EVERYTHING Now on Alt.Binaries.Slack

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 16, 2003 9:00 AM

I've been working on some video and I just posted both high and low res
copies to a.b.s. Actually it took all night. (For good reasons,
uploading is a much slower process than downloading. Best reason being
that it discourages frivolous, useless uploads by ninnypinkers.)

I have been so busy learning new editing stuff that I haven't paid much
attention to any of the SubG newsgroups or e-lists (though I HAVE been
getting special stuff ready for Indyvival!). When I looked at a.b.s.
prior to uploading I ABOUT LAKKED TO SHIT. Normally I check a.b.s.
every two or three days and cop everything there. Sorting it into
directories by author is the tedious part. Sometimes I don't actually
LOOK at the stuff until Friday when Princess Wei and I make a party of
it. But lately I've been concentrating every spare brain cell of the 7
remaining ones into learning new old-dog tricks.

It will take me DAYS to catch up with a.b.s. now!

IMBJR must have been saving up his spunk for one huge spurt, because
there's a string of DOZENS of his art pictures suddenly all in a row.
Same with Espira... giant splash suddenly splorted. LeMur hasn't slowed
down... in 10 years... and the other usual super-genius mastermind
killer-death arteests have all posted healthy amounts of... WHATEVER
YOU CALL THIS. I guess it's still called "art." Phineas Narco's entire
radio shows... Jarto, Heart Ignition, Ride Theory, subvorkian, Codini,
Artemia Salina, El Queso, Enki, Ellis Dee, nu-monet, Blackout, etc etc.
even some new characters, or ever-changing names on old anonymousites.

Now that this phase of my movie-learnin' is over I can actually look at
this stuff.

See, I had to do the movie-learnin'. I used to be an AWARD WINNING FILM
EDITOR. But I kind of drifted away from that and into the Internet. My
last real film job JOB was the SubGenius-MTV "ad" in 1992. And I was
starting to fall behind, techno-wise, then. NOW, I'm way way behind MY
LITTLE BOY. And SubGenius Youth like Pope Lupus Yonderboy. And that
ain't right. With this G4 Mac and these drives I should be able to
sling video -- and subtitles and effects -- like I sling audio for Hour
of Slack, or like I used to sling 16mm film.

I had to get the 5X-Day shit off my computer anyway... first I did the
70 minute cut, which is now on DVD and in our catalog, but really it's
just an enslickened trim-down. Last month I tore into that and recut it
into a nice TIGHT 26 minute "5 X-Day Featurette" which looks a lot more
like something you'd see on TV between dating shows than something
you'd see in an art documentary festival. Much more modern. All flashy
cuts and not too much dwelling on content. SUBTITLES identifying
everything. WEIRD SOLARIZED COLOR EFFECTS juicing up what had been
NightVision shots of bands. You know... learning all the transitions
and effects presets.

(This is all in Final Cut Pro 4.)

But even with that done I couldn't just... ERASE THE FOOTAGE. I had to
try distilling it down YET ONE MORE TIME. So I ripped out everything
that didn't look like a commercial, and I quickly narrated the X-Day
ad-blurbs from SubSITE over some monster movie music, and matched the
footage to the narration, and lo and behold I had a 3 minute HARD-SELL
X-Day COMMERCIAL, almost as hammering as a Ronco ad. I then made a
2-minute version of THAT (merely lopped off the last minute).

Then I made a DVD of the ads and the featurette, then I started making
the INTERNET VIDEO PIRACY BOOTLEG type copies in these formats:
MPEG-1 (VCD)
MPEG-2 (SVCD)
MPEG-4 (for streaming)
RealMedia (for streaming)
DivX avi (for discriminating pirates)
WMV (shittiest of all)

I compared them and picked the best combos of size and quality to post
to a.b.s. I also posted 42 still frame jpgs and the soundtrack as an
MP3.

Now I can erase the fucking 20 gigs of 5X-Day home movies and put ARISE
where that used to be for a rebuild.

This is all I want to do now, of course. Endlessly transfer old footage
onto my computer and recut it. Ideally I would just let it build up,
never erasing any of it, just adding hard drives, until I have, ten
years from now, compressed and distilled it all down into the ultimate
History of SubGenius mind blowing movie. To do it the way I'm
envisioning it I need to be able to add voice-overs and subtitles ON A
WHIM, without having to think about it or consider the process a
hassle. To be able to assemble media as thoughtlessly as one might lay
out handwritten notes on paper, to reorganize one's thoughts. Just
shuffle it around. EASILY. Easily is the key. I can do that easily with
audio and it's fun. Until this month I was still struggling (not very
frequently) with the video. Now that I have the basics down... fuck,
it's all I want to do.

WHAT A GEEK!!

See, I haven't even started into the titling progs, or the compositing
progs (After Effects, Commotion, etc.etc.). Much less the RANDOM CRAZY
ART WARPING PROGS like ArtMatic and Videodelic. I had HOPED that by now
I would be "video D-J-ing" at things like Starwood, projecting amazing
displays and tweaking them in real time via a laptop! That's probably
another year off. But at least I am back to the point I was in my
heyday of film cutting, only I don't have to haul the upright moviola,
or flatbed, and the 500 pounds of metal cans full of film with me.

At some point, like, today, I am going to have to stop this madness and
deal with things like, I dunno, BUYING A CAR for instance and TAKING
OUT THE TRASH. Oh and the TAXES from 2002. Princess Wei and the federal
government have both been very patient.

I did manage to keep making Hours of Slack but that was only because I
had built up a regular assembly line's worth of material. I may have to
revert to reruns of some of the previous 908 episodes.

Yesterday I toted two sacks of mail to the post office. All orders are
filled. I brought HOME two MORE sacks from the PO. A lot of arteests
have sent video and audio. Yikes.

A funny thing happened on the way home but that's for another post.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
PRABOB

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Original file name: EVERYTHING onabs.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05