Footloose and Fancy-Free

So I'm about to start a new film. Yeah, and all my film-making buddies are all like "OMG". Like I pooped out a box of Raisinettes. In the box. F*&^ing magic. But it's not like I wasn't working on films before now, but they were all treatments that I couldn't get funded into production phase, and were more complex than my gorilla-homebrew lunacy.

I tried for at least a year and a half on one project, and then created a series of paintings based on the treatment - so that at least for now I could gain closure on a project I may not be able to make in the way I want with the resources available. I'm fussy like that.

That series was entitled 'mother' and exhibited in Sydney, Australia in October last year. I have published a pdf of the collection and you can view that here. I'm pleased with the outcome and hope that in time I will be able to re-exhibit the works, and also exhume the original project when the time and situation is right for that to proceed.

The new project, however, is completely different. I've decided to go back to direct film processes and work on 35mm neg. So I will be painting and scratching neg and then doing a digital inter to produce my pos final. Living up the street from Sydney's biggest lab = bonus. Being able to scare staff by rocking up in my bathrobe = awesome. Actually doing it? Well, after several months in production, I hardly notice shit like that.


I've got to do my timing sheets first - which will take weeks, most likely. It's a frustrating and slow process. But it's very meaningful. I can't create without this paper-based notation system. So I'm off to get my dopesheets on. For fun and potential interest, here is one of my previous sheets

I only really care about percussive sound and other aspects of musicality when I do visual music so this is the kind of basic notation I work with before I start to animate. Once I do start working, I tend to scribble all over these with adjustments, notations, and other stuff like ugly stick figures. It helps to pass the time.

In any case this is the vortex of my life for the next month or so. Bye!

Atkins Bars detox

OK I do not usually eat fake crap. I loathe it. However, lately I have been losing a lot of weight and whenever that happens I tend to feel ridiculously hungry and need to constantly shove some kind of food in my face.

Not wanting to actually eat the world, I turned to mini protein bars that were gluten-free and low GI. It seemed to be a good solution. Until I tried Atkins bars - the decadence range, which is actually a lot more like eating candy than some strange amalgamation of soy products and cocoa, are something I discovered in the supermarket last week. I was curious and so I bought two different kinds to try.

They are damn tasty - and not as sweet as candy, and I hate candy because I hate sweet stuff, but this was just the kind of thing I could manage to eat. I ate both of the little bars in rapid succession, and felt amazingly contented at my discovery of the most strangely tasty weird thing ever. Anti-candy. How droll.

Four hours later, I was glued to the can with the evil vengeance of modified carbohydrate-based low GI sweeteners. Mmmm, tasty AND slimming. I am now afraid of Atkins bars. However, if ever a person needed to regulate their downstairs motility, I would say this is the most pleasant way to go. Slow, sure, and terribly effective.

Dear Universe:

Thank you for making life so interesting that I have no time to blog.

Love,

Rachel

my amazing borscht

hey - I decided to share my secret borscht recipe. I figured it's evil to keep all my tasty recipes to my self. So this one you can have.

2 bunches of beets - make sure they are in reasonable condition
1 bunch dill
1 lemon or lemon juice (fresh is nicer but whatever)
1 brown onion
1 egg
sugar
salt
sour cream

ok. yu peel all the beets and halve. If they are enormous beets, they should be quartered or whatnot. However bigger beets are bland and should be avoided if poss.
put the beets in a suitable cooking vessel.
grate the onion. If you're a sissy, you can dice it. Put into the pot with the beets.

get about half the dill. form a bouquet garni with some string, or just put the dill in without cutting, so you can fish it out later with a fork. I do the latter because it's not hard to miss a big floating weed in your soup pot.

fill with water enough to cover the veggie mess you have created and then some.

boil this and then reduce to a simmer until the beets are tender. They should not fall apart. Don't kill the beets. Don't allow the fluid to reduce too much. If the beets become crowded they will sit on the bottom and burn.

when the beets are tender, remove from the fluid and allow to cool. This is an advantageous moment to goof off, eat warm beets, or admire your odd sock collection. You will need to grate the beets so you really do want to piss off and do something else for a while...

when it's all cooled down, grate some of the beets (you will have some beet left over for sandwiches and public sculpture construction). Also, beat an egg, and (if the fluid in the pot is still warm) add a very tiny amount slowly to the egg, constantly whisking. Add more and more till you have a mix that can be added back to the pot without curdling the egg. This gives the borscht it's texture. If you're a sissy I guess you could thicken with cornflower, but what would my grandmother say? If she was dead, she'd come down from her magic cloud and kick your ass. But she's not dead. So it will have to wait.

add the egg mix to the main fluid whilst stirring or whisking. add the grated beets back too. Turn on the heat again and bring to a light simmer. You should be safe if you combined the egg properly, but keep whisking for a while to make sure you don't curdle the mix. If you fucked up well yu will have eggy borscht. Not the end of the world, but not as nice either.

did you remember to take out the dill?? hehe chop up some fresh dill (fronds only, no stem allowed) and add this as well.


You have the basic mixture here and its a matter of balancing sweet, sour and salty - so add the lemon juice first. I usually start by squeezing half a lemon into the pot. The other half I stab myself in the eyes with, because I'm an animator and have a sick sense of humor. then add some sugar and salt. Be sparing at first. You can always add more but can hardly add less. Balance to taste.

serve with sour cream and cracked pepper. can be served hot or cold.

if you are on some kind of hippie detox diet you can serve with natural yoghurt instead of sour cream. If you are a vegan, substitute cornstarch for egg to thicken. There is a reasonable sour cream substitute on the market made of tofu and magical belly lint. Sometimes this is found in Kosher food sections of supermarket, or in vegan emporiums. There's not many vegan emporiums around, which is a shame, because I've always wanted to buy a six pack of vegans to decorate my rock garden.

hint:

on the side, here is something nice to do with the excess beets.

get some fresh goats curd. Not that shitty soft cheese shit in the stupidmarket. You go to a cheese shop and buy fresh goats curd. get some mint and some balsamic vinegar and other herbs you enjoy. chop finely and mix with grated beet. its like a sweet minty tart dip that goes well with fresh sourdough. Not that I can eat fresh sourdough. I fucking envy bread eaters.

excuses, excuses

eh, so I've been traversing the globe to scoff wine, cheese, and hotness in excessive quantities. I have been a lazy ass and not updated my blog for ages. I'm doing my taxes, freaking out about money, and strangely feeling rather chipper despite the fact I haven't a clue where my next buck is coming from. Life is crazy and I need to buy a few thousand feet of motion picture film. To this end, I'm going to scribble up some inspirational doodles and stuff that you may wish to procure for filthy lucre and when I have it all organized I will post a link to my fundraisy daisy crazy website. Until then I'm going to continue to neglect things here.

x r

burning sinuses of doom

I hate stupid colds, and I get them lots.

I'm also about to buzz Melb. for the St Kilda Festival.

Come and offer me a throat lozenge!

:P

not-so-lazy morning

Ok - so for a change, I slept in till 8.30 (woozah!). I got up and made breakfast (eggs benedict, just for a little treat - usually I eat meagerly at b-fast time), then set about my autumn cleaning.

I do clean in spring too, but once a year is not enough in my place for a rip-apart decent clean, as the house I am in has issues with damp and my wooden furniture suffers from molds and mildews as the weather this time of year is cool and damp, and I have limited light in some parts of the house.

So, to help combat this, I protect and treat the wood with a home-made beeswax polish that is killer-bee, so to speak.

This type of wax is intended for natural wood finishes - not for lacquer surfaces, painted/distressed surfaces or varnished woods. On this kind of surface I don't recommend beeswax polish, as it containes turpentine which is a strong solvent. Also don't use this on gilt surfaces. If you have antiques with inlay and or gilding consult a conservation specialist for advice.

You can make this easily but have all the windows open in the house/apt, as it's quite a fumy stinker of an experience for the first few hours.

What you will need:

pure beeswax, I prefer chips but you can get lumps of the stuff and bash it up
pure gum turpentine - not the synthetic stuff
essential oils (up to one teaspoon) - you might like to use bergamot, lavender, etc but avoid eucalyptus and orange as these have interesting properties that can damage some surfaces
a jar or tin to use for double boiling, not to be used for food service
a pot for the boiling
some safety commonsense and a few towels to grasp the jar or tin
a spatula that is not for food service (a wooden paint stick or such is good)

OK - here's an important point - this is something not to do if you are absent-minded, if there are children about, or if you are excessively clumbsy. You're going to be double-boiling a very flammable substance and if you don't pay attention you could cause yourself some injury. Follow the instructions very carefully because I'm not going to be responsible for you melting your skin off.

You will need to use a jar or tin suitable for boiling, I use a jam jar and find this is quite adequate. However it's a little tricky to pull out of the water safely, so you might want to use silicone oven mits or something like that.

Put a bunch of chopped wax or wax chips into the jar, and cover with turpentine. Ensure you add more turpentine than required to cover, maybe a centimeter higher than wax. Add any essential oils you like (apart from those that have paint-removing properties! lavender is safe).

NOTE: you may also, if you wish, add some pigment powder to refresh wood color. However, if you don't use pigments on a regular basis I do not recommend this. They are very dangerous if inhaled. Also, if you have a mixture of wood types in the house, it won't serve well to tint as you must tint specifically for types of wood. Nuff said.

Place into a pot of water and bring to a simmer, not a full boil. Stir the contents until all are melted to a clear liquid and remove from the double boiler. Place on an insulated surface (wooden chopping board, or maybe on a dry cloth) and allow to firm - it will form a soft paste. This is then ready to use.

The wax polish is highly concentrated, and not much is required to polish wood. You will need a clean soft cloth to apply the wax with, and then another one to buff the waxed surface with.

Place a small amount of wax on the cleaned wooden surface. Wipe with soft cloth along the grain. A little bit will go a long way so don't overdo it. Allow the surface to sit for half an hour or so to allow the turpentine to evaporate off. Buff the surface with a dry soft cloth, you will have a soft shine and a great tactile surface. This kind of wax only needs to be done annually or bi-annually, or more often on frequently used surfaces such as dining tables or coffee tables, which may require repeat treatments twice a year. The finish will be water resistant, and inbetween waxing you should be able to keep the finish looking good simply by dusting and buffing with a clean soft cloth.

I have to stress again this is a very fume-heavy treatment so please don't do in confined spaces, places with inadequate ventilation, around pets or children or the frail/invalid. The process of making the polish is very heavy on the fumes and so is application. Take care but enjoy the process.

FYI: this recipe is also the base for encaustic paint making - if you wish to make encaustic paint base, dissolve damar resin into the turpentine for a few weeks before making, and do not add essential oils but instead, a teaspoon of refined linseed oil. If you require a very fine quailty encaustic wax, I suggest you consider artisan grade beeswax - this is a little harder to find but any good paint supply store will carry it. I would also encourage experimentation with the proportions as encaustic can take a very long time to dry if the mix is not right. I do have my secret recipe, but ha ha it's a secret!!

Have fun and all that jazz...