I found out this week that the puppeteer we were talking to about participating won’t be able to make it out West for the show. So no puppet re-enactments! So sad!

We’re striking out left and right in the field of scale models.

So, it looks like we may have a puppeteer coming out from the East Coast to participate in the film. I’ve asked him to spend the week of production with us in the gallery. He will be making puppets of the build and production crews. And, then when we don’t capture an important moment on video, he can re-enact it for the film.

Okay, am I soooo excited.

Also, I spoke with one of my musical partners, Nobu, and he’s been speaking with Honyo, the amazing artist who designed our first two CD covers, among many other things. He’s working on the movie poster for the Japanese release. It is going to be faboo!

And just now I broached two new aspects of the project with the crew.

Awhile ago we considered posting on the website every email the project generates. So that people could follow the development, or recreate the work through that deep documentation. We opted against that. However, the hope now is to present every email in a massive catalogue that is available at the concession stand.

And I’ve always wanted to post all of the footage from the film, or a lot of it anyway, online for others to edit. To put it under a Creative Commons license. To that end I asked the crew today how they feel about us posting clips online, and making them downloadable so that anyone who desires can create a version of Disembody.

With luck we’ll have footage of pre-production meetings going up this week.

Well, my first big foray into excel seems successful. We have a detailed line item budget. And it was surprisingly good news. The show can be pulled off for $23,000, I believe. Which puts us within $8,000, which is very doable. I’m quite confident we can raise that money in the coming months.

As well, I had been concerned about what our maximum budget might be, if everything I dream of comes to fruition. That absolutely can not exceed $40,000, if the investment break-down is to work. The good news is that we are still several thousand dollars under 40K, even when I dream extravagantly.

Okay, so that’s all good news. But now do you want the frickin’ great news?!

It looks like we have ourselves an arcade game designer. Yeah, that’s right, straight up, we are going to have our very own Disembody flash game that is playable online at our website and on a stand-alone arcade machine in the theater.

Oh my heck! Could I be more excited? I don’t think so. This is going to be fabulous.
Our designer is a gentleman named Mitch Cichocki. I hope to have bio info up for him on the site soon.
In the meantime, if I’m not mistaken, his myspace page (if I’m not mistaken that it is indeed his) suggests he’s right up the 23E alley: his musical selection is Xenakis.

What else has happened this week?

The website is growing and getting stronger.
My interior designers gave me a budget for the theater interior and it is very reasonable. Have I mentioned how fabulous they are?

And speaking of fabulous, have I mentioned how fabulous Amy Sampson is? She not only hooked us up with Mitch, but also with her friend Jean who is submitting a trailer for the show. She also has supplied us with a fair amount of clothing. This will be going out to our embroiderer next week to be branded with our logos.
And she has been invaluable in finding investors.
Hence her executive producer status on the project. This could not happen without her enthusiastic assistance.

Jonny and I have also been talking a lot lately about a couple of additional aspects of the project. He suggested an online time clock so that we can actually track the amount of time that goes into a contemporary art work. This is a brilliant idea. And even though I’m a little concerned about where it could lead (jealousy), I think it’s too brilliant an idea not to play around with.
As well, he’s counseling me on making a slight change to the crew payout system. It would be an optional change that people could make. For now, that’s all I’ll say about that.

Finally, this is still in the air, but we have the possibility of bringing a puppeteer onboard for the week of the shoot. Skye and I are super excited by the idea, but still have to work out a lot of details.