Back to Work

PYT by Michael Jackson

January 18th

We started work last week shooting a two day ad campaign at Milk Studios. It felt good to get back to work, and everything ran smoothly. I rocked a new video card in my MacPro and the speed/color on my two EIZO CG211's was awesome. I added a second screen to our standard studio setup and the extra real estate is really nice.

We're rocking a pretty standard lighting set up, with a spotted background that has a nice grey gradation in the falloff. The key light is nice and poppy, and has nice warm temperature that I end up cooling off in the temperature, which is intensified by a good amount of desaturation the photographer wants. 9 shots each day with Michael Jackson on repeat, should be uneventful.

While we're waiting for hair and makeup (which takes the usual 4 hours) I flipped through the new "Wired" (Feb. 2008) and read an article about "Griefers." The whole concept isn't new to me, and I remember it well back in the days of the original iMac. With Billy Jean blasting in the background, the article details how there is this whole subculture of people who basically try to ruin people's experience in online gaming. I haven't played online games in probably 5 year, but when I was in high school my friends and I used to fire up our 56k modems and play a few games of Starcraft or Diablo until our parents got pissed that we were tying up the phone line. I remember us ganging up on kids every now and then, or thrill killing new players, but these guys take it to a new level of harassment and torment. The article speaks mostly about their attacks on people who take the game to seriously, but the whole thing just seems a bit ridiculous to me. They're taking copious amounts time to create a mirrored (albeit a much darker version) world that the initial user has probably spent months building, solely to mock them. The steps they take just seems to compound the whole indulgence in online worlds (the author mostly talks about "second life,") that I feel is already excessive. Don't get me wrong, I have a PS3 and definitely spend some time playing it, but its mostly when I'm jet lagged, sick, or hungover. I'm not one to sit there for 10 hours and play a game. I just don't understand the appeal.

There's also a decent article about a book by Charles Barber titled "Comfortably Numb: How psychiatry is Medicating an Nation." Its just a quick blurb about how, being a doctor, he would spend time working with homeless people, and truly mentally ill people, and then would go to classy parties and realize all these people were on the same drugs. The quote that sold me on buying this book......"anger, greed, laziness, impulsivity, as well as jealousy, lust, anguish, and so on, are simply part of the human predicament. They are not medical conditions." Well said, and I'm getting that book tomorrow.

Magazines are on the edge of extinction for me, and the airlines adding internet soon will be the final proverbial asteroid for me. A note on Wired magazine. I feel like its a sort of cross between engadget, newsweek, popular science and Maxim. Decent tech reviews, Current events articles, and scientific breakthroughs, all in a reader friendly (almost too much) package. I actually enjoy reading it, but I feel like its almost too much like maxim and not nearly enough like newsweek (although thats gone a bit downhill too). For the two or three decent articles you get in this, you get a lot of completely useless information (the 10 best extinct animals, how to Luge, is it ok to play guitar hero while hosting a party?). All in all its a good magazine, but I usually supplement it with the economist (GREAT current events) and the Seed (best science/tech magazine I've ever read. Its going to be a sad day when the magazine finally dies, but I think it will still be a long time before they are totally gone. How else are we going to look through 50+ pages of advertising BEFORE getting to the material? And for that matter, how will I make a living?