I think I need one of these. The more I think about it, the more I know it to be true. Interactive Mirror from Alpay Kasal on Vimeo.
ch-ch-ch-changes!
I'm giving The Cutting Room Floor a much-needed makeover. While the "Darkwater" theme that comes as a plugin with WordPress was very nice, I didn't really think that it visually represented me as accurately as it could. I feel that this new imagery does a much better job. The background image is something I made in Maya. I took great care to be as accurate as I could. I measured out a typical piece of 35mm film, complete with Dolby, SDDS and optical soundtracks, accurately measured out the sprocket holes, aspect ratio, etc. For the texturing (which involves the colors, images, and actual "texture"), I made as detailed a reproduction as I could in Photoshop and then applied it to my filmstrips. I then mapped the color channel into the transparency channel and set a slight bump map to accurately portray the ridges of the film emulsion. I rendered the whole thing with mental ray. That was a whole lot of technical! If you understood it, cool. If not, just check out the images and marvel at their accuracy and coolness. :) I've been working on it for a while and just got the time to render it recently. Below- the Photoshop reference image :
Compare that to this image from wikipedia. The most interesting part to make was the soundtrack. The "static" shapes between the sprocket holes contains the information for the Dolby Digital soundtrack (see the little "DD" symbol? that's really there!), the two blueish strips of "noise" on the edges contain the information for the SDDS track and the black and white sine wave patterns are the optical soundtrack, read by a lightbulb in the projector.
Pretty cool, eh? I stuck some countdown leader in the middle of the frames and then deformed the strips and added some cool glowey light and some metallic sphere thingies in a sort of "orbit" around the light (just going back to the astronomy interests). I'd love to hear feedback on it- especially if you find it detrimental to the blog reading experience. I tried to be kind to the eyes and I'm still working on the page layout...
"Postartum" Depression?
Words are returning in spades! I've been trying to figure out why I've been so blue lately and realized something that might resonate with others:
I recently finished a screenplay that I had been working on for some time. I knew I had been working on it for at least two years (I started it when I was still living in New York) but a friend actually confirmed for me that I had sent him the first draft in September of 2002! So basically, It's been a project for about four years. In those four years, I abandoned it twice, hacked it pieces, pasted it back together, killed some of my characters and even brought a couple back to life. Needless to say, it’s been in my head for a long time!
Well, about a week ago, I actually typed "The End." Now my mind is reeling! Now what? Now what do I do with this? So I've finished the daunting task of writing 106 pages of story, now I'm faced with the even more daunting task of actually making the film (or worse yet, now people might actually read it, judge it, and the whole thing might not ever become a film)! Plus, there is a bit of…sadness. Now I have to move on and just let the screenplay part of it be what it is. This is much easier said than done.
Since that day, I’ve been moody, prone to crying for no particular reason, tired, argumentative, etc. Most interestingly, I had a very bizarre dream a couple of nights ago: I just had a baby. I kept finding the baby in precarious situations- climbing on scaffolding, swimming underwater, even jumping out of airplanes! I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone else to know that I'd had the baby and was extremely reluctant to nurse it.
All of this suddenly made sense to me- I was suffering from a kind of mild artistic postpartum depression (without all of the chemical changes that go on during childbirth, I admit- though it has been suggested to me several times that the "chemical" thing is there in me as well. My hellish experiences with prescription drug experimentation are fodder for another post!)
I’ve read about this happening with many artists- there’s a sort of mania involved in working on a large project and then a sort of depression when you send your creation out, defenseless in the world, to be scrutinized by curators, festival organizers, etc. Might be one of the reasons why much of my work has never left my house and why many of the talented people I know are "closet" artists! I do know that this has happened to me more than once.
Needless to say, this realization has been a powerful tool for me. It has forced me to start on another project- to have a new focus while people are reading the script and the "what ifs" are floating around my head. I think we all just have to keep plugging away…
A Sample of My Art Work
