Cubelog

Well, we did it!

Not many pics ( care of me ) . . .

. . . as me and Hog were cordoned off in the soundproofed projection room - but even there we could hear the loudest of the joyful whooping and hollering. It was weird and not a little stressful being in this slight remove booth, but by all accounts it went smooth and the already ample and eager attendance looks set to expand in coming months.

A couple of DVDs without subtitles was the biggest hitch ( that all came together in a cluster ! ) , that and not offering specific scenes, just films which almost lead to a terrible faux pas when Hog was asked to find ‘’any scene from ‘Thelma and Lousie’‘’ clicked on what looked like any random road scene but turned out to be the precursor to a rape scene . . . so almost nearly could have really messed up all the good natured fun of the evening - good natured fun that involved several graphic zombie films, mind . . . as well as Snow White and Carry On Camping.

I’ve been re-researching Max Headroom, and harvesting various quips and witticisms - however Max Blackout in this role basically consisted of coming on, mostly fairly wordlessly or shouting a bit of mock abuse, to stop each performance going on too long. Tom did the main host’s role, and there was a bit of banter between us which I think it worked well - hard to really tell from that aforementioned remove.

Tom did a great job generally but the real stars ( as well as the audience participants ) were undoubtedly Colin & Richie who were just extraordinary, able to play anything at any moment, even though this was the first time they had even met!

Lessons from this first outing include :

check all DVDs for subtitles before including them on the Menu.

Include a choice of scenes, not a choice of films.

Start the band before the scene ( for smoothness ).

It could be possible to have an audio feed to Colin so he can hear a bit of the film’s music - there was funny, but unintentional delays between the music and the subtitles for ‘Singin’ In the Rain’ and ‘Heigh-ho!’ from ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ - and for some he didn’t know the orginal melody ( though always filled with something good ! ).

A louder audio monitor from the stage would have been good for me - but only would have added to the stress of the multitasking Hog. Also a visual monitor from a live camera feed would be really good and some sort of mic-ing of the audience, but there was already 3 cameras in the complex Max vision mixing setup, which I really should have taken a picture of !

Anyway, though, all in all a success for The Cube and a strong foundation for fun to come.

Yesterday I videoed Louisa in her Scratch pad ( sorry no stills ) and then rushed on to The Cube to setup the technicals for Movieoke with Rod and Tom - little bit worried about it from my perspective as for this first one Max in going to have to be installed in the projector room.

This means being somewhat removed from the audience for ad-libbing / judging timing . . . However, hopefully there will be a loop from the stage so I can hear Richie & Colin, and Tom who will be the ‘human’ host, plus maybe a bit of audience spill . . .

Visuals seemed sussed tho . . .

I then went on to the Watershed to check out Cinéformation about “Film as Art”. The last piece show had a live improv soundtrack from Ale of the Orchestra Cube fame and accomplice.

I came back via The Cube to pick up my Camera and Tripod for today’s filming, but Indymedia wasn’t as hard rocking as I had expected and was so it was all locked up.

Back this morning I picked it up and met Educated Ed in the office where Hogge was sweeping, Chani bottling up and Heath computing.

A barefoot Ed drove me to The Holmes on the Bristol University Campus where he lived when studying with a plan to make vocal noises inside a natural chamber in the side of a massive 1000 year old Oak, as well as playing 78s on his gramophone . . .

However when we got there the area was cordoned off. We went to search out the porter who Ed knew old boy style, but it turned out he was no longer there. His replacement was very helpful, and bizarrely turned out to have been in the first year on the same course as me when I was studying Art and was in my third year ( not in Bristol ).

He informed us the mighty oak had fallen. We decided to film there never-the-less . . .

Parts of the old oak remained housing various, what I understand have now to be called “minibeasts“. The area generally is being made into botanical gardens - I’m sure there’s information to had about it here somewhere, but I haven’t searched heavily.

Ed made some extraordinary noises and we packed up to go back to his house, with the notion of possibly videoing Joe too. When we got there Joe . . .

. . . was busy ( thinking about ) designing some sandpaper based invitations, but I did eventually end up videoing him too on his Technics E55 organ.

As I write The Greatness proceeds . . .

Like Mr. Hopkinson said, we tried playing colours this time and I fear I was stuck in teacher mode and got us to do something instead of TOO MUCH CHATTER (see me after practise Hopkinson). Talking of Mr H:

You can just see the legs of Tiny Tim and Ale’s head. Ale was a demon on the Tabla by the way.
I had my first go at orchestrating, which is really odd but occasionally you create something quite beautiful like the great thing the horns were doing which was fantastic. If you fancy trying then come along.

The recent story about that guy who couldn’t remember who he was but could play ‘authentic’ music on a piano inspired a very chilled out piece that developed very organically and ended in a very authentic way. Question is, would medical experts describe our music as ‘authentic’? Answers ona postcard please…………

Sunday sees the first away fixture for Orchestra Cube at The Fleece & Firkin, its a night of Orchestras organised by Jesse, it would be nice to see you there.

Ciao for now,

Richie Paradise

Hi ya,
Hope you all can make it down to this . Our moderator knows Max Blackout you know

PRESS RELEASE
Perplexed book release, launch party and exhibition. http://www.iamperplexed.tk
At The Cube Cinema, Dove Street South, Bristol, BS2 8JD
www.cubecinema.com 0117 9074190

Book
Films In America 1929 -1969 is a wry new book work by Lady Lucy based on a book she found in The Cube Cinema Green Room. A re-appropriation of the first four decades of sound film, 41 film portraits - one for each year - including The Lady Vanishes, Little Women, The Philadelphia Story, Rear Window. The pictures don’t explicitly spell out which film each drawing represents, leaving the readers playing a guessing game. Collaborating with Cube designer Richard Starzecki and Old School Cube film programmer Ben Slater who has written an mesmerising piece of text to go in the ltd edition book.

Originally a Cube exhibition, this is the first series of new Perplexed commissions. Perplexed is the Cube Cinema’s publishing Imprint, established to release a series of open themed projects and to involve and inspire involvement among artists, photographers, designers, performers, and the never ending array of creative people associated with our place.

Launch party

Films In America 1929 -1969 is published in a limited edition of 100 on
June 25th in conjunction with Movieoke the latest post modern leisure sensation
where it’s karaoke except with films. Ever wanted to act out a scene from you favourite film ? Nows your chance.

Exhibition

Heartthrobs , World Filmography 1968 all June at The Cube
To coincide with the book launch of Films In America Lady Lucy will be presenting the latest works from her ongoing “Book Of Books” projects. The Book of Books is an ongoing drawing investigation of old school popular culture books that Lady Lucy finds in charity shops, car boot fairs, 2nd hand book shops, garage sales, and other places that you’d find the monochrome illustrations that Lady Lucy uses as her inspiration. Heartthrobs are a series of portraits inspired by a book with a tag line ” The moody males of your dreams”. World Filmography 1968 is an installation composed of 100 drawings made from the photographic representations of a text book film survey of 1968.

http://www.ladylucy.tk

Funded by The Arts Council of England
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk

Ok, well ( too many ) things keep happening, but I keep failing to document them - always the way when there’s stuff to write about you’re too busy doing it to write about it etc . . . I may get time to fill in the recent gap, I may not . . . anyway, today . . .

Today I videoed Tom Bugs . . .

. . . for my Cut-up project. By the way, that pic is taken with my new backup camera, in use while my usual one is off for it’s 3rd repair !

Coming to video Tom, carrying camera bag and tripod for that, and going on directly to the Orchestra, carrying CDJ Deck and Kaoss pad for that ( plus the usual stills camera and mp3 player ) , I was rather overloaded. However, due to an email misunderstanding I arrived half an hour late for the orchestra and all the Amps were taken, so never got a chance to use the deck but took the opportunity to record some video of the proceedings.

There seemed to be more attendees than in recent weeks. Everyone was formed in a circle, but ( while I was there at least ) there was direction - mainly from Rich and Ali’s direction ( pictured on the far left on the right hand pic above ).

Various methods were employed, including playing colours - first everyone played “red” and then “green”, then multi-coloured where each player was assigned their own colour leading to faux Reservoir Dogs squabbles possibly prescient of Movieoke.

I recorded some audio onto my mp3 player before I left, and though distorted, really enjoyed it as I lugged my stuff back.

I was meant to be making a DVD archive copy of the Sky Captain rescore with Jem in the evening, but an email from Tom had alerted me to the Bruce Haack film that was showing that evening - something I had been blissfully unaware was happening even though I originally suggested the Cube show it !

So I saw Tom again, this time on stage . . .

. . . demonstrating his bug brand stylings as part of the “inventor’s night'’ support for the film. This also included a shot, mostly wordless play about invention and ideas. It was all good, tho the audience was rather sparse - I don’t think it was advertised much though and it was a Wednesday . . . People were asked to bring their own inventions, the most prominent being S.J.Esau’s noise drowning machine . . .

. . . which made a constant loud noise.

Jem didn’t turn up for the film ( he missed a treat ) generally right now there’s a lot of rushing around, mainly Venn related. Tomorrow as I write ( though not necessarily post ) I’m due to video Diss Miss and will be going through the complex video intricacies for Movieoke Set-up with Rod - might even make it to the Watershed’s Cinéformation: Film as Art in the evening . . .