Listen to MP3 Commentary by
Pete Moraites and Eric Scott
(Salvador Dalek)

Music: Thingstuff (Stuffthing Mix by Salvador Dalek)
Made with Kellee Edwards Lawler (vocalist) and Marc Cobrin (engineer)

For Thingstuff, Kellee and I chatted and made noises in the booth for several takes, which Marc sliced and diced and layered up into a texture. I mouthed the bassline and the percussive bits, and Kellee sang a few takes of melody lines, doubling and harmonizing her improvisations as we went along. Brilliant. I wish I had all the source clips for this piece to keep playing with. Oh well, make more.

The track was edited /scored to picture for Hypnorama (Mix 2) by Eric Scott as the other half of Salvador Dalek.

Hypnorama : June 2004

I just moved into an apartment in Northridge, CA with Alyson.

We’d been living in our apartment for less than 2 weeks when we decided to do the 48 hour film festival. I’d done some production photography and a title sequence for Lisa Gold in a similar “competition” called instant films a few months ago. It was a lot of fun, though it seemed pretty high stress.

So I wanted to do the 48 hour thing when it came around. Lisa and I had talked about teaming up with her as writer and me as director, and she would coach me through the producers role and kick in some money for costs. We met up and chatted a few times about possibilities if we drew different genres (yeah, it’s against the rules, but, a) it’s impossible not to think about something you’re really excited about b) some teams supposedly had full scripts for every contingency (this is the “everyone else does” excuse) and c? who gives a shit? We did it to have fun, not to test our ethics.

When the time came, lisa and I decided we wanted to approach the whole thing differently, so she joined another team.

We had zero budget, and I mean zero. No budget, no shooting location, and no house or apartment to edit in. I had been considering blowing what little money I had in the bank at the time on a hotel room or two or a suite where everyone would stay and work. I was shitting my pants about spending that money, but I couldn’t think of any alternative other than to have about a dozen people stay at our one bedroom apartment which we had just moved into. I didn’t want to suggest it to Alyson because I thought she’d think I was crazy or be pissed at me or worried we’d get kicked out of our new place.

Alyson: Let’s just do it here.
Pete: Here? That sounds crazy, we could get kicked out.

Aly talked me down from my paranoia and we decided to have about a dozen people move into our one bedroom place in Northridge.

I wanted to create a really crazy visual piece, and I wanted it to be a kind of creative free-for-all where everyone could participate in whatever ways they wanted. You want to act, act. You want to shoot, shoot. edit, edit, got a cool idea for a sequence, direct it. I had visions of multiple ideas being explored by the artists involved, and then everyone remixing each other’s pieces, and then we would edit it together and improv dialog over animated sequences and then have the dialog bites looped and scratched into the music. The whole thing would look and sound like a comic book come to life. it was insanely ambitious and to cap it all off, part of me still wanted to control every level of detail in the whole thing.

It sounds like a recipe for disaster and anyone looking for a piece which actually ‘made sense” would argue that disaster is exactly what we got.

But we had so much fun!

I’d invited a lot of people, anyone I could think of with a creative passion (and anyone I could think of who wanted to experience more creative passion. I invited other animators and directors I’d worked with or for, people I’d met at RES...I thought everyone could riff and do their own thing and/or collaborate with new people and it’s be fun and in the end it’d be a great showcase and networking opportunity; one way or another this piece was going to stick out like a sore thumb or gleam like a diamond amongst coal...nothing else in this venue would be so visually striking (I was right about that!) I figured a team of artists gathered from the RES community and the like would astonish the crowd at 48 hours, which seemed to attract a lot of filmmakers with traditional commercial sensibilities in terms of narration and style, which is very cool, and which could expand a lot of horizons by mixing it up with the animators and experimenters from RES. RES and 48HFP could co-sponsor an amazing interbreeding of styles, sensibilities, approaches, and talents. The more i thought about it, the more potential I could see for fun (and profit) for everyone. Mostly I saw it as a way of having such great times creating for the weekends as entertainment, and spreading that idea like a virus, killing of the routines of going to Blockbuster or the new big studio shit, or cable, or restaurants or parties where people talk about work (or what movies they rented or went to)...all of which is fin but there’s so much focus on purchasing entertainment that I hear a great call in our spirits to reconnect with play for the sake of play...and I see that as the greatest potential for 48HFP and RES (as well as Tomato whose workshop experiences have rekindled that joy in me)

So the call went out far and wide and though I’d envisioned dozens of creatives in for the fun of it, be it my track record (or lack thereof) for creating such grand ambitious pieces or be it a failure to make it sound really worthwhile, most said no, or simply didn’t respond. For a lot of people, it’s all business, it seems, and appealing to their sense of fun seems suspicious and probably self-serving. It could also have been that for all my proselytizing about creating as a party activity, I was still secretly hoping I’d get a lot of recognition for making it happen, and thus wind up getting paid by someone to do something similarly cool. Everyone’s a mind reader and nothing is a turn off like an unspoken self-serving intent wrapped in altruism.

Dozens were invited and a dozen plus showed up. For 48 hours our little apartment became home to a family of creative lighthearted friends. This is exactly what I wanted.

The Crew:
Billy (aka Doctor aka Chickenman) Martin
Billy was first to arrive. We met in ‘98, i think, in Kona Hawaii (actually, I think we met briefly in ‘92, also in Kona). I was there to help out with the A/V crew for a Tony Robbins 9 day seminar. Billy was the show director and he gave me a bunch of videos to edit together of a speaker who wasn’t able to show up live, so we needed t set a context for the audience before the speaker (Dr. Pete Duesberg) would have a conversation/ Q&A with Tony & the audience over the phone. Amazing material on the great cultural misunderstanding surrounding HIV/AIDS. I cut the video together and dressed it up with some fake out jerry-rigged motion graphics (photoshop and premiere, in lieu of After Effects) The piece was great and really well received. I made some more fucked up motion graphics throughout the week and Billy and I had a great time. He hired me on to do graphics for a bunch more shows over the next several years and our friendship flourished. Billy’s a super-talented genius and an inspiration to be around. Billy does it all; he directs, shoots, and edits, and at the live events he does all of them at the same time like some multi-limbed hindu deity weaving the visuals, directing the cameras and video feeds, DJ’ing the music and speaking to the audience through chiron text as the disembodied comic to Robbins’ straight man. He gave me so much creative freedom (the most I ever had in a client situation) and became a profound influence on my creative work as well as my spiritual journey (which have become one and the same) Billy showed up with a half-ton of super cool toys: A portable blue screen, a dolly/crane, lighting kit, and one of his trusty G4's. We used the blue screen a lot, even though we didn’t do any compositing. (Well, I did a little bit of compositing with some of the footage months later). The blue background became part of the design of the whole thing. We used the crane to get some wicked shots in the part where we shot actual video (the rest was a lot of sequential stills to be animated together in After Effects)

Blue_9.a and Down-e-Fresh
A few months before meeting Alyson, I had found myself in a bit of a slump as far as meeting girls. I had declared an intention to meet a certain number of girls within one day, get a certain number of phone numbers, a certain number of rejections (good for getting over fear of rejection) and one girl to take me out for at least a half hour and pay for my drink or food. The girl was a cute gothy punky chick named Bethany. I’d told her straight up what I was doing and that I wanted her to take me out and pay for a basked of fries and/or a soda for me. She was cool and friendly and said yeah, sure. She was with her friend Verdel, who it turns out is a really talented artist and gave me an awesome T-shirt he’d made. Bethany bought me a basket of fries and a soda at the Rainbow Room in Hollywood and the three of us chatted about art, music and the like. Two of Verdel’s friends showed up, and this is how I met Matthew Lohse aka Blue_9.a. He was in town from Ventura to meet with a producer or music agent or the like. We started talking about music and in an instant we recognised each other as of the same ilk. Passionate music enthusiasts light up when we talk about music; music we love, music we hate, mucsic we link to other music. We talk about music with a reverence that can only be matched when talking about shagging. the bond was forged... quickly we both declared the sense that we’d keep in touch and that we’d work together on some kind of music / animation hybrid. He sent me a link to his website, syaticmedia.com, and when I heard his music I couldn’t wait to work together. His works ran the gamut from dark and brooding to tongue-n-cheeky funwith a penchant for frantic beats and intense dramatic sound. Wicked shit. I hung out with Blue a couple of times, both of us prattling on endlessly about the different strands of our individual musical tapestries, agreeing and disagreeing and recommending, defending, and celebrating our favorites. I watched him work and he taught me some cool stuff about composing (another of his talents). And then 48HFP came along. I made the call and excitedly told him I wanted to develop the music concurrently with the visuals and make the whole thing in a creative jam session. Blue’s enthusiasm was awesome right from the word go and his energy was so consistent throughout keeping everyone in great spirits. Everyone did, really, but Blue definitely brought heart to the homebase.

Blue was collaborating a lot with Tyson Patterson aka Down-e Fresh. I’d met him once before at his place in Ventura when I’d come up to visit and chat with Blue. He was talented and focused, funny and a gracious host. And I wasn’t sure I liked him. It was about an hour after I left his place that I realised why I was acting a bit aloof to this guy who seemed by all acounts to be someone I’d be friends with. Down-e and I share a certain cockiness and I’ve spent a lifetime getting comfortable with my own. Oce I got over myself, I had some great times hanging out in Down-e’s garage while he rehearsed his hip-hop ensemble Doomsound. Another multi-talent, he tried to teach me how to scratch one night but I was hopelessly stoned. During the 48HFP, Blue and Down-e were the Breakbeating heart of apt #78 around the clock. Listening to musicians create is fucking awesome, and these two gods were jamming and improvising beyond such mortal concerns as sleep-cycles and into the realms of hyper-consciousness. It was the thrill of hearing sounds evolve and mutate that kept the rest of us going the whole time.

Weston Higgins
In the early spring of ‘04, I took a job working production on a reality show. The show was douchey, but I had fund and learned some interesting stuff and met some really cool people. I worked with the art department, which is what Weston always tells me to call my position on the gig, but I was hired as a P.A., which is how we met. Higgins was the Production Coordinator or something. I don’t know what his title is, just that he was coordinating a lot of the production. In a bizarre little microcosmos for the month f the gig, there were more than a few people who seemed a bit serious about their positions in the hierarchy (and to some, this paralleled a kind of social strata.) Wes was refreshingly free from ego. Diligent about his tasks, while easygoing and funny, his magnanimity is only one of the qualities which make him an excellent leader. We made friends immediately, and as it turns out, Weston used to work with Rob Zimmerman, a great friend of mine since 7th grade. After our tenure in Bizarroland, we hung out a few times West asked me to A.D. his music video for the Minnesota rap-rock band S.O.R.E. Here I got to see him work his people magic while being creative visually and solving logistical puzzles. Wes is a great director and when he directed the shooting and editing of the “courtyard battle sequence” it rocked and was probably the only part of the piece that made any narrative sense.

Ari Raz
I met Ari a few weeks before 48HFP. We were both helping Jonathan Wells and the RES crew with screening and selection for RESfest 2004. He’s a funny, creative, cocky schmoozmeister, so he reminds me of me. Full to overflowing with stories and ideas, the only thing that’s kept him from taking over Hollywood with his own material has been thinking he needs “money” to do it. and a healthy preoccupation with chasing skirt. It’s like looking in a mirror. This guy can create something cool on any budget, on no budget, on the cliche’d cocktail napkin. And if he wants a “budget”, he can charm that into existence as ell. The girls already love him and the more he makes his artworks the easier that gets. I’ve seen him crank our a full story-arc with great characters, visuals, shots & edits like Rainman counting toothpicks. A visually and verbally talented artist whose media of excellence also included human social dynamics. As soon as he realizes his networking is just another creative expression in his palette, he’ll put it all together and be unstoppable...then when he ditches his ego, he’ll be an artiste of great renown.

Over the course of the weekend Ari decide to add After Effects and Photoshop to his repertoire, Photoshopping tons of photos, animating pictures, and experimenting with some filter madness to create this little clip which I, in one of my egoic moments, decided to remove because, despite the obvious abstractness of our final product at the screening, I was still, at 34 years old, too prudish and catholic to handle the possibility that anyone might judge us for the possibility that most of us did in fact (after Dee went home) get stoned during the production.

Lakie & Dee Singley
I met Lakie at an audition of sorts. A group of hypnotists were being auditioned for a possible TV series where they would conduct therapeutic post-life regressions. Lakie and I were picked to be test subjects for their screen tests. We hit it off immediately. Lakie is sexy, smart, talented, funny and awesome to talk with and hang out with and she quickly became on of my favorite people in LA. When I met Lakie’s son, Dee, my already high esteem for this woman skyrocketed. Along with good looks, he’s inherited the brains, talent and charms. Watching them together is a joy. Lakie was busy through most of the weekend, so we never got to shoot any sequences with her, but she brought Dee in a few times and we shot tons of cool stuff with him. Dee is supercool. Smart and talented and creative. We were all just improvising ideas and dee was totally psyched for every bit of the experiment. In between posing for tons of stop motion stills, he swam in the pool, played on the trampoline, sat on the floor drawing pictures, and I knew I wanted to do a lot of animated photography. A few days before the weekend, Alyson and I climbed the fence of the high school football field across the street to shoot some photos so I could start experimenting with photoshop and aftereffects. What we shot that night was just going to be

The entire apartment became the production space. we had one desk with a tower and a laptop. A low coffeetable was taken over by billy’s computer, monitor and hard drives, and the entire kitchen counter space filled up with Blue and Down-e’s audio gear. The couch became home to Ari and his laptop. In the bedroom, we flipped our mattress up against one wall to clear the floor for shooting against the bluescreen which took over the other wall, and a crane for overhead shots. we had a mic set up on a stand in there for recording audio bytes from the actors which were to be mixed in or scratched into the music.

After laying down 1st month rent and security deposit less than 2 weeks earlier, Alyson and I were stretching our budget for the month, so we didn’t think we could afford AC. On the first day, Aly baked an awesome batch of toffee cookies and I cooked up a nice big batch of pasta and tomato sauce for everyone to snack on throughout the weekend (that was about it for craft services!).
So we’ve got a dozen people floating in and out of a tiny one bedroom with a half ton of computer gear and heat from the oven and stove in late June in the San Fernando Valley with no AC. To prevent suffocation and heatstroke, we left the door open pretty much the whole time. Anyone walking past the door can see straight through the living room fulla guys on computers and into the bedroom filled with lighting gear and a camera on a crane while Alyson is walking around in dramatic makeup, high heels and vinyl boots and vest (my Hustler tank-top between takes). “Someone’s gonna think we were shooting porn”, I thought, “we’re getting kicked out for sure.”

The constant bass-pulse and human traffic would surely attract attention. But no one batted an eye. Maybe it was because we were living in the epicenter of the porn capital of the planet. Maybe this seems normal around here.

The original plan was to remove the bluescreen and composite all the animated stills into comic book panels and… yeah, I don’t know how I thought we were going to do all this in the allotted time… but once we blew out the levels and pushed the saturation, the blue became the background and even the edges of the screen just seemed to make nice design elements which fit the look of the piece.

Deb Collins
Deb fucking rocks. Deb Collins is the fastest editor I’ve ever seen… lightning. We worked together at a bunch of Robbins events, which were great training for the 48hour project. 48 is about 47 more hours than we sometimes had to take something from thought to screen. Deb made that possible time and again with nimble fingers and a laser focused mind. Deb flew into LA on the way from editing in Fiji to returning to Colorado. On no sleep (Robbins gigs were frequently crazy long hours) and a long plane flight, Deb came in on Saturday and jammed. That’s a rockstar editor. Thanks as always Deb. A total joy to see you.

Jon Powell
I met Jon at another cult I joined for a while… well, cult… I say amazing experiential process with a group of human beings, you say cult… tomayto, tomahto. Amazing experiences, really… It’s only a cult because of perceived financial need… and of course whether or not it’s a cult is just an opinion. Lose the mandatory recruitment and continued financial support for transformation and EVERYONE should create experiences like this. But anyway, really awesome people…. Willingness to share the experiences we did is beautiful. Jon is an awesome actor… and everyone who gets to experience his performances is exposed to a powerful raw emotional energy… its an energy we all have… and we all love to see it expressed…I said I wouldn’t talk about the experiences in the workshop in more than the most vague and abstract terms (and I may have even signed something) …THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB IS YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB. Ahem… sorry. So suffice it to say that I’ve seen Jon Joy it up to the rafters and Rage alive… the rest of you felt the tremors and waves.

Shai
I met Shai at Ken Rutkowski’s networking brunches. Always smiling, easily laughing. A great sense of humor and a keen mind. Shai nailed the role. Actually, Shai created the role. He wore the sunglasses and the trenchcoat… and he walked…. He got kicked in the nuts. He did it all! His own stuntwork… the intense mental preparation, the emotional history of his character… SHAI = PROCESS. Shai’s awesome. Thanks again for playing…