A nice quiet room

That's what this blog feels like sometimes. We know that the occasional person drifts through - hell, even WE drift through on occasion - but, for the most part, it's a quiet, clean, spacious room, maybe one with huge floor-to-ceiling arches opening onto the sea. Birds fly in and out. The waves crash on the beach. A tray with a pitcher of cool lemon water sits in the corner, next to the blogging desk and the quill pen knife.

We pop in occasionally, write a little snapshot of 13BIT life, usually about what we eat while editing or some other such interesting morsel, or "bit," as it were. Then we leave and go about our bittness.

That bidness today includes sending the Bit-Rocket into low-level orbit towards El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de la Porciúncula.

We're off to collect some interviews of collectors.

No more apologies

No more apologies, god damn it, for not posting. We could make a movie about the pathology of guilt, shame and inaction of not posting, but it would not be true.

We have actually been super hard at work, doing the work of Bitting. But first, a 13BIT food update:

We have been eating a lot of dark chocolate salty pretzel chocolate bars from the Chocolate Bar, on Hudson Street (and, no, we do not get any swag for our priceless references, just the joy of knowing we are spreading the word).

We have been doing smoothies still from Integral Yoga. Uh...chocolate corn chips with guacamole. Brussels sprouts from Integral, as well. Ninth Street Espresso from Chelsea Market has become a mainstay and, on our new pagan holiday of Options Expiry Day, we sometimes get ice cream from Ronnybrook Farms, also in Chelsea Market. The occasional Gobo takeout diner. 2 Boots. What's new, you ask? Not much. Why mess with a winning formula? Better to just add little bits of junk food, one thing at a time. We still miss the loss of Rue Bourbon and Miracle Grill, but life must go on, Bitting must go on, the future marches on. Which brings us to:

1. Lakshmi, aka "The Quiet Room," is a couple of days from being sent out to festivals and greater things.

2. The uber-blog "Low Budget Legends," has finally been released into the wild. You can glimpse it at http://www.lowbudgetlegends.com

3. We have put the water footprint doc on the back burner for now, actually, we have wrapped it in foil and put it in the low-carbon footprint freezer temporarily while we are feverishly at work on another documentary, the subject of which will be revealed in the near future.

4. We have been pod-casting parts of "The Discreet Charm of the Hipster Class" to wild popular acclaim.

5. We are getting in gear to write the script for the next narrative.

6. German TV is running "Lumia"

7. We are participating in a forum in Los Angeles in the fall on visual arts, and will be doing special director chats about "Lumia" and "Video Out."

And let me tell you, people, THIS IS NO VAPORWARE! Everything is actually happening and we are very excited dot com about it all.

PLUS, 13BIT Labs is working on a few killer iPad apps.

Yes, Elko and Otto have a lot on their plates here while we are chewing on our bones and watching them work.

We promise not to take so long until the next House of Bit post.

Pushing Off

When I take long road trips, the kind where I drone on for 12 hours a day through long stretches of prairie or desert, I often feel that I'm in a plane - a C47 or an Electra - and making long runs from one isolated place to another. We get dusty, my co-pilot Elko and I, the plane gets dirty, we drone on, and eventually we come to a stop for the night, then crank it up again the next day. There are more details to it, but I'll leave it there for now.

I feel a similar analogy now regarding 13BIT, but it's more water-based. If we think of the company as a small boat which has been sitting on the shore, or moored for a month and a half now, that's more like it. The crew has just re-assembled and we have laid out our plans, discussed the charts, the routes, the shoals ahead, the places we may need to take on more crew. We are ready to push off and navigate the waters ahead. It's more accurate than the flying idea, as well, because it's a longer, slower journey, and the expanses are even greater. We are shooting for a spot that we are not even sure exists, or that we certainly don't know the path to at the moment, but we shoving off nonetheless.

Anyway, I'll shut up before I get any more silly than I already am. I have a wedding to go to this evening in Tribecaton.

Nee Hao Ma

6.5 bits here - writing again from Hong Kong. I have returned from the wilds of Niseko - and I'm still burning from the sulfuric waters of the onsens. And my limbs are burning from tumbling down the mountain on a board. Ok that makes no sense. It is because I am in 13Bit withdrawl - and I am having problems functioning. I am looking forward to finishing the script for Venezuela and for the other new 13bit projects - and for forming a compound and for the recession that will make NY gritty. In asia it is the year of the OX, but globally it is the year of the Bit!

Blog After Me

This morning I received an email from Big Paul- telling me to repeat some affirmations and then blog.

I am going to blog about the very strange dream I had last night Years ago I worked for a company called DPG, a production company. It was bought by IDT, the phone company, because the president of IDT wanted to make a movie called Yankee Irving. While I was at DPG/IDT the entire animation staff was outsourced to Canada, and most everyone else was fired. The story of DPG is much more colorful, but it might be in another movie -so I wont go into details.

My dream: Last night I dreamt DPG bought the bank where I work. When I heard that my bank was bought - I quit. But when I realized the bank was bought by my old friends at DPG, I feverishly attempted to get my job back. (I also came to realize that since I had quit, I had forfeited my bonus or severence) This is all in the dream. So I am in this room waiting to talk to someone who can give me my job back and I see all my co workers - who are there to take over the bank. They are all happy to see me. We were all on good terms. Then I start pitching 13Bit movies - and that generates some interest. We start bantering, start discussing making more movies... Then I awoke...

I will be back bitting in less than a week.

Chipatosis

Sometimes, the mail is your conscience. You make a purchase on the Internet and then forget about it. Then, weeks later, a package arrives or, as happened today, a mountain of boxes arrived via UPS from a mad moment at the 13Bit compound that occurred weeks ago.

We were editing one night and Meredith had a craving for some salty food. Usually, it's sugar that powers the Superbitter engine but, every once in a while, one of us wants something specific. In this case, she was jonesing for a bag of the Hawaiian Sweet Maui Onion potato chips from Tim's Chips that we had eaten for a whole previous year.

A little background - I first discovered these chips on one of my hot spring trips with the mighty Paul S. We had stocked up at the Nugget grocery store in Davis, California. Actually, he had brought them on previous trips for years and I had fond memories of ravenously, greedily eating them with great gobs of fresh guacamole by the side of remote hot springs in Idaho and Nevada. Good memories. How much better does life get than a feast of such delicacies, bottles of water, and a good soak at dusk?

Anyway, that's how I knew about them. I could not find them on the East Coast, though, and had become curious about where I could get them. I also wanted to get some for a cross country trip a year or two ago. So, I found them online (www.timschips.com) and, on a whim, ordered a few boxes. When they arrived, I was a bit horrified because I had not thought about the fact that boxes of potato chips take up a lot of room. So, we began to eat this stuff while we'd edit. And the boxes were bottomless. We had chips coming out of our ears. We gave chips away to people. We had Hawaiian Sweet Maui Onion potato chips available for every shoot for "The System," aka "Not Blavatsky," aka "whatever the fuck we are going to call this movie." Anyway, we had chips for a long time.

And then one day, there were none left and I said a silent "hallelujah" and thanked the Universe that I lived through all those chips and vowed that I would never make the mistake again of ordering potato chips in bulk from the west coast.

Life went blissfully on. We edited. We shot. We kept on bitting.

And then one day, Meredith wanted some chips. I had a weak moment, as well, and decided to order some new ones. I went on line and was barking out varieties to her from the main workstation: "Limon con Salsa?"

"Yes"

"Maui Onion Rings?"

"Yes"

We just went into a chip frenzy, clicked "Buy," and then forgot about it.

Today, I was taking Elko out when the UPS truck stopped in front of the building and the guy ominously said "I have something for you."

He started piling the boxes up in the back of the truck.

I had only bought a hundred dollars' worth of chips, but let me tell you, a hundred bucks goes a long way in the world of wholesale chips.

When Meredith came over, I promptly blamed her for the whole episode, tried to impart as much guilt as possible through special osmosis, then we sat down to work.

20 minutes later, I felt like a chip. Just one chip. Meredith was an easy sell. She wanted a chip, too. So we both walked over to the mountain of chip boxes - a bit warily, I will admit - and we started cutting open boxes in awe.

I will not reveal what two flavors we ended up sampling, but within 20 minutes, Meredith was complaining of the dreaded 13bit Chip Fever.

We are now well provisioned for the end-of-summer writing, post production and test-screening season.

[crunch]

We break every wall

There is no first, second or third wall in the cinematic universe of 13Bit, let alone some stinking FOURTH wall.

So there.

We love you all.

On reflection, no justice

I was just thinking about how the bet I made with Meredith two posts down and then clearly won in the previous post, well, that was a one way bet. Meaning, and please excuse all this horrid writing going on here, but I am tired in old South Carolina, meaning that she didn't actually agree to the bet, so why should she pay up?

Well, here's why. Because I am exercising my 50 percent shares in a proxy vote and the tie-breaker, Elko with his single vote, is silently voting with my bloc of shares to enforce the legality of this bet.

Now, I think I'll go watch the Yankees suck in Baltimore and drink some Ultimate Meal crap for dinner.

Man, that Pasita pizza is sure going to taste good.

Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm....

Right, Left, and All Over The Place

Meredith and I have been having a fascinating discussion about something that I am still trying to understand - why there is a right and a left. Not political sides, but simply a right and a left side.

It would take too long for me to recount here my attempts to understand what she is trying to convey to me, but I do still feel that I am NOT the one here with this particular learning disability. I may very well have others, but not this one. This is actually a very rare and odd condition, not the left and right-handedness thing, but her take on the whole thing, the way she sees it and even feels the need to understand this, as though this is something that can be understood and not felt.

In the backgound, Meredith is singing "montage-rama" to a lovely little melody. The scene is going well and it's another fruitful night here at 13BIT Productions, LLC.

"Stupid and vapid are really different."

"You can be really smart and still be vapid."

So, we're deep in edit. And you get in these rhythms while editing. It's all part of that overused, over talked-about thing these days called "process."

As such, deep in edit, a few things are going on. Elko is hanging out trying to get attention. The AC is humming, even though it's April, because it's warm out and the massive turbine-operated Macs are putting out many BTU's. The timeline is taking shape, tea is brewing, I am keeping the browsers all turned off - except for this one, of course.

And, as we always do while deep in edit - and this is a good sign of a happy edit bay with good rhythms and a healthy creative flow - we are talking shit as we work. I happened to talk about something - I cannot say what here - and Meredith happened to respond - I cannot say what about here. And we began to have a dialogue about human nature, which is what it often comes back to here in the 13BIT Agora, the temple to all things modern and philosophickal, as they may have said one day in old England while discussing ancient Greece.

I should get back to the editing before she makes some cut that I don't like and I have to straighten things out.

Happy passover, America.

The Iron Goddess Of Nausea

We are blogging again. Alert the media. Have a parade. It had gotten to the point that we were either going to write again or never write again. Such is the rust in the gears of the creative process that, when you reach this point, you must either pour some liquid wrench on the gears and force your aching bones up into the tractor seat or forever hold your peace and let your voice just fade from the blogosphere of discourse forever.

We don't want that to happen, so we'll call this past two months a break and just never let it happen again.

Actually, when I look at it, there was a death in my family, Meredith went away, and other life events *did* conspire to prevent us from writing, but that is never an excuse. Anyway, enough snivelling.

What does this title mean?

We are drinking the old faithful Yunnan Black again tonight, the tea that always does the job, the tea that's up on the tea billboard in the 13Bit Parking Lot. The tea that don't stop working, yo. We were reminded of our period of drinking Tikunan Iron Goddess of Mercy Oolong Tea and our discovey, confirmed by Tia, that it is a nausea inducer. I suppose that there are some uses for such a tea, but I can't think of any at this moment. Tia says that Japanese models drink it to stay thin. I would think that there are other ways to stay nauseous, but every culture has its thing, doesn't it?

The other thing about coffee, according to my dentist, is that it doesn't stain the teeth at all, whereas tea, well, you know what tea does. And what does Meredith say to this? She says:

"I don't care. I want old, black nasty teeth and I'm going to keep drinking tea."

And to that, I say "amen."

We are also big-time into coffee again here. Anyway, I have to go make another post. See you in a minute.

"It's not nihilistic, it's realistic"

Advice I just had to give someone about a professional situation. Actually, that wasn't the advice, it was a defense of the advice, which was "Just keep telling yourself it doesn't matter," to which the reply was "That's so nihilsitic."

What does have to do with 13BIT Productions LLC?

Well, nothing and everything. But that doesn't matter right now.

We Live to Bit and Bit to Live

"I'm a wreck," Meredith is saying. "I've got issues."

She keeps repeating "I'm a wreck." It must have been a hard day, week and month in field where she works while we're waiting for 13bit to go triple platinum.

Life goes on, though, and Meredith is young enough, resilient enough, and hungry enough to pull through. I know that, by Sunday, the day we continue auditioning people, she'll be in top form. Unfortunately, it will also be time for a case of the Sundays, as the work week is about to dawn, and her mood will evaporate as the day progresses.

As will mine. As will mine.

That's okay, the more we bit, the more immune we become to things like work weeks, the Sundays, the Mondays, and even the concept of working for other people, in general.

It's all just temporary. The mantra of the aspiring artist. We are just passing time here while we work, keep faith, and pursue our dreams. Just for today. Tomorrow the big ship comes in. Or does it?

No matter, we here at 13Bit can swim.

And we are too far from shore to turn back.

Onward.

To the tops!

"Do you know how easy it is to not look like a Schmuck?"

Meredith just gave me the okay to quote exactly what she said "because I truly believe that."

We are going through email for auditions. Most of the actors and actresses are very diligent, decent people who are trying to make it. We appreciate that so many talented people are trying out for us, that they are willing to work for free, and that they are taking the many risks that go with being an aspiring artist. We know how hard it is. We are right there with them.

That being said, every basket contains a few shmoes. In this case, it's someone who responded to us saying "please refresh my memory as to what your project is about?"

That sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Actually, it's not. How hard is it to go through your email and see when someone last emailed you, then to read the original email? How difficult is it to keep track of what you are applying to so that you don't come off as an arrogant, absent-minded yoyo? The answer in both cases is "not very."

We are dedicated filmmakers. We don't make any money. One day, we hope to, but all of our money, hopes, dreams and sweat goes into our work. We love what we do. We try our best to do right by people and all we ask is that people do their best with us. Most people do. We have been lucky so far in our career. We have worked with some great people. We hope to work with many more.

If you don't remember what the project was about when we call you in for an audition, please don't respond.

There Will Be No People

What a dark thought. What a terrible future we may have.

I was lecturing Meredith on spelling, the one area of 13Bit's bailiwick where I happen to excel and hold primacy. Because of that, I get pompous and defend it with all my semantic strength. I was telling her that her misspelling of "privilege" in the previous post was a common error, that particular misspelling, and then I went on to lecture that even *I*, the master of spelling in the 13bit compound, had not learned how to spell that particular word correctly until I was in my 40's. In fact, I may have known the correct spelling, then forgotten how in the brain cell apocalypse of my 1980's existence. Anyway, I said, in my best condescending way, "You don't have to worry about learning how to spell that for another 15 years." to which Meredith replied "There will be no people [then]."

Sigh. It's so sad. We really need to finish our next few movies before that happens. Otherwise, who will watch them?

Sound Edit

Audio is difficult. Even if you're not a perfectionist, as we are, sound is difficult. Color correction can be fun, even satisfying and filled with instant gratification. You correct a clip, it looks good, you say "ah, yes!," and then you apply the changes to other clips. Time passes and you steadily make the whole movie look better in a linear, measurable, tangible way.

Sound editing, on the other hand, is a tedious, thankless slog through the trenches of unfriendly waveforms, odd filters, subjective calls and unidentifiable background noise. It's a relentless riding of the meters, endless small tweaks to levels - I'm talking ENDLESS small tweaks to the levels; it's what you must do in order to have a professional-sounding film - reviewing music, creating music; it's hours spent working in the timeline, only to discover that you got ten minutes of the film done.

It's a bitch. You lose objectivity and need to stop a while. You need sugar. If we go too long without sugar, our brains cease to function, we lose energy and, even worse, we end up arguing about things. When we did "Video Out," we both felt that the first employee 13Bit would hire one day, when we finally have money to hire someone, would be a sound editor. At the same, time, it's hard to trust anybody to do it right, but I suppose that will be a leap of faith we'll have to make when 13Bit is a massive player one day in the cinema industry. If we don't learn to delegate these things, we'll never be the nimble monolith that we would like to be. At the moment, though, we are working on sound and need to stay focused.

We cut the entire section we had made on "Greenewalt versus Wilfred." We kept the part on Mary Hallock Greenewalt because she's an interesting color artist and contributes to the understanding of the art form, but the section that we made about their feud finally got cut, at the eleventh hour. We had trimmed it back in previous cuts, but we decided to eliminate it. Color and audio correction have a way of narrowing your focus, sharpening your critical senses, bringing out the ruthless axe-wielding inner editor.

We decided to skip a trip to the Little Pie Company or Tasti-D-Lite and used the time, instead, to repair some kind of demonic negative pop/click in a piece of music that the men and women of The Analog Orchestra had kindly composed and recorded for us. All we can assume is that their engineer screwed up or intentionally left it in there. We fixed it, though.

Anyway, Meredith has started t to surf the web, so I must stop blogging and crack the whip again.

Onward!!!

La Lucha Continua

I was really inspired before to write an incendiary post about our current struggle with "Lumia," but the struggle continued and I forgot what I was going to say.

Today has been about watching the narrative video we shot the other day and rejecting it out of hand. Great stuff, but not for Lumia, even though it is about the making of Lumia.

We decided to do it strictly via audio, along with visual imagery over it. We are edging our way to an answer. That is the way to go. The world doesn't need to actually see us talking about this stuff. The world is not ready for that yet. Neither are wel.

So we laid down some audio and now we are editing it. We will then insert it into the film and try to finish this thing up. It is good to be working again, bitting, making films.

It will be great to move on to the next film, as well.

6.5 Bits

6.5 Bits here keeping Gotham safe. There is always a void in The City when the full 13Bits are separated and only 6.5 bits remain - or even worse 0 bits.

But a division of bits lets the individual bits meditate and grow strong. It lets them pose deep questions to themselves without the constraints of producing an answer.

Questions like:

1) If NYC was flooded by a hurricane could one canoe up the Hudson river. With a dog?

2) Why did the Anasazi leave hand prints on the walls of the grand canyon? And more importantly why did they disappear?

3) Why is Finnish a linguistic isolate? Is it a language brought to earth by benevolent space creatures?

4) What does a 1/10 of a second feel like?

You O patient reader are welcome to ponder on these eternal questions as well - as we wait for the reunion of 13Bits.

The Amazing Bread Wrapper Device

After almost three years of toil, joy, dead-ends, major discoveries, and thousands of miles logged; along with a lot of tea drunk, quesadillas eaten, and some kidney stones passed, we are on the verge of a final cut for "Lumia: The Story of Thomas Wilfred and Light Art." (working title).

We think it's an amazing movie, and we think it can go further than our initial effort, "Video Out" (http://www.videoout.net).

We are each taking a trip in the coming month and, when we return in late June, we will finish titles, credits, color correction and sound. We'll keep you posted along the way, partly for your entertainment and partly so that we remember what we did and can return to it for the next film. Do you really believe anything I say by this point? It's all true.

Anyway, in the spirit of wide-eyed innocence, discovery and sharing, we wanted to start posting short clips and outtakes from "Lumia." This is a little edit of Craig Antrim, a brilliant artist from San Pedro, CA, and the nephew of Charles Dockum, whom we feature in our film, describing his uncle's first experiments with light art.



Enjoy!