I’ve been busy over the holidays doing the usual things: wrestling with trees in the living room, eating too much, enduring overlapping fractured conversations in rooms full of simultaneously speaking family members and stuff like that.
During that time I’ve also been reorganizing my office/edit suite and lining up my production agenda for the coming year.
This will include all the upcoming efforts I’ll be applying to the Ruffus Project as a whole – including a slate of new episodes made exclusively for release on the web and a series of print-to-order books based on the original shows. That post will be put up here soon – I promise.
I’m also in the process of setting up a whole new blog site at robbomills.net which will – eventually – take over from this site. Millsworks will fade away and get archived somewhere but I’m not going to worry about that right now.
Both of those projects evolved from our creative incubation process with the Rhino Group – a semi-weekly gathering of our core colleagues at Parkdale’s Rhino Bar & Grill.
More ambitious plans lay in wait for some longer form projects and I’m looking forward to being able to reveal them as they get closer to reality.
On top of all that I’m also looking for some kind of job because none of these works are paying my salary – yet.
There’s a lot of commentary I want to offer up since we are entering the year where the War On The Internet truly erupts. The Occupy Movement which sprang from the Arab Spring is just the tip of the iceberg of the disruptive nature of social media and the new ability of citizens to bypass traditional corporate and state controlled media to receive and disseminate information and culture. The interwebz hold the distinct possibility to make fundamental changes in how not just our individual lives are lived but how we as human beings think, operate and interact with each other and the planet we share. That’s big stuff. And believe it or not, kids puppet shows – and other offerings from indie producers like myself – have a place in all that. We are at the cusp of “use it or lose it” with respect to the Net – and also, believe me, of “defend it or die”.
That material will have a better home on the new RobboMills site.
There are many others playing in the same cultural media sandbox as yours truly. I’m privileged to know and work with quite a few remarkable people here in Toronto who are increasingly active in establishing what we do online as a serious industry. You’ll be hearing more about them too. They are awesome.
But – between now and then I have to get all the shit in the boxes on my office floor up on the shelves, all the spaghetti of wires under/over/across my standing desk organized into a reasonable facsimile of a non-combustible electrical array, all my outstanding contracts and other legal documents vetted and signed, and I think there’s also this little thing called back taxes.
Blah blah blah. There’s always going to be something to do.
Soooooooo – bear with me as I get my proverbial shit together and we’ll have a fun and entertaining ride in Robbo’s culture bucket from now to the end of 2012. What happens after that is between you and your local faux-Mayan bullshit distributor.
Predictions for the coming year? Everything is going to get very dark and scary and mean and bloody – and there will be puppets. Keep smiling, tell the ones you love that you love them, and speak out loud against lies, intolerance and hypocrisy. And eat more vegetables.
And now – here’s a video of a crow tubing on a rooftop.
Ruffus The Dog’s Christmas Carol is now online and available for the world to see and share. You can even watch it here:
It would help a lot if you go to the YouTube site to Like and Comment on the show. That kind of audience engagement – *cough*buzzwords*couch* – really does make a difference.
We’ll also be posting it to our Blip.tv channel and a bunch of other sites very soon – as in: as soon as I can get my shit together to do so.
I promise to write a whole bunch more about how we made it, with photos and clips, and what our next steps will be for the Ruffus project – but for now you can check out what other people are saying by checking out their posts and leaving comments:
Please share this show with as many others as you can. It’s our gift to everyone for the holidays.
Download links will be posted soon – and if you want to watch the earlier Ruffus episodes you can find them on the official Ruffus web site.
And if you really really like JP Houston’s song “Merry Merry” you can find it on our Bandcamp site as a free download. It’s an immensely catchy tune and deserves to be heard over and over again. Enjoy!
Cheers.
P. S. Comments here are also appreciated. Tell me what you think of the show – I’d really like to know.
On that same Saturday we will also be hosting a public screening at the historic Revue Cinema here in Toronto. Showtime: 11:00 am.
Here’s the poster for the show.
Not bad, huh?
Limited copies of the poster will be printed, signed and sent to our generous Indie Go-Go donors. There’s still time for you to get yours by visiting our Indie Go-Go campaign page and making a donation.
If you are in the neighbourhood – that would be Parkdale, west end of Toronto – and if you’re up for a family friendly matinee screening of a Christmas classic then come on by. After the screening there will be a brief Q&A with Ruffus – live on stage! The pay-what-you-can box office proceeds will be donated to the Toronto Public Library Foundation.
The holidays are fast approaching and I made a promise last year that our Ruffus The Dog’s Christmas Carol would be finished and released by then. Here’s how you can help make it so.
When we started the project we attempted, through Indie Go-Go, to raise the full $8,500 we expected we could scrape by on to make the whole thing work and release it to the world. We only managed to achieve $2,090 but that generosity from our supporters convinced us to carry on and go ahead with the shoot. I’ve blogged about that before – here and here and here – and here’s our original Indie Go-Go pitch.
Well now, after almost a year of gradually, inexorably (if not continually) working on the post production of the show we are coming down to the wire. The many favours and dedicated sweat equity contributed, in addition to the much needed cash, have carried us almost to completion but once again we find ourselves in need of real money to ensure the project gets finished at the level of quality it deserves and to enable us to release it to the world on time for the holiday season.
The show will be released online for free streaming and downloading with the option to buy DVD copies, songs, posters, calendars, t-shirts and (hopefully) a graphic photo-novella. But it’s gotta all be done and ready for release before December 15th.
Our clock is ticking.
If you can contribute that would be freaking awesome. If you can’t you can still help us with word-of-mouth, just telling people about the project.
Full Disclosure: When I refer to “we” on this project I am mostly referring to “me”, since I’m the guy who has always chosen to wear too many hats. Hey – I got a fat head – might as well use it, right? But I always say “we” because I am not a one-man-band; I rely upon and have benefited from the extraordinary generosity of my friends and family – all of them colleagues and collaborators in this work with me. I couldn’t do a thing without them.
Thanks in advance for your generosity. If you have any comments or suggestions or if you have any questions please feel free to post them here or via email.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back in the basement and keep working on the show.
I know – I know – it’s been months since I last posted anything about our online holiday special: Ruffus The Dog’s Christmas Carol. What can I say? I’ve been busy. I had to pay the rent. My car had a flat tire. My suit was still at the cleaners. My dog ate it. Insert applicable lame excuse here.
Actually, I have been working on it and as it slowly nears completion I eke out small portions to share with other people to get their opinion and to just generally let folks know I’m not neglecting the task at hand.
Here’s a few more.
As you may recall from previous posts about the production and some behind the scenes footage – this production of Charles Dicken’s classic is just a tad out of the ordinary.
We shot this thing in my living room. We used green screen in a very small area with no prepared background elements prior to shooting. It was all very much a seat-of-your-pants kind of shoot. Everyone who worked on it wore several hats and helped out with everything that needed to be done. It was a lot of fun.
All the backgrounds – our virtual sets – are being constructed after the edit was completed. We had to get the timed cut done so JP Hosuton, our composer, could record the soundtrack. He worked with a lot of rough images, layered un-composited green screen shots and a lot of frames with just text describing what the hell was supposed to be going on.
The task of creating the CG virtual sets has fallen to me and I now find myself esconced in my basement edit suite working on a Hackintosh (thank you, Mark!) with just Final Cut Pro, PhotoShop and Cinema 4D to craft and piece together the necessary elements for all 230 separate shots – most of which contain 4 to 10 layers of footage. Wheee!
Sounds like work – but it is fun.
I am liking what is coming out. It looks good. I wish it was going faster. I wish I had some staff to do things for me – like get another beer. I wish – well – as they used to say: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Wishing won’t get me closer to completing the work. All there is for me to do is to just fucking do it.
And that I am.
Here’s a song clip for you. It’s one of JP’s great tunes – it takes place during the visitation from the Ghost Of Christmas Past where she shows Scrooge how his lust for money lost him love for Alice.
Let me know what you think.
There’s more to come. Much more.
Cheers.
P. S. It is definitely odd to be spending the dog days summer cutting together snow scenes.
I don’t rattle on here much about past work I’ve done – not too much anyway – but since it’s the 25th anniversary of the film Labyrinth I thought I’d relent with a wee post about my work on it. I’m also including parts of the behind the scenes documentary called: Inside The Labyrinth so you can see the bits I was involved with.
I was working on Fraggle Rock for Jim Henson, playing Junior Gorg and various other minor puppet characters, and on this one day I was portraying a large Blob that was eating Doozers. It was a hellish costume that required me to roll around inside this small, airless foam sphere. During a break in the shoot I was sitting on the floor – half in and half out of the costume – when Jim asked me: “How tall are you?” I responded: “Right now? About three feet. Why?” That got a laugh from Jim and then he mumbled something about working on a film in London. I did my best not to shit myself – I still had scenes to do inside that horrible costume – and let him know as calm as I could that I would indeed be interested in working for him.
At around the 6:20 mark is the section where they show the Red Riding Goblin with me working out and goofing around in the costume. The concept for the costumes was great but they were very painful to be in for extended periods of time.
I was 28 years old, a skinny, arrogant, ignorant mime with a bit of talent for puppetry and I was in the UK working for Henson. Yowzah! I spent over six months in England – living in Hampstead and working in Elstree. The people I worked with were amazing and fast friendships were built there. I was terribly homesick the entire time and when I was offered further work by Frank Oz on Little Shop Of Horrors I declined and returned to Toronto.
The resulting chronic back pain I could do without. The damage to my right hip when the Ludo harness failed while being lifted up into the tower still gives me trouble. The lung infection I developed while there got worse after my return and forced me to miss the final few episodes of Fraggle. But holy fucking hell – it was frickin’ Labyrinth, baby!
Around the 3:30 mark you can see me and Ron Muek working out the kinks in the Ludo costume.
What I learned on Labyrinth as a performer and as a filmmaker was immeasurably useful for the rest of my career. The opportunity to play with the elite of performers and animatronic designers and builders is one I cherish.
Cory Doctorow posted on BoingBoing about how Jack Christie (a 12th grade student at Donald A. Wilson Secondary School in Whitby, Ontario) has been suspended indefinitely for posting his animated videos on YouTube. Christie was originally given a one day suspension and ordered by the Principal, Warren Palmer to immediately remove the videos. Jack Christie refused and was then given the indefinite suspension. When Gavin Russell (prime minister of the student council) and others took up a petition to get Christie back in school they were told to stop and threatened with punishment.
Way to go, Mr. Palmer.
That’s a really unique way of teaching the fundamentals of democratic rights and freedoms to the youth of our country. But, of course, that’s not really what you were doing, was it? And, of course, they don’t really need to be taught these things, do they? No.
As amply demonstrated in Jack Christie’s rebuttal to the school board, it is the staff of Donald A. Wilson Secondary School (in particular Mr. Palmer) and the Durham District School Board that need to be taught the basics of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Take it away, Jack:
To be fair – not all school administrators are as thick as Mr. Wilson. However, the pinheads who do exist in positions of authority within our school system need to remember they are running (not ruling) institutions of learning – not prisons. Students are citizens. If a person in such a position of power is incapable of seeing the inappropriateness of their response to a situation and then wield their power further in a blind insistence of their authority – it becomes obvious that such a person is not worthy of maintaining that position.
The principal of Donald A. Wilson Secondary School – and the Durham District School Board – owe Jack Christie a very humble and public apology.
Shame on you, Mr. Palmer.
Jack Christie – you fucking rock.
Never apologize. Never retract. Never back down.
Cheers.
P. S. I especially liked the part with: “Look at the fucking puppety puppet!” – but maybe that’s just me.
P. P. S. You can read further coverage by the Globe & Mail here – where the comments are priceless. And there’s a report over at ParentCentral with a great photo from one of Christie’s videos where he suggests Sen. Joe Leiberman has sexual relations with goats.
Here’s a brief clip from our production of Ruffus The Dog’s Christmas Carol. I’m posting this to show what I’ve been up to these past few weeks as I continue to work on the edit for the show. The audio isn’t properly mixed yet but I’m liking how this whole thing is looking.
When we first produced Ruffus for television broadcast we had a very low budget and managed to get creative in pursuit of our solutions to make the show and tell the stories we wanted to share with our young viewers. Our puppet characters were shot in a studio against blue/green screen – we would shoot one show each day and then spend another week shooting all our backgrounds. These backgrounds were cut-out water colour paintings – mounted on cardboard and set up on a rotating turntable. We took that idea from the Fleischer Brothers who did similar things for their animations with Popeye and other characters.
Our similar approach was a simple solution to the very big problem of how to craft multiple sets and locations that looked different from just a flat painted background. And it was fun moving the individual miniature set pieces around to make a new scene – very much like playing with a toy theatre. I liked it.
But that gave the show a very particular look. It worked but it was decidedly low-end. For this production of Dickens’ classic tale we wanted to achieve a richer look – and, of course, with an even smaller budget. Insane! The shoot was 4 days and has resulted in a 37 minute final cut. We couldn’t afford a studio so we shot in my living room with a very minimal lighting kit. The original shows were shot on digi-beta and cut on an Avid. My respect for our editor, Frank Moressa, grows with each day I work on this and bang my head on the keyboard.
This was shot on a Sony XDCam – generously donated for the shoot and operated by Kit Pasold and is being posted on a Hackintosh using Final Cut Pro. My dear friend, Mark Achtenberg, (a very talented editor, writer, director) donated the hackintosh because my plan to cut it all on my laptop just wasn’t feasible with the file sizes of the HD footage.
High definition is awesome!
I’m used to working fast and loose on my productions. I honestly expected to be able to complete the post work on the show in just 3 weeks. I did the final timed cut in a single week in order to get the footage to JP Houston to work on the music score – and he has delivered an outstanding set of tracks. But when I saw how good our footage was I fell in love with it all and wanted to be sure our backgrounds could live up to the same visual standards.
This time the backgrounds are all being created in Cinema 4D. We didn’t have that kind of tech at our disposal back when we did the original shows. The ability to build the sets in three dimensions and light them and choose our camera angles to match our shot footage is an incredible treat. The clip above is just a wee taste of what’s going on inside that big black hackintosh box I’ve been working on. I’m trying not to get too fussy with the work – there’s flaws throughout but I’m happy with what we’re getting and intent on making this production worthy of everyone’s dedication in getting it made and to ensure it has an audience and a life long after it’s been completed and released.
The work goes on. I’ll be posting some more clips and photos next week. Onward!
Cheers.
P.S.
Here’s one of the Fleischer cartoons that used the table top model system I described. They called it the Steroptical Process and it was created in response to Disney’s innovation of the multi-plane animation camera – which provided true depth of field to cel animation.
Although the look of what the Fleischer’s came up with was outstanding they used it sparingly in their productions because it was craft-heavy and labour intensive to make these juicy miniature backgrounds.
Our anticipated release date of December 21st (hey, that’s today) of Ruffus The Dog’s Christmas Carol has been delayed due to unexpected post-production efforts.
Below is a video put together by Ben Deutsch from photos and videos he and his wife, Tatiana Hernandez, shot while we produced the holiday special in our home.
We received a lot of very generous contributions from our supporters through our IndieGoGo crowdfunding pages and the dedication of our team who performed and handled tech and design work made those 4 days a lot of fun.
The unexpected post-production efforts I mentioned above are due to the high quality of the footage we got. What I had expected to be a 2 week edit has expanded in order to make sure our CG backgrounds and effects meet the same standards as the video we shot.
It’s disappointing to not meet our deadline – it was ambitious but seemed do-able. I have been advised by our team that it is indeed better to focus on making the project as good as it can be since holidays come around every year and it will be worthwhile to make something that lasts and lasts.
I was also reminded by my friend Fred of a quote by Douglas Adams: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
So here’s me going Whoosh! as I return to the basement editing suite and continue the work on completing the show.
As you may have noticed I’ve been posting a lot about our efforts to get Ruffus The Dog’s “A Christmas Carol” financed through contributions from the crowd-funding web site IndieGoGo.
The time has run out for that effort and while we didn’t raise the full $8,500 we were hoping to, we did clear over $2,000 and managed to garner a bit of attention for the show itself. It’s all good.
The process of using IndieGoGo was an interesting learning experience. I have no doubts we’ll bring other productions forward through that site. The level of participation from contributors is a difficult one to anticipate; I’m sure everybody thinks their own project is the absolute most bestest in the whole universe. There are a lot of great recommendations from the operators of the site on how to best leverage awareness of your project and ensure you are getting the maximum return for your efforts – but it is up to you to make it happen.
Did I do everything humanely possible to guarantee full or even excess funding of “A Christmas Carol”? No, of course not – I’m a lazy procrastinating slob with too much work in front of him and preternaturally shy about blowing my own horn. We did have a lot of help from many people out there – friends, family, colleagues and total strangers – to which we are indebted. It’s gratifying and humbling to see others get out and make noise in an effort to help us in this quest.
Thanks to you all from the bottom of my sordid little heart.
Today is Tuesday – next week, on Monday, we will begin shooting “A Christmas Carol”. I’ll be documenting the entire process here on this blog and probably on another site set up just for that show. There will be photos and tweets and possibly a live video feed on UStream. We can’t get too ambitious with all that because we do have a show to shoot and that is, perforce, ambitious enough in its own right.
When it is all finished and ready for release it will, of course, show up on the official Ruffus The Dog web site as well as its own online location, and right here and on YouTube and anywhere else we can place it.
There’s a lot for me to do between now and when we wrap the shoot – as well as thereafter with our tight post-production schedule – and while there is plenty for me to be raving, raging and ragging on about (TSA, Copyright, Internet Censorship, stupid cat videos, Net Neutrality, the Singularity, government corruption, cool art, corporate malfeasance, fascist hijinks and general monkey assholery to name but a few) I shan’t be able to indulge my usual blog musings in earnest for a while. That doesn’t mean you won’t see things posted here – I am, after all a lazy procrastinating slob – just that my posts may be somewhat minimal for a few more weeks.
After all is said and done will it have been worth it?
Of course! I get the chance to play with my friends in a creative endeavour and tell a great story in our own way and show it to the world. What’s wrong with that? Paying the bills would be nice too but that’s gonna have to wait until we’re finished this – then I’ll go out and get a job and complain about it at length here.
In the meantime, I’m taking great comfort and inspiration from a slender little volume I picked up at our local bookshop – The River Trading Company, on Queen West (the real Queen West: Parkdale) – where I found it perched in their front window display of nifty holiday stuff.
It’s an Atlantic Monthly Press 1920 reproduction of the original edition.
I don’t believe in omens and signs but I’ll take what I can get – and this will be the book Ruffus reads from in the show.
Once again – my deepest thanks to everyone who contributed and supported our fund raising efforts – our creative team will now strive to make the best Ruffus show possible. Keep tuning in for updates.
I'm going to be slowly making some changes to the website both in format and content - and I'm pretty sure even the URL will change.
It's going to be more of a personal news aggregator with a featured video blog from yours truly. We'll see how long that lasts. So bear with me - thanks.
It's going to be more of a personal news aggregator with a featured video blog from yours truly. We'll see how long that lasts. So bear with me - thanks.