youtube link
If you're interested...
Showing posts with label SPIFF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SPIFF. Show all posts
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Internet has been down
The faster satellite has been down for the past few days. It's only been up for about 10 minutes today so this is going to be a short post. Once satellite is restored to its former "glory" I will be able to post more details.
This past Saturday was the SPIFF and the concert at summer camp. SPIFF went really well. There were about 7 movies, all of which were quite excellent. My movie got a great response, even though it was the only non-overtly comedic movie. One of the IT guys will be posting it to YouTube. I'll link it when I have it. Afterwards, the concert went really well. My band went on first and totally rocked the place. It was a packed house (probably 40-50 people) and everyone was having a great time. They demanded an encore. It's a good thing we actually had another song that we worked on or else we would've been screwed. I would have hated to follow us...
Afterwards, it was party time. I had a lot of fun hanging out with my group and talking with the other "directors" about our movies.
There was a strange point in the night where apparently, somebody had a neo-nazi tattoo on his forearm. It was strange. I had talked with this guy a few times before and he seemed nice, but nobody with a racist tattoo is ok in my book. One of the guys in my group got really upset and we've since contacted the higher ups about how inappropriate it is to hire someone with a racist tattoo. I really hope I don't see this guy again. I don't want to be stuck on the ice with hate.
This past Saturday was the SPIFF and the concert at summer camp. SPIFF went really well. There were about 7 movies, all of which were quite excellent. My movie got a great response, even though it was the only non-overtly comedic movie. One of the IT guys will be posting it to YouTube. I'll link it when I have it. Afterwards, the concert went really well. My band went on first and totally rocked the place. It was a packed house (probably 40-50 people) and everyone was having a great time. They demanded an encore. It's a good thing we actually had another song that we worked on or else we would've been screwed. I would have hated to follow us...
Afterwards, it was party time. I had a lot of fun hanging out with my group and talking with the other "directors" about our movies.
There was a strange point in the night where apparently, somebody had a neo-nazi tattoo on his forearm. It was strange. I had talked with this guy a few times before and he seemed nice, but nobody with a racist tattoo is ok in my book. One of the guys in my group got really upset and we've since contacted the higher ups about how inappropriate it is to hire someone with a racist tattoo. I really hope I don't see this guy again. I don't want to be stuck on the ice with hate.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Mmm... two minute showers...
You know you've been at the south pole too long when the highlight of your week is a two minute shower. At least the water was warm.
Tuesday, I finished filming the movie for SPIFF and I edited it on wednesday. I showed it to the guys who made it and a few random others and everyone really liked it. I know it's too early to start talking awards, but...
After dinner on wednesday, I had a quick band practice, followed by pub trivia. It was our week to host pub trivia so I wrote 12 questions about horror/monster movies. It was a lot of fun. Justus' category was still shots from movies where someone edited out the person's skin so all you had was the background and their clothing to guess the movie. It was kind of an easy round, but totally a lot of fun. The first round was done by Phil and every question was about military history. The scores were very low. Another round was done by Don, registered Canadian, and it was all about people on money from around the world. Aside from it being canadian biased, it was just plain hard. People seemed to enjoy it, though. How could they not? The prizes are beer!
After pub trivia, a few of us watched the movie Primer. I think I decided that I didn't like it. It's hard to tell since you have no idea the entire time what the hell is going on. It's essentially about a group of silicon valley nerds inventing a time-travel machine in their garage, but it totally throws causality to the wind. It was totally some pretentious sciencey-nerd's idea of a way to look cool to people who don't know more than him. It's like if I made a movie...
After a disappointing movie and weak beer, I went to sleep.
Yesterday, after turning in the movie, I actually finished some data analysis that had been giving me trouble for over a week. That took pretty much all day, but after dinner I was able to sneak in a half hour band practice and then played volleyball until almost midnight. The band is really starting to come together.
Concert and film festival are tomorrow night. It's going to be a crazy night. Parties like this are few and far between and the station really comes together and has a blast.
There are some very interesting people down here. Yesterday, I had a long conversation with my friend Mark. Mark has to be in his 50's by now if not older and has come down here every year for the past decade. He's also the guy I jammed with a lot last year, and the one responsible for getting me plugged into music down here. He was telling me about seeing Pink Floyd in germany in 1972 (before Dark Side of the Moon even came out). He also saw the Grateful Dead in 1970... just incredible. Mark works here for 4 months out of the year, then travels for months, then resumes a job back home for about 6 months. There are a lot of people who do that. They work here for a few months and save up enough money to travel for the rest of the year. It's pretty incredible.
Our winter-over should be getting in today, weather permitting, so there will be another hand to help with the telescope.
Tuesday, I finished filming the movie for SPIFF and I edited it on wednesday. I showed it to the guys who made it and a few random others and everyone really liked it. I know it's too early to start talking awards, but...
After dinner on wednesday, I had a quick band practice, followed by pub trivia. It was our week to host pub trivia so I wrote 12 questions about horror/monster movies. It was a lot of fun. Justus' category was still shots from movies where someone edited out the person's skin so all you had was the background and their clothing to guess the movie. It was kind of an easy round, but totally a lot of fun. The first round was done by Phil and every question was about military history. The scores were very low. Another round was done by Don, registered Canadian, and it was all about people on money from around the world. Aside from it being canadian biased, it was just plain hard. People seemed to enjoy it, though. How could they not? The prizes are beer!
After pub trivia, a few of us watched the movie Primer. I think I decided that I didn't like it. It's hard to tell since you have no idea the entire time what the hell is going on. It's essentially about a group of silicon valley nerds inventing a time-travel machine in their garage, but it totally throws causality to the wind. It was totally some pretentious sciencey-nerd's idea of a way to look cool to people who don't know more than him. It's like if I made a movie...
After a disappointing movie and weak beer, I went to sleep.
Yesterday, after turning in the movie, I actually finished some data analysis that had been giving me trouble for over a week. That took pretty much all day, but after dinner I was able to sneak in a half hour band practice and then played volleyball until almost midnight. The band is really starting to come together.
Concert and film festival are tomorrow night. It's going to be a crazy night. Parties like this are few and far between and the station really comes together and has a blast.
There are some very interesting people down here. Yesterday, I had a long conversation with my friend Mark. Mark has to be in his 50's by now if not older and has come down here every year for the past decade. He's also the guy I jammed with a lot last year, and the one responsible for getting me plugged into music down here. He was telling me about seeing Pink Floyd in germany in 1972 (before Dark Side of the Moon even came out). He also saw the Grateful Dead in 1970... just incredible. Mark works here for 4 months out of the year, then travels for months, then resumes a job back home for about 6 months. There are a lot of people who do that. They work here for a few months and save up enough money to travel for the rest of the year. It's pretty incredible.
Our winter-over should be getting in today, weather permitting, so there will be another hand to help with the telescope.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Bingo, Film Festival, Fletch
I've had a busy and fun weekend. Saturday, after dinner, I practiced with my band. We had a really good practice and I think we'll have a great show next week. Saturday night was James Brown Bingo. James Brown is the head chef in the galley down here and every once in a while will host a bingo game. I only arrived for the last two rounds, but I think I got the gist of it. James Brown, dressed like William Wallace from Braveheart, complete with kilt, blue face-paint, and sword would pull bingo numbers and yell them to 50 or so drunk people. He would start by yelling the letter and then people would start guessing the number and if you guessed right, he would point at you menacingly and yell "YES!". It was quite a site. Of course, for certain tiles, there are standard responses. For example, if B4 was picked, everyone would yell "and after," or B2 "bomber" or B1 "with the universe". Naturally when O69 was drawn, the crowd would yell wildly. During the last round of bingo, where you had to black out your entire card instead of just get 5 in a row, when O69 was drawn james brown picked up a 3 foot long wooden stirring spoon (more like a paddle) and smashed a giant gingerbread house to pieces. It was quite entertaining. Afterwards, a bunch of us went into the game room and played pool, foosball, and drank. Much later on, I went with the firefighters to the "bar" at summer camp. Summer camp consists of a bunch of Korean War surplus Jamesways, one of which is a lounge that is used as a bar over the weekend. There, we had some whiskey and scotch. Outside of the bar was an ice-core from the Ice Cube experiment. This ice was upwards of 10,000 years old, so I chipped some of this ice off into my drink and had scotch on the 10,000 year old rocks. Thanks again to New Zealand's extraordinarily weak beer, I felt fine the next morning.
That morning there was the Polympics. Originally, the events sounded fun, but then there were all these stupid rules so it was more like games you'd play at a picnic than actual athletic events so I didn't feel like doing them. After lunch, I played volleyball from 2-4:30 and then soccer from 4:30 to 6 so my legs were quite tired after dinner. There's a film festival this weekend called the South Pole International Film Festival, or SPIFF, where people at the south pole make movies and submit them for judging. I decided to borrow an HD camcorder from the IT department, wrote a script, practiced some editing with iMovie and started filming. I plan on trying to make 2 movies: one will just be a documentary-style movie where I interview people around the base as to why they decided to come down here to work and the other will be my best attempt at a coen brothers style movie. The movies are only 5-10 minutes long usually, so it shouldn't take to long to complete... maybe a couple of days. I've got my actors lined up and a camera man and have shot some scenes already. It's a lot of fun. After SPIFF this weekend will be the open mic where my band will be playing. It's going to be a busy weekend.
Last night, after doing some editing, a bunch of us got together in one of the lounges and watched Fletch Lives on VHS. It's funny to watch a VHS movie on an HD tv... It was a very silly movie. Oh Chevy Chase... used to be so funny.
Today, the other guy in my group finishes his work with the telescope, so I can take over and start running the schedules that I want. I'm heading out there after I finish this post.
That morning there was the Polympics. Originally, the events sounded fun, but then there were all these stupid rules so it was more like games you'd play at a picnic than actual athletic events so I didn't feel like doing them. After lunch, I played volleyball from 2-4:30 and then soccer from 4:30 to 6 so my legs were quite tired after dinner. There's a film festival this weekend called the South Pole International Film Festival, or SPIFF, where people at the south pole make movies and submit them for judging. I decided to borrow an HD camcorder from the IT department, wrote a script, practiced some editing with iMovie and started filming. I plan on trying to make 2 movies: one will just be a documentary-style movie where I interview people around the base as to why they decided to come down here to work and the other will be my best attempt at a coen brothers style movie. The movies are only 5-10 minutes long usually, so it shouldn't take to long to complete... maybe a couple of days. I've got my actors lined up and a camera man and have shot some scenes already. It's a lot of fun. After SPIFF this weekend will be the open mic where my band will be playing. It's going to be a busy weekend.
Last night, after doing some editing, a bunch of us got together in one of the lounges and watched Fletch Lives on VHS. It's funny to watch a VHS movie on an HD tv... It was a very silly movie. Oh Chevy Chase... used to be so funny.
Today, the other guy in my group finishes his work with the telescope, so I can take over and start running the schedules that I want. I'm heading out there after I finish this post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)