Labels: acting, acting process, meisner, training

Labels: video games

Labels: events

"Digg is a user driven social content website. Ok, so what the heck does that mean? Well, everything on Digg is submitted by our community (that would be you). After you submit content, other people read your submission and Digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see.

What can you do as a Digg user? Lots. Every person can digg (help promote), bury (help remove spam), and comment on stories... you can even Digg and bury comments you like or dislike. Digg also allows you to track your friends' activity throughout the site — want to share a video or news story with a friend? Digg it!"

"del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website -- the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved -- which is made easy with tags."

"A source for what's new and popular on the web -- personalized for you. We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you'll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes. All of the content on reddit is from users who are rewarded for good submissions (and punished for bad ones) by their peers; you decide what appears on your front page and which submissions rise to fame or fall into obscurity."

Labels: site updates, tools

Labels: acting, acting process, meisner, training

"The idea is we become a self-sustaining entertainment community with an unprecedented amount of freedom over the films we create."

"In return for their investment, 'angels' get to have a say on all aspects of the creative process, access exclusive content, and in some cases even become part of the film crew. As the project progresses, the aim is to recruit 50,000 'angels' (hence the million-plus dollar budget). The finished movie will be released under a Creative Commons license so that it can be shared and remixed freely."

"Our project is about a Return on Entertainment, rather than a Return on Investment. If it's about a capital return then that interferes with creative decisions, and the fact we want to give it away, and let people remix it. My emphasis is on creating a model for cinema that can produce more distinctive creative work rather than being boxed into commercial genres in order that it make its money back."

It's not that it won't make money, per se, but that's not its restrictive goal.

And Hanson's parting shot:

"Here's my big pitch… If you're sick of being sold 'product' by mainstream media, and are serious about the power of the web and social networks to create cultural change then you need to become a member of the project. A Swarm of Angels is a revolutionary process to create the future of film. Join, and you can make it happen."

• 'A Swarm of Angels' crowdsourcing film production (ZDNet.com)
• 'A Swarm of Angels' (Official Website)

Labels: acting, biz, business, tools

Labels: acting, acting process, meisner, other actors, training

Labels: acting, auditions

Labels: events, ramblings

Labels: acting, callbacks, video games, voice acting

Labels: acting, acting process, meisner, training

Labels: acting, acting process, auditions, video games, voice acting

This is a stop-motion animation I created as an "activity" for my Meisner acting process training (rendered after the class).

Basically, at this stage of my training in Meisner, we're doing exercises where one person is at the "door", and one person is doing an "activity". Both people have goals. Both people are being blocked. Both people are supposed to honor the rule of improve, "Love your partner and believe everything they say."

The "activity" should be physically (or tactile-y) demandingand require extreme focus. I have a time limit. I have an extreme urgency to complete the task. The person at the door is interrupting me, potentially causing me to fail. I can't ignore them.

Stop-motion animation totally fit the bill.

That night's class wasn't that good (I wasn't bought into my urgency), but I learned important, applicable stuff about myself and my this process. So that was good.

Obviously, this is not normally the way to do stop-motion animation, and it's not the way I normally do it (no light box or tripod, the room wasn't light controlled, I didn't have my storyboards with me, I wasn't able to totally focus on the effort, etc.).

But because it required focus to do it right, it made for a good Meisner activity (though ended up with a horribly result).

Rather than just let the effort die, I compiled the thing real quick and posted in on YouTube for folks' viewing pleasure. And republished it here.

Enjoy(ish).

The Tools:

• "Animation plane": Table top
• Video post processing: Roxio VideoWave (to make an AVI file of the still frames)
• Editing: Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 (to make a better movie and do what frame normalization I could, prior to creating a QuickTime movie for upload)
• Rendering: Adobe Premiere Elements
• (No audio)

Labels: acting, acting process, animation, meisner, toys, training

Labels: acting, biz, events, inspiration, other actors

I found another avenue to combine my voice acting with my love for comic books.

Over the holidays, I picked up a stop-motion animation "toy" at Toys R Us. It was Marvel branded, and included put-together cutouts of Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Dr. Doom, and the Green Goblin.

This week I animated a quick scene (no storyboarding this round), recorded some dialog for the four characters, put it all together and uploaded it to YouTube.

Why YouTube, rather than encoding the video myself and hosting it on my site? Since Marvel owns the licenses for the characters, I'm not worried about losing creative control of this particular clip, due to YouTube's user agreement.

Besides, one of the goals is for me to try out YouTube, have fun with it, and see if it's a decent marketing tool to drive additional like-minded folks to my site. And I may be a bit of an eyeball whore. But only when I get paid for it.

My weekend review of my weekly Web traffic stats shows a noticeable upswing for the days following the clip posting. Oddly, referrals don't show anyone coming from YouTube.com to adamcreighton.com; I say "oddly" because I did this twice at set times to make sure it was working. Ah well.

The only change to my voice is a slight mechanization filter to Doctor Doom -- no change in pitch / octave /etc. -- that's all me. The sound effects are a bit tinny, which is probably due to them being sampled at a different rate than the other video audio pieces that went into the final product. Lesson for next time.

The Tools:

• "Animation plane": Jazwares Marvel Heroes Ani-Movie
• Microphone: MXL-990 (with shockmount)
• Preamp: M-Audio MobilePre USB (the model before the M-Audio FastTrack)
• Audio Post Processing: GoldWave
• Video post processing: Roxio VideoWave (though it's a bit short for what I need it to do)
• Editing: Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 (ditto, but slightly less so)
• Rendering: Adobe Premiere Elements (message boards are alive with the known bugs that bit me here, so I've lost a lot of love for Adobe this round; and their pricing already cost them a lot of love)

Labels: acting, acting process, animation, comic books, voice acting

Labels: acting, events

Labels: acting, acting process, meisner, training

Elites look superbadass. Real word. Look it up. If you can’t find it, maybe your dictionary is too liberal.

JOCELYN BLAYLOCK
Clancy, if you could have sex with any celebrity, living or dead, which would it be?

CLANCY
Dead.

Labels: animation, comic books, inspiration, video games

1. denial
2. anger
3. bargaining
4. depression
5. acceptance

Hey, where's "confusion"?

Nothing major going on here, Kids. Just a few relationship deaths hitting at the same time. And relationships are really important to me.

As you were ...

UPDATED: Looks like things are mostly all better, now, which I didn't expect. Coolidge ...

Labels: ramblings

Labels: animation, events, festivals, inspiration, voice acting

Saturday 9pm - late: The fun continues into the night at the STAPLE! after-party — Fistful of Live Art! Head downtown to Club Deville at 900 Red River for live art by Jim Mahfood, Dave Crosland and the first ever Live Art Battle Royale
between local Austin Living Artists and members of the San Antonio Artslam Crew! Music will be provided by 3Deep and admission is FREE!

Labels: acting, biz, comic books, events, inspiration, voice acting

Labels: acting, biz, business, comic books, events, festivals, other actors, toy job, video games, voice acting