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Scrinetunes
Song: Bloodline
Artist: Miles From Nowhere
If you catch me listening to any country music, odds are it'll be the kind with a good dose of southern rock thrown into the mix, which is exactly what this up and coming, four man band out of Texas is doing to turn heads.
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I now realise that for the past six months, or thereabouts, I have been feeling compressed and, perhaps, a little less of myself. Now, suddenly, without having any more choices in front of me than “whatever pops up”, I feel like parts of me are falling out. They aren’t falling out and disappearing, mind you. They are falling out of the tightly packed cupboard that was me and are tumbling down onto the floor at my feet.
And what a joy they are to find. What treasures. They’ve been there all along, tucked away safe and sound. And now they’re found. Fragile at this stage, yes, but they are there nonetheless.
This is an unexplained statement, I know. But, there were these words in my head and this space on our dear old Scrine, so here we all are. Happy and free, lost and found.
It was always my thought that people had the ability to edit their own comments on Scrine, but apparently something was amiss with the code and things weren’t working right. Since I still saw the edit button on my own screen, I thought everyone could, but that wasn’t the case.
Anyway, long story short, I updated the site today and hopefully have everything working properly once again. If you see anything suspicious or broken, let me know.
(In which Bakerina makes her Scrineblog debut, to think some thoughts before sharing them with the PTMYB readership at large)
1. Tuition, room/board, expenses.
Bay Area and Beantown charge approximately the same tuition and on-campus room/board. Living expenses are also approximately the same. Draw.
2. Financial aid.
Beantown has awarded me a scholarship that will cover approximately 22% of my tuition costs over three years. Bay Area has sent me paperwork to apply for a scholarship that will cover about 15% of my tuition costs over three years—assuming that I am one of the lucky scholarship recipients in the first place. Advantage: Beantown.
3. Job opportunities.
Bay Area does not allow first-year students to work. However, Bay Area’s campus is close to the office of an attorney who has suggested that there might be work available for me in the area. ;) Beantown has a co-op program embedded in its curriculum: students attend classes for 11 weeks, then work for the co-op for 11 weeks. Depending on where the co-op places the student, pay ranges from fairly low (for public service work such as with the public defender’s or district attorney’s offices) to almost livable (for big corporate Satan-on-a-retainer firms). Draw.
4. Accessibility to off-campus amenities.
Bay Area has a public transit system, but so far it is an unknown quantity; the school literature says only that it’s *possible* to attend school for three years without requiring a car. Beantown has the T. Draw, with possible advantage to Beantown.
5. Weather.
Okay, on this there’s no contest. Advantage: Bay Area.
6. Food.
Both Bay Area and Beantown have abundance of swell places to eat. Grocery situation uncertain without further study. Rumors abound of swell roadside produce stands in Bay Area. Draw, with possible advantage to Bay Area.
7. Exercise.
Bay Area and Beantown both have huge, sexalicious fitness centers and swimming pools, all free for enrolled students. Draw.
8. Curricula, clinics, special programs.
This is where the choice can really make a body’s head hurt. Bay Area has a community law center, an institute for redress and recovery for the victims of torture and other human rights abuses, the Northern California Innocence Project and several clinics and programs on sustainability. Beantown has clinical courses on criminal advocacy, domestic violence and public health; a program on civil rights and restorative justice, and a project that sends students into Beantown-area public schools to teach constitutional literacy to high school students. I am only scratching the surface of what both schools offer. Draw, dammit, a complete and utter draw.
9. Going home.
Going to Beantown will allow me to come home and see Lloyd at least once or twice a month. Coming home from Bay Area will be considerably more expensive and difficult. On the other hand, one could argue that being 3,300 miles away from home will force me to focus on my coursework, with no distraction. Advantage: Beantown, but since I have no idea whether I’ll be too embedded in first-year boot camp to enjoy any time at home, this might be a draw, too.
10. Future practice, a/k/a Where do you want to be when you grow up?
I have been advised that the place where you pursue your education generally determines where you build your career (or did I get that backwards?) If I go to Beantown, the odds are good that I will work in Beantown or points nearby—or possibly as far south as Washington. If I go to Bay Area, it would not be a stretch to consider one day living and working in San Francisco. Draw, draw, draw.
But wait, there’s a wild card! I have yet to hear from two schools in New York City, one in Pittsburgh and one in Boulder. If any one of those schools offers me a superior financial aid package, all of the previous considerations are hereby rendered null and void.
This was meant to go in the Road Trip’s message area, but it won’t let me (for whatever reason). So, Keith, here’s my response to:
“Boot, how come you didn’t tell me The Cat Empire were so good? Huh, huh, huh? I love them!”Me too! I utterly adore them. I actually 'discovered' them a few years ago in our little Fringe Festival.
- Keith
We were in the Famous Spiegeltent and there were only 15 or so other people. It was so intimate and chilled and funky, all at the same time. Now they fill big halls and I still love them.
Last time was at the Thebbie and they rocked.
So, please accept my most sincere apologies for not telling you about them sooner.
Spending the day moving shelves of books, rearranging your bedroom to make room for them, and all this just so you can build an oversized desk to serve as a movie studio for a bunch of hand-me-down toys is bound to be all the proof anyone needs to know I’m officially off my rocker.
The house just isn’t that big, so where to put the books was a challenge, but who in their right mind wouldn’t want a giant wrap-around bookcase headboard?
See you at the movies.
Well, it didn’t take long for the Pinocchio nonsense to begin escalating. I enjoyed putting together the opening credits for the Pinocchio project that my mind just started snowballing (or maybe it’s a meltdown, hard to tell). I started thinking of scenes and story lines and ways to visually bring this all together.
First thing I did was hunt down some free scriptwriting software to help with the writing. If I’m going to being doing voices for several characters, I needed a clear and easy way to read and record. What I came up with was Celtx, which looks like it’ll handle the job just fine.
The second thing that I noticed right away was that I was out of space before I even begin filming. The Pinocchio office set took up the whole corner of my desk, and with the other sets I had in mind, it seemed like I would be constantly taking down and putting up the sets, not to mention what to do with them when they weren’t being used. Then there was the problem of continuity. All that moving around would make it almost impossible to keep things in the same place, for instance. So the only logical solution (and here I’m thinking maybe brain meltdown again) was to clear out all the book shelves on the back wall to make room for a semi-permanent table of some sort, which would be big enough for at least four permanent sets, which would be enough to serve as the main backdrops for the filming. The office, the courtroom, an outdoor scene of some sort, and some other place that the characters would visit on a regular basis. So last night I started clearing out the books and will finish that up this morning.
And then there was the problem with characters. Barbie dolls pose somewhat of a problem for a director whose co-stars are roughly 5” tall (6” in their actor’s guild profiles). Plus, I don’t know how many of you know this, because I found out the hard way, but Barbie feet aren’t flat. Apparently they aren’t supposed to stand up on their own but require the help of tiny plastic high heels, which I can guarantee you aren’t going to be found in the bargain bin down at Goodwill.
But where there’s a will, there’s a way. Or maybe in this case it should be “where there’s an obsession, there’s a way,” because after thinking about it for a few days, I finally remembered those little, posable wooden figures down at the art shop. They seemed perfect, so I hopped in the car and headed down there. Thirty minutes later I was popping the first Barbie head onto the new frame. Perfect. The characters were now roughly the same height, were very posable, and easily stood on their own, leaving me now only with the task of finding little 4” outfits for the characters, which I’m hoping won’t be too hard. I’m sure I’m going to have to do some fabricating on my own, which I’m prepared to do to. Realism, you know. Can’t forget realism.
If anyone has an interest in contributing any doll heads or doll clothing, little characters, toy props, or anything they might think would be nice to see in the Pinocchio show, I would be more than happy to have the help. If interested, let me know and I’ll give you an address to mail things to.
The Pinocchio, Attorney at Law intro is nearly complete.
Two different sizes for your viewing pleasure.
320 x 240 Quicktime (4.5 mb)
640 x 480 Quicktime (14.2 mb)
Just a very quick and short preliminary clip to see how it streams, double check font sizes and that sort of important Pinocchio-related business.
click image to play
In a small but intimate ceremony early this morning, Scrine founding member Keith flew to Florida to personally welcome e into The 300 Club, presenting her with a framed certificate commemorating her achievement and a gold watch fob he’d found in the diner car of a train back in 1912. “The watch itself is long gone,” Keith said, addressing those in attendance, “but like e’s constant presence and dedication to Scrine, the fob lives on.” The guest of honor wore a beautiful handmade hat brimming with feathers and bobbles and a pair of stunning, purple cowboy boots. Keith, since he was traveling, was dressed in formal attire, capped off with a simple but elegant bowler.
For those of you anxiously awaiting the debut of Pinocchio, Attorney at Law, rest assured that work continues, but unfortunately at a much slower pace than I initially planned. Turns out I don’t know what I’m doing exactly, so figuring out how to make these toys do what I want them to do is taking a bit of trial and error. I’m experimenting with a couple different things to see what works best for me, somewhat produces the results I see in my head, and most importantly, won’t burn up all my free time.
So far I’ve invested about $15 for some foam board for backdrops, another $5 on a couple of dolls down at Goodwill, and $10 at Walmart for two gooseneck desk lamps to help with lighting. I have a movie program on my computer that would do everything I’m imagining, but I’ve never used it (although I’ve tried a couple of times) and the learning curve is just too time consuming for me right now. So I’ll probably end up sticking with iMovie for the moment, which don’t get me wrong, allows for plenty of creativity. The major drawback so far is the limitation of being able to work with only one layer of video at a time, which completely rules out one idea I wanted to try.
I always end up making these sorts of things much more difficult than they need to be.