Defiant Robot

One Of Us: Episode 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 06:36:00 +0000

Episode 2 is now up, with what is arguably (audience wise, certainly) the most successful creative project I've been involved in to date: TrueNuff TV!

Moze, James, Cranston and I reminisce about the genesis of the project PRE-YOUTUBE (yes, there was a time) and what going viral is like (or was like back in 2006 before CNN ever learned what the term meant.)

There's a lot of talk about learning by doing, learning by doing the wrong thing, and learning by going along with other people when they assume you know what you're doing. The key lesson here is doing, which is something that when left to my own devices I forget.

These guys, plus Brando & Rob from TrueNuff Comic (Episode 1) have been my closest collaborators and and strongest supporters (and harshest critics) for too long now to fathom. I would be happy knowing that I would get to continue working on fun projects with these guys, even if the final product never got seen by anyone.

Hope you enjoy!

Also, One Of Us is now available via iTunes.

One Of Us: Episode 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:07:00 +0000

New project! I'm now venturing into the podcast realm with a new series called "One Of Us" - a discussion with an in-group of people so you can get inside! That makes sense, right?

The first episode is with my longest-running creative endeavour of TrueNuff Comic, which just turned 12 (YEARS OLD!). As this was my first one, I'm learning the challenges of the mix and directing the conversation (animated discussion among friends turns into a lot of talking over each other) but I'm happy with how it turned out! I'm hoping to get a feed on iTunes soon and the new website www.oneofuspod.com is still updating but should be online in a day or two one the name records on the domain server update.

Feedback is much appreciated! Listen now at One Of Us.

Correlation does not imply causation

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:37:00 +0000

I had to laugh - the day after I decide to try talking more about what I'm doing to keep me going, I read a short article about a long-standing premise that people who talk about what they're doing are less likely to actually to the thing.

Lifehacker: Shhh! Keeping Quiet May Help You Achieve Your Goals

Am I worried this will hinder me? No. It seems like they're saying that it's a personality type that does one and the other, not that the sharing of your intentions makes you less likely to complete them.

Also, I'm not entirely confident my brain functions like a normal person's anyway.

World building

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 06:50:00 +0000

Things have been comatose around the blog of late. I wanted this to be central to the creative projects I’m working on so that’s pretty indicative of how things have been recently- but I’m going to start the development of my next ‘Thing.”

I’ve been playing with the idea mentally for about a year now without any real development. I think everybody has “that idea” that they always think they’ll do someday and I’ve had a lot of those, some which I forget about and others that just get old and are no longer interesting. Everything I’ve read from people who actually get pen to paper to write say that the important is to actually get down to it, whether your idea is “ready” or not- so I want to start getting this one out while I still have the means to do so.

Here’s my project outline (reserving the right to change any of it later!)

“Radio drama” style production
Episodic format, (one story per episode but a longer story arc per season)
Styled in a type of neo-noir detective story
Hopefully I can make it funny too, but it may not be purely comic.

Anyway, I’m starting a development phase to get the ideas refined. I was linked to a great blog post on Pinterest via Marsha of WhyTheFace. I thought it looked like fun and a good way to get the ball rolling while I get set up in my new Vancouver home with a productive space, so I've signed up and am using it for building a kind of idea-board space. In the coming weeks I'm planning on trying to formalize some of the structure of the first stories, and I hope to go to a bulletin board and cards system to try breaking it.

No, I've never done any of this before. No I'm not sure how to do it. But I'll let you know how it goes!

Until then: Pinterest: Defiant Robot

Toronto, it's not you, it's me.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:32:00 +0000

Hey, Toronto.

I would’ve liked to have told you this face-to-face, but I guess it’s just easier to write you. I don’t think we should see each other anymore.

You’re great, really. It’s just that I don’t think it’s going to work out. When we first met, things were great: all was new, we went on some crazy adventures- it was exactly what I needed at the time. So much potential. Now though, I don’t think things have changed so much as the more we learn about each other the less of a chance you and I really have. We don’t click.

You’ve done a lot for me, I’ll admit. You got me into doing shows again, taught me the power of a community of super-talented and smart people. And you have the coolest friends! I’ve met the greatest people through you, and though I think they’ll probably side with you in the split, I’m hoping they’ll still keep in touch. Also, thanks for getting me that job.

The thing is I just don’t see us together long-term. Your style and mine are ultimately incompatible and though it sounds cold it does sadden me to rationalize it so. I wish I were more flexible, I do! But if I don’t follow my heart/guts/cojones, well then anytime we fight and let each other down I’m just telling myself “I told you so!”

It's... well it's Vancouver. We've always been close and yeah, I've been seeing Vancouver a little bit here and there and I guess I never really got over it. We just work so well together. I’m a west coast boy. I need greens and blues, I need my temperate climate and my buckets of rain. My family’s almost all there, and I never get to see my old friends anymore… I know, I’m making excuses. The basic underlying theme is that I’ve never felt any sense of permanence in this whole thing, and I think it’s time for me to move on. I know you’ll be fine without me. Maybe after some time has passed we can still hang out.

You’ll always have a special place in my heart.

Love, J.Rai

P.S. I hope it's okay if I stick around for a few more months while I find a new place.

Today's existential crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:15:00 +0000

Usually when I start into a train of thoguht like this, I start to worry I'm going to blow a blood vessel in my brain because it just starts to feel like feedback. What follows is a chat session I had after my lunch break today. I figure a transcript is as good as re-writing it.

me: What a great lunch-walk.

Nat: Where did you go?

me: Just through Trinity Square, to the bank and back.

I overheard some middleschoolers discussing ESP and karma and then I had my own existential crisis and now I can't stop smiling.

Nat: Tell me about your existential crisis! I feel like it could make my day (Not the crisis aspect.)

me: Well there were three middleschoolers, girls walking behind me chattering away.

As we passed a psychic reading place, one iof them asked "Do you believe in ESP?" and the other two responded "yeah" without hesitation.

Then before the end of the block one of them said "Karma!" about something I don't remember.

And I thought it was funny being at the age where you just believe those things because... I guess you want to, or you don't question things or whatever.

Then I thought about my own list of things like that I would create in order of descending believeability, putting ESP above Karma

And then I thought about where God would go on that list, the very top or the very bottom

Because if you put God in there then you must credit God with the creation of teh universe, which I don't

So if you eliminate that, then there's just the universe's natural existence

But why does the universe exist?

And why does anything exist at all?

Like, why is there... anything?

There could literally be nothing anywhere at all on any plane of existence.

In any dimension.

At all.

Why is there stuff?

But

There IS stuff.

There are quarks and atoms and waves of energy and as a result there are these three middle school girls, on a School day, at 1 pm, with a skate board and rollerblades in downtown Toronto having some little personal adventure

Or just a ditch day

And I get to wear a polyester sweater and use the internet.

And go outside and the wind blows in my face.

And that's pretty sweet.

Nat: Exeunt.

SoundCloud

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:58:00 +0000

I finally moved on an ages-old suggestion by Threeboy to jump on SoundCloud and do some audio dumping. I've put up some of the back catalogue of musical and aural things I've come up with for various TrueNuff projects of the past - I don't think it'll just be final stuff though, I want to throw up some of the bits and pieces, the works-in-progress that make up the vast majority of the things I've actually recorded.

If it weren't for the deadlines of things like the video projects I don't know if I'd ever release anything as final. Perhaps I should rename my personal studio to "Development Hell."

J.Rai's sounds on Soundcloud

On Movember

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:00 +0000

It’s now the end of November, and thus comes with it the end of Movember and its antics.

This was my third year participating in the fundraiser and my goal this year was just to top my last year’s total (when I raised $440.) This year I solicited friends and family and per usual, trying to be as low-pressure as I could but maintaining visibility by trying to create some kind content that people might wanna see and judge to be worthy of some kind of recognition of the effort.

I did some promo in the weeks leading up to November 1 when the activity kicks off. I put up some photos from last year, did some blaspheming of my record collection, some fun with photo apps, and then The Grow began.

The thing about The Grow is that it is unpleasant. I fell that the idea of the Movember Grow is that it’s the little personal sacrifice/effort, much like running a 5k or a rock-a-thon or whatever people do for fundraisers to be novel now, and it gets sponsored as a reward for your effort. There are rules (that a lot of guys skirt around in truth) that make The Grow more obvious (shave clean on Day 1, no goatees, no chops) and yes, you look awkward for the first few weeks. Some guys are lucky to fill in fast. I do not. On top of that, there is a surprising amount of blonde hair in my ‘stache, which I don’t get because I have rather dark hair. Very brown, at least. I had fairly blonde hair when I was young though. Maybe because the moustache is so young (concatenated, it’s only about 4 months old) it’s still quite young.

As usual, I got generous support from my family. We all want to give now and then and our family’s been touched by cancer, and I don’t do this kind of thing often so I suppose I don’t ask a lot. Thanks this year go to my parents, and bro and sis, Gary, Linette, Jim and Fiona who all made me feel better about the whole effort. As well, a lot of friends new and old threw in too. Some of them were supportive from the start, others were coerced with my new approach at a viral campaign this year (it worked!) – although I gotta say guys, the comments, sharing and all are really great (hundreds of views, dozens of comments, Facebook like sand re-shares) and thanks, but only like three donations came out of it! Come oooooooonnn… okay, enough. I don’t like guilt-for-charity any more than you guys do.

Anyway! This year was a great success for me, I crushed my total from last year and will probably finish in the Top 10 of my work team! This thing I find really interesting about Movember internationally is that Canada has really embraced the Movember campaign. Worldwide Canada has raised the most money per country by far (over $33 million, a $10+ million lead over Australia and the UK, triple the USA total) and we don’t even have the most participants!

Of course competition is not the key. All the money goes to the right place, research (etc.) and the awareness and promotion of getting regular checks is already reflected in my own friends and family. I want to thank every person who donated, emailed, comments, shared a photo, linked my page, re-tweeted a tweet and looked at my Movember page. You set the bar higher this year for me, so next year, I’m gonna have to work it to push it higher.

Anyway, there's still time to donate if you're so inclined. It goes on weeks into December and if you think the effort was deserving, you can visit my MoSpace Page and donate online. You get an official receipt and everything! I will say though, I'm looking forward to shaving tomorrow. This thing is uncomfortable.

Stay healthy and thanks!

UPDATE: 3:40 pm EST Huge postscript thanks to Sarah, Iana and wee Jessica for their generous closing day donation and my first corporate sponsor ever, Flight Centre Cambridge! You guys have gotten me to almost DOUBLE my number from last year. I have to start planning the next campaign now if I ever hope to clear it. You guys are awesome.

King Kong Delta

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:37:00 +0000

...and we're back!

Finished my first shoot today with the new team. What team, you ask? King Kong Delta.

Impatient Theatre Company is rolling out a new project codenamed ITC Digital featuring several production teams all creating new videos in parallel. Hopefully with this much motivated talent we should be churning out a healthy stream of content very soon (first video already released!)

My production team is called King Kong Delta. I will be wearing the producer hat with them, due to my involvement with the mighty TrueNuff TV! The planning of writing meetings and shoots is a routine I'm kind of used to, and I can also contribute to the technical junk since we did the guerrilla DIY production game for several years, and we're working sans budget. WIN!

The shoot was a lot of fun: short, but it felt good to wear those shoes again. Out team is awesome and in the future we'll be casting people outside the group so it'll be good to work with various people and learn from each other.

So a little over a year later, I feel like there's enough going on to update here again. Not that I couldn't have found things in between, but if there's any relevancy to be had here then at least I should be allowed to be specific. Upcoming topics include more classes with Impatient Theatre, ITC digital, the Canadian Comedy Awards, and some other shows I'll be getting involved in. Hope to keep it interesting.

Festivals, classes, books and radio

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:33:00 +0000

So I'll start on the regular front: The Carnegie Hall Show. The summer's been an interesting season - while most shows take breaks because so many of the performers have opportunities to tour shows, do theatre festivals or follow the Fringe around, we too have lost each (and sometimes all) of our cast to other engagements during the summer but soon will have the whole gang back together, at least for a while. Not that the "original lineup" is the only recipe for a sure-fire show of course, we've had a slew of awesome guest performances.

The reunion of the cast is just in time though, as our show has been picked for both the Toronto Improv Festival and the Montreal Improv Festival this fall! Unfortunately, after some attempts at shuffling dates around we are unable to make the Montreal party - but there's always next year. Our Toronto date is September 23rd - Wednesday! That should be easy to make.

This week's show will be a bit of an experiment too, only in the sense of re-purposing the show as a fundraiser for a charity I'll be doing a bit of work with next month, The Sandals Foundation. Through them, while on a trip to the Turks and Caicos next month we'll be building community gardens and playgrounds in some of the less fortunate villages on the islands, and also doing a bit of environmental protection work protecting the local reefs. We're going to use this week's event toward a fundraising goal I've been challenged with through my office and we'll see what the community can provide us.

In other news, I'm in at Second City! By "in" I mean that they finally called me in about the great new Musical Directors program they've started up. They have a very cool series of workshops sharing the tricks and methods that the Second City shows use to involve live improvised music into their shows. I'm most excited about this because since I've just been making this up as I go along (which in improv, I guess is allowed!), I'm very interested to really talk techniques and go-tos with other more experienced Musical Directors. I'm already going to start more regular session accompanying classes in the training centre soon and I'll also be taking the classes while I'm there. It's very exciting!

Outside of improv, I finally got a copy of And Here's The Kicker which is a very cool book of interviews with the relatively nameless writers behind the most popular TV shows and comedians of all time. So far I've learned a lot about the development of a lot of the templates for today's talk shows, sitcoms and film comedies, but also the writers themselves are of course very funny and insightful. There's also a lot of little inter-chapter sidebars about how books get sold, jokes turn into jobs and a few "Whatever you do, don't..." lessons learned the hard way many times over by writers over the decades. I'm not even halfway through but it's already the most satisfying read I've found about writing since I finished Crafty TV Writing.

Also I've gotten back into radio in a big way lately by finding out about a lot of public radio shows in the states, notably The Moth and This American Life. I've wanted to do some kind of radio-format podcast for some time now and so many forms are so appealing, but I think I'd have to settle somewhere around radio play or documentary. Obviously those are both BROAD categories, but I just don't know the words to form the specific type that I'm thinking of yet. I've reassembled my portable recording kit so I'll get to start experimenting on locations again soon. If only I knew anything about documentary...

Until next time!

Beer Pop/Music

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:49:00 +0000

As I mentioned previous a couple weeks ago while I was in Vancouver visiting I hung with the TrueNuff boys and did some video-ing. While I was there James also showed me the newest addition to the merch store: a Cute little Japanese "safety bottle opener" they labeled as the "Beer Popper." We wanted to shoot some kind of commercial clip for the new item (even though by the time it went live they'd already sold half their stock!) We did land on an idea of something in the vein of Vince "Offer" Shlomi of ShamWow and Slap Chop fame:

What we ended up shooting was an improvised informercial pitch spot in that style. With a little clever editing on the dudes' part it came out this way:

Now one of the best things to ever happen to the Slap Chop brand was a killer video and music remix by the now-much-better-well-known DJ Steve Porter that was known as "Rap Chop"

So as an exercise in what I figured was inevitability, I thought I'd beat out the a) request for me to try doing a remix and b) the other fans that might just do one first anyway, and do my own. I wasn't going to do the auto-tune/vocoder stuff of the other one, I just wanted to edit, beatmatch and slice. While trying to make some drum beats for it though, I realized I was trying to replicate the beat from The Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" - so I figured screw it and I just decided to do a Mash-Up, which seems to be all the rage right now anyway (or at least it was, it may be on it's way out yet.) Here it is:

Doing the edit was a lot of fun and I forgot how much fun it was - I hope to find other little things like this to have fun with coming up.

Flashback to the west coast, future in the east

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:09:00 +0000

While I was visiting Vancouver a couple of weeks ago I got a chance to do a little drop-in work with the TrueNuff TV guys. Running a sketch comedy group as a business is a really tough go - be it with friends or business partners - because even when you're not concerned with making money, where that money goes or what you should do it is still an easy thing to disagree on. It's also really easy to get distracted by that and forget to make with the funny.

Sitting in on the shoot and making a cameo or three with the dudes was killer fun though. I miss being producing like that but also with messing around with my crew and having fun while doing it. There are some new videos over at TrueNuff TV going up right now that I jumped on board for, thanks for letting me back in, guys!

Back here in Toronto we're a couple shows in with The Carnegie Hall Show since our brief hiatus last month. Last night we filled the place to the rafters - sold out! It was amazing. Thanks to all who have attended and if you're curious, come on down! We're at the top of our game.

Well, as the fall is coming up (don't deny it, it's on the way!) I'm getting another opportunity with Second City - I'll be in as a Musical Director Apprentice (I've always wanted to be an apprentice!) in the next month, taking some workshops, working some workshops, and eventually sitting in on some shows and hopefully doing some on my own soon enough. Second City is a great hub for the comedy community, even if so many people operate outside of it's doors, it's a great gateway to smaller shows in our larger community and and a great resource for learning and networking. I'm really looking forward to being more formally involved with them.

When I started this blog I wanted to make it my development and writing blog, but that's coming slower than I expected and I've become so much more involved in related projects that I think I've been less able to keep updating, but I think other aspects of my work in the Toronto comedy community are just as interesting, so I'm going to keep up more info than I have been. Stay tuned!

Making it up as I go along

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:26:00 +0000

So another long stretch between posts, but a busy and exciting one!

The Carnegie Hall Show is still going great. We've been playing every week, nailing down what is essentially a new improv format, introducing our show to the community and the city at large and response has been very encouraging. I do think that lousy Toronto weather has kept audiences on the conservative side (size wise, not politically) so I hope that if this God awful weather ever breaks, then we'll get more happy people on the streets looking for fun things to do. Kensington Market is very quiet this time of year it seems.

Also, another ongoing yet irregular show I've gotten to play is the improvised soap opera Dysfunctional Utopia: A Serialized Romance. Directed by Ron Pederson, the improvised soap features over-the-top characters in a developing overdramatic storyline complete with adultery, conspiracy, murder and mad scientists - and we're doing it again this Sunday! Ghost Jail @ Clinton's on Bloor St.

On the writing front I'm still doing more reading about writing than actual writing, but I'm reading a lot. The latest book I've picked up is "The Way of Story" by Catherine Ann Jones - A book that while it contains some good reminders of the process of builsing outlines and developing characters that I've read in better books, there's a lot of new-agey type stuff about visualization and seemingly letting the story write itself, which I can't stomach to believe is actually very effective. As well, Jones packs the book full of self-congratulatory anecdotes about the few productions her career has consisted of, which do little to sell me on her advice since all the stories and ideas she's sold are never ones I would want to put my name on. (This isn't to say there isn't a market for writing a movie where Dolly Parton plays a country singer (what casting!) who dies and can't get into Heaven so has to go back to earth and do a good deed to get eternal bliss - but good God who would want to?)

More educational than any book I've read or heard of so far though has been the community of TV writer/bloggers that I've be uncovering. Alex Epstein has a great book and accompanying blog [Complications Ensue] about writing, the business of writing and (most importantly to me) the business of writing in Canada. Through him I also found Denis McGrath's killer blog of similar themes [Dead Things on Sticks] which also led me to blogs, groups and a killer weekly meeting of TV pros from Toronto. Last Friday I got to have a beer with Denis, Ed McNamara, Rob Pincombe and Rob Sheridan just because I showed up. This week was even bigger, plus George Strombo showed up. I've never been a proponent of networking (probably only because I haven't ever been good at it) but I feel like I meeting a lot of the right people to know a thing or tow about where to go and what to do once I actually have some product to show.

Anyway, Carnegie Hall is still every Wednesday and Ghost Jail is every Sunday. Come say hello!

New opportunity, new show, new challenges.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:46:00 +0000

OK, so at least I've got a contributing gig here in Toronto now. A month ago I got into the Musical Director apprenticeship program at Second City. Great news! I also got a regular job to support my entertainer-artist-no income habit. Also great news, right? Well...

My new job required I spend some time out of town for a few weeks - the same few weeks that were the beginning of this great program at Second City. As a result, I was unable to start - but I will be getting involved in the spring when it starts again, meaning I can take some classes, study some shows and hopefully get to play very soon.

In the meantime, work is good and I'm playing a regular gig, the "Carnegie Hall" improv show on Wednesdays at the new Bread and Circus in Kensington Market in Toronto! The new location is at 299 Augusta Ave. and we helped play the grand opening of the place this past Saturday. Our regular show is Wednesdays at 9pm - we'll be on this Wednesday Dec. 10, and then on a hiatus until January - but then every Wednesday in 2009!

The show is a production of "The National Theatre of Canada" and features, nay, stars, Matt Baram, Ron Pederson and Chris Gibbs, with various guests of excellent talent. Shows so far have been terrible fun and hugely hilarious!

Funny People: George Carlin, Steve Martin and Carl Reiner

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:50:00 +0000

I rediscovered iTunes U today which is an incredible repository of online University education content for FREE! Videos, lectures, interviews, really cool stuff on a broad range of topics from string theory to ancient literature to anatomy and physiology, but also more rudimentary topics and a lot of K-12 topics too (for you teachers out there!).

I was looking for material about comedy and writing, and found a few related things but I found a great series (only 3 entries so far) called "Funny People" from the 92nd Street Y that has three awesome (and recent!) interviews from three awesome comedians, Steve Martin, Carl Reiner and the late great George Carlin. iTunes U functions within iTunes and it podcast format, so you need iTunes to hear them, but they are totally free and very enlightening to students of comedy.

Find the series here.

Week 1: The rain smells good

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:28:00 +0000

So I've been in Toronto for 7 days now. It rained today, and the air smells like it's been cleaned out a bit. I don't know from what, really, I don't recall what it smelled like before, but I've heard claims of the city's odour ranging from "smoky" to "like a towel that didn't totally dry so it ends up smelling like wet dog."

It's been hot here, like borderline too hot. It's muggy and humid. and yes I did know it was going to be like that before I came here, but it didn't make it much easier to adjust. I haven't worn jeans since I got here (apart from when I arrived) which is weird since that's pretty much appropriate every day in Vancouver.

So I got all my stuff, (the boxes virtually disintegrated after I got them from Greyhound, but my stuff inside was mostly okay) a place to sleep for a while and a 416 phone number. Now to find work. What kind? Well I'm looking for everything from my "fall-back Joe-job" IT support gigs to sound and music work, because for the time being I just want to do something, anything to help me settle and get back into the black financially. I got some great deals moving out here but it's still a hit to the wallet, as I'm sure so many of you know.

So in short, I'm here, I'm good, and I'm ready to get to know the city a little better.

Big thanks to Rob, James, Brandon, Jorie, Denise and Brett and any smaller players that helped me translocate. All help is hugely appreciated.

Revelations (Book of Jeff) : 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:32:00 +0000

I spent the last long weekend on Lake Kalamalka (thanks Shane!). On the drive out, in the various towns we passed through I noticed the high number of Hot Chicks With Douchebags, which is not unusual, but always strikes me.

When Ben and I stopped in Vernon, I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a window. I was wearing:

1.) Aviator sunglasses
2.) Cargo shorts (camouflage)
3.) A T-Shirt reading "Your Favorite Band Sucks"
4.) A newly cut spiked hairdo
5.) at the time I was also on my cellphone

...and I realized: I have a chance.

RIGHT ON.

Too much week, not enough weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:53:00 +0000

Got a call Thursday night to see if I could work on Caprica late Friday. I had said that I had an early morning on Saturday so I couldn't if it might be late. The agent tells me it's a 4:00 call and shouldn't go long, and it'd be a huge favor for him if I could make it. I say yes.

Call time: 7:30 pm. Wrap time: 4:30 am. Class time: 10:00 am (In North Van). God Damnit.

Interesting show though. Without giving too much away... well, I guess I can't say much because there's a lot of weird stuff about the show that nobody's talking about. But there's enough widespread info about it to say that it's supposed to take place about 50 years before Battlestar Galactica, before their planet explodes or whatever and they're on the run from killer robots.

As for my class, I took the Vancouver Film Industry Orientation weekend class that the unions require you to have. It doesn't really pertain to Vancouver specifically really, except for a little P.R. info about why we're supposedly so great, but I'm told that the ticket I get for taking it might be worthless in Ontario because... well supposedly IATSE Toronto is jealous of Vancouver getting all the work or something. I dunno. Turns out the union thing isn't a big deal anyway because the number of non-union shows being produced in Vancouver has been on a steady rise in the last few years, so you don't relaly need to be a member to work on most of them.

Wish I'd known that before I sat around waiting for them to return my bloody phone calls.

Will Wright talks "Spore" and the evolution of game design

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:42:00 +0000

While waiting for my AirCare passage ($45 for a 20-second diagnostic? That's $8100/hr by my count!) I was listening to Q on CBC Radio and today's episode had a cool interview with Will Wright, designer of SimCity (now open source!), The Sims and the upcoming Spore, hailed as perhaps the most anticipated video game of all time (By who? I don't know.) In it, he discusses a lot of his ideas surrounding his unique approach to Game Design, widening gamer demographics and the new experience of emergence in the gaming experience (or something like that.)

Is a fun listen for anyone who's interested in video game design, or all the new kinds of video game style that are emerging these days, with the Wii and such. Have a listen to it here.

Another dead end...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:53:00 +0000

So I was perusing the CanDevs Ontario directory looking for Toronto-based developers that might be on the lookout for an Audio Designer (me) and I found a few that look like they're accepting applications but on a couple with explicit postings looking for them.

So I'm doing my due diligence and researching the companies I'm applying to so I can at least know what I'm talking about in my cover letter and applications, or (if it ever happens) if they actually call me back. One company, Pseudo Interactive, starts looking very promising to me, in that they are a "small" company with about 50 employees and seem to be expanding their development force - and then I guess I got the "too good to be true" moment. It looks like a deal falling through with publisher Eidos caused the ground to fall out from underneath them and they had to shut down. God Damnit. Just when things started to look promising. I even sent in my resume and demo reels anyway but the emails fucking bounced. They're phones still work though (I got an answering service) so maybe I should try seeing if they're really gone for good.

And it's not as if they hadn't put all their resources into locking up that deal (which was probably a sweet one for them) they would have gotten it anyway, so they were probably fucked if they did and fucked if they didn't.

Guess it's back to the CanDevs.

Extras

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:25:00 +0000

So I'm supposed to work on Battlestar Galactica on Tuesday. Kinda neat, though I didn't know they were still filming that. I mean I know the last season just started, but I thought that show had a longer production cycle because it's like 50% CGI. Of course, I've only seen one episode so I can't say that for sure.

Got a gig!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Raimondo) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:22:00 +0000

So I'm playing a set at a fund raiser for Magnetic North tomorrow night. It's a private thing so no, I can't get you in, but that's okay because I'll basically be doing my cruise ship cocktail set. One of those things where - as I say - I am to be heard but not listened to.

I've been told that's a sad way of describing it. As if "cruise ship cocktail set" isn't.