Ola

Ola from Patagonia - where the the water in the toilets revolve in an opposite direction to that in NY. I wonder if where in the equatorial region this change takes place?

I am hard at work on my non proliferation of bad art treaty. But I am taking a break to do some trekking - so I am going off the grid - again/

I would write more but I being hustled off the computer.

"The last thing I would spend money on is wallpaper."

Or, more correctly, "Let me tell you, the last thing I would spend money on is wallpaper."

So, how did this emphatic statement end up on the Mighty House of Bit Blog? Well, we are waiting for the next person to come by, the first person of the night, actually. We are down to about 20 more people to audition. The casting is going well; the writing is going well; the editing workflow prep is going well. We have a lot of work ahead of us in shooting and setting up locations, but we don't anticipate too many problems with that. So I'll be optimistic and say that's all going well, too.

We have been setting up the character grid the past couple of hours, deciding who is going to be whom. And we are now in a lull before the first audition of the night. So what happens in a 13bit lull?

Well, those of us who are sick to our stomachs take stomach palliatives. Those of us who are sick of our jobs go job hunting. Some of us head into the next room to trip fronds off the aloe plant that is threatening to engulf the bedroom. Others of us sit around purposfully chewing on our rawhide rings.

Well, one of us was looking at work while the other one was walking off to trim aloe leaves. The one perusing the job listings had finished looking at video and editing listings (we nixed them all today) and had somehow not gotten to her chosen field yet, when she somehow found a job for designing wallpaper. The soon-to-be aloe trimmer stopped dead in his tracks and we discussed the benefits and negatives of designing wallpaper, then of wallpaper in general. This prompted the statement that titles this post.

Back to the hard work that earns us the big bucks.

PS: We just found an ad that says "Artists and Spiritual Thinkers Wanted" Can you spell "13 Bits?" We think it's for a cult.

Art is Our Only Excuse For Existence

Meredith is trolling the job ads and saying "I want to see 'Stupid People Wanted for a Job: Must take a Test to See How Stupid You Are.'"

We just finished making changes in our 5th cut of "Lumia" and we are very close to final. I mean, you're never really finished, but you know when you get close enough that it's there. A "release candidate," as they say in the software world. It is looking good.

We are at the point in the movie where we can quote statements from the film in our conversation and they are really applicable to whatever we are discussing. In other words, we are fluent with the film. At the same time, we are already looking ahead. Not that we haven't had plans and ideas for the next film - obviously, we can't talk about them here - but we have even more now. It's part of the grand cycle of things, at least when you're dealing with art.

And, as Chris Sidenius says, "Art is our only excuse for existence."

Project X

The House of Bit always has many irons in the fire. Our mainstay is filmmaking, but we also create other things.

Tonight, we finalized our order of giclee prints for our July show at S'nice. We are super excited about these large format prints on canvas and we intend to show smaller prints there, as well.

In addition, we spent time tonight on what I'll call "Project X." Not a creative name, I know, but it doesn't really matter what we call it. We just don't want to talk about it in public yet. It's not art-related, but we are hoping it will buy us the time to make art - the eternal struggle.

So that is all to report, but it is enough.

Tomorrow we watch "Lumia" again and on Sunday we have another test screening. It is close to a final cut.

To paraphrase the immortal Sun Ra, it's all about discipline and sacrifice. Mainly discipline, though.

Hail to all chopniks.