FLOODLAMP 7/29/11

1. Attend MaxFunCon over and over.
2. Make new friends
3. Start a standup comedy show with and for new friends.

Jason Van Glass and I started a new show.  We wanted more cool shows at which to perform, and I noticed that there's a park in Burbank that has a great big flood lamp pointed at nothing.  Something had to be shot there, or performed there, or both.

Look at this.  How could you not want to perform there?

So we did it.  Didn't have to build a thing, and they came!  About 30 of 'em, which is great for a first show upwards of 2 miles north of comics' comfort zone, and just about every one of 'em stayed for the whole show, which is even more impressive.

I said some things.  I didn't record it, and I don't remember all of it.  Or, I do, but I don't think it'd make good reading. The jokes turned into laughs.  Plenty of people had great sets.  Plenty of people need to learn to speak into a megaphone.  Yes, a megaphone.  Your regular comedy show has some wimpy microphone.  This is way bigger.

Your hosts.

Anyhow, it was such a success we're doing it again.   Really, how do you look at this and not want to put on a show?

STANDUP: Matt Mira's Day Off @ Meltdown Comics, 07/18/11

Tonight's all-new episode: Dial B for Charity! This was a new standup experience for me. I kind of disassociated, just thinking about what my hands were doing, and looking around to see what different people thought about the bit, while the rest of me told some jokes.

FCP-X Production Notes:

1. I played around a little with filters to make me sound like a Robot, or a Monster, or both! (but turned them off before making the file, thank you)
2. I tried making this in the same timeline as the last clip, and it doesn't seem to allow exporting a selection, only whole timelines.  But that sounds like one of those things people post angrily  about and then the answer is right in the manual, so I probably just didn't figure it out.
3. I did a nice job curbing the excessive UM and AH from my speech, mostly.  And then I started saying LIKE.  Weird. But errant syllables are no match for the power of editing!

Standup: Laugh Revival Comedy Show, 7/14/11

Here's a the bit from the first meltdown set I posted, having mainly to do with the subjects of Batman and Trains, but performed for people who thought they were going to a dance party in a warehouse, not people who were planning to see comedy in a comic book shop. (In fact, it's a cool warehouse full of weird percussion instruments!)

Photos taken by the quantifiably delightful Lucia Fasano.

FCP-X Production Note:  The very combination of characters "Jason Van Glass" is apparently a secret Apple test code that was not removed before release, chiefly useful for testing the crash report dialogue.  The save-as-you-go feature very helpfully kept me from losing data on the four attempts before successfully adding this name to the video.

Lies FCPX Told Me

Continuing to experiment with FCP-X. Oddly enough, I'm using it most for audio editing so far. The latest was a demo of how I could ensmarten myself by just removing 2 minutes of um-ing and ah-ing and pausing for thought from a segment of my appearance on The Projection Room podcast with Marco & Rebecka Duran.

The actual editing was fast and easy, and in all my previous time with FCP, I don't think I understood why I'd use the Range Select tool, and now I do. But exporting was a problem. It failed repeatedly and then told me:

Except, it didn't.  I could click okay and continue using FCPX.  It was like it couldn't handle the request I was making and just tried to distract me with a different problem.   A reboot solved this, for whatever reason.

"Excuse me, this isn't the sandwich I ordered." "I'm very sorry sir, but our restaurant is on fire."

In case you missed out on my guest shot, here's an excerpt from the show discussing one of my favorite movies you've never heard of, The Wizard of Speed and Time.

STANDUP: Matt Mira’s Day Off @ Meltdown Comics 7/3/11

Here's another standup set.  I was less prepared, but I did okay.  It was a mix of jokes I like to tell and things that I think could be good jokes later.

On a content note, I can't believe the Camp Manatoc classic worked.  Now I'm going to be hauling that out all over the place.

On a production note, I trimmed the head and tail of my recording in FCPX again, so the only part you hear is about me, and then I thought I'd edit the set - since I kind of set up the desert thing twice, I was going to get rid of one of those, and then it sounded weird and didn't work so I put it back, but I couldn't figure out how to accomplish a common technique in my editing arsenal:  Determining the time code of a point in one clip, and then finding that same time in a second clip.  It would easily produce a seamless edit, if it were possible.  Also, I found avid frustrating recently because it didn't have a working 'match frame' command that did what I expected from FCP, and now FCP doesn't either.  So that's kind of disappointing.