Red40 will be on location this weekend outside of Holden, Missouri, shooting a new short-subject documentary. “Weekend Warlords” will give viewers a peek at the unique game of “Dagorhir”:http://www.dagorhir.com.

Dagorhir is something truly different. The Dagorhirians stage full-scale battles straight out of Dark Age history, J.R.R. Tolkien, and other sources too numerous to mention. I’m talking elves, orcs, Romans, pirates, etc., etc., all beating the stuffing out of each other. And don’t get me wrong when I say “stage.” This is a full-contact sport, complete with swords, arrows, and assorted instruments of bludgeoning. All the weapons are wrapped in foam to cut down on injuries, but the experience is still pretty intense.

The good folk in “The Dominion of the Unconquered Sun”:http://www.geocities.com/unconsun have been kind enough to let us into their annual event, The Gates of Summer, to document these happenings. We’re hoping to follow an individual or group of individuals throughout the weekend, and possibly a little further. “Weekend Warlords” will be a basic introduction to Dagorhir and a look into the world of those who love it.

What else can I say? This is going to be a good one, people! Keep an eye out for more news and pictures soon.

Here’s what we’ve been doing lately and what’s coming up:

*– Artists’ Essentials editing –*

We amassed 12 tapes — that’s 12 hours — of footage from our shoot last month. 8 hours of footage are in the Mac, sorted, separated, and sound-synched between the two camera angles on “Final Cut Pro HD”:http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/ . Donna, Melanie and I are also well into a design for the DVD covers, which I will post next week. Based on elements from that design, I have constructed some animations and graphics for the DVD in “Motion”:http://www.apple.com/motion/ and constructed a number of titles in “LiveType”:http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/livetype.html — these are two programs I had never used before, so I have been giving myself the crash course. There’s no better way to learn than to have a project to work on.

Three segments of the DVD are edited as of tonight - complete with the aforementioned text, animations, and a few images that Donna has sent me. I will post a clip or two on Monday after Easter with the family. The deadline crunch is already upon us — we are hoping to get this out the door by May 1st, in time for a big art convention. This means the master DVD will have to ship to the duplicator’s by mid-April. Suffice to say, we have many late nights and long weekends yet to come.

*– Mini-documentary project –*

We have a completely unrelated shoot scheduled for next weekend. It’s for a mini-documentary project we lined up last fall. More details to follow next week, so keep your eyes peeled.

*– Wedding video complete –*

Oh yes, and yesterday I completed and shipped out some wedding DVDs for a job I did in January.

Now, at 3:30am, it’s time for bed before the long drive to my wife’s family’s place for some Easter goodness.

Happy Easter everybody!

The BBC is reporting “here”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4365875.stm
that an American company is installing digital projectors in 500 cinemas in Ireland to replace the traditional film projectors. That means the whole country is going to be outfitted, much like “George Lucas wanted a couple years ago in the USA”:http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/18/0318digitaldistribution.html with the release of “Attack of the Clones”http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121765/combined . We see how far that got.

I can’t quite understand why digital projection is such a hard sell to movie theaters. The first time I saw “Toy Story 2″:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120363/combined was at one of the few digitally equipped cinemas in the nation at that time. I could definitely notice the difference and I appreciated the higher quality picture. Plus, it makes distribution of films a lot cheaper and more practical.

Haven’t you ever had to sit through a movie where the projectionist wasn’t quite on the ball? The first few minutes are blurry and out of focus, or the picture isn’t framed up right, or the change between reels is jarring and jumpy? Just last week, for their anniversary, my parents went to a multiplex to see a movie and they were told in advance that there was a giant scratch in their print across the screen for about half of the movie. The theater offered to give them free tickets to another film if they were too distracted. My parents politely declined and went shopping instead.

It’s high time for digital. It’s just funny that, of all the folks, the Irish are paving the way for the rest of us. Is it a coincidence that St. Patrick’s Day was just a few days ago?