My nephew wants to be a volcano for Halloween this year. Last year he wanted to be a tornado (he's got a thing for meterorology). I put my money on hurricane for this year, but volcano won out. I'm sure it was a tough choice.

We're trying to schedule a netmeeting to discuss his vision for the costume. It's amazing how booked a 7-year-old's schedule can get.

I felt pretty good about the tornado last year, but in the end it didn't quite live up to my expectations. I hope to do better with the volcano. I might need an FX budget to really pull it off.




As you can see, it kind've looked more like an inverted Can-Can costume, which wasn't what I was going for at all. You really have to be close enough to see the props caught in the tornado (cow, kite, umbrella, car), and controlled lighting would help. To compensate, I added the infographic below. He was fascinated by how I made that. Go figure.



The year before, he and his sister wanted to be secondary characters from Clifford. You can buy a Cllifford costume at any KMart, but they wanted to be T-Bone and Cleo. So back to the cutting board.




I keep thinking maybe this year I'll start early enough so I'll have more time for my own costume. I've been envisoning some kind of dramatic cape that could also double for goth shows. Even when being mysterious I'm still practical.

Northern California.

This site rocks! I've never seen anything that even comes close.

Now, what was I going to say? Oh yeah, in response to (e:stephenjames) -- it's no Hollywood [inlink]stephenjames,17[/inlink] (good news/bad news), but there's a lot going on in the SF Bay area film community. Do you know about Zoetrope.com? You might want to check it out. Here's a description.

The Zoetrope Virtual Studio is a submission destination and collaborative tool for filmmakers, writers and other artists. Each workshop is a community where artists view, review and discuss one another's work, and where producers can make movies using built-in production tools. Whether you're looking for feedback on your new novella, or just want to discuss screenwriting, click on a workshop on the menu at left to begin participating in our creative communities.

And here's an article about zoetrope and the SF film editing scene iin general --

"Francis Coppola's dream to make the Bay Area a center for film editing has come close to reality with dozens of memorable movies getting their final polish here."

More to say later. A rare call from real life is coming in on the other line. I'd better take it.