46 - RA 15 - The Brick Wall Of The Future

You know brothers, I had an interesting deep n’ meaningful conversation the other day

Deep n’ meaningfuls (or DnMs) are when two or more people cut the jokes and the witty banter, and the wild gesticulations, and just sit back and have a proper, meaningful, relevant conversation. It can be about anything, as long as it’s something important that has impact on your life. It can be about family, friends, work, school, University, a career, self esteem problems, being depressed, being sick, being broke. Anything that has impact on your life. We are a thoughtful generation, doing a much larger amount of thinking about these types of topics than we otherwise would.

The flip side of course is that we do very little thinking about things like sex and drinking and partying and drugs that don’t immediately seem to have a larger impact, but that’s a blog for another time.

So I was having a Cowboy Bebop marathon (sort of, we got about 4 episodes in) and paused it because the two friends who were with me, a boy and a girl, both of whom were a year older than me, paused it because they started about their jobs.

I haven’t had a job in a while, and the job that I had didn’t last long and was only part time, so I was mostly just listening as they talked. One of them had just gotten a full time job offer that he could take once he finished high school at the end of year, which was not exactly far away.

It sounded like a nice enough job, but he was pretty nervous about it. The thing is, we are used to having school. School is kind of a constant, an unmoving, unchanging schedule that everything else is placed around. Our social lives, our jobs, our hobbies, all of it happens around school. What’s more, school doesn’t end at the end of a school day, it continues. It consumes your nights, your weekends, your holidays, your showers, your hours spent surfing youtube. All of it is really just a part of school.

And we are not unhappy about this, nor are we filled with joy, we just are. This is just how we live. So when all of this suddenly changes, like for example, when you are going to finish high school and go straight into a full time job, everything changes. Suddenly it is not all consuming, you go to work in the morning, do your job, then go home at closing time and that’s it. There’s no homework, or assignments, or constant shower worrying, you’re just left with nothing. Just getting on with your thing, maybe going out, killing time, drinking a lot, spending your money on things you only kind of need, and possibly spending time with your girl/boy friend, assuming you have one.

It is a pretty major shift. Your life goes from being about one thing, to being about a very different thing. I couldn’t contribute much, but listening to him share his concerns, and the girl doing her best to assure him that he’ll manage just fine, and adjust and be happy, and then joking that with his new money he’ll buy us all our own boats, I felt a similar concern.

I’m getting to the end of year 11, which means I only have 1 more year of school. Even though I have every intention of going straight to university (though I have no idea what I’ll be studying,) I’ll be dealing with everything he’s dealing with soon enough.

We live in a fast paced world, things that seem like they’re far off hit us in the face faster than a clever analogy, and soon we’ll all have to deal with major changes to our lives that we don’t necessarily want to face.

Theme of the week

            What a relevant deep n’ meaningful that you’ve had recently?

R. A. Lyons.

45 - AL 13 - Through The Concussion Glass

I actually did have an odd experience a few weeks ago.

I thought about writing into a blog, but I thought that neither of you would believe me that it had actually happened. But so many little things about the event were just so unexpected, and so odd, and so strange that I wrote a kind of pre-emptive blog so that at some point I would send it in.

Well here’s the story.

So I’ve been quite unspecific about exactly what the studios that I work for do, and what my job actually is. My official job and my actual job are two different things, that are only about 50% overlapping. Rest assured that the job I prefer is my unofficial job, which luckily is the one I actually do. But we’ll start with my official job.

Officially, I’m a sound engineer.

I work for a studio that has lots of very nice equipment and great studio spaces, and a lot of very talented people that work here and with a number of very talented contacts. Clients come in from ad agencies and corporations, every now and then some animation houses and sometimes film and tv studios. They come in with footage that just has sound they recorded on location. It is usually quiet and distant, and with annoying background sounds, and no foley (as in sound effects created by people.) We then dissect the sounds, recording the foley, pumping up the dialogue and making sure it is clean and legible (not always easy) and then mixing it all into whatever format they want. Stereo is easiest, and everything starts that way, but 5.1 is the main request we get.

This is a great job, and you get to meet lots of nice people (and lots of controlling tyrants who know nothing about sound,) and I really enjoy it.

Unofficially, I’m half of a sound design team.

I do love mixing sound, and I think it’s just as important to the impact of a film as having nice visuals, but I also love composing. I work with my hard-partying partner (seriously, I don’t know where he gets so many party invites from, but he is always arriving to work hung-over) and between us we completely manage the sound. We record the foley, sometimes we dub voices (not to brag, but we do some good voice dubbing,) we mix the sound, add all the necessary effects, and we compose and record the music. Well I say we when it comes to composing, I do most of the composing, my partner mostly listens and tells me if it needs more of something, or less of something, if it sounds too bare, or just too busy etc. And it works.  We get some great work done, if I do say so myself.

So with that out of the way, here’s the oddness.

Sometimes bands and small time performers who want to produce some work on the cheap side, but still make it professional, approach the studio. One such band had booked in for a day of recording an EP they wanted to distribute online. I can’t say their music was very good, but I am always happy to help out small time artists. So the band came in, got out their instruments, tuned up, played through a few songs, and we gave them instruction to not knock over or spit on any of the microphones (you’d be surprised.) Next thing I knew, a couple of cameramen came in with their fancy DSLRs, put up a few lights, and got ready to film. I wasn’t happy about this, because the room was going to get very crowded, and busy, and camera people tend to get in the way. But then even stranger, the band then got into costume. Not subtle costumes either, but black and white horror monster masks, and tribal fur and pelts for the rest of them. It was bizarre.

And then they set about playing. My partner and I just sat in the control room, making sure the sound was coming through properly, and trying to ignore the strangeness of the next room. They recorded about three songs, got filmed in various ways, and then packed up, thanked us and left.

That’s my odd story for the week.

Andrew Lyons.

44 - DL 15 - On The Edge Of Darkness

Previously – On Daniel’s Blogs.

2pm-1am:
Filming. I love it. I love the people, I love the place, I love the activities, I love the end product, and I love the comradery. Everyone is so friendly and diligent and eager to do a great job, it really is awesome. Plus, several cute girls were there, who were not from my course, that’s always nice.

EXT. RUGBY CLUB/PARKING LOT – NIGHT

A small hill rises, the Club House perched upon it. A field stretches off to the side, quickly disappearing into the gloom. At the bottom of the hill, lit by a mere three street lights, is the parking lot. Only two cars are parked, a white 4-wheel drive that is roughly the size of a storage crate, and a much smaller blue car several spaces away.

From the blue car, a figure emerges. Pale, grimy, greasy, sweaty, ugly haired, skinny but also flabby, and in a nervous state. This is Daniel Lyons, 20, a typical straight, white male, really a very boring protagonist.

            DANIEL

Where in the f**k am I?

Daniel walks over to the sign of the Club, all the time trying his phone, hoping that somehow it regains some battery, and manages to lead him home. The sign is dark, and the name is basically hidden. Daniel sighs.

            DANIEL (Grumbling)

Not that it would have helped anyway…

He looks up at the club. There are lights on upstairs, maybe there is a person? A person with directions? Daniel starts walking back across the parking lot, and taking long strides, ascends the sloped driveway till he gets to the entrance. It’s 1:30 in the morning, and there is no chance it’s open, but Daniel tries the door anyway.

He thinks about shouting something, but can’t think of what. No matter what he says, he’s still arriving there at 1:30 in the morning, and everything he does will look suspicious. The door is locked, so Daniel gives up and walks back to the car.

As he approaches, he considers his options. He has no phone, no GPS, and no map books, and he is in a part of the world he has never been in before alone, and has no sense of direction. Essentially, he is f**ked.

            DANIEL (Sarcastically)

Why don’t I just sleep and ask someone for directions in the morning…

Then, over on the road, a sound builds. Daniel quickly runs over to the road, and watches as a taxi passes by. Daniel tries to wave it down, knowing that they’ll have a GPS which can tell him the directions, but the taxi sails past, not giving him the time of night… Daniel runs up the road towards a concentration of shops, light flaring down the street.

Will Daniel ever get home? Stay tuned next week for the continuation of the thrilling trilogy.

Daniel Lyons.

43 - RAL 14 - The Green Leaf Munchies

Here’s something funny that happened to me this week

Favorite Song Of The Moment

            ‘Beauty Killed The Beast V’ by James Newton Howard for 2005s ‘King Kong.’ Yes, I went and got the soundtrack. A sad, somber, succinct, sorrowful and other S words track that underscores the last few minutes of the film and a bit of the credits. It makes we want to write my books with an extra emotional edge,

Theme of the week

            The oddest thing that has happened to you recently (except you Dan, you finish your story.)

Oddest thing that has happened to me recently:

I feel like I’ve spent the last three weeks in the car, cause I’m been housesitting and driving to school from said housesitting house, which takes about an hour each day. This itself isn’t so bad, but mom and dad are always asking me to come home for various chores and things, as well as getting home to do my laundry and y’know… eat food. So really, I’m spending at least two hours each day in the car, and while for some adults this probably seems quite normal, for me, it’s really not normal. I’ve only had my ‘Red Ps’ for 4 months and I feel like I’ve already done more hours than I ever did on my Ls.

But anyway, the funny story is this.

I am driving along the highway for a decent portion of my car trip, and usually during very heavy traffic, so lots of cars get chances to look in and see what I’m doing. I’m assuming they don’t, but for the sake of this story, lets say lots of people do. I was leaving home after stopping by after school and mom decided to give me the remains of a salad from last nights dinner, correctly fearing that I didn’t eat much healthy food when I was housesitting.

Well on the drive home, I got rather hungry. I had been sitting in traffic for half an our, and only about a third of the way through the journey. I looked over to the passenger seat and saw that the salad had slipped out of the bag it was contained. Now I had previously assumed that the salad was contained in something sensible, like a container, but after it slipped out, I realized I was quite wrong. Mom had decided that the most efficient way to give me this salad, was to wrap it up on a large and heavy platter, and just put that in the bag. So here I was driving along, no passenger, but a giant platter of salad next to me.

But I was still hungry.

So I reached over and started munching on this salad. Carrots and lettuce and snow peas and baby spinach leaves and other salady things were all accounted for, and overall it was quite tasty.

So any passers by who happened to glance in, and plenty of people had the opportunity, the would have seen a 17 year old boy, tapping on the steering wheel to whatever was on the radio, munching on salad. It’s an odd sight to be sure.

Anyway, that’s my blog for the week, as you can tell, I don’t have all that much to talk about. But anyway.

Read from you tomorrow.

R. A. Lyons.