Back in the Summer of 2009 I was looking through my email and found a communication from Wright State cautioning students that there was going to be an independent film shot on campus. They went on to explain that we shouldn’t be alarmed if we saw folks dressed as zombies. So I did a little digging, and with help from Casey who had a friend that knew the director Will Graver, we found out that even though the Dayton Daily News was reporting that the set was closed; if you showed up early enough and didn’t mind having the clothes that you were wearing ruined by fake blood, it was possible you could be a “walk on zombie”. I was immediately stoked!
We showed up at the crack of dawn outside of the student union, Casey dressed as a nurse in scrubs, and myself decked out in military fatigues (from my airsoft gear). There was a total of about 30 or so people who showed up for the event. The cast came out, and we started getting makeup applied. It was really cool, they had a couple of makeup artists powdering our faces ashen grey, and drawing veins and dark rings under our eyes. Then the great “blooding up” happened. We were taken out into the green space next to BART (the big ass red thing, as the students know it) and they dipped their hands into mason jars full of fake blood, then flung us with it. I got splattered in my face and chest with the stuff (it almost got in my eye, but the effect was pretty cool).
Then they took us out into the quad and had us wander around as zombies ( the slow type, not the 28 Days Later super-fast variety). We had a bunch of shots taken of us wandering around the quad as Will and his crew ran wandered with their cameras. At one point a kid shoulder checked me a little harder than I really expected, and went down pretty hard, but it probably made for a good shot.
Then Will got up on the top floor of Allyn hall, and had us walk around some more; he came down to the lobby and had us make the” impending doom ” approach on the glass doors, then start pounding on them. The whole time the cast was watching us and getting a big kick out of the spectacle.
After that shot, the two main actors Travis Horseman & Amanda Howell walked up for a quick photo opportunity. The shot that made it on the front of the article @ the Dayton Daily had me in the background : )
Revelation Zombie
Here is the trailer for the soon to be released film Revelation
Just a quick shot from my Nikon D60 super close-up of some ice crystals forming on our living room window. I had to switch over to manual focus to get such a tight shot, but I’m pretty happy with the results.
So I am guessing right about now there is a marketing executive at Apple working on his or her resume. It doesn’t really take a genius to connect the dotted lines between their (soon to be re-branded) iPad and a certain feminine hygiene product, especially when Mad TV did all the thinking for them back in 2007.
Do you deal a lot with PDF files at your job? If so you’ve probably run across files that are gigantic in size. This can be a real pain, especially if your exchange server account has a small storage limit. 1 or 2 high resolution PDF’s can max out your inbox in short order.
Most people don’t know that there is a very easy way to reduce the file size of a PDF, if you have Acrobat Professional. Just go to the advanced menu, and click on PDF Optimizer. This will bring up a dialog box, listing image settings. Here you can reduce the resolution of images in PDF’s (which more often than not, are the culprit behind why the file size is gigantic). If you don’t intend to print the pdf, but just have someone look at it on screen, you can reduce the resolution of all images down to 72 dpi. (in some cases I stick with 120 dpi if the PDF dimensions are small, as Acrobat has a habit of zooming in on small documents). Go ahead and leave all the other settings on their default, then hit OK. Acrobat will prompt you to save the new file you’re about to create, I usually just tack on “-optimized” to the end of the name, just in case I need the hi-res file later on.
I’ve shared this technique with my team, and it’s been given the loving nickname of the “PDF Diet”. It’s not uncommon for 10 mb files to be reduced to a few 100k, it works wonders and you won’t have to worry about getting the stink eye from your co-workers next time for maxing out their in-box. : )
Casey and I celebrated our 20th monthiversary on Saturday by going out to the IMAX theater in Columbus, to see Avatar in 3D. We saw the DLP version (instead of the film “Read 3D” flavor). This was the first 3D movie I had seen in a theater since I was 10 years old and watched Captain EO at Disneyworld. So I don’t have much of a baseline to compare this with, but the one thing that seemed to jump out at me (excuse the pun) was that there was a definite trade-off in terms of picture quality. Things were blurrier than I am used to seeing in either a theater, or my DLP TV at home. Having said that, it was a great experience; even though the film was 3 hours long, it didn’t feel like it. The story line moved along at a decent speed, and most of what was in the film was relevant to the plot. Overall, I’d say it was worth the $14 to see it, although I probably won’t be making another trip that long just to see a 3D movie again for a while.
On a side note, we had a pretty crappy experience, which had nothing to do with the film itself, but how AMC Easton handled a situation. At the climax of the movie (during the Na’vi / Human battle), the fire alarm in the theater went off. We had no idea what to do, because nobody came in and told us if it was a false alarm or not. Some people got up, and left while others stayed to finish the movie. After a few minutes, I and Casey got up to leave when people who had already left were coming back in to say it was a false alarm. That really ruined things for us.
As we were walking out, disappointed by the experience, everyone was given free return passes, but in my opinion this was a poor attempt to make up for what could’ve been a dangerous situation. After the fact, we called AMC and found out that their official policy is to turn the projectors off, and ask everyone to leave. This did not happen. The film just kept running, and the sound was so loud that you couldn’t hear what the emergency PA system was saying – in other words, complete chaos. I’ll probably go see other 3D IMAX films in the future, but I doubt it will be at the AMC Easton.
I’m still in the process of re-engineering the site, but I was able to get my wallpapers back online tonight. They are still in the old site’s format (frankly, because I haven’t decided on a new design for the site yet). I’m parked on the Atahualpa theme for the time being, but that will most likely change, as I’d like to develop my own theme. If there is anything you would like to see in the new site, please let me know.
Hi All, by now I’m sure you’re wondering what has happened to my website. After long deliberations I have decided to migrate stevetruett.com to a new host and new architecture. Expect many updates over the coming weeks, I intend to make all of my old wallpapers and icons available again, but for the time being I ask that you be a little patient with me while I get things rolling.
