Spoon Test Factory (2006) is a short film about Marie, played by Beth Gillin, and Geoff, played by Brian Egendorf (MainFragger), who work in a factory where spoons are tested.

The idea behind the film was to shoot something that was visual and not dialogue-driven. I also wanted to write a script but not actually give the actors a copy of the screenplay. So while significant events in the film are structured, much of what happens on the screen was worked out in rehearsal through solutions the actors arrived at by improvisation. The script was written in Celtx.

The final point that bears mentioning is that Tim and I met Beth, Brian, and Andrew Salerno, the film’s director of photography, at the Philadelphia Filmmakers, Actors, & Screenwriters Syndicate, which is held at Katseye Studio in Philadelphia, PA.

Other Specs

Format: HDV

Lilliput is a very short DV film about the Lilliput robot. Manufactured in the 1940s, the Lilliput robot is believed to be the first mass-produced robot toy in Japan. The Lilliput in Lilliput is a replica and yes, he/she/it does have a hard time walking. That, however, is the Lilliput’s charm.

Besides being about a Lilliput, the idea behind shooting the film was to try some lighting techniques. Boo-beep-boop.

In answer to “Luppie”, the log and a puppy, I present Kettle Kittens. While both find common ground with their nod to domestic pets, they are also starkly different. Like electrum, a Luppie is a kind of alloy, an alloy of a log and puppy (not a dog-log or a log-dog). However, Kettle Kittens is not an alloy, but rather a divide, or even the divide, like space and time, realism and naturalism, or Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale. In total, Kettle Kittens is a very short DV film about a kettle cut off from irresistible kittens. I pray that Kettle Kittens wins Sundance. If it doesn’t, all I can say is what do they know of kettles and kittens or the magnifco “Luppie”?

For Kettle Kittens, Tim manned the camera and did the editing, and I wrote the music and the story/plot line. The film was shot on the same camera we will be shooting The Green Machine on.

What would you like for Christmas? How about an Ant Farm!

Ant Farm was written, shot, and edited over two days. Besides drawing on Dick’s discussion of his ant farm (also see Ant Redux, Rodent Bot Fly), it owes special debt to Dick’s discussion of torches in Forest Walks: 1, 2, and 3, and Dragon’s post, The Better TP Lantern. And by the way – Protozoic does NOT endorse or recommend anyone making a TP lantern as it is very dangerous.

In terms of movie-making, we’ve attempted to properly light the indoor shots. This was done with two fluorescent lights bought from Lowes for a total of 30 dollars. Considering the cost, we were pretty happy with the result.

We hope you enjoy Ant Farm and have a happy holiday.

It’s night and I’m in a forest with Tim waiting for him to get his gear ready so we can record a wilderness soundscape for a movie we’ve been working on called Young Goodman Brown. Adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story of the same name, the movie has been an unexpected one-off. Shot on a Panasonic DVX 100 and its sound mixed and recorded on a separate unit, Young Goodman Brown has given us the chance to gauge what our technical capabilities will be coming into the rapidly approaching Ameviathan: The Green Machine. As is always the case though, the one-off has taken on a life of its own.

Details have become absurd. We’ve just recorded footsteps on fallen leaves. While the footfalls don’t sound exactly as Tim thought they would, I’m thrilled with them. The nature-scape, however, is posing other difficulties. For starters, there has been a lot fumbling in the dark of the Jersey bush. Evidently I have far too many CDs in my car. Then Tim treads on a plastic flavored milk bottle that makes an impossibly loud sound. A discussion of milk bottle sonics ensues and then the conversation shifts to why we can’t record the nature-scape. We pause a moment and listen for birds. We don’t hear any. Then we listen for wind. We don’t hear that either. What we do hear are a lot of cheap car mufflers, jet planes and what is very possibly an infinite horde of random and unidentifiable machines. In a master-of-the-obvious flash it dawns on us that we aren’t in a forest at all, but a wooded lot across from an apartment complex in the New Jersey sprawl.

It is here that the wilds of Jersey become like the wilderness Goodman Brown finds himself in. Certainly, Jersey is a different type of wilderness, but one nonetheless that refuses to let us mow out our soundscape. And like Brown’s wilderness, ours also transmogrifies into a hell. Frustration sparks resignation, which become the flames of failure lapping higher and higher till all New Jersey is an inferno. Accordingly, like Brown, we do the only thing we can. We flee.

The question is though, is Brown ever tempted to go back into the forest again? Personally speaking, I know I’m ready to jump back into the creative pyre the first chance I get.

I hope you enjoy Young Goodman Brown as much as we did making it.

A version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short-story “Young Goodman Brown” can be read online at Project Gutenberg in the etext version of Mosses from an Old Manse.

“Big Bag” marks the Cave of Trouble’s second Burger Kings track (the

Get the song here.

Enjoy.

Man vs. Machine represents the first professional project that Tim and I were commissioned to make. Unfortunately, the piece never aired because the TV show it was intended for did not get off the ground.

Originally, the video was going to be broken into three segments and interspersed throughout the program. Accordingly, the first two parts had a “To be continued” after them. For the web version of the video, we’ve cut out the “To be continued” bits and linked the three segments together.

Special thanks goes to Joe on this one who was an integral component in the brainstorming process and was the one who suggested that we consider the premise of Man vs. Machine.

With Dragon’s most recent post about eggs, I thought I would briefly plug a sort of “egg experiment” that I myself was involved in.

While I living in Essex, my friend Russ (Rebelli0n) told me about a feast he and his friends used to make called Egg Mountain. I was so utterly intrigued by the monstrosity that he described to me, I made him swear that he would show me the art of cooking it. One evening he did, and the now infamous Egg Mountain movie resulted. The video, if I recall correctly, was rather fittingly shot over Easter vacation. Russ’s girlfriend (Caroline) and our friend Tamara helped out with the cooking.

We’ve posted the video on our site in a small format, but it can also be download on Russ’s site, in a larger avi format. Regardless of where you download the video from, I encourage all to check out Russ’s site, Tactical Syntax, which always has insightful commentaries (most recently about the newest incarnations of Dr. Who and Capt. Scarlet) and features the many projects that Russ is involved with. Russ has indicated that he will soon be posting his movie Eldridge (2004), which when he does, I encourage anyone at all interested in independent movie productions and science fiction to watch. It is stellar in every sense of the word.

Finally, for those who watch Egg Mountain, pay close attention to the end of the video where a picture of Dick Van Dyke and a cartoon version of Van Dyke are featured. Russ explained to me that he did not place Dick Van Dyke into the video to be funny and campy. Nor is it a coincidence that both a real picture of Van Dyke and cartoon picture appear. Rather, Van Dyke, and what might be labeled as the meta-Van Dyke, are placed in the video to alert others to what might be Van Dyke’s more problematic connection to the advent of the DVD. At some point, I hope that Russ will elaborate more just what this connection is.

In other words, check his site regularly.

For some time Tim and I have been interested in recording soundscapes. Last summer, during the cicada craze, Tim went out and managed to record some cicada-scapes. I’m sure Bernie Krause could have recorded a cicada humping a grain of sand, but by our amateur-soundscaping standards, I thought the cicada sounds that Tim captured were pretty fabulous. My favorite moments would be when a cicada hit the microphone, or a plane could be heard flying overhead, fading in and then out of the cicada summer-haze. We’ve not posted any of these soundscapes, but if for some reason there is a great internet-outcry to hear them, we’ll post them. Then you too can slobber in an ecstasy of sound as cicadas hit microphones at minute fifteen.

The eventual plan was to put an EP that would be part soundscape and then part cicada-electronica. The electronica end of the plan never became a reality, as it was contingent upon a lot of time and most likely outside help. So the recordings sat.

Eventually however, video artist and photographer Meggie Miao (who also happens to be Tim’s girlfriend) approached us and asked us to record a song about cicadas that she could use in conjunction with some footage of cicadas she had shot. So Tim and I went away and wrote a cicada song, though not the song we envisioned. It did however use the cicada-scapes. So part of the original plan was implemented.

The resulting video, thanks to Meggie’s excellent writing and directing, looks absolutely spectacular. And who knows, perhaps there will be an electronic cicada song yet…

The video is available here in .mov format and the song is available here as an mp3. Quicktime might be required to view the video.

The “May I Have Some Cake Please” video is finally finished. This song is featured in Spontaneous Combustion and is also slated to appear on the forthcoming Burger Kings EP.