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Book Blog Dedicated to Paranormal Romance Books. Suggestions and Comments are More than Welcome.
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Happy holidays, everyone! For all you broke filmmakers, writers, artists, and other people with more heart than money, here's a free way to spread good cheer to charities and start the new year right. CauseWorld is an iphone app where you direct sponsors like Citi and Kraft to donate money to the charity of your choice just by walking into a store. Here's a story on it. Pretty sweet, huh?
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Check out the story of the guy who made a YouTube video for $300 and landed a $30M deal with Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures. He put up the video on a Thursday and by Monday, he had a bidding war going for him. Pretty cool.
Here's the video:
1) He bought premade 3D models of a robot and a spaceship. You can buy this stuff for pretty cheap over various 3D model sources on the Internet. Actually, you can get a lot of this stuff for free--it just depends on whether you find the model that works for you. He then duplicated and animated them in a 3D program like Cinema 4D, Maya, 3ds Max, Lightwave, etc. If he's a desktop creator, he may have used a program like Adobe After Effects to combine the live video with the CGI. It may have cost him $300 to make the movie, but there's a good chance that he needed about $10k worth of gear to bring it all together. That's assuming it's all done on the cheap with a desktop or three (the render time has to be horrendous for something like this--he would need to work in parallel).
2) He bought a collection of premade explosions. This stuff can be cheap or expensive, depending on where you get it. The explosion that impressed me the most is the domed building. Either he bought one premade (you can sometimes buy a 3D model that comes premade with an animation of it exploding), or he had to make the model of the building (which you can do with the 3D programs listed above), then create an animation of it exploding. If those buildings are not actual models of the buildings in Montevideo, then I'm less impressed. But I'll bet it is.
That animation looks professional. What strikes me as odd is that the green screen of the kid with the robots behind him is not perfect, which tells me that maybe he doesn't do that kind of VFX for a living. But the 3D stuff was great. Getting that kind of smooth motion and explosion action takes some practice...unless he bought it premade. But $300 is not a lot, even in Uruguay, so I'm guessing he had to make at least some of that himself. Very nice work.
3) If he was using After Effects or some such program, he can duplicate actors into a crowd, or maybe he managed to get a lot of people to act for free with no food (feeding a crowd that size would eat his whole budget up in no time). He can also create fog.
The water splashing, and the dust puffing when the robots stamp their feet are nice touches, and probably not easy to do. The camera work is great too because it not only increases the tension, it doesn't let you look too closely at the CGI, which is very important for suspension of disbelief. He got a lot of things right beyond the technical stuff.
Overall, it's great, and he obviously put in a lot of work. Kudos to him. What's strange to me, though, is that so many studios would come to him and offer up so much money over a cool video that had...um...no story. Maybe 2012 did so well (biggest box office hit in the history of both India and China) that they figured stories are overrated (and so darn hard to get right!) so long as you have engaging destruction. Well, they may be right, up to a point.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
http://www.myspace.com/trickerytraxxx
MY GRANDFATHER AND ALBERT EINSTEIN
is it a coincidence that man I have to love ? no! coincidence can be explained by it's own nature.
Girl: Daddy, I’ll be out tonight. I’ll be back but late. Deduction. You know!
Dad: A moment that is as short as individible is called ‘a moment’. You come back a moment before that.
Girl: If time interval could be reduced to infinite, everything would be resolved of our own accord. So you want me back before that moment, is that right? Like forever!
Unfortunately, imagination of infinite, brings heavy logical conflicts along with it.
Dad: It’s better than being left at the street forever. Especially when we limit ourselves with literal meanings of numbers (such as noon 12), nothing makes eternity. Besides, every moment that forms time is the same with the other one. You won’t go at noon either. Your grandfather and Albert Einstein formed basic stones of physics with this kind of unchangeable principles and they grounded ways of thinking on ‘no moment that takes place in extent time is special’.
So the girl enters the kitchen. Her mother and brother are there:
Girl: Mom, nature is dominated by coincidences at the smallest extent time unit. Let me out at least for an hour. I believe that the man I love will be there and I trust my instincts.
Mom: Everything that is regular can be seen in a wide perspective. Where are you up to, at meal time? Set the table. We can begin to eat. Deduction…
Girl: What will we eat? Pine cone?
Son: Chaotic behaviour is dependent on deterministic laws, but it also seem very irregular to an eye that isn’t used to those. Anyway… I will leave too, we can go together if you’d like to.
Mom: If you’ll go to the same place, all right then.
Girl: Will you follow my moves step by step? If someone was capable of analizing all forces that effects in nature and to identify the mutual situations of the elements that united them and someone capable to analize their greatness (gravity), in this same formula, along with the movement of the biggest substances of universe, the lightest atom’s and my movements would take place. Will you follow me step by step?
Mom: Everything would be within that identifying and realizing self’s knowledge, past would be just as clear as future to their eyes. You may begin with where you were yesterday, if you’d like to. And I don’t mind if you fall in love a little late. When you move from one time point to another, the point that belongs to them moves too, a moving point shapes a curve, and this curve is the representative projection of whole system’s future behaviour. We may see the important features of dynamics by observing this curve. For example, if the curve closes winding, it means that both populations are following a periodical revolution, repeating the same values continously.
Girl: Like a dance trend too?
Son: Discovery of chaos, brought a basic mistake into light regarding the way we perceive the relationship between these rules and the behaviour caused by these. They learned that I failed today. (to the sister) They’re a little tensed. Maybe I should be the driver. Not an industry engeneer.
Mom: Before it was thought that deterministic causes were supposed to create regular results; but today it is observed they may create too irregular results easily that can be interpreted as random chance. What car are you talking about? You both will be home tonight.
And mom mixes yogurt and water to make ayran and the moment she turns the mixer on, ayran is all over the place.
Mom: Please help me clean this mass.
Girl: Mixing is a chaotic process, only here at home. I think out these in the club, it is better and safe. You should see the bartenders.
Mom: Chaos, on the otherhand, also acknowledges us that things we see as randomness are results of simple laws.
Son: Chaos is not coincidental, it is based on behaviour that may appear to be coincidental but it really is a beahviour based on clear laws. Chaos is the code form of order.
Blinks implying that they may go.
Girl: A chaotic system, reacts to exterior events faster and with less effort compared to a system that is not chaotic: this is called chaotic controls.
She implies that they can go.
Dad (enters the kitchen) : Just keep silent…
Mom: Chaos shows that systems that are based on simple laws can act in a complicated manner to our surprise. Pull yourselves together. What is it under the smoke and all? Are you crazy? Aaaa!
Girl: Yes I am, I claim.
And she thanks God, she praises.
Son: You take care of the blackhole. That is easier…
Dad: Chaos theory is not a physics theory or mathematical induction in terms of its structure. It is a method that explains totaly the tendency of parts of physical reality. The shapes that smoke create in the air may seem as products of irregular and independent coincidences.
Mom: This way you act at home today is…
Girl: Fly butterfly! Why you need an effect?
Son: Chaos is development industry. I might want to graduate.
Girl: I have a test on chaos. Allright. So we stay.
Here are many important lessons for all of us.
The world can not be all chaotic but all probable versions of different effects is possible. Such as the differences that coincidental formulas don’t include. The problem gets more complicated with the first solar flair! Thanks to Ian Stewards ‘Nature’s Numbers’ book. I based this story on that, wishing all the best for all and the flow of acception. No doubt!
You didn’t miss a thing.
Next: A friend and a lover are two different things! Things of soul …
For the first time, I have heavily censored a post. I am strongly pro-1st Amendment, and it doesn't sit right with me to do this. But there is no resolution of this situation that is going to make anyone feel better, so I have decided to respect the wishes of my friend's family and redact the post I wrote about my reaction to my friend's suicide.
It’s taken me long hours to convince myself that this family member’s not-so-veiled threat of litigation over something in which s/he has no rights needs to be translated. This translation should read: “I am in unimaginable pain, and if you do this for me, there’s a chance that the pain might be a little more bearable for today.”
I have been telling myself that compassion for the living is more important than a memorial for the dead. That whatever it is I’m feeling is just a drop in the tsunami of tragic feelings her family is dealing with. Any unkind thing I say to them now will be carried for the rest of their lives, and it can’t be taken back next week after I’ve cooled off. I keep telling myself this, but I still feel raw about it.
Per their request, I am removing almost every detail about her in my post, which makes the whole post quite ironic when read in context. Also at the family’s request, I am removing a heart-felt poem written by her which was posted in the comments section by someone who loved her. It is full of despair and beautifully touching. It is my understanding that this poem was published on the Internet. I firmly believe that a writer who publishes her poem would want it read, felt, and appreciated for as long as possible…
…which brings me right back to the mantra of “Compassion for the living is more important than a memorial for the dead, goddammit.”
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
I stopped posting to my blog when something shocking and personal happened, and I didn't know whether it was right to post it for the world to read or not. On the one hand, a woman cutting herself off from her friends and committing suicide in a rented attic seemed deeply private. On the other hand, no one knowing about her life and death just seemed wrong. It bothered me that no one would use the word “suicide” and that people suddenly only talked about her in a circular way, as if tacitly suggesting that she never existed.
I ended up not posting about it. But then I couldn't really pretend it didn't happen and post about happy events. Hence the long break from my blog.
She was a beautiful person and a
beautiful writer.
[--EDIT NOTE: There used to be a paragraph here that described what she was like and my fond memories of her. But her family has requested that I delete it. Everything I deleted for them from the original post is indicated by --DELETED--. For ruminations on why I agreed and my feelings about this, see Jane Doe's Suicide Post--]
No one seems to know what happened. [-- DELETED--] had a brief memorial service for her but I heard that it turned into a discussion of people wondering what happened.
I did a search for her on the net. There's a mention of her publication in a respected literary magazine, and her name is listed as a volunteer on [--DELETED--]. And that's it. No obituary or any mention of her existence. It's sad to think that this is the most any of you will know about her. She was one of those special people worth knowing...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
This month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The challenge is to write 50,000 words during the month of Nov. I dove in immediately after the World Fantasy Convention. The great people I met at the convention must have inspired me because I've been on fire since then. I'm writing at a record-breaking speed for me. Yesterday was my most productive day at 3,700 words. That's a long way from the 1,000 word glass ceiling I used to live under.
I'm off to LA tomorrow for a filmmaking seminar so I needed to meet my 25,000 word goal for Sunday by today. Good thing I'm deadline driven. I'm now at 25,349 words. Yay!
Now if I can just keep myself from being distracted by my lust for a new netbook, I'll have a very rough draft of a novel to work with by mid-Dec. I'm keeping my fingers crosssed.
I have read what I consider the top three Vampire Romance/Mystery book series that are out there. My Vampire interest was recently acquired through the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer, however I searched for a more adult approach on the subject matter and this is what I recommend.
But there’s a far greater danger threatening Bon Temps. A race of unhuman beings—older, more powerful, and more secretive than vampires or werewolves—is preparing for war. And Sookie finds herself an all-too human pawn in their battle.
