Conan the Barbarian

Keeping in the spirit of Conan: The Barbarian’s recent theatrical release, I thought it only fitting that I devote a blog entry to it.  There is a great deal about the iconic warrior that most people don’t know.  For one, Conan first appeared in 1932, a full decade before J.R.R. Tolkien even began writing the Lord of the Rings.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Conan was the birth of the fantasy genre.

Given that people know very little of Conan prior to the 1980s films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, I’m assuming that means people know even less about his creator, Robert E. Howard. 

I was told once a very intriguing story regarding the troubled soul of Robert E. Howard.  Rumor has it that he was not inspired to write Conan stories; but rather commanded to do so by the apparition of the barbarian, which would periodically come to visit him.  With his hooded eyes edged in wrath, and his sword dripping in blood, Conan would threaten Howard with his life if he did not sit down and pen the barbarian’s tale.  And so, night after night, the apparition would oversee Howard’s work; while in a cold sweat Howard would write as vigorously as possible for fear that he would not live to see the light of day again should he slow down.

True or not, it is an excellent story.

But that, it is rumored, is how the legend of the great Conan of Cimmeria was written.  

Man vs. Baby

We call her Ace.  She’s two weeks short of her first birthday; she barely walks; and she can only speaks a handful of words.  I was asked to babysit her for an evening.  Alone.  By myself.  Just me and her….

Pssst.  How hard could it be?

Lesson One:  If you are not being disturbed by a baby, its because she’s doing something you don’t want her doing somewhere you don’t want her being. 

I’m sweeping.  I’m not watching her.  CRASH!  My stone coasters hit the hardwood floor.  While I’m checking to make sure that they aren’t broken, Ace moves onto the next great attraction: the VCR.  She’s less than two feet away from me, and she manages to push the VHS into the VCR and is now jamming her hand in the slot in attempt to get it back.

Easy fix.  She has this tall alligator toy thing that makes a nice barricade.  I slide it between her and the VCR.  The gears turn in her head as she looks at it with disapproval.  Then, she grabs the thing and shoves it aside like King Kong pitches a parked car out of the way.

As I’m pulling her out of the VCR again, I happen to look at my beautiful 37” LCD television to find that the bottom third of it is covered in hand prints…

I wipe that clean and bring her into the bedroom to pick up.  Ace finds the laundry basket and keeps herself busy by eating a sock.  A minute or two later I glance over to see that she’s put on one of Tonya’s tank tops. 

Now, Tonya told me that if she did anything cute, I should take pictures.  So I go get my camera.  While I’m fiddling with the settings, Ace walks over to the doorway, where she decides that she doesn’t want it on anymore.  It gets stuck on her head; she struggles; flails about; and falls backwards.  CLICK!  Her head hits the door, the door frame, and then the hardwood floor. 

There’s tears, and crying, and it’s the end of the world...  And then she’s at the laundry basket again like it’s a toy box, and stuffs another sock in her mouth.

Once that fiasco is over, I decide to do dishes.  Let me tell you, a baby will find everything that she possibly can, even if you had no idea that it was there, or that she could reach it, or that it was even a problem.  Outlets are really popular.  So is the microwave stand with its metal baskets.  It’s like a buffet for her.  Dig in, pull out as many paper plates you want, throw them on the floor - plastic silverware, plastic cups, napkins, shoot me, trash bags…

I give Ace this baby cup with plastic flaps over the lip.  You’re suppose to fill it with cereal, and the flaps will keep the food in.  Ha! 

What Ace does is she hold down the flaps and shakes it like tambourine, and Cherrios go flying everywhere!  Or she dished them out like a flower girl doles out rose pedals at a wedding.  When she’s done, it looks like she’s made a trail of crumbs that Hansel and Gretel could use to find their way back home.

Clean that up.  Made dinner, which went well.  Now the bath…

The first two nights we had her, Tonya gave her a bath in the kitchen sink, and she loved it, except for that moment when bath-time’s over, at which point there’s screaming. 

I thought, “What the hell.  Let’s give her a bath in the tub!”

Bad idea.  Ace doesn’t sit in the tub.  She wants to stand; and walk around; and fall; and crack her head on the side of the tub.  Now she’s crying, but she’s still determined to stand, and fall, and crack her head a second time…  And then stand, and fall, but I manage to grab her arm this time around. 

I force her to sit, which makes her cry even more.  Then, she gets soap in her eyes.  By this point, her sole purpose in life is to stare me down as I’m washing her and scream in my face.  Regardless, when bath-time’s over it’s somehow still a tragedy, and she’s going off like a tornado siren.

As I’m dressing her, she starts playing with something and suddenly she’s giggling and happy.  Just like that.  Snap of the fingers and she goes from an exorcism to happy trails.

I lay her down with a bottle, and the most exhausting four hours of my life are over.

When Tonya got home, she asked in a chipper voice “How did tonight go?!”  I described it as being similar to when Luke Skywalker meets Yoda for the first time in The Empire Strikes Back:

Oh, and in the morning, it turns out the diaper wasn’t on right,
and she peed all over her pants and the crib.

Go Jon!

Your Turn to Talk!

It’s Fan Mail and Q&A all in one!

That’s right, avid readers!  I know you don’t just visit this page, skim through the posts, stare at the pictures, and then go back to Facebook without thinking something!  Write it down.  I’d love to know!

- Comments,

- Suggestions,
- Hellos,
- Statements like “That man’s my hero,”
- Blog topics you’d be interested in reading.

Tell me what works for you; what doesn’t; what would make you’re stay here at the JonnyD Weekly more enjoyable.

And QUESTIONS!! 

Go ahead, ask!  I’ll (more than likely) answer, either here or in a future Q&A.  Who knows, maybe a whole blog with be dedicated to your question alone.

Fire away, and don’t forget to tell me who you are. 

Yours Truly,

Jonny D Strong

Fear: Jericho

There are only two video games that I have ever given up on.  I quit playing a medieval strategy game called Excalibur because the programmers were obviously against players saving their games.  By the time you’re on level two, you’re pissed off because every failed attempt is 30-plus minutes of your life that you didn’t enjoy, you didn’t get paid for, and you’re never going to get back.

The other was Jericho - the other game from that infamous $5 clearance bin. 

I brought Jericho over to my friend Charlie’s apartment.  Charlie was extremely gung-ho to play the game.  That should have been an indicator right there for me, but it wasn’t.   Nor was his vampire and werewolf movies, Event Horizon, and the case for Bioshock sitting on his PS3.

The full title is actually Clive Baker’s Jericho.  Clive Baker - the writer best known for family film classics such as Candyman and Hellraiser.  Oh boy!

In  Jericho the haunted ruins of an ancient city mysteriously emerge out of a sandstorm in the Kalahari desert.  The EVP readings are insane.  For that reason, your military squad, Jericho, is sent in. 

Before the main menu loads, there are the ten second advertisements for the various programming and production companies involved.  I don’t remember which company it was, but I will never forget the video.  It had this crazed, pale-faced dude wrapped up in a straight jacket with his eyes and mouth sown shut.  He’s in a padded room, mumbling maniacally to himself as he rocks back and forth.  He looked like something out of a rated R version of A Nightmare Before Christmas. 

So we’re not even to the main menu and I’m already freaked out.  However, this is my first time enduring horror in front of Charlie; I was determined not to be a wimp about it.

The main menu is nothing more than a pulsating wall of stretched out flesh.  Off and on the faces of the damned push against it from underneath.  Joy.

Gameplay starts topside at the gates of the ruins.  I’m okay with this.  Its quasi-daylight, minus the fact the sandstorm is still going on; I have guns; and there are six other people with me. 

Naturally, I shift over to the shotgun.  A shotgun does a lot more damage when something jumps out at you.  And you don’t have to aim with a shotgun; you just have to be facing the right way. Perfect, because I’m won’t be looking at the screen once the creatures start jumping out.

We have a few encounters at first, but nothing I can’t handle.  Then, someone on the team says, “We should split up!”  No.  No we shouldn’t.  But of course they don’t give a damn what I think, and half the team breaks off.

Alright, fine.  I still have four guys, including me.

We get to the entrance to the underground compound.  Its locked, of course.  It can only be opened from the outside, go figure.  Two of us are going to have to stand watch outside.  I’ll stand watch. 

Nope.  They send me in with one other guy.  The stone door rumbles back into place, and we’re trapped inside.  Its pitch black.

Great, ten minutes in and I’ve gone from being outside with six men, to being trapped in the darkness of a crypt with only one other guy, and no choice but to go forward and feel my way into a heart attack.

At this point, Charlie asks, “Hey, do you mind if I kill the lights so we can get the full effect?!”

Without missing a beat I say, “Yeah, let’s do it!” and a part of me dies inside.

We switched off every so often over the course of the next 4-6 hours.  Honestly, the game wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.  However, it is extremely complicated.  You had to manage all seven of your guys to utilize their different abilities.  Without playing regularly, I’d have to restart just to relearn all the controls.  And let’s face it, I’m not playing the game by myself.

Out of everything in the game though, the thing that scared me the most was that crazy little dude in the straight jacket.  I did not have nightmares that night, but multiple times I woke up in the middle of the night fully expecting to see him rocking back and forth, back and forth, at the foot of my bed, mumbling away through his sown shut lips...  

Fear: Darkness

My wife bought me two PlayStation 3 games from a $5 clearance bin at Best Buy.  One of them was called Darkness.  By the screenshots on the back cover, it looked creepy.  Now, I can handle creepy…as long as that’s all it is.

You play Jackie Estacado, a lackey for  mafia crime-load Paulie (typical, stereotypical mafia name).  Anyways, a job goes horribly wrong, and the two dudes you’re with end up dead.  Well, this doesn’t go over well with Paulie.  So, for your 21st birthday, Paulie makes you a little present in the form of a bomb strapped to a dead guy’s chest inside a closet.  BOOM!  Your body is blow clean out the seventh-story window.

That’s when the Darkness starts to manifest inside you. The screen turns an eerie blackish-purple; captions appear at the bottom of the screen in a gigantic, twisted font; and a demonic voice starts saying things like, “you’re soul does not belong to you.”

Shortly thereafter the Darkness emerges in the form of two massive black serpents that rip out of your back and hover in your peripherals.  You can have them attack people, or slither out ahead of you to scout the area.  You can also have them eat people’s hearts, which makes them more powerful.  As they get stronger, the two heads start fighting over the hearts.  One will have it in their mouth, and the other will be yanking at the severed arteries.

Okay, creepy… but I could keep playing on the principle that the only disturbing thing about the game was me. 

Of course, the Darkness cannot aid you unless you’re in the shadows.  Now, when you get freaked out in most game, you just fall back to the well-lit areas where you’re safe.  That doesn’t work here.  If you want to feel safe, you enter a room and shoot out all the lights… Because that’ll give you a warm fuzzy feeling when you’re in a haunted orphanage.

Eventually, you realize that the Darkness is taking over your body.  To stop it you eat the barrel of your gun and pull the trigger.  But you don’t die.  You awaken in the trenches of WWII, where instead on Nazis, they’re fighting against zombie-cyborg-soldiers that don’t die unless you devour their hearts.

Messed up, but whatever.  I was fine until I reached the bomb shelter.  The backdoor is down a long cement sewer drain.  Just before you reach the mouth of the tunnel, the silhouette of a soldier suddenly appears in front of you and instantly vanishes, scaring the crap out of you!  I damn near crappie-flopped on the living-room floor.  What the hell was that?!  That is not okay!

Against my better judgment, I kept going.  The sewer empties into a battlefield that’s covered in a heavy, rust-colored fog.  All you see are shadowed forms moving on the edges of your vision.  And then BAM!  Lightning.  The screen goes white.  Thunder crackles.  You heart skips.  And when the flash clears you’re offset twenty yards.  Get back to where you were.  Keep going.

Bam! Silhouette! And then its gone again.  But I’m still firing at nothing and screaming in my living room like I’m actually out there…

Stop firing.  Breathe.  Keep going.  Bam!  Lightning!  Silhouette!  Lightning!  Lightning!  Silhouette!  And suddenly, I’m surrounded by zombie-cyborgs and they gun me down.

While the game reloads the Darkness spouts off in its demonic voice while faces of death flash across the screen…

…I don’t play that game at night anymore…

Fear Week

I’ve decided to make this week ‘Fear Week.’

Everyone fears something.  Spiders.  Vampires.  Horror films.  Basements.  Campsites at night.  Clowns.  Sounds emanating from the other room.  At the same time, there is certain type of person out there that can brave the bone-chilling horrors with an air of nonchalance. 

I am not that person.

To better understand how my hardened soul works, I have found a segment of dialogue from an anime called “Ouran High School Host Club.”  Good show, by the way.   In the scene, the main character, Haruhi, is pulled into the hallway by the class president, Kazukiyo, because he has a secret he wishes to confide in her.

Haruhi - “You have Nyctophobia?  So you’re afraid of the dark?”

Kazukiyo (or me) - “Yes, and you can add to that Horror-movie-phobia, Scary-ghost-story-phobia, Being-startled-by-a-loud-noise-in-the-other-room-phobia, and Accidentally-seeing-trailers-for-horror-movies-phobia.  And what’s with those things? Why do they keep showing them without warning us about it first?  It just doesn’t make sense to me.  What ever happened to civil rights for the fraidy cats out there?  Cowards are people, too!”

Now that we’re clear about my feelings on the matter, we can move onto my following posts as to what brought the whole matter up this time around.

“What could it possibly be?”

STS: A Little Bit of Muscle

A Little Bit of Muscle is about just that:  a little muscle car taking on a big jump.  The movie marks the second short film by Stranger Things Studios.

                                      

Final Stats:

Hours on Set: 6
Hours of  Video Editing: 28
Hours of Sound Editing: 7
Cost: $35

Director’s Notes:

The idea was simple.  Record an RC car hitting a jump; kill the audio; and then replace it will the sound of a real muscle car. 

That’s where it stopped being simple.


PRE-PRODUCTION

Right from the start there were problems.  My nephew and I tested the car ahead of time to make sure it could make the jump.  It couldn’t.  Hell, it could barely make it up to the top of the ramp, much less fall off the end.  Fall, mind you, not jump.  Fall.

It took a while for it to hit me that the car didn’t have to make the jump.  It just had to look like it did.

FILMING

It was mid-June, and I really wanted to get filming done before I left for my Alaska trip.  There was only one day I could do it.  Enlisting my nephew Kris, and my then friend Chris (because that wasn’t confusing) we met up at Macalester College to build the set on one of the campus’s back roads.

Of course it rained.  Down-poured even, not to mention the tornado sirens.  On top of that, Chris got locked inside the science building. He showed up a half an hour early, so he got to watch as the janitors locked all the entrances.  Turned out to be a blessing.  Chris let us in, and we filmed the movie inside instead.

Oh, and then the “camera car” couldn’t turn to the right.  Instead, it continuously arced off to the left and slammed into the closest wall, over and over again.  I had to replace the car three times before I got one that went straight.  But for the night, we had to live without it.

After three hours of work the three of us were ready to kill each other.  But we had the footage.  All I could do was hope that the end result would make everyone feel like it was worth the pain.

While in Alaska I went through the footage.  That’s when I found out how crappy my crappy camera was.  It cut the final few seconds off of every clip. Half of the footage was unusable.  We had to shoot the scene all over again.

As soon as I got back home I grabbed who I could, which was my nephew and my wife, and we rebuilt the set inside Macalester College on a +100 degree day.  But hey, at least there wasn’t a Warhammer 4000 nerd-fest taking place in the lobby... wait… nope… there was.

Another three hours of work and the three of us were ready to kill each other again.  I walked away that day accepting that I needed to improve my directorial and managerial skills if I ever planned do another film.


ON TO EDITING

My main goal from the start was to experiment with audio.  Syncing the shots to music is as much of a blessing as it is a nightmare.  I find music helps me conceptualize the sequence of shots, but the splicing has to be perfect.  I mean down to the hundredth of a second!

However, music does helps mask imperfections in sound effects.  I’m sure the Harley engine and burnout MP3s would have sounded choppy, like it was cutting in and out, if I didn’t have the music to blend them together.

Overall, this film was a nightmare.  It took FOREVER.  I  learned that it isn’t how long your movie is, but how many camera angles you use that determines how much work you have before you. 

But for that very reason, I am very proud of the end result, and I am thankful to Kris, Chris, and Tonya for helping me out on this one.

I fully intended to stop after this film because of how frustrating it was, but I have had several people ask what my next movie is going to be, and several others asking if they can help with it.  That’s all the more I need to hear to want to keep at it.

~ Jonathan Strong

On a final note, when I screened A Little Bit of Muscle for my wife, all she did afterwards was look at me and say, very matter-of-factly, “You owe me a new car.”

Monthly Scoop: August 2011

Every year I have at least one month that never happened.  It goes like this:  May 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, April 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th ….wait, wait, wait! What happened to the rest of May?  July was that month for me. 

That is why at least once a year, coincidentally right after the missing month, I make a bucket list.  Hence this image of the guy wandering around with a bucket on his head.  Poor sad bastard…

What was I saying?  Ah, yes.  Bucket list.  I told a friend of mine that August was my bucket list month.  He told me that I can only make a bucket list of things I’m afraid I won’t get to do before I die.  Well, I want to get them done, and I don’t think I’m going to get around to doing them after I’m dead, so I’ll just do them this August.

So, I’ve made my list of everything I keep saying to myself, “I keep meaning to do that,” or “I’ll get around to it eventually,” or even the horrid “God, I still haven’t finished that?!” 

No, I’m not going relay the entire list here.  That’s be boring.  Instead, let’s talk about the projects I normally talk about:

Temporaltorium - didn’t touch it.

Moby Dick - 9 pages….that’s right, 9.

Stranger Things Studios - Oh My God!  Did Jon actually got something done in July?  Barely.  Three days ago I finally finished work on the studio’s second short film, entitled “A Little Bit of Muscle.”  It is currently undergoing pre-screening amongst close friends and the crew, but look forward to seeing the film both on YouTube and on this blog in the next week and a half!

So watch for that, and watch out for  my bucket list blogs in the weeks to come. 

Spoiler alert:  there might be something about the aftermath of a hot wing competition, as well as a capsized canoe.  Stay tuned!