually finally finished reading that Capital in the 21st Century book by Thomas Piketty. Seriously I've not read something that interesting in a long time. Thick and dense AF, but dang this amateur economist was glued and completely nerded out. St. Anne the Wife asked me to stop talking about it more than one occasion. I also finished Dave Grohl's The Storyteller this past weekend. In a former creative life I was actually a musician and learned to play thanks to listening to hours and hours of Nirvana. There was so much in his book that I related to with his time and experiences on the road. He seriously seems like such a nice guy. I've already started re-reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and I've got a couple other books waiting in the wings. Months ago I'd ordered the 11th Edition of the American Cinematographer Manual and it was finally delivered this past week. I'd also picked up the 4th edition of Directing the Documentary by Michael Rabiger at a used bookstore awhile ago.

Eating Up the Art Kids

Hot dang it's been another minute. If you've been around a bit you'll have noticed the growing gaps between these blog posts. There was that solid season were I was cranking these things out once a week, but now seems I'm leaning hard into this whole "once a quarter" nonsense.

If you've stuck around too – or if you read the previous post – I'd mentioned something about going back to school for an MBA. Well, here we are almost two months later and I've got four applications started with different Masters in Business Administration programs here in Oklahoma. I spent nearly all of March studying for my GRE (Graduate Record Exam) and relearning all the high school math I'd packed away with my varsity letter jacket. Being on this side of adulthood, I can promise you I've never had to calculate the area of a circle based only on the length of two sides of an interior right triangle. Freakin' hats off to the good kids at Khan Academy for helping me hobble through all the maths with their video tutorials.

In addition to studying for that freakin' test, I also hustled a handful of people I've worked with over the years into writing me letters of recommendation for my grad business school applications. There's also the financial aid nonsense to work through, plus the resume and personal statements to write up. I'm not too worried about that 500 word essay considering why and how long I've been interested in going after an MBA. That damn resume though...

Being a full-time freelancer in the film industry, I've yet to have an employer ask for a legit resume. It's normally a potential client asking for my demo reel and possibly previous work history and examples. All those goodies are on my website, but that doesn't cut it when reaching outside the circle I've been in the last twenty years. I'd rather mow every yard in our neighborhood with nail clippers than try and cram my professional experience, qualifications, and recognitions onto one 8.5" x 11" piece of paper.

But here we are.

Hopefully I'll know more and have another update in the next few weeks. Surely too I could go into the whole thing as to why as a creative professional I'm looking to get an advanced business degree.

"Businessmen drink my blood, like the kids in art school said they would." - Arcade Fire

On an actual cinematography related note, I smashed the soul out of my Mavic 2 last week with an "unplanned landing" and subsequently upgraded to the Mavic 3. Wish I'd have gotten the Mavic 3 Cine, but I couldn't find one in time considering how far I'm from either coast. Still, I'm digging the new drone but hating the basic remote it came with and the incredibly dumbed down software.

I also got to shoot on the new-ish Canon C70. It's tough to judge a camera based only on one two day shoot where you're actually never working with the footage. Buddies of mine have sung that camera's praises, but I'd still much rather run around with a RED or Alexa package any day.

This Time of Year

For a bit there I felt like things were going well. Shoutout to this time of year for always keeping it real.

There's normally a good amount of work and stock footage sales coming in the last of the year and 2021 was no different. Then January hits and it's basically crickets while everyone with real jobs is sleeping off their year-end work hangovers. It's not too bad though because January is also normally when those end of year jobs get paid for so there's plenty of cash coming in and no complaints.

But then freakin' February... It's basically Winter's July when no one is working and us freelancers are once again questioning our life choices. My backup plan du jour this time of year is normally wanting to go back to school for an MBA instead of just being alone with my dog all day and doing laundry, taxes, and spiraling into this year's version of seasonal depression.

Things will pick back up like they normally do this time of year. Until then, I'll just be over here freakin' out. I'll also be reading a lot, pretending to take still photos, and procrastinating on the rubber stamp doc I have no excuse to not finish.

Each weekday morning you'll most likely find me at my regular coffee shop scribbling out a daily journal entry followed by a good amount of reading. Lately I've been obsessed with Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" and I'm nearly 200 pages into this 750+ page economic textbook. I'd seen the 2019 documentary based on Piketty's book a while back and wanted to read it myself ever since.

There's also that medium format camera that's been keeping my attention more than I'd like to admit. I do appreciate a change every now and then to remind me how much I enjoy what I get to do for a living. This time last year I was avoiding how slow my paid work was by learning my way around a drone. This year it's this film camera from the early 1970s.

The beginning of February brought a decent amount of snow for here in Oklahoma City. I knew from last year's February snow to head out to Lake Hefner to try and find some magic. There's a story too about me nearly getting Saint Anne the Wife's car stuck in a snowy ditch for a single photo if you're up for that kind of thing. Also, I went out to shoot a major real estate investment that literally went up in flames (thankfully no one was physically hurt).

In rubber stamp doc news: not much... Late last week I connected with a grad student writing her thesis about a narrow slice of of rubber stamp history I've been drowning in. Kinda wild being able to share notes and contacts over such an obscure topic. Not gonna lie: I'm crazy envious of her being seemingly laser focused on her specific topic while I'm over here trying to grow a crop of wheat and raise turkeys so I can make lunch.

DIY Film Developing

So back to this whole "shooting film" nonsense: I'm a fan. At this point it's more along the lines of having unprotected sex and just "hoping for the best." Sure, it's super exciting to do the thing, but the risk of incorrectly metering your light is incredible lower than a surprise family addition or a weird rash. There's also the the thing about not waiting nine months for your film to be processed. I could go on, but I'll just snip the analogy here and now.

Unfortunately Oklahoma City isn't teeming with photo shops and getting film developed isn't as easy as it would be in a larger market. Buddies of mine ship their film out to be processed, but they're better people than I am. Turns out in this situation I'd rather have the one marshmallow now instead of eating both later. The photo lab I'd stared using here in OKC to develop my film ran into some substantial delays and I started down the rabbit hole of developing my own color film at home. As a high school student twenty-something years ago, I'd taken a photography course and developed black and white film. We never did anything with color film, but it's the future now and I'd figured there'd be a YouTube tutorial or thirty that'd get me up to speed.

Thanks to the internet I put together a film processing kit plus the confidence to not blowup my house. Willem Verbeek's YouTube videos on developing were key in me actually gaining the confidence to try and pull it off, but Will Cobb's in-depth video was crazy helpful with the nuts and bolts of the process.

The worse part was waiting for the $200-300 in gear I'd ordered off Amazon to be delivered. There was a problem with the first round of plastic reels included in my Paterson kit being defective, but I was able to work out a hack while waiting for those to get replaced. I'll say too the amount of developing chemicals I'd ordered was twice as much as intended (got the two liter Unicolor kit instead of one liter) and the recommended bottles were smaller than I should've gotten (the four pack of 32oz dark amber glass bottles vs. an accordion style solid plastic bottle). Thankfully I can do basic math and use a calculator to split the chemicals in thirds to make the mismatched puzzle work.

It was nerve-racking getting used to spooling the film negatives by feel alone in a dark bag. Some of the tutorials I'd watched had dudes sacrificing an unused roll of film but I didn't want any part of that $12-15 of nonsense. I got somewhat comfortable with the spooling process after practicing in the light and then the dark bag with some previously developed negatives I already had. Those botched plastic reels – even with the hack – ended up creasing a few sections of my negatives and added some "character" to a few frames. Thankfully though most of the rolls I developed came out pretty well, especially considering how I'm just getting started. There was one roll I'd hoped to get more from that turned out a bit sour; pretty sure I'd botched the developing time on that one. Still, not bad in terms of the collateral damage I expected early on.

At this point I'm something like 6-8 rolls into developing my own film and it's much less daunting than expected. The startup costs weren't nothing, but considering how much money I was spending having someone else do it I'll end up ahead here pretty soon. I figure too the time I'm saving doing it myself will help with the learning curve of shooting on film.

I knew I'd not be getting the same results I'm used to from my digital cameras, but this is something else. This old film camera is making things interesting and I'm crazy impressed with the unpredictability and character of the images I'm getting. There's also this thing of the inherent mood and color that comes along with the film negative compared to digital. There's an annoying camera scratch on my negatives due to something scraping along the negatives in my film back. I've still not figured out what it is, but Photoshop fixes are working till I get the problem solved.

My old-school Mamyia RB67 doesn't have a built in light meter, so in order to figure out exposure I've been using a combination of a handheld light meter and my Canon DSLR. I'll do an initial light reading with my incident meter and then a test shot with my digital camera to help dial settings in. The Sekonic meter I currently have doesn't include a spot meter, so I'm sure I'll upgrade in time.

It's easy to get lost in trying to correct and grade the different images, especially if you're trying to match multiple shots. The time I'm spending scanning my negatives and dialing in the colors to look the way I'm wanting will only help my color correction and grading for paid work.

This dip into the world of film photography has been super interesting to me as a digital cinematographer. Watching how some of the film photographers I've been following expose their images has been refreshing compared to my near reflexive habits and digital workflows. It's wild seeing more and more images from film photographers that I'd normally consider overexposed compared to the dark and moody frames from my cinematography brethren.

Over time all this nonsense will work its way into how I make a living. Even this early on I'd feel much more comfortable approaching the idea of shooting motion film stock. I know St. Anne the Wife and I have had a couple different conversation about some of the money I've pumped into this thing. By no means is it crazy money, but surely it's a much more cost-effective mid-life crisis compared to the spandex clad buddies of mine and their deep dives into road racing.

Post 2021 Wrap

So, again, it's been a minute. I go through these times where I'm not getting paid work for months on end, and then get suddenly slammed with an unhealthy amount of work and travel.

St. Anne the Wife and I snuck off to Portland and the Oregon coast back in October. While we were there I got in another interview for my rubber stamp doc with a dude from See See Motor Coffee. We also found out about another stamp collecting club based in the area, so I'm hoping to get back out there to connect with them soon enough.

November somehow ended up with tons of editing and a trip out to NYC. On that trip I got to interview Henry Hargreaves who runs the Coffee Cups of the World Instagram account for my rubber stamp project; cool dude who's tack sharp if you ever get a chance to connect with him.

Then December just barreled on through: back to NYC, more editing, four days out in San Francisco immediately followed by four days in Connecticut, Anne & the boys off school for winter break, back out to NYC thankfully with St. Anne the Wife that time, and finally a quick(-ish) day trip to Chicago.

All that travel and work nonsense finally caught up to me at the tail end of the year and I've been weirdly sick. I've taken what seems like a half-dozen Covid tests but they've all come back negative. I'm still not completely out of the woods, but I'm hopefully on the tail end of this dumpster fire.

Besides all the frequent flyer miles these last few months, I also crammed in more books than I'd read in years. I was making it through one book a week with all the time I was sitting on a plane. Hopefully this habit will stick through 2022.

There's also the used Mamiya RB67 medium format film camera I picked up in New York just before Christmas. I've only shot a few rolls of film through it so far, but dang it's been an interesting departure from the cameras I'm normally shooting through. Oddly enough it's crazy similar in size to my RED Weapon camera body. It's heavier than it looks, but no where near the cinema cameras I'm used to lugging around. No doubt a different workflow and hopefully it'll help me to slow down and be more intentional with the images I'm making.

Rubber Stamp Doc teaser

Early last week I finally put together a quick teaser for my untitled rubber stamp project. Good Lord I'm far from finished with the whole thing, but it's something to see parts of it coming to life.

It's to the point where I think it's detrimental trying to do the entire thing by myself. Having a project teaser at leasts gives me something to send out to those possibly interested: crew, producers, production companies, etc. There's still a pitch deck to put together and at least a rough budget to figure out so I have some kind of answer when asked what I think I need. Ideally I'd love to land an executive producer who's been down this road before so I'd have help asking the questions I don't know to ask. So far it's helped start some additional conversations and hopefully too it'll help add some legitimacy to the cold emails, text messages, and DMs I'm sending out.

I've done documentary work since I started behind a camera, but I think this project has legs enough to be seen by more than my immediate family and those 10-15 regulars on Vimeo.

There's plenty more interviews I'm wanting to do and topics to chase down. There's a few people I want to talk to here in the US plus Europe, Australia, and Japan. With what I have so far, I'm pretty sure I could put out a festival ready short or possible feature length film. Being ambitious, it's not out of the question to see it as a docuseries considering what I've learned so far.

Recent Stuff on the Netflix

Finally saw some cam op work I'd done show up on Netflix the last few weeks.

One of the fun parts of this nonsense is getting to share it once it's available. The actual and very un-sexy part though is that the production process typically takes forever and sometimes never crosses the finish line. Those realities – plus the non-disclosure agreements and deal memos you typically sign – don't land on your Instagram stories to prove you're an actual "working creative" and drive your peers to their next panic attack because they're not there on set with you too. The best part of social media has to be the unending regret of "following your passions" and not becoming an engineer or lawyer or something even close to practical so you could reliably provide for your family. That and funny pet photos/videos.

Back in Summer 2019 I got to b-cam op some of the NYC interviews for the six-part Netflix docuseries How to Become a Tyrant. The NDA I signed before the shoot is keeping me from publicly posting about how some of the sausage got made those few days I was on set. It was one of the first times I'd shot on the Angenieux EZ zoom lenses and I've been in love with them since. Not necessarily enough to reach out to my banker to talk about a loan to pick up a set, but don't temp me and my disposable income here in Oklahoma.

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There's also the Movies that Made Us "Back to the Future" episode that was released recently. Steve Mathis is a buddy of mine here in Oklahoma City who's gaffed most of the movies my generation and the following grew up with. He'd reached out about a project he was being interviewed for during the legit and scary uncertainties of Covid last summer. They were going to do a two "camera" interview using iPad Pros and needed someone to basically babysit the tablets and restart them as they'd overheat and inevitably crash...and also setup and light the interview as the "Digital Imaging Technician – Oklahoma. There's a bit more from the shoot way back on the blog if you're up to check it out.

To DC and Back

It's been about a month, so surely it's time for another update.

The Washington, D.C. trip came and went a few weeks ago. For the first time, I kinda got to "peak rubber stamp" considering how saturated the week was. Looking through my notebook those few days I landed something like 65 different stamps. Most were directly related to ones you could find at National Park sites, but that's totally fine considering it being the main reason I drove about 3,200 miles in seven days.

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There's also the new buddies I made out in eastern Tennessee. Picasso Gaglione and Darlene Domel let me spend most of the day at their place in Knoxville and talk rubber stamps till I ran out of hard drive space (and then some). They were both incredibly kind, interesting, and their creative worlds and experiences went way beyond the scope of my rubber stamp documentary.

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With all the stamp hunting between Oklahoma City and D.C., I'm pretty sure I found the best egg sandwich in the country at Fox In The Snow Cafe in Columbus, OH. I'd already had at least three coffees in about four hours, so I can't speak to their espresso offerings but damn that sandwich probably changed my life. There's something to be said too about A Dopo Sourdough Pizza in Knoxville, TN and how I'll be making my own pizza dough plus thanks to A Baked Joint in D.C. for reintroducing to Tabasco sauce. And thank goodness to the coffee shop owner at Redhawk Coffee in Pittsburg who kinda blew my mind with a quote about "cup stamping being the backbone of the hipster economy."

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For the actual National Park Travelers Club conference in DC, I'd not really had a plan going into it. All I knew was what I'd learned during my interview with Mike Brown back in June and some of the time I'd spent on their website. Ideally I'd have gone into the event as a producer with wireless video signal and headphones connected a dedicated camera op and production sound mixer/boom op. But, there I was like an idiot trying to do all the nonsense myself seeing as how I didn't have an additional $1k-1500/day to hire out a crew.

I'm pushing hard on this project to do what I can with what I have, so I was out there with my RED Weapon, a set of prime lenses, and some filtration/NDs. If I were to do it again, I'd have tried to spent the $1k to rent out a couple of the Angenieux EZ cinema zooms for the week and at least used a monopod vs. trying to keep the camera package as SUPER lean and unobtrusive as possible while filming the conference. I'd also planned to shoot some sit-down interviews with convention go-ers back in my hotel room, but that never panned out. This project is more a marathon than a sprint, so I'll probably be making some changes as I go.

I'm still hoping to make it overseas and meet up with some connections I've made (London, Melbourne, etc) plus get some of the Eki train stamps in Japan, but that's quite a bit of money I'll need to come up with to make that happen. Seeing as how I'm planning to pay for all this via my stock footage revenue, I did shoot quite a bit of skyline footage with my drone while I was out (Little Rock, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis) plus a handful of things with my RED. I'm also considering reaching out to some production companies and other connections I've made over the years to see if those could be options to help fund this nonsense.

Rip Van Winkle'd

Dang... I Rip Van Winkle'd this blog for a solid chunk of the summer. Last thing I remember was talking about a DIY case and then somehow slipped out this website. It's not like I've "not been doing the things." Freakin' far from it. That's probably what happened. That mysterious "work" came around and brought it's bill-paying elixir, only to have me fall asleep on trying to keep to healthy writing habits. Still got that 'ol Moleskine notebook habit going though. There's plenty in there from the last bit...

A quick recap on what's happened the last two months:

  • I've been back and forth to NYC twice now: once for work; another with fam (and more work).
  • There was that one day shoot at the Oklahoma State Capitol about a bounty (alive, preferably) on an Oklahoman Bigfoot. You'll notice I tried my best to dodge the news cameras.
  • Then there was a solid weeklong project with me cam op'ing on a network pilot shooting here in Oklahoma City; bulletproof vests and minivans were absolutely involved. Thank goodness for EasyRigs being stronger than 12 hour days and a full-kitted out Amira with cine zooms.
  • Finally another weeklong shoot full of 12+ hour days, but this time as a still photographer sweating my tail off in the heat on a feature shooting up in Guthrie, OK. I legit shot and had to cull through something like 10,000+ still images from the week.

With all that going, I've still kept at it with my rubber stamp doc. I'm three interviews deep at this point and sitting on about 1.4tb of footage. I'm actually heading out Tuesday for a cross-country trip to a rubber stamp convention in Washington, D.C. at the end of the week with the National Park Travelers Club. The drive should take about two days each way, so you'd better believe I'll be picking up some new stamps along the way. I've also super stoked about landing an interview with a guy out in Knoxville, TN, to talk about his world of rubber stamps and the mail art projects he's been part of over the years.

DIY Tube Light Case

It's been a bit quiet around this part of the website the last few weeks. I'm neck deep in an edit for a project I directed/DP'd a couple of weeks ago and I'm prepping for another shoot in NYC this coming weekend. Turns out there's only so much time in a day.

That being said, I did manage me work out a DIY PVC pipe case for my two Astera Titan tubes. There aren't a ton of case options for LED tube lights unless you've got quite a few of them. I've been looking for case options for individual tubes that could fit in another case vs. dedicated cases that would just be an additional checked bag for flights and/or one other case I'd be lugging around on shoots. I've been using the cardboard tubes the lights ship in, but they got rained on during a shoot and quickly started coming undone.

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Astera has a fancy $1,500 case for their Titans that's super nice, but it holds eight LED tubes, is heavy AF, and tough to travel with. They've also got a soft case, but it's not a good fit for what I'm looking to do. Hot Rod Cameras has a custom case for Quasar tubes, but again, I'm not looking for an additional, dedicated case that'd most likely end up costing me more in checked baggage fees than if I'd just rented at the destination.

Surprisingly, the Google searches for "DIY tube light case" were more about building your LED lights which is something I'm not even close to wanting to do. There are tons of YouTube videos for DIY PVC pipe cases for fishing rods, so I figured that'd work. Freakin' kudos to the YouTubers and the rest of the internet for making step-by-step tutorials for the rest of us to follow. If I hadn't been rushing to get these done in between my normal work day and family responsibilities, surely it'd have made for a useful resource.

For this project I used a 2" wide PVC pipe and glued a fixed cap on one end and a screw top setup for the other. The pipe came in 5-6' pieces, so after working out the measurements with the Titan tubes, I hacksawed them down to 41" long and sanded off the painted and raised labels on all the parts. For the interior padding, I glued 2" of dense foam to the interior end of the closed/fixed cap. I also ended up making something like a sock to put over the light so it doesn't get scratched and banged up once it's inside the rigid case. There's a bit of extra fabric on the open end of the sock to act as additional padding to keep the whole thing snug once the cap is screwed on.

All in I think I've spent about $50 on parts, so that's like $25/case. They haven't traveled or been on a working set with crew yet, so I'm curious as to how they'll work out. If I were to do it again, I'd like to find a bit thinner walled PVC pipe and not be as messy with the purple primer/glue process. The sock is made out of some fleece-type fabric my mom and I scrounged from her sewing room. I'm hoping the seams hold and the fabric doesn't stretch too much. The DIY PVC cases are close to the same length and diameter as the cardboard tubes I've been using, so it's not a problem to fit them in my 48" Tenba stand case. I'm planning to also get a couple of C-stands with turtle bases to go in the same case to make for a travel-friendly, battery-powered interview lighting setup.

UPDATED 6/1/21
Traveled back and forth to NYC in mid-May with these DIY PVC cases. The lights did fine and were packed in that long case with a couple of C-stands with turtle bases. The case did get a bit heavy but was still under 70 lbs, even with a 15lb sandbag.

The TSA did go through and open both PVC pipes while in the screening process on my flights out and back. They left their handy dandy "TSA Screening" note inside the main case and I could tell they'd pulled the lights out of their blue socks. No harm, no foul, and they lived to fly another day.