I was running through the airport with a uzi, and I needed to steal a car quickly. So, I run around nervously until I come across something that stopped me dead in my tracks. "No way!" I yell out loud, but no one seemed to hear me. There parked in front of me was the coolest thing I've seen in a video game all year - which is saying a lot. Without hesitation I ripped the driver from the seat, punched him in the face, and drive away in THE NEWS VAN!



I've been playing ton of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas lately, since it's easy to just pick-up and play, without all the online entanglements. And, now that I can drive a news van around...I'm hooked.

Is it weird that I drive around live van in real life every day, and then play a video game where I drive around a live van?

Hmm. Yeah, weird is probably right. I bet Rasheed or Shaq go home and play themselves on the Playstation - although the NBA games are actually designed for that.

Anyway, I'm always playing out different 'live van scenarios'. Sometimes I'll just drive around and look for a good spot to set up a live shot, which is difficult because of all the criminals around me - which is like actually having to do live shot in Longview, Washington most of the time.



Occasionally I'll just turn on the gangster rap station, and run over pedestrians pretending that I took pain killers before coming to work [which is something they teach us not to do, in live truck safety school. The other thing is "look up and live"].

My favorite scenario: I turn on the "riot mode" and "aggressive drivers" cheat codes, so that the game is complete mayhem, and then I drive around city in the live van trying to cover the riot for the news. The game is cool because the AI makes the 'people' all around you to do really hilarious or interesting stuff. So, sometimes I jump out of the news van and take a screen shot (or blow people up with a rocket launcher).



Of course, I can never get very far in GTA without 'accidentally running over a cop' or 'shooting down a helicopter', and the live van will eventually get demolished as a result.

*sigh*

Good times.

(maybe I should've kept all of that to myself)

I know it's a little late, but I'm finally posting my short holiday film, The Candy Cane Incident on my site. It's a cautionary tale about mixing narcotics and candy canes, as part of one's holiday cheer. It rocked everyone's faces at the festival, and now it can rock yours, as well.



Here are two Real Media clips [many people hate Real Media, but it's the only thing I'm good at streaming].

The Candy Cane Incident - Small [5.8mb]

The Candy Cane Incident - Medium [11mb]

And, Danyk posted his holiday magic film, The Freshmaker on his site. Check it out before he gets sued by Mentos.

The holidays are finally winding down here around LLR headquarters, and I now have a moment to blog about reflect upon the last week. Keep in mind that I'm writing this in a live van, thirty feet away from about a dozen police cars surrounding a car that's mashed into a fence - so I don't have a ton of time to...um...reflect.

Here were the highlights:

1. Drinking
2. Watching the entire Arrested Development Season 1 DVD
3. Playing Scategories.
4. Trying to load 250GB worth of CD's into my itunes folder (so far I'm up to 3.6 days, something like 800 songs, but sadly, only like 4GB so far).
5. Not working.

My favorites were #1 and #5 (in no particular order). Oh! I also had another favorite thing: My robot scarf! [not to be confused with last year's treasure, the robot stocking]







I'm going to be the coolest photog with a robot scarf standing in front of crime tape this winter!

The Season's Bleedings film festival (sponsored by my blog) was this past Saturday night, and it was a total blast! While we didn't fill the whole ballroom (who could?), we had a great crowd, smooth drinks, and watched a ton of gory films. What better way to really ring in the holidays?



Kitty and I threw the event as a fundraiser for p;ear, a kick-ass homeless youth shelter/art gallery in downtown PDX. It was a sequel to our indie-gore fest two years ago, but with a nice holiday theme. Basically, homemade films, and crazy/sexy cabaret acts.

Here's was some of the pre-show press:

Portland Tribune
As a basis for a philanthropic endeavor, it’s certainly original: a horror film festival — with an emphasis on guts, gore and gruesome doings — serving as a fund-raising vehicle for a local nonprofit. It’s audacious as all get-out.[more>>]

Willamette Week:
If you were one of the people fortunate enough to attend the last Gore-o-Rama-a-Go-Go, then you know exactly how sick and depraved things got. There were films that could gag a maggot. But despite the lowbrow orgy of violence and gore, the whole event was a fundraiser for p:ear, the local nonprofit that works with homeless youth, providing art, education and counseling. [Willamette Week - temp. link]

I just got back around 300 photos from the show, and I posted some of my favorites on a special Season's Bleedings Photo Gallery page. I put captions on about five photos before I lost interest in it, but you'll get the idea.

Enjoy!

--------------------------------------------

karaoke attack

My friend Rich has taken up the job as LXD videographer in my absence, and caught some truly memorable moments over the last few weeks. Here's some of my favorite karaoke clips:

LL Robot and Bryan (performing "Eye of the Tiger")

Hasser (performing "All by Myself")

-------------------------------------------

Gotta get back to work! Only two more days of news stories about meth-related crime, until my holiday break! [I should've done a 12 days of xmas thing with that...oh well, next year.]

Today our station was visited by Panasonic sales reps, hoping to sell us on their next-generation news camera: The DVCPRO P2.

As luck would have it, I was assigned to go shoot with the camera for the day, as if I owned it. So my reporter and I loaded into the news van, along with one of the Panasonic reps, and made TV magic. The guy sorta followed us around while we were shooting the story, but kept back out of the way. I felt like I was on a date with the camera, and he was the ever-watchful chaperone. (And, he totally didnt catch me making-out with the P2.)



I do like the puzzled look on his face when I left his sight, and then came back a moment later with my wide angle lens attached to it.

Some of my favorite features:



The camera had a standard viewfinder, AND a flip out color LCD montior. And, while it would probably take me less than a week to destroy the monitor - it was still a nice feature.



The camera 'records' on PC-slot sized cards, and can hold five of them. When you're done shooting, you just pop out the disk, plug it into the computer, and you're editing. There's also a PC-slot in the top for a future wifi transmitter.

The card slots, and media are truly the future digital video recording, but the TWO THOUSAND DOLLAR list price for EACH P2 card is a rough obstacle for stations (and Panasonic) to overcome.

Oh! The coolest feature was the 'recording buffer.' The camera is constantly recording and buffering, so that when you hit the record button it buffers back to up to FIFTEEN SECONDS before that. I like to think of it as the 'holy crap!' button. As in: you see something amazing/insane/terrible, and can hit record button the moment after you realize what you saw and say 'holy crap.' The camera has to be pointed in the right direction, of course.

Anyway, at the end of the day I felt like the mother at the end of "The Good Son". With each arm she held the two boys from falling over a dangerous cliff. Does she drop her evil-yet-flesh-and-blood son (Macaulay Culkin), or her distant-sweet-natured nephew (Elijah Wood)?

Last night I shot my little short film, "The Candy Cane Incident" for the Season's Bleedings film festival this weekend. It was so fun - it would've been a blast, even if it wasn't for the show.

That's not to say the evening wasn't without any problems. One of our cast members (not pictured) decided he wanted to go get some drinks at the Matador and up-and-left before we were done..or even half-done...filming. It totally ruined our continuity, and pretty much fucked the whole film. So, Hasser and the gang all voted and we agreed to COMPLETELY START OVER at 1:30am.



My favorite thing about shooting the film (aside from the 'cranial drill scene') was the "Bottle of Blood." I found it at Goodwill back when I was Halloween shopping and picked one up for such an occasion. I looked at my brand new Doc Martens today, only to find them covered with red dye.





I scanned over the footage today, and it looks totally rad. But, I feel guilty looking at all my actors covered in fake blood. I wonder if the red dye ever came out of their skin...



If you wanna see it - come to the show this Saturday!

If you told me that someday I'd be kickin' back in a TV newsroom, checking out an issue of something called News Hound magazine - I would've said, "What are you talking about?" and then, most likely, "How can you see into the future? I'm fascinated" and then there would be a whole conversation about divination or clairvoyance or other stuff from those supernatural Time/Life books I read as a kid.

Where was I? Oh yeah...

Well, today was that day.



I especially like the article about newsroom romance. Although, I didn't get to read much else because "they" saw me sitting around doing "nothing", and I soon found myself "working"...for that is the life of a "news hound", such as myself.

I have the sudden urge to start a competing magazine now, called News Fancy (perhaps published by Meredith?). I'll keep you posted.

look live (n)
A taped reporter stand-up that's designed to give the impression it's a live shot.

Saw this post on Lost Remote the other day. It featured a reporter's unedited, taped 'look lives' accidentally airing at the top of a newscast. (Did I forget to mention it featured the F-BOMB?)



[link to WMA video clip (vartv.com)]

I know it's the reporter who was swearing, but I feel bad. Once he taped that thing it was totally out-of-his-control. The photographer could've cued the tape wrong. The live truck guy could've played the wrong clip. An editor back at the station....well, you get the picture.

I personally seen/recorded worse things in the raw video. I once had a reporter tell the people watching to 'go away', and then called a guy an asshole in the take after that. [NO: I'm not naming names. YES: I still have the tape.]

Where was I? Oh yeah...

I found the clip amusing, but horrifying because that could easily happen to me (and by 'me' I mean the reporter I'm with). There's always one crew from our station that has to tape a 'look live' at the end of the night. There's a bunch of random reasons that a station would choose to do a 'look live' [can't get live shot from a certain location, crew moved to different story, overtime issues]. Some stations have a problem with it, and there's good arguments for either side.

When we do 'look lives,' we - very deliberately - do not say the word "live" or show a "live bug" on the corner of the screen. Maybe it's because we pay all these reporters to be on TV, so we squeeze out some extra 'face time' now and again. Can't let all the "lens meat" go to waste.

Anger Management

Taping look lives can be a pain, and there are times where we'll shoot tons of takes. It can be really frustrating, but at least you can get it perfect - rather than have people doing "shout outs" on live television. But, you can't let the rage take over.

Using Wilson as my example, I made a handy chart to illustrate how to overcome and deal with the difficulty of doing look lives:





Hope it helps.

Updates for everyone!

Taking a night off from Everquest 2, I've decided to get my much-neglected blog back into shape. I was able to get back all the posts I lost and archiving problems I had here all fixed. Thanks to everyone who took their time to send me suggestions - much appreciated.

As much as I want to write all about my online adventures, I remember this quote from my old-pal Seanbaby, lamenting about me and Hasser EQ dorks who talk about it:

"Since this game is played over the computer, most people would never know you played it unless you told them. However, if you’ve ever known anyone that’s played Everquest, you know that the part of their brain that allows them to keep the details of their quest for level 8 Vorpal chaps to themselves has long since been destroyed."

And, in case you didn't notice: Seanbaby updated his website a little while ago. Now I can stop getting emails asking about it.


The new look
Since my blog was a mess anyway, I decided to bang out a new css template, and sorta simplify everything. I was surfing around various news station's websites and decided to go with the LLR News Team.

In the news business it's called the "Mount Rushmore" when you're showing the busts of the news team all huddled together on the station's marketing and websites. That's what I decided to do. The dorky silver robot with glasses is the socially retarded weatherman.

Goodbye HaloScan
You are more trouble than I'd like to deal with anymore. I'm gonna see if the Blogger comment-thing works any better. [I even kept the dumb, Blogger profile thing too.]

A haiku for my old comment system:

comments do not work
id rather just use blogger
feel free to discuss

Shout out to my friends who recently made blogs:
Dinah: "Puff Piece"
Mac - "Macslost"
Mike M. - "Homemade Fireworks"

Interesting/disturbing:
Military robots with guns. Might as well just call it Skynet.
Tru Calling: Season 1 DVD. You didn't watch the series. Now you can not watch the DVD!
Everquest 2 fake-money already for sale. It's a vibrant economy, that Norrath.

Season's Bleedings
Portland's premier (and I think only) holiday-indie-horror festival, Season's Bleedings is less than two weeks away! But, the deadline to submit films is this upcoming weekend. Kitty and I are working our tails off to get this show together. Many of my friends said they're making some holiday short for the festival. How's that coming, by the way? Let me know if anyone wants to get a film and needs a few extra days...

Just looked, and I think blogger has erased my entire blog, the handy archive system, and all that stuff. The old pages are still there, but it's all messed up.

Although, my blog still says I have all my posts.
Weird.

Oh man.
This does not look good for LL Robot.

Only one thing can cheer me up: this photo.

Been locked in the "sweeps loop" for the last few weeks. Non-stop grind at work. So, today's much belated post is a typical example of my day at work.

Here we go:

We shoot our story and all that stuff, and then get to our live shot location to put the story together. Most of the time, it'll be a place where the event/crime/action is, but there are occasions where we will just park in an emplty parking lot away from all the meth heads and crazy folk.

When we get there, I hop out of the news van and walk all around making sure there's no over head power lines that I could deploy the mast [see figure below] into.



At work we have to go through these regular safety sessions where we watch videos of live truck operators getting fried by powerlines, and simulations of a news team getting ready for a live shot. We all call it "look up and live" training. I hope I don't sound like I'm knocking it too much - it's a good thing.

And just in case we forget, there's handy notices all over the trucks.



After it's all safe, we throw out the cones - a 'safety perimeter', if you will.



And then after all that safety stuff (time willing) is done, out comes the PS2 that I keep in my special 'live truck toolbox'. I have a travel case Xbox, but I always forget to bring it with me. However, the PS2 lives in my toolbox.



Right now, I've been playing a ton of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I never get anywhere in the game, since I only get to play it for like 30-40 minutes while the reporter writes our story. So, basically I just go on a cop killing rampage drive around the city.



Occasionally, I'll hand over the controller and my reporter will run around the game, getting into trouble and running over pedestrians.


So to recap our safety lesson:

1. "Look up and live"
2. Playstation 2
3. Edit story, live shot, blah blah blah...