A Big Weekend in the Movie Studio

AKA A Big Weekend at Home

So, I pretty much forgot to take any photos of the weekend's activities. I will add in some photos for those of you who hate words.

On Friday I actually wrote a script for the entire vaudeville show. Channing and Sunny (who was visiting for the weekend) helped me turn my brilliant ideas into a script, and added in some brilliant ideas of their own. I ended up eliminating the hilarious but dirty jokes that Keith helped me come up with, because I decided it wasn't worth it to limit the audience by including a few dirty jokes. Without them the movie is appropriate for all ages, so I decided to stick with the non-dirty jokes. Those jokes are really good though, so they will soon be available to members of the fan club!

That night we recorded the voices of Pillow and Pillow (Burke and Ty) until the wee hours of the morning. Okay, it was only like 12:30am. I had never met Ty before, but I wanted Burke to cast his co-Pillow so they would be comfortable singing and telling jokes together, and so they could show up at the same time. I think his casting worked out really well. We also ate this pie:



His name was Pyman, and he was delicious.

Then on Saturday I worked at my job, but afterwards I worked on fine-tuning some of the songs. Then I rolled up my hair in some rags in preparation for the next day's shoot. Here is the result of my test-curl, before I combed it out, which almost turned out (after I combed it, which of course I didn't photograph) better than the actual curling:



I was really excited because I used to have to get my hair curled a lot when I was a kid, and it never worked very well because I have really straight hair which was really long for most of my childhood, both of which prevented it from curling very well. I kind of want to start curling my hair all the time, but I'm not going to because I am lazy and because it is a stupid idea.

So on Sunday we set up the greenscreen and pushed all of our furniture to the edges of the living room.



We recorded my song first, because I wanted to do it as soon as I woke up. I was very excited. It's a version of the Mongoosnuffle Shuffle Rag, adapted so it fits with music. Mr. Tusks played the part of Mr. Mongoosnuffles, and he got the attitude right even though he doesn't exactly look the part.



Next Keith (a different Keith!) and Jessica came over to help out. We filmed the complicated giraffe song and dance, which required three puppeteers. And of course none of us know how to be puppeteers, so it was a bit difficult. I think it turned out fine, though. I'm a big fan of doing things I have no idea how to do. I made Keith and Jessica sing songs (the giraffe and beaver) as well, but I'm not sure how they turned out. I'm going to attempt to edit them today. Channing is kind of a confusing conductor, but I figured he would do a better job than me since he has some experience recording music. We recorded some backup versions just to be safe.

Later we filmed the Pillows and Barnaby lipsynching and dancing to their parts. This was hard just because these guys are hand puppets, which meant we had to lay flat on our backs with our arms straight up in the air in order to get them in the proper position.

After that there were only three minutes left on the tape and we were tired so we decided to call it a day.



There is still one more song to film, and a few incidental things for transitions and backgrounds, but the vaudeville show is almost complete! After that's done we still have to film the entire ending of the movie, but it feels really good to have such a big chunk of footage out of the way.

Now to start editing...

PS - Rachel, I'll be sending out your fan club materials tomorrow.

boat and beaver

I finished that beaver puppet I was working on, and finally got around to taking a picture. 

Now I'm building a boat. It's almost finished, I just have to attach the mast and the sail at this point. Mr. Tusks was less helpful than usual on this project, which was great. 

Below is an experiment which involves me saving a bunch of trash, as do most of my experiments. Can you guess what it's for?

A cat with the tail of a beaver! And more!

I made most of a giraffe for the Golden Retriever movie. He's very tall, but not so very fat. Giraffes aren't really fat, but this one should definitely be a bit fatter. I ran out of stuffing.

Here is his inside-out neck, when I was pinning the mane(?) in:

Here is his cute inside-out body:

I realize that you can't actually tell what anything is. I'll post a right-side-out picture when I finish stuffing him.

I still haven't finished the beaver puppet, because I don't have any suitable brown fabric for his body. Mr. Tusks' body is not very beaveresque, but here he is, delighted to model a fine beaver's tail. 

Clearly I need to make a trip to the fabric store very very soon. 

Thanksgiving was really good. I was nervous about being in charge of the meal, but it turned out fine. I think it was easier than I expected in part because we've been cooking meals from real ingredients so much more often lately. When I was growing up, cooking things that didn't come from packages pretty much only happened on holidays, which probably made it even more stressful for my mom when those days came around and she felt like she had to not only cook, but cook something extra-special.

We didn't have tiny pies, just a regular-sized one. Tiny pies are all the rage around here ever since I figured out you can make pies in a muffin pan. I meant to make them as portable lunchbox desserts, but both times I've made them we've eaten all the pies too fast for any of them to make it into a lunchbox. As you can see, I didn't even have the strength to take one photo before I ate two pies. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't have time to make them for Thanksgiving, because I thought Channing's mommy would have quite liked them. But the next day they went to Chinatown, where they saw tiny pies for sale in a bakery. 85 cents a pie! What a deal! 

I'm looking forward to Christmas. We're going to Memphis for a few days. My mom already spent an entire day putting lights on the Christmas tree. I get to see my niece again (she'll be 3 months old on Christmas) and this time she'll probably be dressed like an elf instead of a pumpkin. I'm dragging Channing to The Nutcracker (which I'm pretty sure he's going to like) and I'll probably make him watch at least five Christmas movies with me. And hopefully at some point I'll get to go ice skating in my holiday elf cape. And we get to make gingerbread cookies! And wear mittens! I'm going to make Mr. Tusks wear mittens! Wooden mittens, so he can't scratch me. And read the Christmas stories, which are banned during the rest of the year! And giftwrapping! I love wrapping presents. And Christmas cards! Sighhhhh. Christmas is so great. 

Beaver Background Update

They are done! Almost. I just have to adjust the length when I get the actual song from my dear friend Keith. Here is a preview dam:

And they're stop-motion backgrounds, so there are 300 more just like that but slightly different. Exciting, huh? Also, logs. Whatever. 

Next step is Beaver Puppet! I don't have any idea how to make a beaver puppet, which means this is the kind of project that I want to do most. I like the ones with thinking. 

I'm tired. 

I spent almost three hours going grocery shopping today. Most of that was getting to and from the store, and most of that was because I decided to walk two miles to the train instead of waiting for the bus. Too bad the store I like is in San Francisco. Usually I don't make the trek, I just suck it up and go to the store where Channing got called stupid by the cashier for buying organic toothpaste. But today I had nothing to do, so I spent all day going to the store to get bulk spices and loose tea. Also, we got our CSA box yesterday so I've been planning menus to use all the foods that I don't usually eat. This is partly why we joined the CSA, so we would be forced to break out of our ruts of getting the same vegetables every time we went shopping. This week's box had broccoli, broccoli raab, bok choi, salad mix, onions, pomegranate, butternut squash, and tokyo turnips. Our plan worked, because the only things in there that we would usually buy are onions and pomegranates. I would get broccoli, but someone who I live with and eat with at nearly every meal refuses to eat it without making gagging faces. Unfortunately it turns out that this plan is also a lot of work what with the finding recipes and shopping for extra ingredients and cooking the food and everything. I guess it's worth it, but sometimes it seems like I spend more energy making the food than I get from eating the food.