Eric Ingrum's Project Blog

It’s finally out!

Buy Final Cut X on the Mac App Store.

Double Feature takes up a lot of time. Michael and I always plan these other projects, but we just don’t have time to complete them before Double Feature starts kicking our ass again. We move the work around (year planning, mixing, research, etc) in a such a way that we have little vacations for ourselves a few times a year, and it allows us to work on a few extra things…but revising the website always seemed to get pushed back. With my mini vacation once again coming to an end, it seemed like now or never.

http://doublefeatureshow.com

This new site is crazy awesome. The design is a much cleaner, Helvetica driven sort of look (despite the single mass use of Arial – ease up, font nerds!) It uses our year end artwork for both the background and main header, which is neat and modern looking. There’s a bunch of new features, and the backend now allows us to expand in a way that’s stupid easy. Easier expansion means a lot less of “wouldn’t this be cool? If only it wasn’t such a pain in the ass to actually roll out.” A few of those things have gone up already.

Double Feature Gallery

We noticed the most accessed page on the site (besides the main page) was the A-Z list of films. People who are seeing the site for the first time want to know what we’ve covered. I used to have to update the list manually, which not only took a lot of time but always seemed to get pushed back and ensured it was never really up to date. Now the list gets updated automatically whenever a new show goes up.

With the revision comes a database of artwork for each individual movie (a bit more on that in a second) so it seemed like an obvious choice to build a gallery of every movie we’ve ever covered. This way people can browse our shows like you’d browse DVDs at a store. Similar to the A-Z film page, you can look at that gallery and click any cover to immediately go to that episode’s page.

This database also gives us the ability to post a count down to the next show in the upper right hand corner of every page. This way it’s easy to figure out what we’re doing next week so you can watch the movies in advance. It also clears up a little confusion about what “Wednesdays at midnight” means, since that’s technically Thursday morning.

New Entry Example: Lost Highway + Psycho

The show entries template has been updated too. Each entry now features the chapter times so you can skip between the different movies covered in the episode. It also has details for the movies themselves!

There’s more obvious links to IMDB and Wikipedia, and buttons to purchase the movies on Amazon or iTunes. My favorite thing about the new site, however, is that there’s now high resolution cover art for every single movie we’ve done. I removed all the text from each cover and conformed them all to 1500x1000px. It helps make the Double Feature site a more legitimate resource to find useful things (which is part of the overall goal looking forward).

There’s also release date, director, writer, actors, a synopsis…all of this goes into a database as well, so now you can click a director’s name and see every movie of theirs we’ve done on the show. If we’ve only covered a single movie of theirs, the site doesn’t bother showing the link – that way you don’t go through a bunch of clicks just to find out you’re already looking at their only episode. We’ve given each of these director’s their own page with a brief description of what the director is all about. It’s a great place to go if you’re not familiar with their work.

I’m still writing up a lot of these descriptions and working on some new features. We have a new contact page on the site if you’d like to leave any feedback about the changes.

I just finished a live music video for the Glittermouse song Porn Stars and Promises (We’re in Love). You can stream it from YouTube here:

You can also download the video directly.

I shot the song with Rob Cornell on February 3rd. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing. I borrowed a Canon T1i and he brought his T2i and we filmed without having any real preparation. Neither of us had been to Lincoln Hall before, so we weren’t really sure what to expect. I’ve been really interested in using a DSLR to shoot video and I thought this would be a great test for low lighting.

I know Glittermouse though their singer, who also happens to be my Double Feature co-host Michael Koester. To be perfectly honest I’ve only seen them live a handful of times and I wasn’t really sure what song to shoot. While we actually shot for the first two songs, I ended up putting together this video for the fourth song in their set. It wasn’t optimal for the coverage we had, but I loved this song so it had to be the one.

I edited it together in Final Cut. I actually cheated a bit and used a ton of b-roll and footage from the other songs. While I’m sure knowing that will ruin the magic for some people, I’m actually really impressed I was able to pull off such a believable video. A lot of that was the magic of Final Cut. This was my first time really using FCP – when I did the Birthday Massacre Bootleg DVD I had made everything using Quicktime and iMovie. Final Cut turned out to be really great. I even did the color in it. I can’t wait to jump back in.

Gorillaz released their new album “The Fall” yesterday, and it’s free. If that isn’t enough to make me go crazy, they also recorded the entire thing on an iPad. Inside the album artwork pdf they include credits to all the iPad apps they used to make the album.

Speak It! $1.99
SoundyThingie $2.99
Mugician FREE
Solo Synth* $14.99
Crystal Synth XT $4.99
FunkBox Drum Machine $2.99
gliss $0.99
AmpliTube for iPad $19.99
XENON Groove Synthesizer $4.99
KORG iELECTRIBE $19.99
bs-16i $4.99
Mellotronics M3000 $11.99
Cleartune $3.99
iOrgel HD $2.99
olsynth $6.99
StudioMini XL $5.99
BassLine $0.99
Harmonizer FREE
Dub Siren Pro $3.99
Filtatron $4.99

That’s roughly $121 in iPad apps, assuming the full versions were used and not free trials.

* I can’t actually find “Solo Synth” anywhere on the iPad, although a Google searches seem to return Moog’s NLogSynth Pro when you go looking for it. Since Filtatron is credited as Moog Filtatron in the album notes, it’s possible Moog’s other iPad synthesizer was used as well. It’s only a best guess at this point.

An AmpliTube iRig was likely used for guitar input on tracks like “Bobby in Phoenix.” It’ll let you jack a quarter inch input directly into the headphone jack. It’s also possible vocals were recorded this was as well.

Various sounds of US travel appear on the album; “California and the Slipping of the Sun” has some samples. There are some samples of what appear to be radio stations on “The Snake In Dallas” as well. The track “The Speak It Mountains” includes the classic iPod click sound, and “Aspen Forest” also has the cell phone interference sound you commonly get when your iPhone is on Edge and near a set of speakers.

We use an iPad on Double Feature all the time. Production meetings, emails and notes, show research while we’re watching the movies…I often wonder how we even did a show before it. “The Fall” makes me wonder if we couldn’t record and even mix the show on one as well.

I play a lot of thought experiments out in my head. I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t think “what would I do in X situation? Then what if Y happened?” For me these little experiments have become a large part of how I determine right from wrong. I think about what is true or right in a situation, what I feel strongly about, and try to apply that to something else to determine how I feel about that thing.

Piracy has always been an odd one for me. I make stuff in my free time, and I have a great amount of respect and appreciation for people who create things. Musicians, film makers, game designers, all of them. I think when someone comes up with an idea or works on some kind of content, they should be payed for it (if that’s what they want). I know I’ve written before about how I would urge artists to put out their music for free, but that was as part of an overall marketing strategy. It’s not force.

So to be clear here, I don’t believe:

Artists make too much money

Famous people are greedy and have enough cash!

Music should be free, therefore stealing is ok

Instead I believe:

If an artist makes money, great!

People are entitled to any wealth fairly earned.

If an artist wants money for their content, they should be able to charge.

If your blog already has too many pictures of Ayn Rand, just start substituting Angelina Jolie in her place.

I’m a free market guy. If an artist charges too much / uses a bad distribution method / makes shitty art / is too famous or popular for you, don’t endorse them. The answer is to tell them to fuck off, not to go ahead and steal their product. Avatar looks like a shit film, so I didn’t watch it. I think the radio is an embarrassment, so I don’t listen to or buy the crap on it. The things I DO like I enjoy enough to want to support monetarily. If I don’t quite like them that much, I don’t buy them. Because of this, I don’t really have anything I’m not REALLY excited about.

Where this gets tricky is the used market.

I’ve established that I purchase things to support an artist. I’m not really concerned with legality so much as ethicacy, which is why the used market stumps me. I’m generally a pretty cheap person. I look for deals like it’s a hobby. I’ll spend an extra week trying to find a deal where something is a dollar off. Very often you’ll find these deals in the used market. You can buy used for far less than new! Here’s the question then:

How is the used market any different from outright stealing?

To look at legality for just a second, of course you have the right to purchase and resell goods. You can buy a used film and no one can sue you. You won’t get in trouble. It isn’t wrong in any legal sense. You can do it. On the other hand, why would you? When you purchase Bioshock in shrink-wrap, Ken Levine and 2K Games get some cash. Microsoft gets some cash. They brought it to you, and you told them it was well worth it. The market sees the popularity of Bioshock, and you basically help insure the creators are successful and that games like it get made in the future.

When you buy a game used, the impact of your purchase is so diminished it’s essentially like it never happened at all. Who benefits from a used game purchase? GameStop, eBay, and the dude who bought it in the first place. You’re supporting vendors, not creators. Frankly I don’t really care about vendors nearly as much as creators. It’s great that they’re there, but I don’t think they don’t deserve to earn as much as (and certainly not at the expense of) the creators.

Some might also argue that you’re increasing the implied demand on the used market which increases the price and confidence of goods of the new market. While that’s true, the effects are once again so marginal. Are we more willing to purchase a good if we know we can resell it later? Yeah, sure. Would that good sell anyways? Yes. Does your dollar have a much greater impact when you buy new? Exponentially.

A lot of people in my generation don’t know what it’s like to purchase goods. Music especially, but even movies and games are commonly stolen now. If you were going to buy used (and the creators weren’t going to see any money anyhow), why not just steal? At the end of the day, putting the law aside what’s the real difference? I mean, we’d certainly never make it illegal to sell or buy used goods. The only difference between purchasing Bioshock used or downloading it without paying is that GameStop might go out of business. Not even the people working there would miss it.

I would rather purchase something and show my support than steal it, but then again I’m a nut job. I do things in black and white. Most people who don’t steal don’t have a problem buying used. Why is that? Is legality the only reason they spend their money? What makes it different for them? Are there better arguments for the used market that I’m not thinking of? Do people really just love supporting eBay Inc?

After six long years, LOST has finally ended. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ending…trying to convince myself it wasn’t a huge waste of time. Unfortunately there’s no real way to do that. While the episode was emotionally satisfying, it was intellectually offensive. The “flash sideways” in each episode of the last season was all building up to this huge cliche. It was a writing gimmick that would allow the show to end with a lot of hugging and pseudo-religious nonsense. I could never re-watch the show, knowing that’s what it all came down to.

Some people were pissed about the lack of answers. I get that, but personally I wasn’t expecting any real answers. I’d come to terms with that. I just wanted the show to be as creative as it used to be. A lot of people have rejected the flash sideways – this site has even edited them out of the last season. I applaud that, but I still don’t think that makes the last season very compelling. It fixes its most obnoxious flaw, but it doesn’t make me want to watch it.

So now that it’s all over, what do I do? The first few seasons stand as some of the best television ever made, but the last few are mediocre – and the final is downright offensive. Should I purge it all from my AppleTV? I’ve got a solution.

I’m going to pretend season three was the last season.

The Best Ending

Right away I know the season three finale was pound for pound better than the season six finale. All that church bound hug stuff was nice, but that was never why I liked the show. I liked it for the mystery and the writing…something the shows producers claimed was never the top priority, The end of season three (We have to go back, Kate!) was probably the biggest WTF moment of the show. They never had a comparable mind fuck scene after that. It’s as if they forgot that was part of the show. At the end of season three, you know they get off the island but wonder if thats what was best. Its pretty much the same conclusion you get at the end of season six, but without all the sloppy heavy handed stuff. The show just wasted the last three seasons telling you it didn’t matter – they were just going to end up getting off like they did in season three.

Questions!

The biggest problem with pretending season three was the last season is that there are tons of unanswered questions. There’s two reasons that doesn’t bother me. The first is that seasons 4-6 brought up plenty of questions that were never answered as well. I actually think there’s about as many unanswered questions at the end of season six as there are at season three. The questions are just different. the other reason it doesn’t bother me is that it turns out I didn’t want to know the answers to a lot of those questions. Once I found out the whispers were trapped island ghosts, I knew somethings were better left to the imagination.

What does it all mean?

By the end of season six, you find out there is a magic light at the center of the island. You’re told not to ask exactly what it is, or where it came from. Jacob is explained, but you’re told not to ask what mother is or where she came from. That’s fine…going back too far would just lead to a creation myth. Ask yourself though…how is the cave light any different than what we thought Jacob was in season 3? There’s a magical man at the center of it all. We don’t know who he is or where he came from, but people fight over him the same they do the light. If were going to end up with no solid answer either way, why not stick with the undeniably cooler memory of that first encounter in Jacob’s cabin?

This is OK

This is the cleanest out. It doesn’t require any special edits or “looking the other way.” It’ll be as if LOST went out in its prime. At three seasons, it’s short enough that I can still show it to people AND I wont have to feel guilty knowing they inevitably jerk the audience around for three more seasons only to pretty much come to the same conclusion. Rather than hitting the audience over the head, season three’s finale invites a great dialogue and much speculation…something season six failed to do when they forced the fans to get caught up in lame conversations about purgatory.

I mean, we all just pretend Matrix 2 and 3 never happened, right?

The other day I found this spectacular short film series called Bright Falls. It’s a six episode viral series that’s been compared to David Lynch’s work (specifically Twin Peaks) as well as the X-Files and the creepier moments of Lost. Noticing there wasn’t a very comprehensive place to figure out exactly what Bright Falls is, I took a day off from my other nonsense and made a site.

http://brightfalls.blogspot.com

As I wrote on the site, it’s the best of everything I enjoy about the above mentioned films and shows…that seedy underbelly feeling of the small woodland town. A looming darkness so heavy and otherworldly that it’s oppressive. A driving mystery that challenges the audience to watch again and again.

Although it clearly draws a lot of inspiration from those works, it’s also unique in how dark and often terrifying it is. You always know somethings not right, and occasionally that something becomes very threatening. It’s a six part series (two parts have been released thus far) and if it’s going to continue the way it’s been going, you’ll nearly have a heart attack approximately once per episode.

I can’t say enough good things about it. I feel like I’m usually surrounded by mediocre films…this was a reminder that there’s some incredible stuff waiting for you in the strangest places. It’s independent, it’s free, and for me it’s really inspirational. Go check out brightfalls.blogspot.com and watch the first and second episode. It’ll really hook you.

I’d love to make something like this.

If you listen to the show or pop over here once in a while, you’re probably heard/seen me joke about Uptown. It used to actually be funny, but I think it’s started to have a serious effect on my overall feelings about humanity.

I first moved to the worst neighborhood on the northeast side a few years ago. It was a part of Chicago technically called Uptown, but it was on the border and most referred to it as Buena Park. At the time I thought it was a little snobbish – people didn’t want to acknowledge they lived in a bad neighborhood so they called it something else. Still, for a bad neighborhood it was a nice enough place. My cohost, my neighbors, and my Uptown girlfriend would all joke about how bad the place supposedly was.

I eventually moved north into the heart of Uptown. I realized when I moved that it wasn’t a great area, but it was cheap. I’m saving for a condo so I wanted to find a place where I could save more money. A nice condo is expensive and I don’t want to have to wait five years to buy one. I hated high school, so I graduated early. I hated college, so I graduated early. I hate renting, and I’ve had about all of it I can stand.

I’m starting to venture away from my point here, so let me just come right out and say it: Uptown is a bastion of miserable poor people, and they’re making me forget how much I love people in general. It’s soul crushing just to leave my apartment – and it’s even harder to return once I do. I can venture off to a nice neighborhood, hang out all day, and on my walk home I know once I’ve entered Uptown just by the look on people’s faces. A year ago I wouldn’t have believed it if you told me, but it’s true. You can sense the misery. You can see the poverty. It’s almost as if you feel the cynicism radiating from these people.

I guess I’ve just never been around so many unhappy human beings.

My last few years in Chicago have made me feel so enthusiastic about humanity. I would say hi to people I’d run into, I’d recognize people on the street, I’d even occasionally talk to strangers. I was always seeing the brighter side of the human race. People were full of ideas, creativity. I owed everything I had to the species. It inspired confidence in our collective future. It made me so excited to be alive. It was brilliant. That’s one of the reasons I live in the city and not the country…I like being around the man-made.

I’ve lived in the new apartment for eight months, but it’s never been this bad. When I first moved I was so absorbed in stuff I was working on I didn’t even notice…and then everyone was indoors all winter. Now that it’s getting hotter out everyone is outside. Day and night I have to face the overwhelming populous of depression. During the waking hours the main roads are lined with vendors and random groups of people just loitering and hassling passers by. The ignorant things you hear these people say, it’s astonishing. At night it’s a trade off; less people doing more awful things. Last night I barley felt safe walking home – in all my adventures through the city, there’s only ever been once or twice I haven’t felt safe anywhere and never where I lived.

I’ve been hassled several times in the last week or so. I’ve had to go through crowds of people talking about drugs, getting drunk, getting high. I hear these narrow-minded conversations outside about women, about minorities. I’ve seen the cops arrest someone in front of my apartment a handful of times just this week! It’s so disheartening. Usually I can shrug stuff like this off, but it’s really been getting to me. It’s actually distracting. I feel like I’m not making progress creatively because my whole outlook is fucked up. I have a new project I’m doing a pilot for at the end of the week and it’s been really hard to focus on.

I only have four months left here, so I’ll deal with it. I’m just starting to wonder if I should really rent another place in Uptown, or if after three years it’s finally time to find another neighborhood. More importantly, I need to find something to restore my faith in humanity so I can get through this.

I don’t write about music a lot because bands tend to really disappoint me. If you want to find challenging art that’s really doing something interesting, it seems that musicians have all but given up. I thought the new Gorillaz album would be the most interesting thing happening in music this this quarter. I’m excited about Plastic Beach and I think they’re one of the few bands doing something interesting. Just as their Stylo video was grabbing my attention away from that great OK Go video, someone else stole my interest.

Just when I thought I was tired of viral campaigning, I saw Trent Reznor write about how he had nothing to do with this. I won’t spoil any of it for you, just google iamamiwhoami and you’ll dive right into it. For people who aren’t yet interested enough (based purely on the above graphic), here’s the basics: Someone started uploading short YouTube videos with pop/industrial music and fantastically bizarre imagery. A few weeks after they went up, a music blogger got a package with some disturbing items.

Every step of the way there’s also some vague riddles. As with any good viral project, it’s a lot of numbers and codes all designed to make you guess who the artist is. Everyone suspects someone really high profile (ie Lady GaGa, Amy Lee, Christina Aguilera, etc). No one’s sure yet, but there seems to be some answers buried in the clues.

Kind of makes me want to get to work on music again.

I’ve been on a long beak from everything. I haven’t touched anything even bordering on artistic (besides Double Feature?) since I started a mad dash to pay off my student loan. Yesterday I wrote my lender a huge check, and long boring story short – I’m finally free of student debt. The repercussions of my worthless bachelors degree are now behind me. From here, it’s on to better planned and more lucrative decisions. Let’s see if I can’t get back to doing something interesting.

As if Mass Effect 2 wasn’t going to be enough of a distraction from that, the final season of Lost begins tonight.