I love cassettes

About ten years ago a good friend of mine made fun of me for still owning cassette tapes. This must have been Friendster or something like that cause I know it was online, but before I joined FB.

Now, cassette tapes are "back in fashion". So, I guess I'm being that guy and saying "I like them before they were cool!" But really - THIS IS WHY I LOVE CASSETTE TAPES!
* the moments of silence are when the tape automatically stopped cause it was getting stuck*

Internal and External perceptions of LA

"I just want to be in a swimming pool, eating tacos and signing autographs" - "The Smithereens" the movie one of the down and out character's says about moving to LA while living in a scummy basement apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

They say that when you visit Venice, Italy you need to arrive at it by the sea.  Venice is a magical place where all your romantic impressions from movies and history come true.  And this perception is solidified if you literally approach it properly. I, on the other hand, arrived to Venice for the first time by train.  Which means I passed through Mestre before I got to Venice.  Actually, my hostel was in Mestre and I stopped off and walked around that city for a couple hours before departing for Venice.  If Venice is a magic dreamland then Mestre is an industrial nightmare.  Most cities have a mix of "nice" qualities and necessary, but "ugly" qualities, but when faced with a place that needs to exist as a fiction then all the necessary aspects of it get shoved into a nearby area and the local commerce tries as much as possible to get visitors to ignore it.  Or sometimes, like in the case of North Vegas, be afraid of it.
Still, I was absolutely glad I went through Mestre and got a chance to see what a completely rejected working class construction zone was like where there is practically nothing "nice" or "beautiful" about the entire place.  I guess it might seem strange, but I have never really agreed with most of society on these terms of "beauty", "good", "prosperity", etc.  Often I find things that are supposed to look beautiful to actually look very ugly and visa verse.  This particularly true with modern architecture.  As one of the last created cities on earth Los Angeles as some of the most diverse architecture and it can change dramatically within a span of 10 feet.

One of the most apt and concise descriptions of the conundrum of LA I found in a somewhat creative bureaucratic text book from 1955 titled  The Metropolis: Is Integration Possible? which is part of the series Metropolitan Los Angeles - A Study in Integration [the entire book is quite facinating because it give eloquent and complex descriptions for a purpose that is clearly supposed to be quite dry given chapters titled "Local Governments - Your Concern", "Water Supply - Your Heritage", "Protective Forces - Your Safety", etc]:

"Los Angeles and its environs are many things to many people.  The metropolis spreads out across the coastal plain and its surroundings valleys in a turning areas, farm lands and orchards, industrial centers and oil fields.  No other metropolitan area in the United States, or perhaps even the world, is so diversified and decentralized.  Consider the dilemma of the visitor from New York or Chicago who is completely at a loss because he can find no particular place to pause, as in Time Square or The Loop, and say to himself, 'This is Los Angeles'."

With such a short history as a city Los Angeles approaches itself in a very "modern" way.  If cities were humans who had personalities then Los Angeles reached adolescence and its most influential time period in the 1950's.  The biggest explosion of the cinema industry, automobiles, suburbs, microwave dinners and disposable products.  It is a disposable city.

How can a city express an adjective such as disposable? If you spend any time in virtually any city that is older then LA you quickly notice that there are a lot more older and classic buildings then in LA.  However, often, especially in California, many buildings are not necessarily older then LA, but they are much more cared for.  Simply spend some time in downtown Los Angeles and you can see a dozen buildings that are over 100 years old.  There are a few, like the Eastern Building, that are pristine and well cared for, elegant, beautiful and decadent.  However, there are hundreds of others that are decaying, rotting and falling apart.  Why?  It's quite easy.  Just like the City Market of LA (which I describe in a previous entry) many buildings in LA develop a certain amount of decay where it becomes more of a nuisance to repair then it is to destroy entirely and rebuild a new building entirely.  It a way it's a perpetual process.

Let's take a recent example at my armamada, the University of Southern California.  Just a few years ago they constructed a new Building for the Cinema School.  The Lucas building.  This was to replace the old Lucas building (both created from huge donations from, you guessed it, George Lucas).  The old building was only built sometime in the 80's, but just over 20 years later the University needed to fix so much in the building and, according to the Dean, there were so many new restrictions in relation to earthquake safety that it was cheaper and easier to just tear down that building and build a new one all together.  So, now the old building is just a memory.  It is disposable. Get rid of the old to make way for the new.  When the old is just out of style that it's an eyesore and just before it becomes beautiful again as a historic relic.

So, this is what real estate developers do.  They wait for a building to die, in a sense.  They want a building to become an eyesore (or become a hazard) in some cases for much older buildings that have a historic value to it.  That way they can bypass city laws forbidding destruction of historical landmarks.  It might take 5 or 10 years, but eventually they will have their way and the city looses more of it's historic culture and instead is replaced with the cookie cutter machine of big industry where everything should look the same. Every Walmart looks the same, every high rise, every 7-11 and eventually everything will look and be the same.

Enjoy it while we can.

Obituary for the LA City Market

For those who don't know. The most amazing complexes in the entire city of LA is the City Market of Los Angeles. This is the long giant two square block complex of loading docks that appears to be at least 80 years of age. Surrounded by San Pedro, 9th, 11th and San Julian streets the complex is one of the most negelected, over used and amazing constructs. More then anything this building represents the beauty of collective construction, neglect and pieced together necessity. More specifically the entire place was originally used for loading and unloading of goods. Huge trucks would move in and out during the peak of it's life time.  There were a few major accidents and thousands of minor accidents most were left as is and only a few times did the owners decide to try fix any damage done.

It was originally build to house businesses and make it easy for trucks, vans and other vehicles move in and out.  Chances are there were at least a few dozen deaths and maybe even one or two murders within the life of the premises.  It also appears that there there a few different parts of the building that once had extensions to it.  Therefore, there are some walls and doors that were once interior, but for some reason or other a part of the building needed to come down and now the wall or door was exposed to the outside world when it was not intended to.
The image to the right is a perfect example of a walk-in fridge door that was no longer in use and mix of laziness necessity to keep the door permanently closed someone decided to use a 2x4 to block it off and the need to mask the wall as much as possible by painting it the light camouflage green in order to conceal the door just enough so that people won't casually notice.  In a way this turns into that "truth is stranger than fiction" or I would call it "accident is more beautiful than art".  What artists in their right mind would even think of creating a door and even creating a door in such a fashion?  And yet I have never seen anything so beautiful.

So, now in it's latter years with an inch thick layer or rust and it's 10th coat of paint the owners have decided to tear it down.  It's age has reached the eclipsing point where the asphalt that was crudely added in the 60's or 70's has worn away enough for the elegant tiled brick ground to peak through and just a tiny amount of the old railway has shown through as well.  Now the complex if half gone.  The amazing Art Deco sign has turned in to a vulgar Billboard and the cranes have already ripped apart the entire north corridor of the complex.

In speaking with one of the owners I mentioned that this is one of my favorite places in LA he replied "Ya, but it's unsafe."  And it was the most obvious explanation that made me realize and masochism of my aesthetic appreciation.  Reason why I love this place is 1) because if has an old classic look to it (in a strange way it's like being in Italy - but this is a totally different time period) and 2) it's totally neglected.  There were hundreds of thousands of decisions that lead to people decided to clean something up either in a half-assed fashion or deciding not to fix something at all!  AND this is the very reason why it must be destroyed.  There is simply no way for this space to be usable and safe.  It's like an old dog that you love, but it's so old that it's body hurts by just existing.  You can't be so selfish to keep it around when it's in so much pain.  It must be euthanized.  Still, I'll always wish I had more time with it.

When I first saw that space I knew I wanted to have a crazy huge installation of art, video projections, DJ's - just one crazy huge festival of art and music. Certainly, the best time to visit is night. Unfortunately, that will have to be left to my dreams.

Good-bye, old friend.

Documentation of the disappearance of the most beautiful structure in LA

Can you spot what is missing from the right side that's in the left?
This is probably my favorite spot in the whole world. I've been shooting here for quite a while and one day I came along and noticed that the most beautiful piece of this area is now gone.

Broadway Bridge example

Here is a fairly simple example I did with some footage I shot the other night riding over the Broadway bridge.  I used After Effects stabilizer because the footage from riding my bike is extremely erratic.  I'm also using temp music from Languis.  I will want to work with them once this project gets more legs (and hopefully funding so I can pay them), but I'll also want to work with other ambient music artists as well.  But I think it works really well.  There's just a couple parts where the AE stabilizer just completely fails that I'd like to fix up.

More to come.

"East" texts and info

This new project is all about different parts of LA that are over looked.  I am currently calling "East" and the other day I had an explosion of ideas about what I want to shoot and how I want to put it together.

I will open with the following quote from Robert Smithson from his article "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey":
 "Picture in your mind's eye [a] sand box divided in half with black sand on one side and white sand on the other.  We take a child and have him run hundreds of times clockwise in the box until the sand gets mixed and begins to turn grey; after that we have him run anti-clockwise, but the result will not be a restoration of the original division but a greater degree of greyness and an increase of entropy."

Then I want to follow that with this text that I wrote the other day:
"Just as popular media neglects important topics, under represented people and identities it also neglects places.  In the most photographed city in the world there are endless miles that are rarely if ever exposed to the world.  This area is know as East LA."

I made these notes:
Show multiple scenes & places and between each location have a matching shot - i.e. from Vernon zoom into the Sears Building then cut to Sears and neighborhood.

each location ~ 5 min
~ 120 min in total
24 locations
19 locations and 5 interludes

Interludes timelapse x2 timelapse 1: night, lights, driving cars timelapse 2: sunrise/set etc 2nd Street Tunnel 6th St bridge tunnel chopper ride over LA ($ permitting) Blueline ride

Locations Vernon Chinatown Watts - Inglewood downtown - Bway theatres Santa Fe and Train yard LA River Sears Building (Boyle Heights) Fashion District Jefferson Park (empty hotels) Griffith Park - abandoned Zoo Little Tokyo Highland Park El Sereno Monterey Park Baldwin Park Linclon Heights Olvera St Cypress Park El Monte Skid Row

I also forgot to mention that I'm planning on shooting as much as possible by bicycle (or hand held) and then later stabilizing it (there is soo much jittering on a bicycle it doesn't look very good).  I want to make this film in the most alternative way possible.  I never want to be in too much control of the scenery (unlike Hollywood that wants to lock off every bit of our world), use as little dirty energy as possible and do this almost completely by myself.  I hope to have some friends help me shoot. Mostly cause I'm afraid of shooting with a $1K camera in some of these areas all alone.  This is usually how I make things and it's not exactly a new technique, but often people use the term do-it-yourself to try and get away with poor looking productions.

Here is an example that I shot a few weeks ago on the Blueline train going north.

Forgotten City

The Southland.  City of Industry. La La  Land. City of Angels. There are very few cities that are discussed regularly in a metaphysical context.  New York, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Jerusalem, Las Vegas, DC and possibly one or two others.  But there is only one city that is pretty much only refered to in a metaphysical manor which is simultaneously alluring and revolting.  Los Angeles is a city that seems to bring out the extremes in people.  You either love it or hate it and any emotions in between is left to Pasadena or Orange County, the Valley or possibly Long Beach. Certainly a significant amount of discourse has been created to try and define or explain the phenomenon that is Los Angeles.  Thom Anderson creates a brilliant picture of this in his film "Los Angeles Plays Itself" by stating that to the outside world there is no difference between "Hollywood" and "Los Angeles", but within the cities confines there is a radical difference.

Paul Arthur describes LA with an analogy by stating that "nowhere in America are the imperative of high and low culture so blurred."  There is certainly something to that.  If we split things into two camps with vulgarly obtuse terms such as "Hollywood" and "other art forms" within this city - like music and fashion.  Hollywood equals pop-culture movie making, commercial advertising and artificial representation spectacle.  "Underground" art forms of music and fashion thrive in this city, but if an individual from music or fashion is introduced to a "Hollywood" interaction they will certainly jump at the chance and in a way they end up reinforcing larger subtext to this city that is semi-conscious, but not always obvious.

This city screams pop-culture.  If you do not support nor idolize pop-culture you might as well not exist.  "Hollywood" is an overwhelming place. On a clear day the sign can be seen all the way down to South Central, Inglewood, Watts and Hawthorne.  The shadow looms over all parts of the city and those that are born here feel the intense class divide and, in a way, they idolize pop-culture that much more because of it's dark shadow and it's unattainable status.

This creates a very strange paradigm for those who have either no interest in popular culture or are strongly opposed to it.  By no means would I consider someone in this outsider camp any kind of counter culture or subculture.  Anyone who does not drink the pop-culture cool-aid is simply ignored.  The most apt description would be that it is an "Other" culture, in all the complications that the word "other" has become. 

The "other" culture is the outsider, the sick, the different, the disgusting, the taboo and anyone outside the commonalities of the LA life style, who does not praise excess wealth or attention, is certainly ignored and treated as disgusting. NYC might have a lot of attention for it's complexity, but LA gains more attention pretty much because of it's attention.

However, it is also the most regulated city when it comes to representation.  In NYC you only need a filming permit once you lay down a camera track or need to close off a location, but in LA you need a permit to shoot in any and all circumstances.  In Japan I had no problems shooting anywhere I wanted with a small crew from TBS, the largest TV station in Japan. LA follows the rules of image capturing.  Hell, it creates the rules. You cannot shoot unless you have everything signed off and the rules are laid out.  And the city complies whole-heartedly and gives Hollywood eminent domain over anywhere and everywhere it wishes - local communities and commerce be damned.

Everywhere you can find a location at any time of day where there is a building or street that is shut down for a shoot.  Often times the shoot is really a commercial, but the crew always knows better then to tell the public that.  If anyone asks a crew member will always say that it's a movie or TV show in a way to add acceptance to the shoot.  After all, if it's just a commercial then passers-by might not be so accepting of them to shoot there.  However, if there is a protest and the streets are shut down then passers-by are belligerent, hateful and angry.

And just as Anderson describes, the city attempts to mask itself.  It is either a stand-in for another city or it's no city at all.  If ever it is supposed to be Los Angeles then rarely, if ever, do you see a distinct setting. However, the whole city of Los Angeles is expansive.  Just about everywhere in Los Angeles County is considered apart of the city as well.  Everything north of Long Beach  all the way to Oxnard.  From the Beach to the desert.  It is endless.  And in the same fashion that Hollywood is only willing to show pretty people it is also only interested in pretty places or, if it's not pretty, it's at the very least convenient.

It is from this enormous metaphysical dialogue that I am constantly having with myself which has lead me to start a new project.  I know what you're thinking. How many projects can I work on at once.  Well, the answer is a lot.  Too many.  But I keep going places and as much as this city disgusts me there is a large part that I am in awe of.  Shall I name off the old downtown cinema's that have the most exquisite marquees that I have ever seen?  Million Dollar Theatre, Orpheium, the Mayan, United Artists, Los Angeles, the State, the Regent and my current favorite, the Tower, which still has old advertisements on it's back and side.  They are all so decedent, eloquent and unforgettable.  (In NYC all the old cinemas on Broadway were eradicated by Giuliani in order to clean up the city - a similar initiative is expanding from Figueroa and making it's way to Santa Fe).

The Sears building in East LA has such a complex history to it and it is completely mind boggling.  In one area you can still enter and purchase your hardware supplies and on the back side you can see the history where the loading docks brought in endless supplies when it was the West Coast's largest supply store.  The green neon still glows for miles in all directions.  Olvera Street is a throw-back to Los Angeles, Mexico and still possesses exclusively Mexican merchants that sell useless trinkets, clothing and crystallized sugar fruits that'll make you sick to your stomach.

And so the most subversive thing I can do in LA is to shoot illegally and expose all the areas that are overlooked, ignored and still beautiful.  In New York there's an endless sea of solo filmmakers shooting 16mm, S8 or DV.  San Francisco and Chicago it's not as prominent, but there are still a handful of people shooting on a weekly basis.  LA, the only people shooting illegally are fashion photographers shooting stills.

This should be done while it still can.  LA Live has already infiltrated and the new football stadium is all but built.  Soon it will all be white washed and cleansed.  Midnight Mission will be relocated and the expansive sea of homeless in the East side of downtown will be uprooted and displaced. They say the real-estate market has always controlled and will always control any major change or development in LA.

They recently announced on NPR that developers bought out two live-in hotel buildings on Los Angeles Street (the first street of Skid Row that is one block East of gentrified downtown - the 100'  difference is appalling).  These are the same live-in hotels that pocket all parts of downtown and are home to thousands that were able to get subsidized rent.  The same that are apart of the Alexandria and the Rosslyn Hotels that are now overrun with artists.  And we all know that the artists simply make way for the yuppies, the American aristocrats.  Aristocrats with artificial class. Soon the East side of downtown will become the new Bunker Hill.

There may still be signs for Bunker Hill downtown, but that neighborhood is completely and utterly erased from existence. Bunker Hill was a run down part of downtown on the North West corner.  Old Victorian houses lined the streets and it was available cheap housing for poor families. Now it has been replaced by hotels, museums and the ugliest building in human history- the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Many know of the old railways that filled downtown LA, but few even realize that many of the tracks from the old Red and Yellow lines are sill under that pavement in downtown LA.  Actually, much of the streets where the rails live the pavement has eroded away and reveal the left over and forgotten tracks.  This has become an eye-sore to city government and so have the old crossing signs that are still in and around Santa Fe Street, but they are the most beautiful parts of Los Angeles to me.  Every year there seems to be a little less rail and a little more asphalt.  And a little part of me dies.

Gentrification not only displaces families, but it also destroys history.  Frankly, I don't really understand the purpose of gentrification.  There are already thousands of locations that are already "beautiful" where yuppies can go live, but instead they want to make an "ugly" place "beautiful" for them.  Well, I think my neighborhood in Skid Row is beautiful with the rails coming out of the ground, rust covering the fences, trash littering the ground, junkies sleeping in the alley ways.

Dandelion design

without shadows

Just finished with modeling, texturing and "furring" my latest model of a dandelion.  This will contain the same colors and shapes as the other design - cyan, violate, white and orange as well as cubes, spheres and cones.

However, I am having some issues that I need to work out.  I like the shadows I get on the ground, but you can see there are some shadows that the fur picks up that looks bad.  I don't know how to separate that out.

"fur" with shadows

There's no way to "unlink" lights to fur like you can other objects and you're supposed to be able to separate that out in rendering under the fur and/or light attributes, but I don't see it (I think that's a new addition and I'm using Maya 2009...cause I'm poor).

It looks like I'm going to have to work this out in compositing.  Last time I did shadows separate I had a hard time working it out.  So, something new to learn.

Also, the rendering times are pretty extreme.  The last model had about 30 seconds of rendering time per frame (that was full HD).  These renders were just for 640x480 (less then 1/4 of HD) and fur without shadows took 1 minute 13 seconds and 2 minutes 40 with fur.  Separating them out in comp will fix that, but I still need to figure out how to make it all shorter.

cyan "petals" with violate "fur" - rejected idea

Another thing I was trying was using different colors on the fur then what is on the geometry.  It looks kind of interesting, but I don't think it looks quite right.

Well, there's still a long way to go.  I just have two models rigged and ready for animation.  By the end I'm a little worried about rendering times and more worried about having too much geometry for Maya to even run without crashing constantly.

On another note, I just have to add how frustrating it is that what I am doing is extremely complex and for "experimental cinema" it's quite advanced, but even at this stage in the animation and VFX world this is really low tech.  Not to mention how in the experimental cinema world they don't care too much for animation of this kind.

Garden test #2

So, I spent a whole bunch of time writing out a complex series of expressions.  For those who don't animate digitally that's basically kind of like programming - writing mathematical equations that set relationships between different things.
Basically what I wanted was to have the parts of the flowers grow to their full form, but I didn't want to animate each cube or sphere or anything.  So, I made a simple circle (that is invisible) so that when it's at 0 degrees all the objects are at the same place and I rotate the circle to 180 degrees all the cubes and etc are in their final place.

This took about three full days to write the expressions, but it took only an hour or so to animate.  You can see the picture here is basically what I had to write, but keep in mind this is only 1/4 of the entire thing.  I couldn't get it all in one image cause it's too long.

But it turned out really great looking in the animation.  Also, the nice thing is one series of expressions like this creates 12 flowers because changing color or shape doesn't require any different expression.  However I still have 7 more series of expressions to go through and that's just for the flowers.  I haven't even started planning out the bushes, trees and waterfalls.  I have a feeling that this is going to be an extremely heavy scene.  Having too many objects can cause my computer to chug along slowly cause I don't have the top of the line computers nor a render farm like huge studios do.

In any case, here it is.

The F-Word

A letter in response to the article "Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling" by Gendy Alimurung in the LA Weekly Vol 34 no 21

Dear Gendy Alimurung,

                I don't need to tell you that your article last week on the "death of film" was quite striking.  It sent a fire storm across the city and across the world amongst movie makers and film enthusiasts in all corners.  First, let me congratulate you on a great article.  This is possibly the most in depth coverage on the complexity of film across the spectrum and it's addressing a huge problem by bringing it to a wider audience.  Yet, I have many concerns with some of the topics and conclusions you take on.  I hope you will bear with me for a moment as I try to explain things from a bit of a different side.  I think you might enjoy my conclusion, but I have a few things I need to go over before I get to it.

                I am a movie maker and even though I'm no Christopher Nolan I still have quite a lot of experience with both film and digital video.  I spent 10 years as a cinema projectionist, which included everything from reel-to-reel projection to DCP 3-D presentation.  I studied film and animation at NYU and USC, respectively.  And during my undergrad it was obvious to me that film was going the way of the dodo bird, which is why I focused on analog filmmaking, editing and presentation.  When I continued on into animation in my grad studies I decided to focus considerably more on the digital aspect of movie making.  I've worked for three different film archives - one in New York City and two in Los Angeles and I've worked with Mark Toscano, archivist at the Academy Film Archives, collaborating on film and digital moving image projects.

                There are many experts on both sides of the coin with respect to film or digital video, but I am probably one of the few that has such intricate expertise in both areas.  I have worked with every aspect of movie making from negative cutting to motion capture. I love film, but I love digital as well.  Just as there is a huge sea of possibilities in film it is the same in digital movie making.

               Digital movie making is not bad.  I know you never explicitly state this, but there is a strong undertone in this film vs. digital argument that always ends up with film enthusiasts often not realizing that they are film ONLY enthusiasts.  This segregates the market and only hurts both worlds.  My decision to work in digital is just as valid as someone else's decision to work with film.

                This is an old argument and for the past 12 years that I have worked in this world all across the country people have been telling me that film is dead.  David James used to hold an annual "Death of Cinema" conference at USC.  Dozens of filmmakers have announced the "death of film" including Peter Greenaway who dated it to be 1983 with the invention of the remote controller.  Susan Sontag announced the "death of cinephilia" and therefore "the death of the movie" in her article "A Century of Cinema" in 1995 (ironically this is about the time I was learning to become a cinephile).  I was once laughed at by a salesman of B&H when I called to ask about 16mm film equipment who replied that "film was a dead medium" and I should "get up to date with the times".

                Any film enthusiast will go out of their way to tell you how ugly video looks when compared to film in a similar fashion to Roberta Hill in the documentary "Cinemania".  This argument is usually a 4 pronged approach:

1.       Digital does not look as good as film

2.       Digital is much easier than film

3.       You can just shoot and shoot an shoot and not think about digital, but film is very precise and thought out

4.       Digital has poor preservation capabilities

                To each of these arguments I strongly emphasize that whoever is making the statement really does not have a well rounded knowledge of the entire discipline of movie making. 

1.       Your specific example of DVD is absolutely correct.  Watching a DVD (or a VHS or a Betacam) looks terrible on a huge screen.  Home video formats were never meant to be shown in a cinema.  The same could be said for 8mm film.  And if Cinefamily still has the same Christie Roadster projector that they did a couple years ago when I held an event there then you are correct in stating that the blacks are not black, there's little detail, etc.  That projectors highest capabilities are displaying a resolution of 1280x1024 (that's only if they are connecting via the best capabilities possible).  That's not even full 1080p HD let alone 2K or 4K.  If you're looking for a great indie theatre to watch digital in LA you should go to the Downtown Independent.

        However, it is a completely valid aesthetic decision to choose digital rather than film.  There is no way you can convince me that the original TRON looks better then TRON: Legacy.  I love the original and if you show it to me it better be on 35mm, but one is not better than the other simply because one was shot on film and the other on digital.  I projected Miranda July's "Me and You and Everyone We Know" when it premiered at the grand opening of the IFC Center in New York City.  It was shot on HDCam and we projected it on two formats one was HDCam and the other was 35mm and the HDCam was far more beautiful!

2.       I've worked in Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, miniDV, HD digital video files and with entirely computer generated (CG) moving images.  To say that one of the mediums is easier or harder then another is totally and completely related to context.  Just the other day I was rendering an image from a CG animation package where each frame took 1.5 minutes to output.  So I am very jealous of filmmakers that can just drop their films off at FotoKem and return the next day to watch their dailies.  Sometimes it takes weeks for me to render (aka export) the animation I work with.  The last film I made took me over a year to get just a simple three minute digital movie finished.

3.       When I shoot with my Digital SLR I can only afford a couple SD cards that are fast enough to shoot video.  On them you can only capture 12 minutes of footage at a time and the SD cards are somewhat equivalent to going out and shooting with 8 or 10 rolls of film.  So, I am absolutely conscious of what I shoot.  Every frame!   I am not the only filmmaker who works like this.  There was a huge problem with video tape, especially analog and miniDV/DVcam, but it's changed dramatically.  This change is absolutely for the better.  People should be more conscious of what they shoot.

4.       Archiving is an extremely problematic area and the biggest problem is that most archivists don't like, understand nor want to deal with digital.  So, it's no wonder no one was going to Pixar with "Toy Story" and saying - "We need to learn from the sorted history of early cinema by preserving this footage properly".  Film had the same problem.  "Metropolis" has an endless history of restoration. F.W. Murnau's  "4 Devils" is completely lost to history. Even the original print of "Citizen Kane" was lost in a fire.  The best avenue to preserve is still, admittedly, on film.  But digital archiving has so much potential.

Your report that digital file formats have changed 20 different formats in 10 years is actually an understatement.  I can count more than 10 formats that I can export right now from Final Cut Pro, but if you're thinking about a self contained movie file (as most are, including the writers of the Digital Dilemma 2) then you are thinking about it all wrong.

Film is a series of still images put together and the best way to store a digital movie is the same way - with an "image sequence" or a series of still pictures numbered in order from the first frame to the last.  You can open up a photoshop image format document now that was made 10 years ago with no problems as long as there is no corruption.

File corruption is also a big problem - and "you can't stick it on a shelf and forget about it" holds just as true with film as it does digital.  Film cannot be stored on reels, it must be stored on plastic cores in a plastic can and often the core breaks and the film sags and becomes warped all because someone left it and forgot about it.  Film must be cleaned and prepared if it is ever to be shown.  We absolutely need to get better organized with digital as well and I hope we will find more and more archivists willing to work with us on that front.

                Digital movie making is extremely important.  I say this as a lover of film.  Frankly, I do not trust a movie maker that has never worked with film.  Especially if that individual's job relates to Cinematography, Editing or Directing.  However, digital is a wonderful new world that I really love to explore.  The problem is that these two worlds are not as exclusive as some might declare.

                I tell you this because I want to save film!  George Lucas' choice to use digital is just as valid as Nolan's choice to use film.  My friend and filmmaker Rick Bahto still uses Super 8 (S8) and really only S8 and occasionally Regular 8 (R8).  As he should!  My other friend, Beth Block, used to work on film and sometime in the 80's or early 90's she had to turn her back to it because of the expense and she stopped making movies all together.  Now she has graced the world with her amazing images once again, but she will only use full 1080 HD or higher (if possible) and she refuses to show on anything but HD projection.

  It is time that we completely change this dichotomy.

                I will explain my solution with a story.  Recently George Lucas donated a huge amount of money to the USC cinema school.  I was in the process of receiving my MFA in animation at the time.  Almost all of that money went into the new Lucas building that was completed about four years ago.  Three famous individuals who donated a significant amount were leading a lot of the decision making about how the money was spent - George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis.  Rumor goes that Lucas and Zemeckis wanted the ONLY digital projection in the entire building, but Spielberg was emphatic about having at least one 35mm projector in the main theatre hall, the Ray Stark Family Theatre (aka Lucas 108).  Lucas and Zemeckis were eventually convinced and to all our benefit we are able to view 35mm film at the USC theatre.

                Just as these friends came together to find a great solution we must do the same.  We should not be divided by our differences, but united in our struggle to make and watch movies!  I call on all digital movie makers to help our brothers and sisters in arms who want to work on film.

                They are getting rid of film projectors.  At an old theatre I used to work at in San Jose, CA I recently heard from an old colleague that they just went all digital (12 screens and no film).  This is a crime!  But we cannot solve it by trying to convince people to choose a side.  Cinefamily should not be punished for refusing to install a DCP system! 

                I admit that the scale has tipped too strongly toward digital in recent years.  We need to rebalance - film and digital video are equal in my eyes.  We must unify digital movie makers and filmmakers.  I ask filmmakers to respect and understand the benefits of working in digital and likewise for digital movie makers to respect film.  But how can we really help?

                The answer is so simple.  We need to join forces and attack things at the source.  Don't go to cinemas that have only digital and no film.  Don't use distribution houses that refuses to make film prints.  If a studio forces a Director or Director of Photography to go digital then call on the other directors and DP's to shout it out in the streets. 

                We can come up with a list of institutions.  However, I don't like black lists.  Instead let's have a gold list of preferred theatres and companies to use that are film friendly.  You don't have to work in film to go to them, but in order to make sure our cinema legacy is sustained we need to make sure certain kinds of institutions are supported.

                Just a couple LA theatres on my Gold List are the Echo Park Film Center, USC's Ray Stark Family and Norris Theatres, the Egyptian, the Downtown Independent, the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder, LACMA's Bing Center, the Academy's Linwood Dunn theatre, RedCat,  the Aero, the New Beverly, the Kodak and, of course, Cinefamily's Silent Movie Theatre.  That's just to name a few and I want to come up with a whole beautiful list from across the world and across the spectrum of film making.

                As an extremely low-budget DIY filmmaker I specifically ONLY purchase Kodak or Fuji SD cards to use in my digital camera because I want them to keep making film too.  This is rather difficult to keep up with because Kodak keeps changing their direction, but whatever their position might be I'm still supporting them as long as they support film.

                This is not the only solution.  I hope others can add to this list and come up with great ideas as well.  I should not be alone to help my comrades in their struggle.  And really, it's my struggle as well.  I am ashamed to say it, but I have still never seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" on film - (35 or 70mm).  I will one day, but there will always be another film to replace that one.  And you never completely understand a film meant to be watched on 35mm without seeing it on 35mm.

                Please feel free to contact me about this topic.  I always enjoy a great conversation about the art of the moving image medium.

Cordially,

Huckleberry Lain

The Digital Dilemma of Experimental Cinema

And so, now we find ourselves at a crossroads.  The few of us that have wondered our brains into the forest of Experimental Cinema have found a wall.  The box that we are outside of and originally left behind has become stifling.  The new world that we have imagined has a limitation.  A roadblock upon aesthetics has barred many from being open-minded in their open-mindedness.  Technology has forced us to take sides in a foolish battle.  Experimental Cinema has become the last battleground for celluloid film.

There has been much speculation over the decades upon the end of film in which video will succeed the throne of the field.  It has become an endless dialogue how analog film will end.  Because of this and because video shares some fundamental qualities that are different from film many filmmakers, curators and fans of Experimental Cinema (and all cinema) have rejected video.  It is a radical change to put upon a system that is over 100 years old.  So many have devoted their lives in order to understand it perfectly and now it is completely deconstructed by a different medium.  A medium!  And nothing more.

Virtually all other areas of cinema have accepted this new form in which to use the same techniques.  Large production narrative, television and advertisement (aka Hollywood) have been behind funding this development.  It has made previously difficult processes become significantly easier – and at the same time they had added more expectations and workload to the productions.  Documentary, world and “independent” cinema use it as a means to cut the budget and shift funding.  Home movies became significantly less hassle with equipment easier to understand.

Digital has become the standard and it is almost because of this that the culture of Experimental Cinema is unwilling to unclench its fist from the 16mm reel.  The question then becomes – is it rigger mortise? 

Will this last stand for celluloid cinema kill the world of Experimental Cinema?  But I need to stop for a moment.  Surely there is a whole chorus of voices now who are angry because I am saying that digital is better then analog.  Do not be mistaken, dear friend!  My love for celluloid will never be extinguished!  However, you cannot deny the strong generalized rejection of digital “filmmaking” in the Experimental Cinema culture.  It is very similar to a certain artist by the name of R. Mutt who in the first half of the 20^th Centruy caused a tornado of kerfuffle when many declared his found art piece, “The Fountain,” not to be art.

Rejection to such an unnecessary extent as this is what I like to call “The Aesthetics of Rejection.”  It comes when an individual rejects a certain artwork or medium as “not being art”.  Certainly, this can be applied to more then just the world of art and cinema.  Indeed, a colleague of mine, a very intelligent individual who had strong passion for Socialism and the films of Godard and Eisenstein actually told me once that video games are not art.  I was appalled.  However, most people have learned much since the days of R. Mutt, however.  People usually do not reject something outright as “not art”.  Most use a disgusting categorization in which the culture of Experimental Cinema was invented by breaking – “good” or “bad” (also known as “high” or “low” art).

Anyone who is familiar with Experimental Cinema is familiar with the standpoint that video/digital is “not good” or “low quality” or some how displeasing.  I implore you not to follow in this path.  It is segregation!  One is not better then the other.  They are merely two different tools and each possesses different qualities.  I can only imagine the day when a pupil came to his teacher with a sponge instead of a brush in which to paint with and the lashing the pupil received for such an offence.

There is also the other even more revolting argument.  No, assumption!  The assumption that working in film is significantly more difficult then working digitally.  This somehow gives merit or validation to considering one form of cinema “good” and the other “bad”.  This is often an argument made by critics who have never used a movie camera in their lives.  I assert once again that the tools are merely different and some things are easier in film and others digital.  Anyone who has spent nights rendering 1000 frames in Autodesk Maya with 4 layers per frame each at 30 seconds rendering time per layer only to realize that you had one thing slightly off and it ruined your whole scene knows what I am talking about.  Anyone who has used Mental Ray would never say that digital is easier then film.  Even now with the dieing businesses of film development laboratories, it can be faster to send a roll of film to be processed and get it returned to you than to have a scene rendered from a CGI animation package.

Therefore, it is absolutely preposterous to make any judgment call about which is better or which is worse.  The only thing that the aesthetics of rejection reveal is what forms of art people don’t like.  A story can be poorly written.  An image can be badly composed, but a medium cannot in its entirety be bad.  If you do not like digital filmmaking then just state that.  That is at least a respectable stance.  I do not particularly care for Heavy Metal.  By no means would I consider Heavy Metal not to be music.  How absurd; I wouldn’t even consider it to be bad.  I just don’t like it.  And even within that I subject myself to live performances of such music because I enjoy music; I want to be persuaded to like Heavy Metal; I enjoy the atmosphere of a music event; it opens my mind as to the possibilities of our world.  (In fact, the films that I learn the most from are the films that I do not like - they teach me what I never want to do in my work.)

Yet, you can see everywhere in our current culture of Experimental Cinema that film is virtually the only accepted method of making our form of art.  Young artists who come to fruition are only accepted if they work in film.  Certainly, those who only work in film and are successful are likely to be very good filmmakers, but there are an equal number of filmmakers artists who work digitally whose pieces you might significantly enjoy, but since the Experimental Cinema world looks down upon digital works you will never be exposed to them.  Most often these individuals turn to a different world where they are more accepted – "interdisciplinary art", "multimedia art", "new media", etc.

“But there are many filmmakers who work in digital video that we will always watch.”

Who? Jonas Mekas? Su Fredrich? Ken Jacobs? The Kuchar Brothers?  This is only because they were already accepted as filmmakers before they picked up a video camera.  They were already infallible and therefore did not receive the wrath of the aesthetics of rejection.

How many who consider themselves to be studious and wellsprings of knowledge of Experimental Filmmakers even know the names Miwa Matreyek or Dr. Strangeloop (David Wexler)?  Certainly, there will be some.  However, both artists have become world-renowned and both attribute more influence to filmmakers who are generally accepted under the umbrella of “Experimental Cinema” then other artists, but both are rarely discussed in our culture.  Why?

If we let these authoritative rules hinder us our field will become stagnant and we will let it die.  Experimental Cinema will end with the final filmmaker who became known with their films.  By no means am I making a case for filmmakers to stop working with film.  I hope celluloid sees many more years, but critics and fans who really and truly love “Experimental Cinema” must accept digital if it is to continue.  For if we are actually the expansive thinkers who can see meaning amongst the abstracted shadows on the walls of the cave then we must have a perception that is expansive enough to accept digital.  Let no boundaries stop us!  Let us re-radicalize “Experimental Cinema”!

Implosion 3: Designs and things

I'm starting to do designs for the new piece.  Basically the way the film will work is a simple camera move through a scene as a garden grows out of the ground.  The camera will move through a maze and the garden will grow.  Every so often it will raise levels to taller and taller foliage.  I have planned out 5 levels all with different designs -
Level 1 - short flowers

sections and timing

Level 2 - taller flowers
Level 3 - bushes and short foliage
Level 4 - trees
Level 5 - waterfalls

Right now I've only designed the flowers.  I will have four designs for both sections (eight in all).  Each design will have four colors - violate, cyan, white and possibly yellow (tentative).  And each design will have three shape bases - cones, spheres and cubes.  This makes 12 types of flowers for each design and so 48 for each level; 96 flowers in all.  As you can see in the map, the outer two sections are levels 1&2 and they are the largest so it will take a very long time to model and rig, but it will be worth it. If I only used four flowers that would get old fast.

I have some timing there as well.  Within level 1 you can see an "x" in the bottom slight left.  I have roughly timed that to be 6 seconds.  This could easily get longer, but at least for now I think it's a good start.  I was mostly working backward.  I want the film to be at least 3 minutes in length.  There's roughly 30 sections that are the size of "x" in the whole map, which makes for 6 seconds for each "x".

camera moves and levels

As you can see here in this image the camera will start in the bottom and follow the path of the 1st level, then rise as it reaches the 2nd level, the same with the 3rd level, etc.  All along the way the flowers and foliage will rise from the ground as the camera passes. And at the end I'll probably add some spin or something.  We'll see. I have a feeling I'll be motivated by Ale's music and play off of that at that point.


Here are my two sets of sketches for the flowers and the respective names I'm using.  Most of these are wrong or variations of real flowers, but I'm more using them for naming purposes in my scenes rather then making for accuracy.

I modeled my first flower.  It's a white, cube, "sunflower".  And I used the near final render settings (lighting and texturing) that I like with an HDR for somewhat natural lighting - really it doesn't look "real" I just like some of the HDR's that I've made cause they give a nice soft look where no part of my scene feels like the color stays exactly the same across a certain part of the image.

Experimental Cinema is a Radicalizer

At what point in a career does one establish a rationale for experimental cinema?  How long after a medium’s formation is it still acceptable to describe its purpose?

There is no reason to limit a date of publication for logic.  The difficulty is that there is already much history of written text upon the subject and even upon this very topic.  The history of experimental cinema is equal in length to the history of cinema and now with well over 100 years of cinema there is also 100 years of cinema rhetoric.

However, just like everything it is subject to constant change, constant analysis and constant invention.  The most important concept to retain throughout this spilling out of ideas is, at the very least, an attempt to avoid reinventing the wheel.  I will start by stating that for as long as possible I will stick to the singular term “experimental cinema.”  Only so that I do not digress into the endless cycle of terminology semantics and nuances of “experimental,” “abstract,” “avant-garde.”  But rest assured I mean to use the term “experimental cinema” to encompass all these terms and more.  And, specifically for the purposes of this article, the limitations of the term are not defined by the writer, but by the reader and movie-goer.

Experimental cinema is a radicalizer.  By its very nature and function it has the potential to change people very extremely – to radicalize them.  How can this be?  How can such a passive recreation of cinema instigate such a shock?  Let’s set the scene, shall we.

It is an old scene. In fact, it is older then some societies, religions, cultures.  It is the cave analogy.  Whether Plato invented it or if it was indeed created by some figure named Socrates makes little difference now, but is now immortalized in the classic text The Republic.  It is a stage described many times again and again.  For our purposes it is quite apt.  It is really a very good description of what a cinema must have been like in the 3^rd Century BCE.  We start with a cave and in this cave we have individuals, let’s call them slaves because in Socrates mind they pretty much were.  These slaves are locked in a seated position and forced to stare at a wall.  They have restraints so that they are unable to move their heads.  Upon the wall are shadow and these shadows are created form a glowing fire, which is behind the slaves.  And in between the slaves and the fire are people, or projectionists - if you will, who pull out stocks of shapes – a horse, trees, cows, sheep, people, hills, buildings.  These shapes are brought up to where their shadow is brought into the filed of vision of the slaves and then removed, replaced by another shape, which is thusly removed and the cycle goes on.

The slaves are made to believe that this is the full scope and reality of the world.  Socrates invents this mythical world to describe the state of his world saying that the people who are marveled and praised are those who are like a slave that has a great skill of predicting correctly as to which shadow that will be the next to appear before it comes into view.  In his mind, a philosopher is damned with a punishment of knowledge because they are like a slave who is released and able to leave the cave and able to see the world as it truly is.  A freed slave who then returns to the cave describing to the other slaves what this real world is like and the fiction of their existence and their foolish guessing game is ridiculed as being delusional and crazy.  And Socrates continues to describe a world ruled by philosopher kings and the society they will create in a perfect world, which goes quite beyond our immediate needs at the current moment in relation to Experimental Cinema.

Let us take this scene and reverse it.  Not so much in it’s power structure nor it’s scenario, but within it’s linear structure.  We start with a free people. They wonder about this world their entire lives seeing the world as it is.  Over time they take it for granted, but still continue living.  At one point one individual enters a cave lead in by strange discolorations on the rocks that seem to have a shape or meaning.  They are lead further and further back until they find huge shadows upon the wall and a comfortable seat, which makes for easy viewing of these shadows.  At first the shadow catches their eye because it is moving, but they cannot make sense of it.  After some time they begin to realize that the shapes are representations.  It takes quite a bit of pondering and conjuring, but they eventually see the shapes as signifying of objects that they know from outside the cave.  Symbols, representations or abstracts that take some time to explore with one’s imagination in order to make the connection to the referential object.  These shadows deviate from their originals.  They are two-dimensional, without color, different in size, alternate design and they also bare some other characteristics that function in order to resemble the original, but through simplification.  For example, there is a figure, which is a circle with lines protruding directly out from it to represent the sun.  The original sun has no lines protruding from it, but the lines work as an abstract representation of rays of light extruding from the sun.

The forms of images begin as fairly representational.  Their shape is proportionally the same as the originals with only slight mental adjustments and explorations into personal imagination does the individual make sense of the shadows.  The shadows continue and the individual starts to realize there is a correlation between the images.  It is telling a story.  This story starts out realistic and after some time delves into an imaginary world where real objects are converted yet again so that they are harder to distinguish from their original.  Still after some pondering and analysis of these new shadows does the individual continue to distinguish the symbolic meaning of the shadows.  The story further continues into alterations and more alterations of reality until the objects are completely abstract.  It is at this that the individual is baffled.  S/he takes labors mentally over these new and completely foreign objects.  They leave the cave and are dizzy with confusion then return again to attempt to make sense of the objects once again.  Finally it hits him/her that these objects are solitary – they symbolize no referential object.  There is no name as to call each of these objects.  They are to be accepted purely for what they are and nothing more.

At this we have come to the radicalizing moment.  If the individual accepts this then they become radicalized.

Now the individual returns to the external world with his/her friends and colleagues.  S/he describes for them of this marvelous other world with new and different objects.  They begin to understand other objects and concepts of their former world as also possessing the ability to have alternative expressions.  First it starts simple.  "How is this plate both a function for eating and an abstract sculpture at the same time?  What are other ways we can make a plate that is radically different but still carry a function?"  Then it goes beyond simple everyday items.  "If I squint while looking at this tree it becomes a completely abstract shape and has beauty to it.  At what point is the tree no longer a tree?  Is it determined by how I look at it?"  Eventually over time they explore larger world concepts of sociological, political, cultural and philosophical navigations.  "What other ways can government exist that they might be abstracted, but still carry a purpose?"

Their friends and colleagues will think they are delusional or hallucinating, but individual assures them that what they have witnessed is true.  “So, what you have seen is real?” one might say. 

“Well, yes.  And no.” s/he would answer. 

“And these different and other worldly objects, they are real?”

“Both yes and somehow no.”

“Well, how can this one thing exist and not exist?  And this other world with other governments and other countries and other economies, how can they exist if your impetus carries such a flawed genesis?”

“It might be possible that if you also see this then you will understand this alternative world.”

So, the individual takes his/her colleague to the cave.  However, in this case the colleague does not accept what they see when an abstract appears in their field of view.

“Do you not see this strange object that represents only an abstract form?”

“All I see is a shadow and nothing more.”

“But the shadow has a representation of a large meaning beyond what you can see.”

“The shadow’s only meaning is that it is a shadow.  You’re ideas are flawed from the start.  I will bother no more with this.”

And so we are left to ourselves, but now the seed is born.  As we’ve accepted experimental cinema we must accept and even instigate experimental life-styles, experimental habits, experimental logic.  A notch has turned in our brain.  What was previously not possible has become possible.  What was previously out of our angle of view we now see because our view has become so wide that the horizon has disappeared.  Reality holds a myriad of possibilities.  Realization is brought upon because of the field we engulf ourselves in.

Garden music (early itteration)

So, I just talked with Ale and he loves the test video I gave him.  He also has a song he's working on that he thinks this would be perfect for.  I think it sounds great and even gave me a few ideas.

Implosion of Light: The Garden (start)

Well, I still have one more song by Ale (aka Languis) to create some visuals to, but after a couple of these animations where the visuals were strongly synchronized to the music I decided that I wanted to go in a little different direction.

I'm not sure where it came from, but I started to have visions of a growing garden made of cubes, spheres and cones.  I'm in the process of designing and planning, but I made a quick and simple style of what I'm thinking.






The design, animation and everything is extremely simple, but this was just a test.  I was having trouble in the rigging process.  Basically I didn't want to have to animate each little cube on it's own and I wanted to have something else simple driving the cubes into growing.  That way when I actually animate it's quite simple even though it looks complex.  It's still time consuming, but if I was going to animate every single cube individually I probably would completely nix the idea.

I've sent an email to Ale to see what he thinks of letting me take the lead on this and I'm waiting to hear from him.  I'm sure he'll like it, but he's also a super busy guy.  I asked him if he wanted to do his own version of the first prototype piece (the one I animated to the music by Eric Satie) and he thought it was a great idea, but work and kids have gotten his hands full.  Still once he gets to it I think it'll be amazing!

I'll post designs soon!

Implosion of Light 1 & II

After I returned from Italy I met with Alejandro Cohen of Languis (the sonic component of Parallel) because I enjoyed working with his music and I wanted to continue the collaboration.  He loved the idea and quickly came up with three sonic pieces, which I slowly slowly animated to.

I am very grateful to him for his patience.  It showed around a few times at the Punto y Raya Film Festival in Madrid, Dublab's labrat Matinee here in LA and a couple other places.

You can see the first one below, but the second one just completed in March of this year and will be making the rounds to festivals.  If you would like to see it please ask for it!





UPDATE: Ale is going to post Implosion II on the Dublab blog. So, I might as well post it here too.

Implosion of Light 0

So, I've been working on this series for a couple years now.  I'm calling it "The Implosion of Light an Sound".  I thought of that title while I was on a minor shoomie trip a couple years ago and had a crazy vision of CG cube based pixelated images.

I had a residency in Florence Italy and was very moved by these mosaics there.  Particularly the one's in Revenna on the East Coast below Venice.  It contains some of the oldest and "most perfect" mosaics (according to some historians) and rightfully so.

I was particularly moved by the abstract ones and after some weeks of contemplation I decided that I wanted to take that idea and use my skills as an animator and a 3D artist to create a new type of mosaic.

At first I just wanted to make a simple animation using just cubes and animating to music (because I feel more free to be abstract, but audiences will accept it).  I knew I needed to start off with on my own cause it would be a little difficult to explain to someone without an actual example AND it was extremely important to get a "pipeline" (or workflow) working because it would be pretty intense and I wanted to make it as easy as possible.

I was also pretty passionate about making it, what I'm calling, a "Virtual Sculpture".  I started looking into holographic technology to see if I could create animated holograms.  At the moment that technology is not quite ready for complicated animation.  So, I decided to go with making phantograms.

A Phantogram is basically a hologram, but it can only be viewed from a specific angle.  It needs to be stereoscopic 3D (so usually wearing glasses) and it's a forced perspective image meaning you need to look at it at a 45 degree angle to see it in a proper form.  So, if you create a phantogram it appears that the image is popping out of the monitor, table or floor.

It took some time, but I finally organized a pipeline and then I spent the next two months or so animating and creating my "prototype".  And this is what I came up with.