Skeptical Sunday: Lucky to be Alive

I had intended, with the conclusion of my work on PIRANHA 3D, to take more time to write on the blog and work on personal projects. But I concluded my final day (or to be precise, an all-nighter graveyard shift) on the project with a trip to the hospital for terrible stomach pain. Though I might have tried to ride out the pain usually, I had just signed up for health insurance the month before and was covered for the first time in four years, and I decided I might as well make use of it. I was diagnosed with gastritis and sent home with a prescription for a powerful antacid and some generic Vicodin for the pain.

About a week later — having been told to stay away from spicy or acidic food for the next few weeks — I was drinking a milkshake when I was hit with such a sudden and intense pain in my abdomen that I thought my appendix might have ruptured. I called an ambulance and was whisked to the hospital and examined.

Brian, my roommate, had his gallbladder out 3 or 4 years ago after a protracted series of gallstone attacks that took some time to be identified. When I let him know I was in the hospital and described my experience to him, he advised me to insist upon an ultrasound exam to check for gallstones, as this is not standard procedure and, if I had gallstones, it would take some time for them to diagnose it via the normal process.

After some hemming and hawing — I don’t know why they were so hesitant — the hospital staff gave me an ultrasound and discovered that I did, in fact, have gallstones. Unlike kidney stones, you can’t simply let gallstones pass out of your body; if they pass out of the gallbladder, they can either block the bile duct or get into the pancreas, causing even worse trouble. And they can’t be broken up by ultrasound like kidney stones, either. The only option is surgery.

Holding Pattern…

Sorry for the dead air lately. Life’s been wall-to-wall, and what time hasn’t been spent at work, writing, or trying to get Sandrima Rising done has mostly been spent sleeping — with one exception I’ll talk about in a forthcoming post. 

By way of some related news, my buddy Anthony and I have officially partnered up as a writing team on the strength of our recent spec collaboration, Ninja Johnson. I haven’t mentioned this one around here before because we were waiting to get a draft of the script polished and out the door; now it’s awaiting judgment in the hands of our manager. Once he weighs in I’ll be able to say more about it, in particular about what’s going to happen next with it. 

I never thought I’d be able to work with a writing partner, but Anthony and I, aside from being close friends, have a great creative energy and since we both give a lot of input on each other’s writing as it is, it made sense just to make it official. I’m looking forward to cranking out more scripts with him. 

At the same time, it’s definitely an example of “be careful what you wish for.” I’ve got two treatments and two partial scripts in my inbox waiting for me to take a look and do my pass, so that’s taking up writing energy and the reason the blog has been kind of slow, and why I’ve missed a couple Secular Sunday posts in a row. 

I’m not dead and I haven’t abandoned the blog, though. I’ll try to post more YouTube videos or something in the meantime.

Secular Sunday: This I Believe(d)

With this being my birthday weekend, my gift to myself is once again not having to read CFAC. I thought instead I would go back to a pre-blog journal that I wrote when I was still a devout believer, and post a few segments of what I used to believe and express. 

I have to say, I kind of wish I’d read CFAC instead. I find some of the things I said to be truly alarming, drawing comfort only from the knowledge that I eventually pulled my head out of my ass. 

But let’s not be coy, let’s dive in. 

Talent vs. Skill — Round 2

I wrote about this topic in the very early days of this blog. In that post, I asserted my belief that talent is an inborn thing, you’ve either got it or you don’t, but you could learn a particular skill with reasonable success. And that passion might be a more important factor than either one.

I spend a reasonable amount of time assaulting other folks’ firmly-held beliefs with off-the-wall concepts like reason and evidence, so it’s only fair that I should occasionally have my own beliefs so assaulted. I was browsing the Kindle store (“Do you have a Kindle, Dorkman? You’ve hardly ever mentioned it”) and saw as one of the recommendations in non-fiction a book with the provocative title Talent is Overrated, and subtitle “What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.”

Interestingly, the title which I found provocative actually understated the case a little bit. The book could easily have been titled Talent is a Myth, because that is essentially the book’s thesis.

It’s important to note that Colvin uses the word “talent” in the same way that I did in my post — not to mean just general ability in some particular field (I delineated that as “skill,” something entirely separate), but to mean specifically an inborn ability that cannot be acquired by any means other than sheer luck of birth circumstances. According to Colvin, the research and facts simply do not support any such thing.

Kindle for iPhone

Yeah, you heard me. Amazon has released a Kindle for iPhone app, available free from the iTunes App Store. 

If you have a Kindle, it gives you access to all of the Kindle books you have purchased, right on your iPhone, and also makes it dangerously easy to buy more. In addition, it has a feature called Whispersync: when you read a book on your Kindle with wireless access on, your Kindle automatically keeps track of what page you are on, and transmits that information to your Amazon account. With Kindle for iPhone, that means you can open up a book on your iPhone, if you are without your Kindle but have some time to kill, and can pick up reading exactly where you left off on your Kindle — and, of course, vice versa. 

If you don’t have a Kindle, Kindle for iPhone will let you purchase, download, and read Kindle books straight on your iPhone. For those who feel that their iPhone screen is sufficient to read eBooks, and want to read more recent stuff than Project Gutenberg or Google Books can yet provide, you can make that happen here. And if you decide down the line that you want a Kindle after all, all of the eBooks that you purchase through Kindle for iPhone will transfer over. 

For the record, I’m loving my Kindle more each day. It’s already increased the amount of reading I do, thanks in no small part to the controversial text-to-speech feature. I can “read” while I work, without having to buy a separate audiobook edition of the book. This is especially useful if no audiobook exists for the book I want to read. Multitasking and productivity FTW!

(Though, unfortunately, this feature may not be reliably active in the future, depending on the whims of authors/publishers. For the record, I think this whole text-to-speech controversy is retarded. I already bought the book, you already got the money. Let me read it how I want.)

WordPress like Burning!

If you’re reading this, that means you took my advice and bookmarked DorkmanScott.com as the portal to my blog. Conglaturation! You have been successfully re-directed to the blog’s new home on WordPress. I decided to migrate the blog sooner rather than later. It came to my attention that WordPress has a “pages” function that will allow me to build a serviceable website without having to know HTML or pay someone who does. 

I have successfully imported all previous posts and comments, so the transition should be relatively seamless on that front. Although since it displays all the posts in line, I’m flogging the “Insert more” tool within an inch of its life, to keep the longer posts short on the main page. Previous posts are being edited to be shortened, and from now on I’ll default to dividing long posts that way. If you see a “Continue reading” link, you can assume it’s lengthy after the jump. 

The theme currently in use is just one of the WordPress defaults, unaltered. I will probably change or at least customize it, so the look and feel of the blog may be in flux for a little while, but I had to pick something for the launch.

New Job Joys

So as a brief note, I’ve landed a full-time visual effects gig for the next couple of months with Digiscope. I can’t say yet what I’m working on, I’m afraid, but I think I will be able to by the time the trailer hits.

This isn’t my first experience with working at an FX house. I had a brief stint at Glowgun at the end of last year working on Feast 3 (which I assume is safe for me to say since they’ve already added it to my IMDB profile). But this is the first time working on a high-budget, high-profile movie that will see a wide theatrical release. But again, I can’t say more than that right now.

I’ve got a ten-hour workday and I’ve still got a bunch of personal projects that need my attention in the off-hours, so while I’m not suspending blog activity, I’m going to shift the focus for a little while. Instead of the longer, more opinion-driven posts, it’ll probably be more re-blogging. YouTube videos, news articles, stuff like that, with maybe a very brief commentary. That’s aside from Secular Sunday posts, which will still be relatively comprehensive.

So I’ll still be posting with frequency, and possibly even more frequency than before since the posts will be brief. And stay tuned for when I can actually say what I’m doing here!

DorkmanScott.com — Your Source for Whatever This Is

I’ve gone a long time coasting by without the professional accoutrements — no website, no business cards, I haven’t even bothered to put my professional reel together until just recently (and still haven’t posted it online).

But no more! I’m working on getting my act together, and the first step is my registration of dorkmanscott.com as my official site address.¹ As of now, if you type that in, you will just be forwarded back here. But over time I hope to build it up to be more of a site with a portfolio and all that jazz.

It’s worth updating your bookmarks and/or muscle memory, as I may also shift the blog from Blogspot to WordPress at some point. Haven’t had major problems with Blogspot, but WordPress seems to be more customizable and have more reliable servers, both of which may matter if things start to pick up. If you get used to using the dorkmanscott.com portal, then the switch from one to the other will be relatively seamless for you if/when it occurs.

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1. Dorkman.com is being squatted on, MichaelScott.com is some country western singer, and Michael-Scott.com is porn (NSFW!). Straight porn, no less.↩

My thoughts on Fan Films

So I’ve had some people actually asking me where I’ve been, why I haven’t been updating my blog as much. Which is a little silly, seeing as how I frequently check in and explain, and the story never changes. However, while I’m sure it sounds like I’ve got a lot on my plate — and I do — one project in particular is the focal point of my time, around which the rest of the work I’m doing currently orbits. That project is the fan film, Sandrima Rising.

I know that I’ve been vague and avoided mentioning it too much until now, to the extent that it’s more than likely sounded like a project happening somewhere in the background. The main reason being that I’ve seen too many fan films get destroyed by long-term hype, so I advised the producers that it would be good to wait until we’re fairly far along into post before we start talking about it. But we’re getting pretty deep into the final stages of post, and I’ve been given the go-ahead to talk a little about the project.

So I’m going to do so — in my next post. Before that, though, I’d like to talk a little about fan films in general.

Lots to mention…

Been hard at work on everything in the world these last few weeks, seems like. Some of the highlights:

Kung Fu Red: The first of many collaborations to come between myself and Anthony, we shot this the very first weekend we got our brand-spankin-new RED camera. I wanted to shoot a fight scene and he obliged. It was originally just supposed to be a camera test but we wound up liking the edit so much that we finished it out with sound, music, and color grading.

I’ve embedded the YouTube for your convenience and viewing pleasure. If you want to see it in higher quality, check it out on Vimeo.

The Descendants: Turned in the latest, and IMO greatest, draft. I’m super happy with it, I’m waiting on Dark Horse to see what they have to say.

Sandrima Rising: Working with the Dastolis and churning out finals. Some of the CG work in this is really top-notch. There’s a “city chase” sequence in the middle that I think will knock people’s socks off. My hat’s off to those guys.

fxphd: I’ve mentioned fxphd in the past, but this time around it’s even more special: Ryan and I are teaching a course this term! So if you can afford it (and for the level of training phd offers, aside from us, it’s an amazing deal), come sign up and we’ll drop some knowledge on you.

48 Hour Film Project: Already kind of addressed this. We really wound up liking the film we made, with the exception of the opening scene. We re-shot the scene and will be posting the revised version on YouTube probably in a couple weeks (I have too much going on to finish it right now). We will also probably post the 48 Hour version after that, just for comparison.

Troika: This is a project that Anthony wrote and directed a selection of scenes from in order to pitch it to financiers. As a writer I’m super-critical of my own work, and that of others, and there’s not a lot of scripts that really entertain or interest me. I like reading good scripts, but a lot of scripts just don’t cut it.

I have to say, Troika is a great script.

Among the scenes shot are a fight scene, a dialogue scene, and a car chase. The car chase was shot on greenscreen, and there are plusses and minuses to that. On the plus side, the fact that they were shooting green is the reason Anthony called me to be on-set, and that led me to being on-set for all of the subsequent shoots, and ultimately concluding that not only did I want to make movies with those guys, I didn’t want to make movies without them.

On the minus side, it was my first day on-set and I wasn’t totally committed to the project, or to them, at that point, so I came on board as a consultant for the first half of the day and then buggered out. I did have something else to do, but I can’t remember what it was and it doesn’t matter; I should have stayed there all day. So while I consulted and gave them advice, once I was gone they were on their own in a foreign land, and mistakes were made. Now, in between Sandrima renders, I’m working on the car chase stuff, and its difficulty is my punishment for leaving that day. Karma!

Still, it’s nice to have something that isn’t lightsabers to put on my reel.

He’s also written another script that he’s working on developing and may shoot in the next few months, and which I also think is great.

So that’s where I’ve been the last few weeks and why my posts have been scarce, and will probably continue to be scarce through July. I am still active on Twitter, and will be getting more active back here once all of these projects — which have bottlenecked into July — are completed.

Oh, also, Ryan and I will be at Comic Con this year, as is swiftly becoming traditional. If you see us, do say hi.