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.

I wish you non-seasonal happiness

We didn't go out for New Year's Eve. I have a somewhat irrational hatred for this "holiday" as it is so terribly arbitrary. Maybe it's just because I'm constantly making resolutions that aren't year-based. Or because I think it's just an excuse to get drunk, and if you want to get drunk why do you have to wait until December 31st anyway? Or maybe it's just that my heart is three sizes too small.

But I love Christmas. See:


Yesterday we sent 31 variously-sized pieces of mail, including some New Years Cards which I felt it necessary to make instead of printing more Christmas cards after Christmas was over. I'll post a photo after the packages start to arrive. There was a terrible line after us when we left the Post Office. Channing said "that was really fun, but it would be more fun if someone mailed us back." Which some people sometimes do, and it is indeed very fun.

One of the packages was this tiny baby hat, which is not completed in this photo:

It's for a tiny baby, so it didn't fit on my head once it was done. But I think I may have made it far too big, so it might not fit her until she's five or something. I've never made a hat for a human before, so it would have been easier if I'd had her to try it on instead of using an approximately baby-head-sized mixing bowl.

I stuffed my giraffe.


And I had this amusing holiday dream, but it's taking 1000 hours to upload, so you can just look at my youtube channel in a while if you want to hear me talking about Jimmy Durante kittens. (Update: it finished! )

Maybe we will paint the living room sometime in the next four days. We are finishing up the "small" home improvement projects now, so maybe we'll have leftover energy for moving on to the main project. Maybe tomorrow would be better.

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.