The Inalienable Rights of the Ignominious

And the hits keep on coming! Oh, Acolytes of Boo, your faithful narrator keeps himself quite busy these days. I’ve been formulating a script for several months now. It’s a short, but that’s because the story I want to tell is not feature length, but a complex story that only lasts a dozen or so pages. One night the story literally woke me up. I was in that state of nearly sub consciousness when this idea occurred to me and I turned on the light, scribbled the basic idea down and then promptly fell asleep fully, having exorcized the demon of the muse.

I have been an avid fan of courtroom dramas (and even comedies) for well over 20 years. I even worked as a deposition videographer for a short time. The world of the legal fascinated me, but simultaneously I have never had an idea I felt was compelling enough to attempt to put to movie. This idea moves me enough to make it the next thing I shoot. It mixes serious issues of race and politics, so I’ll be able to stab at the heart of a politician I hate more than any other because I know him personally. I met this raging moron former state legislator on several occasions in my various video jobs over the past 8 years. Now I’ll take him to task, and with a very harsh view.

Last night, whilst awaiting my dinner date at Easton, I had this notion to bring with me a notebook. I had a pen in my pocket. Instead of reading CINEFEX on the article on the visual FX of IRON MAN, I was compelled to start writing the screenplay. I just… did it. No real thought or decision was involved, it just started. The damn broke and scenes and characters that my mental outline had never even pondered suddenly started appearing and saying things. I felt more like I was transcribing a TV show I was watching in my head than “writing”, but then again, the best writing I know of comes from this kind of serendipitous experience.

I will soon have a completed first draft typed up and the re-writing phase will begin, but the biggest hurdle is always the first completed draft. I sometimes cheat and cut corners in scenes and dialogue just to cross the finish line and feel that relief that comes with a draft completion. Then you go back & fill in the gaps with re-writes and little changes that quite frankly continue all the way through rehearsals, shooting, editing, and ADR in post production.

Something is inspiring me. I don’t actually know what it is, but I’m getting things done. The compulsions to finish old projects and start in on new ones has me aflutter. I have so much more to do and the energy and will resides in me to see it all done.




On a completely other note, today I finished the final DVD master of GOODNIGHT CLEVELAND, complete with trailer and deleted scenes. I did myself a favor last year that I failed to remember. I renamed several sequences of scenes that were removed as “deleted scenes” so they were very easy to find and export as individual scenes. ROCK ON, which made life much easier today.

An initial master disc is made, the DVD art and disc graphics are now done too. Tomorrow I’ll get some of the inserts made, and on Monday (no holiday for me), I’ll burn several copies for the cast & crew. Unfortunately, I can’t do full color inserts et al for the entire cast & crew, but then again, I don’t know hardly any of them and I’m not the one who promised them this movie 12 years ago. I’m just an editor and I’m already going wayyyyy over the top to help a bunch of strangers by finished their movie and then screening it for them in a movie theater.



Speaking of which, I already made the DVCAM master tape and DVD backup of the first COWTOWN FILM SERIES show tape. Unlike most people I know, I’m not gonna wait until the last minute to prep a show. This is too important to slack on. I’m going to test the projector and cables and lighting several days before the show.

I have entrusted the presentation of the shows to other people in the past and both times it bit me in the ass; one of those times it bit my ass and also my own wallet. Never again. Two bit know-nothings will not affect these screenings. People are going to be paying money for these screenings, so I need to make them as classy and without mistakes. Exhibition and theatricality often get overlooked by alleged filmmakers presenting their movie to an audience. I am motivated by my years as a movie theater projectionist/manager and also from some film festivals with really poor presentation. I feel compelled to give people something a little extra and make absolutely certain that the filmmakers movies are shown as best I can. I can’t imagine a more disrespectful thing than to screw up someone else’s screening by not being thorough and checking everything ahead of time.

The world spins in my direction these days my friends. Over a year ago I bought a pair of the precious VANS. I have worn 10 and ½ since puberty and this time, my feet were too big to wear them. So I ordered a 2nd pair of size 11’s and on my left foot, the one that gets hit with Gout, and it was still too tight. So both pairs of perfect VANS have sat in a closet unworn and brand new. By a fluke, I tried them on yesterday and BOTH pairs fit perfectly. I must be losing some weight, although not in the gut area. Going to the gym has helped a lot. I’m still swimming, but I’m still not anywhere near where I want to be. As I get older, it gets harder & harder to lose the weight. I’m only up to twice a week at the gym and I want to be at 4 times before the end of September.

Peace and Love and Good Happiness Stuff,
Peter John Ross

It is Complete. GOODNIGHT, CLEVELAND! has been recorded to master tape

The karmic goodness continues! As my Sonnyboo Fan Club of 5-6 readers no doubt already know, the sun is shining in Rossdonia these days. The future looks quite good, both short term and long term. The summer may be coming to a close soon, but the sun continues to shine its golden rays, good guys win, bad guys lose, and your faithful narrator has nothing but exciting news.



Last night at approximately 11:29PM, I put GOODNIGHT, CLEVELAND! to master tape. I finished someone else’s feature film. Even though it’s not mine, a level of satisfaction permeates.

Sadly, Micah Jenkins was not present for the momentous occasion. I would have bought us a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Micah revived this and brought it back to life last year. His interest, more so than my own, got this movie to be finished. Micah has been laboring on the audio fixes for close to a year, one night a week in my basement.

Part of what took so long was that I was only willing or able to donate one night a week to the project with some occasional weekends. Since GOODNIGHT, CLEVELAND! is an ultra low budget movie, there is very little coverage in many scenes, which means awkward pauses, extraneous dialogue, and everything else – you’re stuck with it. Another element, very often overlooked is AUDIO overall. Upon LISTENING to the movie, the audio levels, dialogue tracks, ambient sounds, electricity humming, refrigerators, air conditioners, crown noises, these are all cursed with this movie.

Most people simply do not put the time and effort into editing the audio as much as they do their picture edit. It shows in the work, especially if you’ve ever played your cheap ass audio in a movie theater’s sound system. There have been times where your sound is great on your PC speakers, but put it in a real Dolby rated movie theater and you can hear every single flaw at decibels you didn’t know existed.

With Micah having both finished his audio “fixes”, meaning making it as good as we can without re-recording or spending any real money on it, it was my turn to finish up. I always knew that from the rough cut and even picture lock last year that I wanted to do more music spotting. Spotting is the process of determining where music goes in the movie and “how” it goes in. Will it be ambient music, like a radio or TV in the movie, or the music only montage sound, or will it be layered into the scene’s audio, but still be a main player in the moment.

This past Sunday, because the clock stared me down like a barrel of a shotgun with the screening in less than a month, I dived in headfirst into my job of music. George Caleodis had given me 2-3 CD’s of a band he was in from the 1990’s called THE IDEA and told me I could pretty much use any of it, so I did. Since the film takes place in the 1990’s (since it was shot in 1996-1997 it’s considered a “period piece”).



I’m an amateur sound designer/sound mixer. I am in no way a pro or even necessarily good at it. There are some serious and real people out there, but I have no budget to hire the folks who I normally would use for this job. Micah & I had to do it ourselves with whatever off the shelf software we had available to us.

I put in a few songs to be “ambient”, meaning songs that are coming from unseen TV’s and radios in the scene. To make it sound more “natural”, you don’t just lower the volume or gain on the music. I used an EQ setting where I kill out the bass and it sounds a bit more like a small radio or TV would sound. In one case, I even started the music as “scene music”, meaning the song at full volume, mixed with the sounds of the scene, then slowly EQ’d out the bass to make the same song appear to be on the radio in the next scene. It made a perfect transition. Hopefully no one will even notice it’s there, but I’ll know I did something cool to get us from one scene to the next using audio to smooth it out.

In other scenes, like the “love scene” (if it can be called that), I added a song to it that plays into the moment and lifts the scene up some. Similarly, at a more “action” oriented scene towards the end of the film (it is a film, shot on 16mm), I added an upbeat rockin’ song that also seemed to elevate the tension and excitement whereas before there just wasn’t much there. In other cases, the ambient music just smoothes over the horrendous inconsistencies of regular audio in the scenes.

I had a new mantra with Micah these past few months as the deadline of the COWTOWN FILM SERIES premiere loomed. I said, “We can’t make it good, we can only make it better.” Striving for perfection is not a bad thing. I often do in my own works, as best I can, but with this project we just needed to see it finished. That’s all. It’s been 12 years in the making, 5 of which in my world. I checked my emails looking for end credits info and I saw that my first real emails to Miguel and George about taking on the completion was in summer 2003.

It took until winter 2004 to get the film out of DuArt labs in New York. Then I personally paid for the telecine transfer to digital video. We attempted for several months in 2004 to edit this and just get the audio synch to picture. It failed because schedules and what not didn’t allow anyone from the production to give us some kind of road map to link the sound and picture.

In 2007, Micah pushed to bring it back to life. Micah and I know several of the investors and even though we weren’t involved in the shoot in any way, we felt an obligation to try to give them a finished movie, even if it’s just a DVD. As one of the investors said, it would be “closure” to the whole thing. On September 11th, 2008, we’ll close the book on GOODNIGHT, CLEVELAND! and show people this flawed masterpiece.

I like GOODNIGHT, CLEVELAND! It’s a weird, yet strangely appealing movie. It has warts, like all movies, but I really like it. A charisma of story and character gets to me. I only hope it gets some other people too. I’ll find out September 11th at 7:00PM at the Screens at the Continent.

What a strange feeling this is right now. A giant albatross has been lifted from my neck, albeit a self imposed one. I can’t tell you why, but in the last week or so, I’ve just been getting more Shiite done. Life is setting up the pins, and I’m knocking ‘em down. The stars have just aligned perfectly for me so the next year or so will be BOO TIME.

Peace and Love and Good Happiness Stuff,
Peter John Ross

What's in a Name?

My name is not actually “Sonnyboo”. Nor is it “Sonny” or any variation therein.

I was born Peter John Ross on January 24th in Reynoldsburg Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. I am the 4th child in a family of 4 kids. My mother named the other 3 so my dad finally got to name me for once. I was named after “Pete Rose” and “Johnny Bench” of the baseball team the Cincinnati Reds from their heyday of the BIG RED MACHINE. When I was a kid, I was called by friends & family “Pete”, but never “Peter” unless I did something very wrong and got caught. So by the time I lived in Wadsworth Ohio, I heard my name as “Peter John!” a lot when the police would bring me home in the back of the squad cars, quite a bit more often than maybe I should have, but I was young and most of what I did was harmless.



When we moved to El Paso Texas, I was addicted to the music of the Sex Pistols, and although my preference was for bassist Sid Vicious, I was subbed “Johnny Rotten” for my behavior by friends and teachers, and the family still called me “Pete”, but I didn’t spend as much time with them, so it was always “Johnny Rotten”.

Moving back to Ohio, to Pickerington, no less, for my last 2 years of High School, I felt like a different person, but somehow similar to whom I was, so I went by “John”. Somehow, people wanted to specify which John, so it was “JohnRoss” almost like one word.



Shortly after high school, I worked at a movie theater, and quickly rose into management, as in an Assistant Manager! The company policy required that I be called “Mister Ross”, but I was all of 18-20 years old, and so I said to the staff, “just call me ‘Ross’” and that has been my name ever since. I don’t know why, or how, but that has been my pseudo preference ever since. It’s just kinda been how I am addressed and what I respond to, but to be honest none of those names really match. I don’t know what name I would choose now.

When working as a broker for Bank One, I even had my name plate say “ ‘just ‘Ross’ “ plus another one that simply says “Ross, as seen on TV” which was a joke then, and not so much these days, although whenever I tell my parents I’ll be on the local news, they ask me what I did wrong this time.



Professionally I go by “Peter John Ross”, cursed with three first names like a presidential assassin, but I can tell my friends or people who know someone who knows me if they refer to me as “Ross”. If I get an email or a phone call asking for “Peter”, I assume it’s a bill collector or telemarketer or that I’m still in trouble so then I kinda hide. Old habits. Some people think I hate my names or that it irritates me. I don’t hate being called “Peter”; I just don’t really know who that’s supposed to be. If you want to gauge whether or not I like you, I’ll tell you to please call me “Ross”, otherwise. The big clue that I don’t want to talk to you, I’ll let you keep calling me “Peter”.



That is the etymology of “Ross” as my name. Not really all that interesting if you think about it.

48 Hours of Frivolous and Fornicating Frogs

Well, I did something I didn’t want to do. I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project here in Columbus. No offense to TJ, the director/producer, as he did a good job and his team was cool, but I was not in the mindset. I did what I could as an editor, but overall, I wanted more time and that just isn’t what this is about.

Mostly I detest any level of competition in filmmaking. I have always fought hard against giving awards at screenings and festivals that I am involved with. It’s art. It’s subjective. There truly isn’t a “better”, although you might like one movie better, we get into the entire “preferential/subjective” versus “overall/objective” arguments. What I love about my theory is that I have to be presented with an argument that has not been placed in the eternal loop of being subjective. I used the Socratic Method on this hypothesis and proved it as a theory for over 25 years since I was in grade school and first learned sciences.



The screening of the 48 Hour Film Project went well. I thought virtually all the films had merit. Some had great ideas, others great technicals, and others had both. The movie that I predict will win hands down is AIDAN 5, a sci fi movie with Bryan Michael Block as the actor playing 5 clones. It deserves to win, it was freakin’ AWESOME. Style, music, camera work, and most especially the performances were great. Again, they used hand drawn sketches instead of Photoshop illustrations, or even higher end material – but the idea was so visual and so well executed, it only ADDED to the experience.



Again, I hate “competition” in the arts because can you really compare a high end, produced at a studio piece to literally some community college kids with a camcorder shoot? There will always be perspective and preference. I respect and like both types of movies, but I understand people want to apply this Jock mentality to filmmaking. It’s like people need an adversary or external motivation in order to push themselves to achieve more. That works for some people, but not others. I am self motivating, so I don’t need that crap. I’m never truly satisfied with what I’ve made so I’ll be trying to improve my moviemaking perpetually.



If anything the screenings just verify my theory that Filmmaking is the new “Garage Band”. In the late 80‘s, cheaper guitars and amps made it possible for the everyday Joe to be a musician and start a band. Today, cheap HD cameras and home PC’s are making it possible for that same Joe (or Josephina) to make movies. And they do.



Last week I shed off my biggest freelance client, voluntarily. Given the economies instability and the prospects of the future look quite dim, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did and I don’t really regret it. I’m looking forward to getting some of my free time back. I had this imbecile of a “producer” who in 8 months was on time a total of 4 times. Last week, I was so pissed off that when she was 90 minutes late, I left. Over an hour later, she called my cell phone pissed off I didn’t call her. She said she wanted to pick up her hard drive of materials and I told her it would be packed up and ready for her. I can’t abide people who don’t respect my time and efforts. I happily handed her back the drive. I made sure to email her the information that half the video files are in the Matrox hardware codec. She didn’t know what a codec was. Most people outside the film industry don’t, but an alleged producer with 10 years experience should have at least heard of it. She’s incompetent.







Now that I have time again, I can focus even more on the upcoming screenings. We’ve got Uweekly doing a story already. A good start and I want the WEEKENDER to do something for us too. Promotions are just as much work as making a movie. Most indie filmmakers don’t seem to grasp that, and even some of the ones that do think that by simply following in your footsteps will be enough. It’s not. Cheap knock offs of my promotional efforts don’t always equate to the same level of payout.



I’ve been working for 2 weeks on the animations and promotional items for the screenings. I was already doing “pre-show entertainment” when Paul Landis handed me several slide cards to play before the show. I was already doing some, but these were cool for the most part. I just had to omit a few. I don’t want people thinking I’m associating with some of these people/companies. Mostly because I don’t want anyone to get scammed or screwed and complain to me that I promoted those ones. Combine that with PAID sponsors, and I’d rather just not use those. It’s probably best to avoid promoting people who lie or just plain don’t deliver.



I’m going to use the solid state COMPACT FLASH card video player that plays MPEG1 and MPEG2 video files. I used this in Cleveland at my booth on an LCDS player, but for the shows, I’m going to play out of this thing into the Line In of the DVCAM/HD decks. It auto-loops, and I already have five 15 minute programs of pre-show that I’ve tested with this setup. I’m using trailers of upcoming films in the series, plus other local films, with drive in style promos, and animations I’ve made for the Cowtown Film Series.



I can’t stand projecting of DVD. First off, DVD’s are unreliable and never 100% guaranteed to work. They sometimes skip. DVD’s sometimes lock up. DVD’s also having such a high level of compression that the details are lost, especially when showing them on a 50 foot movie screen. Colors get muddled or lost on DVD when projected like this. I feel a responsibility to people paying to see this, nonetheless the filmmakers whose movies I’m presenting, to give them 110% and make certain we present things as best we can. DVCAM, being a mechanical tape, but at a much higher color and resolution gives a very good presentation format. When we screening HORRORS OF WAR off DVCAM, depending on the size of the screen and resolution of the projector, it looked almost as good as a 35mm film print (and better when using the Texas Instruments DLP projectors) with full colors and great amounts of detail on the big screen.



What I made yesterday, that I’ve been mulling over for 3 weeks how to do, is something for the actual main presentation. I wanted a special “please turn off your cell phones” promo, so I made this:




COWTOWN - Turn Off Your Cell Phones from Peter John Ross on Vimeo.


I used After Effects, Photoshop, and some funky fonts with some images I already had in the cue. Then I used, yet again, a tutorial and plug-ins purchased from VIDEOCOPILOT.NET and I processed this to look like old film. It was NOT a film look plug in, but rather an actual blank film clip, keyed in over top of the footage. I used the tutorials to see how to add the jumps side to side and top to bottom, along with a glow and the film sprocket holes on the sides. Strangely most of the images are from a FONT that came with our DVD duplicator.



In a very rare move, I recorded my own voice for this. Working on My Sexy Fiancé Veronica’s Holocaust documentary, we’ve been pouring over March of Times films from the 1930’s and I just had that generic old school narrator’s voice and accent in my head, so it was easy to exorcize that demon into this piece. I then processed the voice and the music with a high pass filter and added a loop of the static/film projector sounds and Oila! We have a semi-authentic sounding bit.



I feel pretty damn good lately. I can’t really say why (I mean it, I am forbidden from saying), but the sun is brighter, the air a little fresher, and my outlook has improved. As with all things, it seems karma pays out. You do some good things, and then good things return to you. I love life and fate because I seem to always get what I deserve, and those things tend to be happy.



As I have written in the blog before, the creative ice melts, and I’m coming back to life. My ambitions return with the creativity. With my new free time, I have a new book to write, this time something a bit more centralized and focused. I’m going to write out of the psychological effects of filmmaking and analyze the reactions of audiences. I’ve been mulling this over for a while and the threads that connect basic filmmaking techniques on emotional reactions fascinate me. I just want to write out my observations and put them out there. Plus I get off on having books that I write tangible in my hands. It makes me chuckle.



I got some royalty checks in from the other books. TALES FROM THE FRONT LINES sells a lot better than the HORRORS OF WAR ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY. The screenplays just aren’t moving as well.



Well, I need to get to finishing the last bits of sound design and music for GOODNIGHT CLEVELAND. What do I do with my time off editing full time? Edit. I am sooooo obsessive-compulsive when it comes to film.



Peace and love and good happiness stuff to the Acolytes of Boo…

All 4 of you.



Your faithful narrator,

Peter John Ross

PJR, the man, the myth, the legend always in boxers

The Seinfeld-Twin Peaks Connection

Ever since Doc Hayward (Warren Frost) & Mrs. Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriski) appeared on Seinfeld as George Costanza's soon to be parents in law, the Ross', I often wondered if there was a connection between Seinfeld and Twin Peaks.

There were as many as four Twin Peaks cast members on a single episode of Seinfeld. The aforementioned two, along with Jacque Renault (Walter Olkewicz) playing a "Plaza Cable" guy who terrorizes Kramer and the mysterious Mrs. Tremond (Frances Bay), who already appeared on Seinfeld getting a marble rye stolen from her, all showed up in a season seven Seinfeld episode called "The Cadillac". A previous Seinfeld episode also had three of them, plus character Emory Battis (Don Amendolia) who worked at Horne's Department store and was tricked into letting Audrey Horne work at One Eyed Jacks played the owner of a horse carriage owner who loans his rig to Kramer. Sue Ellen Mischke from Seinfeld played Ms. Jones, the assistant to David Warner's Mr. Thomas Eckhart, turns out to be an assassin who tries to off Sheriff Harry Truman. Even Elaine's boss Mr. Pitt (Ian Ambercrombie) appeared in Twin Peaks as Tom Brockman, the insurance man.

Strangely, no one in the casting department for either show is shared, nor can I find any producers/writers shared. These two shows couldn't be more different, and yet there are strong ties with the bit actors and day players.

What is the connection? Why were so many of these actors crossing over from the Pacific Northwest to the Big Apple? Who bridged these two productions?

A mystery without an anwer....

March of the Swivelheaded Ant Man

Let’s start with the mystery of my opinion of THE DARK KNIGHT, since I last left off before seeing it. I dug it. It rocked. Yes, they clearly used HEAT (1995) as a basis of the overall plot structure, which was a good thing. If the idea was to make Batman ™ seem “realistic” they took that ever further in this one than BATMAN BEGINS (2005). I’m seeing it again soon in IMAX™ and I have since read the script. There are some subtle details in the words, but mostly I’m enthralled with the very well written dialogue. Very natural and something filmmakers should bear in mind.

Well, we just did another INDIE GATHERING in Cleveland this past weekend. They are always fun. I set up a booth, sell some DVD’s, give away CD’s and hand out for upcoming events. Of course, I sell more DVD’s and books when My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ sits at the booth by herself. How odd that the pretty girl sitting alone gets more and more convention boys to buy more product!

I did 5 panels on various aspects of film. I haven’t done much of this stuff lately, as my public appearances have voluntarily dwindled. The social and public coma I have been in for the past year has started to fade. As I prepare for the next few months, I’m already turning up the volume on what I’m doing.



On the way home, the magical MARIE’S PIZZA was had with a brief stop in Wadsworth Ohio where my arteries choked on the most blissful combination of tomato sauce and cheese on bread. Every time I’m within 50 miles, I stop off in my old home town to partake of the pizza I grew up on.

Cleveland fascinates me. They have so much more in the way of older buildings, gothic architecture, and MOM & POP stores. There’s a lot more identity to Cleveland than Columbus. I feel like if Columbus were to be defined, it would be a strip mall with an Applebee’s next to it. There are these tiny pockets of originality here and there, and I wish they could succeed and explode to drive away the corporate, test-market-y stains of retail that permeate everything else.

I cannot blame the giant anonymous “they” of the corporations. They are only 50% to blame. The other half is the people and consumers themselves that prefer this generic, uninteresting blah.



GOODNIGHT, CLEVELAND! has almost finished its sound mix. We’re on time for the Sept 11th premiere, but it has not been an easy road. Miguel Baldoni Olivencia has decided not to Alan Smithee the movie, and take credit. This pleases me immensely. It’s his movie, not ours, no matter how different the “intent” was during the shoot and the “result” from the edit. Micah Jenkins works his head off with these edits and smoothing of audio from 1996-1997 in the new digital realm. I often have to say, “We can’t make it good, only better”. That’s the mantra for a film this old.



THE COWTOWN FILM SERIES just got our big wish. For the Halloween screening on October 30th, I wanted a HORROR film, and specifically I wanted to screen Bob Kurtzman ’s THE RAGE. THE RAGE was shot here in Ohio after Bob Kurtzman
moved back here from LA. For those not in the Know, Bob Kurtzman is the “K” in KNB Effects. He worked on movies like EVIL DEAD, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, AUSTIN POWERS, & SCREAM. Rob is also the originator of FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, writing the story that Quentin Tarantino adapted into a screenplay and Robert Rodriguez directed, and he made his mark as the director of WISHMASTER, and more recently THE RAGE. What most people don’t know is that Bob Kurtzman came from Crestline Ohio, interestingly, the same place my entire mother’s side of the family came from. Bob has come back to the Midwest and planted a firm foot in the community and away from either coast. He’s started the studio PRECINCT 13 and setup shop doing visual FX for movies like Rob Zombie’s DEVIL’S REJECTS and more.

I might be losing friends as I turn down some shorts that have been offered to me for the whole series. I asked for a public call for entries, but not all of the pieces are up to snuff. I’d rather play fewer shorts of surpassing quality than let something go because I’m friends with someone. It’s a business and I’m sorry. Here’s an idea of what I’m doing with graphics/animation thanks to VideoCopilot.net’s tutorials.

Work shows no sign of letting up. My head hurts. Very little sleep for me as the August heat destroys the equanimity of cool air distribution on the 2nd floor of Rossdonia. I have picked up a cheap futon for the basement so that I might get some proper sleep at night on various nights. The problem is removing the old family blue couch from the basement, along with it dolly, and dolly tracks, and even a ¾” deck for relocation to the Production Partners studio. This is more than a 2 person job. At least I can afford an El Cheapo futon with a decent pad.



I once reposted a story about the great Stanley Kubrick
and how a London reporter got to go to his estate 2 years after his death and discovered all his boxes of research and information. It’s now a documentary and I found it hilarious and fascinating.

CLICK HERE to watch video



We upgraded our 2nd edit system (Edit “B”) here at work to the Matrox RTx2 system for real time HD editing. I am pleased that it works well with the other motherboard, as Matrox products are sticklers for compatibility. We’ve also increased our storage by 3.5 Terabytes at work, and I added 2.25 Terabytes of storage at home for My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ and her documentary. We have some progress. A rough cut is done, some graphics work is complete and now we have some archive footage from MARCH OF TIMES from the HBO Archives to go over what selects we’ll use & buy for the project.

We re-watched NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN in Blu-Ray™ last night. What strikes me best about this movie is the maturity of the filmmaking. Most people don’t grasp the concept of subtlety. Very little is spoken out loud in this film, so is not to beat the audience over the head with obvious or pointless dialogue. In a 3 minute film by John Whitney locally, “A FAMILY MATTER”, reminds me of that kind of mature filmmaking where the story is told visually with the words being spoken often telling you something other than the blatant plot points.


This was a big one, but I’m busy, so I gots ta G.O.

Peace out homies, and I hope the crazy people find peace in reading my blogs.

- Ross