Aug 31/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	ArnisCanada.com: My martial arts website contract Now that Lady-X work is behind me the last of my two contracts is on its way to being done. It's a website for a practitioner of the Philippine art of Arnis: Goru John Tirone. I was up until nearly 4am this morning making content for the site and I can say that I now know a lot about Arnis or Kali or Escrima. It uses SSI and .CSS representing one of the first sites I've built that will be easy for me to change and maintain from the start. You can see the site progressing here in my contracts work folder >> KeithLoh.com v3 coming up After this is over I will get to work on my first redesign of KeithLoh.com in over a year. Take a sneak peak here >>

	Aug 29/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Lady X: Episode 13: Clan Gozen to be released September 1st Locations, costumes, audio! The three month process has come to an end, culminating in the release of probably my first full production. Lady X: Episode 13: Clan Gozen will be appearing on the Lady-X films website (ladyxfilms.com) this Monday, Sept 1. The page will have a feedback button and voting so I'm hoping to get some positive reaction. Episode 13: Clan Gozen came from an idea from Dylan Couper who professed a desire to make a samurai film, possibly after I filled his head with previews of the next Ryuhei Kitamura picture Azumi or possibly after I screened Versus to him. Anyway, the idea of me ever doing a DV samurai film never occured to me so I took a lot of convincing to actually commit to it. To be honest, I bitched every step along the way as I wrote the script and delved into full production. Even near the end I was worried that I would have to hide my head when the release came. Now that I've seen the finished product a few times, I am proud of how complete it is. There are some faults and rough points but overall, for a project that was built from scratch (except for the Lady-X framework concept) and carried all the way to the end with an actual musical score (courtesy of Keith Gillard) and soundtrack I am quite satisfied with the effort. Now, will the results impress the audience? You decide. Buckwheat Zydeco I saw him when he came to Vancouver three years ago and I saw him again last night. This time I brought my Dad who professed a liking for cajun music. Zydeco isn't exactly the same thing but it is pretty close. Buckwheat gave his signature feel-good show and displayed his usual charm. Good fun. Et toi.

	Aug 27/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Vancouver International Film Festival 2003 As usual the website for the VIFF is still in relative tatters despite the month of the VIFF coming up soon. Obviously, lots of things need to be finalized for those people before more useful information is posted. However, today some more of the films have been announced including a whole slew of the Dragons and Tigers programme. See the press release here >>

	Aug 25/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Lady X is finished The music was delivered last night to Dylan and I celebrated by eating veal. That is all. Confessions of a car salesman This is an extremely interesting and entertaining article about what goes on in a car dealership. It'll make you think twice about what goes on when you wander onto a car lot.

	Aug 24/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Lady X almost complete As I sit here Keith Gillard is putting his masterful touches on what is the best Lady-X soundtrack so far. It improves the film greatly. After the mastering it goes into the final file and off.

	Aug 23/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	My province on fire Some of you who are not from B.C. may be wondering just what is happening with the fires you have been reading about on the wire services. These fires are in southern B.C. but not in the Lower Mainland which is where Vancouver is. However, one of our largest cities outside of Vancouver, Kelowna, is getting singed. Although it's terrible that people are being forced to leave their homes (last count 30,000), there are some scary/ beautiful images coming from that fire. Take a look at this gallery, then at this picture (at the top of the page). I also learned that the place I went rafting at last weekend is now fighting off a fire. After a weekend of breathing in soot that weekend I got a sore throat. Those people who need inhalers probably are worse off. Gunfire FX Last night I worked on compositing gunflare effects into a 2 second shot of Dylan Couper 'shooting' in the Lady X episode. Take a look at it here >> (610k)

	Aug 22/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Lady X one weekend to go Aside from Keith Gillard's soundtrack, some very small things need to be done for Episode 13 including some impromptu special effects and sound layering. Then it's overnight to Japan Monday. Virus week Like a lot of people I've been cleaning up, updating and blocking the two big virus attacks that hit machines within the past two weeks. I did a fair amount of phone 'tech support' to family as well and at work I've been swamped by mega loads of crap email. I cannot emphasize it enough; get behind a Firewall, get a virus scanner and update your Windows (you Mac people can continue smirking... for now).

	Aug 18/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Nearing the end with Episode 13 of Lady X Attack! With only a little more of a week to go before Dylan and I must deliver Lady X: Episode 13, we have a few things to finish. For one, we needed to provide publicity stills to the executive producers of the Lady X series. You can take a look at some of the stills we have here (updated and bigger than previously). What else is left? Some fine tuning of the editing, a few more sound FX from me (I bought some fruit tonight for the expressed purpose of destroying them for the microphone) and the musical treatment from Keith Gillard. I'm just now beginning to feel the effects of the rafting / partying weekend, however, including some weariness at work and achiness all over my rowing muscles. Beating fruit and vegetables into submission Tonight I had the wonderful experience of slamming knives and trowels into cabbage and watermelon to achieve metal against flesh FX. My bathroom was spattered with veggie matter and so was I. Afterwards, I ate fragmented watermelon until I was bloated.

	Aug 17/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Back from water, partying, trains I am still alive. A very good rafting trip followed by sleepless nights in tents (and then in my car), punctuated by the bone-rattling passage of a nearby CNR line and seemingly non-stop partying in the campgrounds. I survived and enjoyed myself. If you are interested, I went here to Hyak river rafting (Thompson river). Now, back to sound editing...

	Aug 15/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Getting back to nature While eastern Canada and the United States are scrambling to get civilization working again (the worst blackout since the 60s) I am going back to nature for two days of camping and one day of river rafting. Looking forward to a break from video and from work. Lady-X: Episode 13: Clan Gozen stills Last night I posted a page of stills taken from my Lady X episode to pyroglyphfilms.com . Take a gander here >>

	Aug 13/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Wooshes and clangs : evening foley work Kelvin and I spent an hour or so last night banging together pieces of pipe and swinging real swords around to try and get the various sound effects. I tried banging steel pipe together, scraping my various prop swords I own (sabres, rapiers) and even some cutlery. (I think our neighbours probably think we are getting some revenge for some odd noises that come from their direction.) Not a single one sound I thought was good enough but by layering a few together in Vegas Video I think I got the right impact clashes and slides. For the 'woosh' of the sword cutting through the air I used vinyl pipe swung in a circle and the heavy rush of Kelvin's wushu sword. Keeping me up Thanks also to the homeless guy in the alley below my window and some jerk in the floor above me for keeping me up at 3am with their loud argument. It's bad enough that the homeless guy's take on recycling was to throw bottles onto the ground but someone decided to take him to task from many floors up. I was in the middle and my efforts to mediate failed.

	Aug 12/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	What a foley artist does A foley artist is a sound effects technician who creates original sound effects to recreate sound on a movie for what you see on the screen that was either not recorded on location or was recorded improperly. For Lady-X in the next couple days I have to figure out how to work in SFX for a sword fight. See a foley artist at work here >> In my searches for foley advice I found this interesting piece of technology whereby you can add 'sound effects' to your live action duelling performance. The videos are pretty funny.

	Aug 11/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	10 day update? My big bro's engagement, Lady X, contracts Yes, it's been quite awhile since the last update which gives you an indication of how busy it's been for me. First thing is, congratulations to my big brother for announcing his engagement to his girl. Secondly, Lady X finished its principal photography (still need a handful of pickup scenes) and I've seen the edit (from Dylan). It's good and it's off to Keith Gillard for music while I work on sound FX. Thirdly, I've been up to my eyeballs in contract work and day work. Basically, my entire weekend was shot because of a contract. So I haven't had much time for friends much less keeping up with work I need to be doing. Still... The 2004 Prius What a sweet car. I test-drove the Toyota hybrid 2001 Prius and loved it but wasn't quite taken with its snub-nosed look (plus the fact that it was priced very high). But now after looking at the 2004 edition's new looks I may have to take a look at my finances. You take a look yourself now >> Learning: .css and Flash At work I've been converting the new Clipstream™ website to .css as much as possible. Now that I've taken the time to learn .css I totally love it. The next website to have it will be the new design for keithloh.com. No ideas on when I will be doing that yet as I have a second contract to do before that. As well, I've been doing some straight Flash animation. If I redid this entire page as .css it would probably be about 50 per cent less code. Update: it took me twenty minutes to make up a stylesheet for this entire site. Now I've converted this page all to .css. It didn't really reduce the code 50 per cent but it should load up a lot quicker and be easier to maintain.

	Aug 1/03                                                                         More in weblog archive
	Recovering from 15 hour day Yesterday went quite well considering our small crew and the accelerated way we put the episode together. I am quite tired but getting ready for a new day of shooting, this time out of the woods. I am 80% satisfied by our production effort and the main part is now out of the way. You can see my production notes on DVDA here >> Previous blog here >>