Pre-production notes: Overcooked Vegan Episode 7

It’s just some damn food.

I hit a wall just before episode 6. Overcooked Vegan is research and development for me and I was having difficulty with my progression in technique. I guess I’ve been documenting that in the production notes. After ep 5’s unnecessary hurdles and mounting scrambling before ep 6, I declared a two week OR SO hiatus. Basically, for September I’m only doing intermittent pre-pro and maybe some animations but I don’t look to go back into production until early October.

To explain the wall, I’ll have to say it’s not just time and energy. There is logical return. You do art because you’re compelled to do so. Personality might dictate how much of that art is satiated with intrinsic versus extrinsic reward. You might also throw in a quasi-social awareness angle which ideally is intrinsic when authentic. Business is all extrinsic and always in need of a return. The blood of business is money. As I said Overcooked Vegan is R&D. The immediate return is constant information from testing. The long term goal is broadcast or cable, if not overcooked then something else. But I started getting a lot of knuckle-headed return.

For episode 6 I had two people who had originally committed to participate want me to sing and dance them back into their commitment. Fuck that. Go walk your puppies, ________ (You know what fits). So I went back into my 20 some odd remaining submissions to my casting and from the two emails got my first zero response and a response that I will describe as “that’s the internet for you”! Despite having a fairly detailed casting notice AND episodes that can be surveyed for examples ANNND the show title, I was asked two inane questions: “What kind of personality are you looking for?” ANNNNNND “Would I have to cook vegan food?” Come on now. What the %64#2D is wrong with you?!?

So the wall represents the cracks in my patience and I have to repair the wall. There’re more issues but I don’t write this to vent to the public. (I’ve been led to believe that production notes help some people who are interested in getting insights into various levels of production and I don’t mind passing on information if it’s of value.) I guess I mean to say, I’m not that dude taking pictures of every thing I do and posting it online. I already have two feature-length documentaries that I have to find a working time machine to finish before certain deadlines and tomorrow an additional one is coming my way. I can’t even write about my irritation on those projects alone.

Beyond the complaining, I do have more headspace to slowly make changes to the format so that cutting it to the half hour will make sense in flow and instill more humor into it. Of course pre-pro has to be met with proper pro. I also have to work on publicity. Very few people know the show exists. It’s taking a preposterous amount of time to get the word out via the method I had been waiting for so it’s time to return to the responsibility of self. Except I hate doing publicity. In the words of Gil Scott-Heron taken totally out of context, “Home is where the hatred is”.

Change the style

You’re going to have to work the post because you didn’t work the production.

Last year during Men’s World Cup, I started on working on building my book so that I could make a play towards the Rio Olympics. I laid out this plan of action to cash in on some favors, shoot some pro athletes, upcomers, etc. What happens? I stay injured. 3 broken fingers, achilles, tears here there and everywhere. That slowed my extra shooting down to a crawl. In the interim, I see people whose work I really admire ramping up now for all the gigs that I planned to compete.

I rarely stretch. My son is looking at me. He tells me, “Dad, you’re injured all the time. I’m going to stretch everyday like you’ve been telling me.” About time, little mofo. I’m looking at another week on the DL before I dust off the ligaments, tendons, and flabby brain. I’m going to force myself to take baby steps instead of doing 2 a days. Sure I will. I’ll actually do it right this time. Sure I will.

Last week I set up a test shoot, with models from a sports agency. I debated on the time which was a double-edge sword decision. I knew if I set it too early, my mobility might be compromised but the traffic would be less. I chose the opposite which yielded 2 of the 3 models being late as they were thoroughly caught in the flood of traffic and one food-poison afflicted no-show. (She emailed and called early. Nothing bad I can say about that). Starting later, meant a higher sun and less energy as I waited for people to show. The ladies were good but I didn’t have full command of the cameras as I was fighting the pain. I had exceeded my rations for standing for too long. So, I got adequate and adequate is anathema to me right now. But, I did need to get into a groove. Like I said, I’m going to give myself another week, then test the wheels out again while sticking closer to my new sketches. I’m looking for a stylistic breakthrough and I’m not feeling like it’s going to come through improvisation.

I guess I’m going to have to keep on shooting if I’m going to get there. I wonder if I can stretch vicariously through my son.

Production Notes: Overcooked Vegan – Episode 6

… Overcooked Vegan Episode 6 is up. My frustration caught up with me for little while so I chose to only have one cooking segment this time around. That’s standard for web shows but I’ve mentioned my interest in targeting broadcast and cable in the past. Ironically enough, this episode wound up being one of the longer episodes because I got a bee in my bonnet to do a long held back product overview. I call it overview because there is little reason for me to believe my tastebuds are precision-tuned to match anyone outside of myself.

The neighbors always said that I looked like the Soy Milk Man instead of my daddy.

Backing up for a second, I was prepared to upload the show Monday night but I figured I would take Tuesday to build some new animations. Instead, I decided to get rid of the clutter of empty Almond Milk boxes that I had collected for a photo project. Trash day and I was sick of looking at the things on the shelf so I got to shooting them quickly so I could feed the recycle bin. I wrote a script and realized by the time I was finished that I sounded like Joan Rivers using the baritone patch on a vocoder. My voice was super tired. So, I figured I’d catch a couple of hours of sleep then finish everything about 2 am. Nope. I started at 5 am. Screwed! It took about 3.5 hours to piece it together (voice record, edit). On the finished output I hear that I sound like Joan Rivers using the cracking tenor patch on a vocoder. So be it. That’s what I get for being anti-social for the week.

Eggplant and I are not friends but this was pretty good.

Problems: On set I let the talent leave the radio on at the beginning thinking that I was going to shoot and cut a different way. No. Don’t do that. You honestly do not know what you’re going to do in the edit so keep everything as useable as possible. The external audio device is begging to be replaced. I’m going to have to address that asap. Lastly, I have to find a definitive episode number to call it a season so I can appropriately tweak ideas and prepare for season 2.

In all, it’s still a learning experience and good production exercise while passing on decent health-related information. In doing the almond milk overview it reminded me about the carrageenan issues. It had totally slipped my mind. How I go forward with that information is thus far unknown but I’m glad I did it. Down the line, I’ll revisit the segment and re-edit to give it more pop. I’ve been out of Almond Milk since Saturday so it was funny having so many cartons but nothing to drink.

Production Notes for Overcooked Vegan Episode 5

Eat my weekend up.

Overcooked Vegan Episode 5 is live on the web as of Tuesday afternoon. I missed by morning launch because of Monday’s time management.

I had wound up booking the two shoots that appear on Saturday. Finalizing the times became weird but it worked out. Fortunately, April and Kelly wanted to do their shoot together so I didn’t have to do 3 that day otherwise I’d still be editing. To make the time, I basically ditched the b-cam footage. But I think I finally figured out how off the LCD is in its luma reproduction so I should be able to eyeball it better. With that I probably overcompensated pulling down the whites in post and tweaking the color. I had zero time to watch the episode before I uploaded it. If fortunate, when I review it, I won’t feel compelled to dive back in and re-upload it.

I took a couple hours off Sunday to watch the finale of that disaster called True Detective Season 2. One thing it did help was re-raise questions about the structure of this show. The integration of story, cooking and culture isn’t as fluid as I’d like it to be. But time leaves me again to call it a work in progress.

Monday led me to Olga’s Naturally. Whereas the restaurant overviews are not remotely the most important part of the show, I didn’t like the omission in episode 4. For background, I walk into these restaurants cold. I’ve only been rejected/put on pause once and only one place held any history for me as a customer. Olga’s was a spot I came across on a Yelp search. The location is impossible to find through casual driving. I stopped in post lunch rush and had the place to myself. Two sentences in my explanation the owner was all in and offered to give me a sample (full order) gratis. I negotiated that I’d pay for an entree so effectively it was a buy one get one free. This was the first time that someone saw the value in what I was doing to make such an offer and subsequently it became the 1st time that I shot the food on site. Cool. It felt like some progress in this time of growing pains.

Ultimately, the next camera needs to at least have zebras. The audio recorder needs to perform better than the on-camera mic. The monitor should kind of allow me to calibrate it. And on and on…

Panda Problems

black fur in the pawn

Someone used to like this toy… Maybe even “loved” the hell out of it. But it grew up, couldn’t deal, hit the sauce. Who knows?
Been juggling. Watched the Rousey v Correa waste of 40 seconds and the Malignaggi (not looking it up) v Garcia with my boy. Hype to fight ratio is horrifically imbalanced. Couple days later I see the end results of a hawk vs a pigeon. No hype necessary.

Hawk wouldn’t wait. The pigeon did. Hawk flew off with it before I could grab the DSLR

I finally got some work out of a client that I had pursued for many years. At the end of it all, counting the the time, the years of pursuit, the gig won’t be worth the payout. Don’t devalue your efforts. Someone else is always willing to do that for you.

But I do dig the challenge. Newness. You’ve seen what the longstanding references get you. Newness brings the initial jolt of energy. Maybe it can be ridden into better situations. With that, I went to a crowd sourcing seminar at Film Independent. I met a cat whose unstated mission was to meet everyone there. I watched in horrified admiration as I am not wired that way. I’m slowing down because he caught me before I could escape. I have to respect that.

I’ve been trying to get up and go work since 3 am. Let me put this phone down and see it through. Adiós

Production Notes for Overcooked Vegan Episode 4

Episode 4 is live as of 5 am or so my time.  Episode 3 was supposed to be the last bit of lemonade however this episode went up without a restaurant overview because it was delay another day (I try to launch early Tuesday mornings) while I get footage today or get it out. I’ve adjusted the compression settings so the compression is 8x faster but it takes 5 to 6.5 hours to upload the thing. That would have meant another Thursday launch and I don’t want to feel that burn again.

Because I launched ep 3 on a Thursday before a holiday weekend, it got lost in the throng. Subsequently, I don’t understand YouTube‘s counter because it fluctuates browser to browser and if I look at the analytics from Google, there are massively more views than what the tube admits. Oddly enough, I don’t really care about the view count aside that it poisons a viewer into thinking it’s not worth their time. My main goal is to make steady gains in the production technique and package it all longer format later.

I’ve been up all night making certain that the upload went successfully, so I’m cooked right now and should keep this short. Reigning myself in now.

Pre-production: Given that I had to animate a doll for ep 3 because of the quantity of flakes, I opted to go through Backstage.com and pull some actors. One was vegan. One was not. Both showed up early. The problem that arose was the location people… chose… non-communication as communication. I am not going to go any deeper than that. I’ll just say that it led to the clusterf**k that this episode became. And not that the episode is all bad but I wanted every episode to be a building block not a further display of crisis management skills. Que sera… or wutEVaaa.

Production: Having to split locations and alter the time frame, I gambled that I could get away with on-camera mic only. Master class of WRONG! Audio sounds more hellish than normal. I had to bounce light to the ceiling for flat, whack light. And for the coup’deville to the coupe de grace, I didn’t get a proper money shot on the first food item. Is youuu CRAZY?!! Time crunch like a mofo, man.

Post Pro: Minimal color correction. The first segment took over a day to edit because it had the most going against it. Having to deal with the producer part of the production had sapped my energy and I didn’t push the guy properly. He did a good job on his own but I fell flat as a director in both instances, I feel. So that led into a messy edit and me choosing not to re-cook the dish to cut in. Time was most important so I felt it best to take the hit and put it in the wind. The 2nd segment cut in under two hours. That’s probably because it was more cooking show formulaic and the weight of the location shift had already passed. I normally render segment plates then add music and bugs for the final output but it was more expeditious to copy and paste the edited elements into the output timeline then export it all to Compressor. After that, drag to YouTube, alter the web sites, post to social media, sleep for an hour then type this then hit the streets hunting.

Pre-pro 5: Don’t let the same mistakes occur. Start integrating the plotted elements. Lock down one more participant. Practice the beauty lighting speed. Get the lavaliere working. Keep on pushing.

Devil business

The business card layer of the abyss

I got my start in computer graphics like almost everyone I know. I shall I say, “Yo ho ho, matey!?” An acquaintance had a copy of Quark 3.11, another had Photoshop 2.5, someone else had Freehand and all I had was a 40 lbs coal-powered computer with an amber monitor pushing CPM and sporting dual 10″ floppies. Actually, that computer’s power switch was an ignition. I had to use an actual metal key to power the thing on! Hahahahahaaa! I totally had forgotten about that detail. Apple had released System 7 and I was learning what I could intermittently on other people’s machines.

Fast forward to ’94 and I had been pretty good about pre-flighting files. I don’t recall ever looking at a product/file that I had commercially printed that yielded any low res proxy. I used good production techniques and I checked my work like a good little desktop printing soldier. Bulletproof results!!! Well, not anymore, sailor!

Old card: Free of Satan, not free of chaos

I was running out of cards and I really needed a change of logo so I fashioned something like an anarchy symbol but using the megafunk “M”. I did the thing in under a half hour — didn’t proof, step back, nada. Time was an issue. Auto-pilot was more so. I’ve been handing the things out for a couple of months but during my gallery show I handed one to someone and really looked at it for the first time. (I’m referring to the information side of the card. The front side is just an image.) The web site is a bit of a bitch to read because it’s a little too small. It’s not as chaotic as the one prior. I preferred the chaos. But the hilarity was that the anarchy M can easily be misconstrued as a goat head. The looks of confusion that the card brings are plentiful. Anyway, I’m not changing the damn thing until I’m all out of cards.

Unfortunately, the trip to the crossroads hasn’t yielded anymore height on my vertical nor successful bank deposits. To top it off, Next Day Flyers screwed the order so much that I’ll probably never print with them again. That’s my advice to the kiddies: Watch for goat heads and Satan calls if you’re the sensitive type. I find the card funny. Sloppy, yeah. That too.

Hawaii time to my show

Yes. I was early to my own show… were it in Hawaii. Lateness is often a sign of disrespect but not today. I’m just relaxed. Thus far it’s a smallish turn out at the gallery but I’m way good with that. I’ve had some decent conversation and some possible leads on portfolio/head shot work. Shake the rust off kind of thing. 2 hours left before I can strip the walls and go.

Gallery Show, July 11 4-8pm

Click image to enlarge.

It’s been awhile but I’m dusting off the beret and the protruding tea cup finger to display a range of some of my visuals at the CAb this coming Saturday, July 11th, 4-8pm, 8443 S. Crenshaw Blvd., Inglewood, CA 90305. I’m recovering from an injury so that’s going to force a little scramble in terms of installations but everything will be up in time. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to hold off on presenting my most recent project though. I’ll be presenting photo and video. There will be food and music by a DJ; free admission. There’s a permanent collection, my stuff and some of the other artist rooms might be open.

It’s a good place for local artists to show their work so bear that in mind if you’re an artist or a patron looking for something to support in the neighborhood. The open house varies from monthly to bi-monthly, if I’m correct. You can search Facebook for Ericco Studio to fact check that.

I’ve wanted to get back into displaying some of the stuff so this will be fresh step. So many things have changed over the years with the how and who to collaborate with that there is a void of connection despite all of the communication mediums available. There’s also the transition from youth to older. You have to find different options in different ways. Well, this is supposed to be an announcement post rather than a musing so I’ll cut it here.

Production Notes for Overcooked Vegan Episode 3

You might notice something a little fake about one of the presenters in episode 3 of Overcooked Vegan.

episode type is too damn small

I had joked with a friend that I would start animating a doll if I had anymore no shows. That became a planned segment I was preparing for episode 5 or 6. I wanted it to be smooth animation and build a nice set. As I alluded to in the last production note, I had a person cancel 34 minutes before the shoot and she has never been heard from again. I’m fine with that. However, the cauliflower was blameless and aging. I then I had several more cancellations and someone no show/no call that I would not have expected to do so. So, I frankenstein-ed a segment for Episode 3.

Initially, it was to be Spicy Curry Potatoes, Cauliflower and some asparagus thing. I’m not big on asparagus. It went bad (rotted) so only the 1st two dishes were possible to salvage. I called some people whose numbers I hadn’t tried in many years. Voicemail. Bah. That turned my Sunday into a cooking day. Neither dish takes over 20-25 minute to cook. Prep time isn’t too bad… UNLESS YOU’RE #@$%*! ANIMATING A FAKE BARBIE DOLL ON THE FLY! This lovely knock off from Jieyang has almost no weight to her. Under a proper set up, I would have added weight in areas and shot metal into her feet or used modeling clay.

I had to bumrush the animation. The doll was held in one hand. I made certain to leave one finger designated as the shutter button. Of course that certainty immediately dissolved and I was washing my hands every couple of minutes. I purposely left the camera on autofocus because I needed less to do. What would have taken an hour had the talent arrived those weeks ago turned that Sunday into a 3+ hour production. I ordinarily attempt to have the dishes cooking simultaneously no matter who is cooking. You can’t do that with a doll in your hand. And the funniest thing to me is that the manufacturer molded protruding nipples. Strange.

I don’t set up light during the regular shoots. Think I did with tumeric and paprika stuck to my 9b$@3-ing hands?

The other task was writing for the voiceover. Circumstances were not ideal but I do appreciate Batani-Khalfani coming through and laying down the overdub. I was juggling several projects so I omitted some things that I thought were funny and that might explain the root of the jokes better. Things that I obvious to me, as I strained to overdo my normal dry humor, might not translate as well without the proper set ups. I have no invite to write for any network comedies so I guess I can keep playing with dolls.

The name of the character had to be that way. 17-20 years ago I had a meeting at Mattel®. I had stripped all offensive items from my portfolio… except the one of with the pile of bleeding Barbies™ being stepped on. Total oversight. Totally haven’t gotten any work from them EVER. It was humorous. Head nodding in approval for everything then BAM! I’m not the world’s best designer, anyway. So, Barbéi’s tatoo says “Made in Jieyang, China”. Just because she’s plastic, does it make her a liar? From there, I was going to have her “exoticize” herself by claiming she was part this, part that in percentages that don’t add up. That slipped my mind. What you get is that her family history is a bit too close to too many things. I was trying to go the McDowells’ Coming to America riff. Shaw Bros became Shawz. Run Run became Walk Walk. Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lie, became Bryce Léi. I mixed two different readings so that it seemed like she didn’t know what accent she was doing moment to moment.

Overall it wasn’t too difficult since I was going in for the hack job style. The 3 hours of standing was a bit arduous. I had a wall of things to do so that compressed post-production and brought me to releasing the episode on a day that no one will probably see it. I had to cut some animation out because I didn’t have any extra dub. But it’s all cool. I think it’s ok. I haven’t watched it yet as an entire show, just pieces. Work to do now. Gone.