drcuriosity

The film premiere went fairly well, I think. A few contrast problems with the projector and the sound level was a bit off at times, but generally well-received. A few people have even accused me of having some acting talent, if you can believe that ;-) The Japanese guy sitting in front of me laughed (in a good way) at the dialogue and seemed to think we'd done a good job. We were "quite understandable", at least.

Most of the cast and crew went for dinner afterwards, which was good both socially and (dare I say it) professionally. We had good discussion about various aspects of acting, filmcraft and so forth, and Brad told us a bit about his experiences up at Armageddon (including a good talk with and shoulder-massage from John Rhys-Davies, and stuff to do with this sci-fi series project that he (Brad) is involved in. It'll be very interesting to see if it goes places, and indeed which places it goes.

Work in the lab has been interesting, but we're still having hardware problems. The screen material we were given... well, it's about as IR-reflective as human skin. Which is kind of bad to say the least, if we're trying to build an interactive screen. We're looking for alternative materials now - I've suggested we try to track down someone with one of those Sony NightShot cameras, and take it past a fabric store to see if we can find anything appropriate. That requires finding someone who doesn't mind us borrowing it or a cheap hire place though, most likely.

We also had the fun yesterday of being partway through dismantling the display screen to remove the backing projection material, when the guy in charge of the lab came through to tell us that a good 20 or so Chinese dignitaries and academics would be arriving soon, so if we could finish what we were doing quickly it'd be good. Eeep.

Now, even when you have three people, trying to move half a cubic foot of glass (6'x4'x1/4", at a weight of approximately 36kg/80lb) quickly, precisely and safely is rather tricky. We managed to get things into the state we wanted them, relined, refastened, realigned and back against the wall with at least a minute to spare. My lower back did not appreciate it, though. Rest day today.

There was random talk on a web forum about New Zealand and its national anthem, containing the lines:

Guard Pacific's triple star
From the shafts of strife and war

And how there was no official explanation about what the "triple star" bit meant. I did a bit of Google™-ing about, perversely under the search terms "shafts of strife", and came across a reproduction of a cartoon that was in the Listener magazine (generally containing current events articles and TV-related stuff) that I read back in the late '80s. I didn't see every strip (57 of 'em, weekly), which probably made it a little more surreal, but seeing them now it still looks fairly cool - and good for nostalgia value, for me. For some reason the storytelling style also reminds me of Patrick Farley from e-sheep.

So: Shafts of Strife. Have a read, if you like.