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these days are getting shorter
2003-02-11 12:35:32
Determined to complete the current project under schedule, and finish the review backlog while I'm at it. Sure, it looks like the going's slow, but that's 13 episodes I have to cut through, and I'm well on pace for well over 100% overage.
I've only got like 11 or 12 more CDs to review, and then I can start ginning up a basic site design. Of course, if I ever get paid for that computer I sold, or ever get my refund from CompUSA, I'll probably be snapping up a bunch more albums to complicate the problem.
Current video: Dark Tranquillity, "Hours Passed In Exile" to Saishu-Heiki Kanojo. Progress check: 27%. Expected catalog number: #69. I did a purge on the ideas list last night and got rid of anything that hinged solely on lip-synch. I was ready to kill myself after the strain of finishing #68, and I couldn't face ever doing a video like that again. About 60 seconds of footage cut of the 570 I'll need.
--Kai out
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as the flesh of the dead
2003-02-10 12:47:18
Bad video. Brain dirty. #68 is finally up, so I can stop worrying over it. No idea how or even if I'll be able to foist this tasteless wonder on the public. Some post-production to make the mixdown/distro version, and after that, I can get cranking on a video I can actually be proud to claim my own.
The weekend went alright, as I got the first volume of Argent Soma, started AzuDai on tape, and finished off HYD at long last. I ended up on the wrong side, but it wasn't too traumatic, and it kinda goes with the territory that occasionally you're going to join up with someone that the author isn't quite as fond of. I also nabbed everything I asked for digital, which was somewhat of a shock, as it included the highly rated Wolf's Rain. If I can get a couple more eps of this and some time to listen to _Nattens Madrigal_ again, I may put together something to thoroughly torture the AWA 9 Pro audience with.
Current video: Dark Tranquillity, "Hours Passed In Exile" to Saishu-Heiki Kanojo. Progress check: 20%. Expected catalog number: #69. This one's headed for Shoujocon, and maybe to AX as well. Probably start work on it for real, not just getting eps loaded, tomorrow, with a two-week timeframe to completion.
--Kai out
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turning home still
2003-02-07 11:52:21
this one's quick, I've got a bunch of stuff to do before club. First, total reviews now up to 405. My ears are still smarting from sitting through Bathory's awful _Requiem_. Second, I couldn't get the new Jump (supposedly out now), so I nabbed another weapons mag in the hope of getting more detailed info about the Barret M82A1, which I foolishly wrote into my book without getting a proper tech-spec background on. In the course of which research I learned that Carlos "White Feather" Hancock's old sniper record of 2,100 yards has been broken by a Canadian sniper operating with US forces in Afghanistan with a confirmed kill at 2,430 meters. That's about a mile and a half away from the target. Reach out and touch someone indeed.
On the subject of weapons, I was looking over the new Call of Cthulhu d20 handbook, and the combat section blew my mind. It's like Sagara Sousuke put the damn thing together; pages and pages of firearms information, cartridge caliber conversion charts, and what have you. No sense at all. On the rare occasion when one of Lovecraft's protagonists pulls out a revolver, he pulls out a goddamned *revolver*, not a Webley or an Enfield or a Peacemaker in .45-70 Long Colt. You can give a paramilitary game an aspect of horror, but you'll kill a real horror game by bogging it down in detailed weapons crap. When I wrote The Awakening, I deliberately kept away from that sort of thing; too much focus on weapons realism detracts from the story you're trying to shape as a GM.
Current video: ********, "***'* * **" to ****** ** ****! Progress check: 84%. Expected catalog number: #68. I haven't done as effects-intensive a video since #46; 6 cuts done, 10 to go, all lipsynch. It'll probably wrap over the weekend, and I'll end up putting off the compositing for the next one till after clipping is done, just from considerations of burnout avoidance.
--Kai out
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for once and for all
2003-02-06 12:13:03
Currently in the middle of now two library projects; 402 of about 430 reviews are done and ordered, and I'm plugging away at fixing all my catalog links now that the new system is in place at the AMV DC. No sleep til goddamned Brooklyn.
I've decided not to do the intro to the current vid; it opens off fine as is. So that means that I have more time now for the lipsynch editing I need to do in the body of the video. This one'll have mostly a straight-cut feel, but the amount of effects-level work that I'll have to do is intimidating.
Club looks nifty for tomorrow, but I can't wait till next week, when Haibane Renmei starts. "Selfish curiosity", as some blokes from the Midlands said a while back. Hopefully, I'll reap the last volume of HYD this week and put that particular demon to rest.
Current video: ********, "***'* * **" to ****** ** ****! Progress check: 79%. Expected catalog number: #68. The video is drafted, but I have a lot of work to do with regards some attention-intensive processes. It may be finalized by this time tomorrow, but probably won't be complete until the weekend.
Just have to hit the IRS, and I'll have my last cut in place.
--Kai out
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down went the boat
2003-02-05 13:03:14
reviews done this morning: 5
reviews left to do: 37
reviews collated into alphabetical order last night: ~390
albums I didn't have listed that I had to add to the master list, then put in the to-review pile: ~5
And somehow I managed to get a good chunk of work done on the current video as well. Somehow, I'll get those reviews done, slap together a rough site design, send 'em off, and start Point of Impact back on the road to relaunch. Completion date on this video gets later all the time; if I do reviews and watch Yawara tonight as planned, then it MAY finish Friday, but probably not. A lot of work between drafting and lipsynch.
I was listening to my master playlist last night while getting reviews in order, and because of my schitzophrenic tastes it's about equally possible to get something like a narration track from a MB drama CD as it is to get some Bay Area thrash. Usually when something like this comes up I skip past it, but this time I just let the track play. The weird part is that I could follow about 80% of the conversation with the same facility with which I listen to German. Time spent listening to Japanese and reading subtitles: 2.5 years. Time spent in formal study of German grammar and vocabulary: 5 years. Throw that at whoever next accuses you of "wasting your time" watching subbed anime.
Current video: ********, "***'* * **" to ****** ** ****! Progress check: 64%. Expected catalog number: #68. Everything's clipped, but I won't know how much I need to do in the way of edit-to-synch until I start drafting. Looking less and less like it's going to have the intro originally planned, but I got nearly all the key shots that I laid out in the storyboard file. Nift.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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