Yup, five weeks from today we will be opening at Fringe Exhibitions in Chinatown. I don’t think I can describe how I feel right now, but it’s a mix of fear and exhilaration. It’s a lot like the mix of sensations that accompanies a live performance with SPP or oRSo. Except that feeling starts a few hours before a gig, at most. Five weeks out is a bit much. LOL. I can’t even imagine what kind of terror/glee rush I’m going to be riding over the next five weeks. It should be good.

Jonny went home yesterday. But only after making his second pilgrimage, this time to dip his fingers into the ancient muck that made Los Angeles the mind bogglingly wonderful city it is today - black gold.

Or maybe I exaggerate, but Jonny really did enjoy the La Brea tar pits, I think. It’s one of my favorite places in L.A. so I was overjoyed to take him there.

The week he was here we accomplished a lot. We got the wiki up (though it’s still not quite ready for prime time). We got the internet archive library started. We got the ephemera page started. We found some bugs in the confessional setup. We established that the time lapse will work. And we began the work flow list for video production.
We also discussed a couple other projects which we may be able to announce on the blog in the coming days.

After Jonny left I had lunch with Amy who is finding investors for the production. As well, she is trying to find restaurants, markets, cafes and bakeries who will provide food and drink during the production in exchange for promotion in the film and catalogues. They can write it off against their ad budgets. So far no luck.

Next week I’ll be hitting a couple hardware stores to try and get building materials in exchange for promotion.

Today Janet and I went over the contracts. I think we’re finally finished with the crew deal memo, the senior investor contract, and standard investor contract.

In SF, I believe today was the day Alex, elise, marcella and Skye were meeting to establish the video production protocol: work flow, responsibilities, shoot style, logging method, etc.

I wrote the newsletter and created a 200 strong email list for promotion. I’m working on the archive and website this evening.

Daniel, my dear friend, and an investor in Disembody, arranged for a friend of his to read my stars and send me a chart recently, as we saw in an earlier post. He then thought maybe he could do some tarot readings for crew. Right now that looks unlikely, as he won’t be down South any time soon, but he did do a quick three card reading specific to Disembody for me last night over the internet.

“Okay, first the 10 of wands. It has been an almost overwhelming burden to undertake, but made lighter by spreading the work around and delegating. Next the 5 of wands. Lots of disputation, argumentation going on. But lively discussion and interaction, the nature of a rough and tumble game (like say basketball or a ballroom dance.) Lastly the 9 of swords. Ouch. Things will seem nightmarish. I could elaborate more on that, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Can you see why I’m deciding to give up doing tarot readings? Who wants to hear shit like that? I don’t think it is an accurate spread anyway. Disembody will be a triumph. Nighmarishness is always in the head, just remember that. It has no objective reality.

“I pulled one specifically for the premiere. It is the 10 of cups. Love, joy, fulfillment.

“Its all what you decide it is anyway.

“Dan”

Yeah, I think that is about right. The week we build, between the opening and the premiere should be nightmarish. I mean, the film will kind of suck if it isn’t, right? Where’s the dramatic arc, the tension, the insurmountable challenge overcome, if that week isn’t a nightmare? The nightmare will make the joy and fulfillment of the premiere all the sweeter.

LOL

Today Amy and I went and got the new investor pamphlets made. And I did a bit more work on drumming up funds.

And I got contracts from Janet to go over. I also bought three external hard drives to load with video for Skye, elise and Jonny. Skye and elise are familiarizing themselves with the footage so that if moments of the film need exposition, they can find the relevant Making Of footage quickly. Jonny needs the footage to set up our internet archive library.

Fortunately, I had Jonny on the phone as I was beginning the transfer process. I have been leaving all my drives formatted as Fat 32 so that they will move between Mac and PC (I am on PC, the editors are on Mac). This however is likely my hard drive problem, as Fat 32 is unstable with files over 4GB according to Jonny. Certainly, the drives won’t allow transfers of data over that size, so…

Now I’m editing the footage that is larger than that, and rendering it down to manageable chunks for transfer to a drive I’ll give Skye. He’ll then format one of the other new drives for Mac; transfer the footage from the Fat 32 drive; format a second drive and then transfer the footage over for elise. And from here on out, I’ll just send them every tape and file without capturing it onto my PC. The Fat 32 drive we’ll give Jonny and he’ll prolly copy the footage and then reformat the drive to NTFS.

Anyway, as it stands, I think I’ve salvaged all of the footage up to July 6. Everything from this last trip to SF may be gone. I suspect so, anyway. I think about 20 GB of material may be gone, if not forever, for awhile, cuz we can’t afford data recovery just for those meetings. All in all, it’s about 4 TB of drives down. This project was supposed to cost me everything, so I guess, careful what you wish for…

But, let’s close on a cheery note, Jonny is coming to LA for the first week of June!!!! Erin’s loss will be Disembody’s gain! Woohoo! We are going to be productive like nobody’s business! You don’t know Jonny, if you did, you’d know it’s possible we’ll just make the whole film that week. If Erin could come with, hell, we could make the film and all the ephemera, too!

Oh fuck, I was supposed to call Erin earlier this evening…

Today is turning out to be a money issues day. I’m working on selling the 1624 Dutch edition of Ambrose Pare’s book De Chirurgie, ende Opera: van alle de Wercken / van M. Ambrosius Pare. This is not as easy as one might think. Old books are valuable, and this one is in very good condition for a book that is almost 400 years old, but there is a very limited market for them. And a much more limited market for surgical manuals in Old Dutch. So, even though it’s worth a few grand apparently, I may not be able to sell it.

As well, there is the distant possibility that a distributor, the dream distributor of basically most any artist working in the realm of moving images, that they might point us out to people they know in the world of investing. Yeah, I know tortured language. I’m as scared of saying something online that fucks up a possible deal as I am of getting a deal. LOL.

However, even the distant possibility of investors from outside my cloistered realm getting involved, required a call to my lawyer. And I think it means we are going to alter the financing of the project to bring it more in line with the realities of L.A. It will have less of the egalitarian, “Gee shucks fellas, why don’t we use the old barn to put on a show. We can share the profits to help save Father Todd’s barber’s school!” and more of the “the party of the first part will receive 10% of profits, after hum and ahem and haw, for each 20% of said budget (see section 09.65.c.2 of said contract) invested.” My lawyer is actually really happy about this change. She thinks it’ll be a lot easier to sell and distribute the film with conventional contracts attached, as opposed to contracts being artworks in themselves.

This is not a bad thing. The project was always intended to be an actual film in practice, as opposed to just mimicking one. So, bringing our financing in line with tradition makes perfect conceptual sense.

It sounds like - and I’m not supposed to put these things on line because then they can be construed as contractual on some level, apparently but I’m only willing to limit the transparency of this project for the sake of financing so much - anyway, it sounds like, the initial investments will be “bridge loans” and, of course, we will honor the initial contract we wrote about here and on the website. But, as of today, all future investments will hew to the typical industry format. My next stop after this blog post is the invest page on the site to expunge details which might lead to lawsuits or breach of contract claims.

Then a few emaisl to book dealers.

And this folks is the real work of art.

P.S. Can I just say that, to the best of my knowledge, everyone involved in this project adores David Lynch? I personally consider Twin Peaks a paradigm shift in my televisual life. And Inland Empire? One of the best movies ever made. Honestly, I loved it. When Han, upon first reading about Disembody, said it sounded like Inland Empire in a gallery, I just about wept I was so flattered.

Spoke with my lawyer today about creating contracts that give investors a continuing share. I had some fancy ideas, but she set me straight. We’re going simple. The investors get a cut of any money I make. Neither collectors nor distributors have to deal with them or vice versa. It all goes through me and 23E Studios. Every penny I make, from day one, is divvied up between me and them. Looks like it’ll be 1/50th of the gross for every thousand dollars invested.

We also discussed how to handle the project collapsing before it opens and how to legally be prepared for that worst case scenario.

I have asked her to think about how to create a contract that buyers of objects like the architectural model cinemas will have to sign, so that any money they make off resale is shared with investors. Trying to apply the filmic thinking of distribution to unique objects. Janet thinks that the objects are like DVDs and I should let right of first sale apply. But I’d prefer to create a contract that blurs that line and puts the art objects in the same class and on the same footing as the film.

Also asked her about potential new producers, since i’m relatively sure Chuck is going to bail on me.

Haven’t heard from Kam. Worrisome.

Can’t believe I’m hoping the upoming strike runs through next year just so I don’t have to compete for talent. SELFISH!