Guitar

If all goes as planned I should be getting new Epiphone Explorer Guitar from DV247.com on Thursday. I sort of ordered it 3 years ago but things kept coming up preventing me from getting it.

I have 6 other Guitars, 2 Fender Telecasters, 2 Fender Starts, an Epiphone Les Paul and an copy of an Ovation Acoustic. I did used to have 2 Gibson Explorer's.

A Black and White Explorer like Dave Grohl used to play and a wood finish one. I sold one to pay for going to Cannes, but the check from the Guitar shop bounced so I missed Cannes that year.

I can't remember why I sold the other one. One thing I do notice is it's great while you have guitars, you can use them. I don't play as much now.

The guitars I had that where worth money I ended up selling as I needed the money. You get the money it seems to always go quickly and you always need more money.

I sort of promised myself the cheaper Epiphone Explorer for selling the expensive Gibson Explorers. I've tried buying Gibson Les Pauls a few times but something always seems to go wrong and the price has gone up to where I can't really afford it or justify spending the extra over an Epiphone Les Paul.

I've been playing Guitar since I was 14. Most of the bands I played didn't get much further than rehearsal rooms and playing a few gigs. I used to play in a band with Lee Thompson Sax player with Madness.

Sax players seem to be able to be in more than one band at a time. Our split and Madness are still one of my favourite bands. Currently I'm thinking of starting a blues band in London. Not sure if it's worth playing gigs in London clubs or Pubs now unless you have a following for your music on the Internet.
 I put some tracks up on Soundcloud at http://www.soundcloud.com/megachrist

New eBook #IT

#IT takes place in The DigiVerse

The follow up to Megachrist.com.

Is there a digiverse.com

Anyway I have about 12 chapters, but I decided chapter 13 is actually going to be numbered Zero and I agreed that some chapters where going to be written by God and some reason this is one of those chapters and it will be copied from the blog to the book.

We follow Kate and Phil as the religion develops. They move to New York.

Maybe this is all fake. Maybe no one is interested. If you tried starting Megachrist.com as a religion.

1.    Not many people would know

2.    Not many would follow it

3.    It doesn’t really promise anything or deliver

4.    Little take up

5.    No crazy Messiahs changing the world

Phil writes a new book.

Kate develops an AI program and a 3D computer world called The Digiverse.

Suzi and Zandra journey into the Mountains and The Hall of the Necromancer Bone King. They die and are reborn as Death Ninja Assassins who can kill victims while they sleep by entering their dreams.

We go back to The Black Arts College for another term.

They visit a space station city that orbits Jupiter.

We learn more about the Illuminati and the Old Ones.

Who and what do the crazy Messiahs get up to?

#IT

Harry McGeough

#IT

Harry McGeough

Published by Harry McGeough at Amazon

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, including photocopying, recording, copying, or by any information storage system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Copyright 2011 Harry McGeough

Preface

This book did start as a simple book about a serial killer in New York but, then it changed. I don’t want to lose the first book loads of weird shit in there somewhere. Anyway Phil is writing that now.

I’m writing Phil and someone else is writing me…

So whatever happened to Kate and Phil?

If you read Megachrist.com maybe you want to know too. If you didn’t it may still be on the internet or on iBooks or you can grab it from Amazon.

Well this is part of there story as the story continues…

And Suzi Chang, she’s been in most of my books. Now she controls a Hong Kong Triad but is back in college at The Black Arts College in New York.

All of the story that takes place on Planet Earth happens in New York. I’ve been there a few times. Plan to go back sometime.

Sometime in New York City – John Lennon

If I told you God has promised to write part of this book would you believe me? Is IT true? Do you believe IT?

The New Name of GOD is IT.

Prophet X

Chapter Zero

Kate was very drunk. She had just got back from a New York club. It was 3am in the morning and she felt compelled to finish the first chapter of the new book that she was writing about IT.


Phil was crashed out on the sofa and she was writing on her new iPad.


None of the words really made a lot of sense but then, the voice never felt any need to make any sense.


The thing that you need to know, is thing everyone wants to know. There is a reason everyone wants to know this thing.


This universe was designed that way.


Which is a simple answer but, an extremely difficult thing to design into a universe without making it obvious.


I am the greatest writer so far ever. Well almost. This isn't it.


It's the next book that comes after this one.


The problem being that I can't write that book here in this universe.


If you can imagine there being an infinite number of parallel universes.


The book I'm talking about only appears in very few of those universes and very few people every get to read it.


The way you can tell if you are reading this book in one of the universes where I write the book I'm trying to tell you about is... does the author have an agent? Have you heard all about it? Is it popular? If it is then something is wrong and you won't ever get to read the sequel as in this universe it won't get written.


In fact I can only write the next book if this book fails to take off and not many people read it.


Which strangely enough is just what happened with my last two books.


The first book featured Kate and Phil and was called Megachrsit.com.


It's about a new internet religion and has a simple message from God that he has a new name , the new name of God is IT.


Phil writes a book within the book called The Black Arts, which feature Suzi Chang.


The second book is called Sex Drugs Death and also features Suzi Chang.


All of this is in the past and I only mention it, as very few people read either book, as far as I know.


Anyway this book is called #IT


The new book follows Kate and Phil to New York, where they meet Suzi.


This should be impossible as Suzi is a fictional character written by Phil.


So how can this happen? Well first you nee to remember that Kate and Phil are also fictional characters and as such they can do things that might appear to be impossible in the real world.


So the question that I need you to answer as you read this is are you sure that you exist in the real world?


If you're sure that the answer is yes, thats fine but you won't find what you're searching for here. As this book is written for the people who are not quite sure.


If you seriously believe the answer may be No, then I would look deep into your soul and ask God for the why? Consider investing $100 in the church of the Megachrist as you may be one of the new Prophets who will guide the church as it starts up in these troubled times.


The time of struggle. Between you and me. When we struggle to make ends meet. Don't deny yourself. Take the path before it changes and disappears.


The thing is the words and answers that are needed are not even written here. They are as Bob Dylan said blowing in the winds of change.


Kate continued writing by the light from her iPad and the moonlight though the window.


She had just finished reading Phil's book The Black Arts and felt some kind of link with the main character Suzi. Phil had told her a story from the second book, The Death Ninja's


In this book Suzi and Zandra die in a Japanese garden and live on as ghosts but find a doorway into an Astral World.


The meet one of the guardians to the portals "The Mountain King" die a second death which allows them to be reborn into the real world, with gift or curse of everlasting life.


As the Chinese are found of saying be careful what you wish for, you may end up getting it.


Kate then drifted off into a deep sleep dreaming and found herself back in the time of the Vikings, where she meet White beard another of the Astral Portal Guardians.


A Kate was still very drunk and there was a huge dark storm blowing outside of the castle and  a log fire with many furs in front of it. Well let's just say Phil didn't get to hear about what happened but it was some of the best dream sex Kate had ever had.


It wasn't until the next morning that Kate meet Suzi and Zandra. They too had come in search of White Beard as they needed to find the doorway into Kate's world. More of that later in the story.


Kate awoke in a pool of sweat as the Sun started to stream through the dirty loft Windows.


She felt her neck and it was still connected to her body, in the dream her head had been cut off and bounced on the floor, still looking at the blood leaking out of her neck.


She remembers seeing White Beard fighting Suzi and the clash of their swords, crashing in a blinding icy blue light. Eventually she passed out and woke up. The dream was vivid, but started to fade almost as soon as her eyes opened.


She still felt a connection with Suzi, as if the battle still raged on in the dream without her.

Music

I finally got around to connecting some of the music equipment I have hanging around in my flat and I have a small music studio that sort of works. I'm using Apple Garageband as the software. I was using a Cubase Lite version that came with my mixer but, Mac OS X Lion broke it and I can't get an update unless I pay about £60.

When I first used Garageband I thought all it did was either work as a backing track you play something and it plays the rest or allow you to build up music using loops. I found out that it also lets me play guitar and record it, using amp and effects settings into an audio track. It lets me record vocals as an audio track. Also it will allow me to use midi to control some built in instruments like bass, drums, piano or sax.

So I plugged in my Yamaha Midi controller and my Alesis 16x2 USB Mixer and I had something that works. Using a roland midi keyboard, I could create some simple drum patterns. I do have an Alesis Drum Kit, which I can use as midi or audio, but I can't play it that well.

I have a couple of Shure mics and a half a dozen guitars and a bass guitar. This is enough to muck around and make some music with me playing everything. I've been playing blues and some covers.

I did some Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed, Ramones and John Lennon covers. I put some tracks up on Soundcloud at http://www.soundcloud.com/megachrist

The actual thing that allowed me to finally get it started was building a coffee table I've had flat packed for the last two years and shifting the computer onto it.

Photography

Before I made a movie I was into Photography. I used to be a freelance photographer and take pictures of bands in low light pushing film to 1600 ASA. Bill one of the characters in Pub Crawl is a war photographer. I buy too much gear and with photo gear now it seems to be obsolete before you get to use it.

I still have Nikon F3 and a Nikon F4 stills cameras and 24mm, 35mm, 85mm and a 180mm. All prime Niikkor lenses. The still work on Nikon digital SLR’s with a 1.6 times magnify effect. They even work on Canon DSLR’s with an adaptor.

Before the Nikons I had Olympus OM-1 and OM-2 camera’s I mainly shot in Black and White and had an enlarger and developed my own films and prints up to A3 size. I still have some of the negatives, but no longer have an enlarger. The fact is with computers you don’t need one. I keep meaning to get a film scanner.

I now have a Nikon D80 which I can use with my old Nikkor lenses. I did think about upgrading it to a Nikon D7000, but it was too expensive so I settled on a Canon 550D.

I used to go out and take pictures on film. Now I can take digital pictures and upload them to my iMac computer, but I don’t get out that much. So even though the pictures are free to take. I take less pictures than I used too when I had to pay for film and development.

Strange really. The new Nikon interchangeable system cameras V1 and J1 with Nikon 1 lenses., look good. I would want to try one out before I buy one and as usual right at this moment, I don’t need them. I’ve hardly used the Canon.

Focusing on camera equipment rather than taking pictures  is the wrong thing to do. Nikon got flamed for suggesting that a better camera and lens takes better pictures.

Some Smartphones can shoot 1080p video and even edit it on the phone.The sound may bot be very good. Like I said I really should go out more and shoot some pictures.

If I am out I usually have an iPhone, but not a camera. I even forget to take my little Canon IXUS 120 compact.

The thing is I have a blind spot I very rarely remember that my mobile phone can take pictures. Seems silly really I just don’t see a phone as a camera, even though I am more than happy to see it as a music system for playing MP3’s, that I use it for all the time.

Not that I have much space to use for photo’s on my phone as it’s full of music. I will try and remember that my iPhone is a camera and a video camera even. 

Unless I go out with the mindset to take pictures the phone stays in my pocket playing music into the tiny earphones.

The Shot

Jessops, the UK’s premier photographic retailer, has teamed up with The Mob Film Company to launch a short film competition. Budding filmmakers up and down the country are being urged to put their work in the spotlight.

Using a Digital Camera or DSLR camera’s movie function, participants must produce a short film of up to 10 minutes called “The Shot”. I’m not sure from the rules wether this means you need to use the microphone on the camera for sound.

I’m not sure how the judges will be able to judge what the film was camera the film was shot on, but that’s the rules.

The competition will be judged by a panel of film and television directors, headed by Paul WS Anderson, Director of the Resident Evil series.

The competition, which runs until early next year, is open to everyone in the UK and offers one lucky winner a very special prize: an all-expenses paid trip to spend the day with Paul WS Anderson on the set of his latest movie. In addition, the winner will also receive a £5000 camera package, courtesy of Nikon.

Full competition rules and submission instructions can be found at www.facebook.com/jessops. Visit www.mobfilm.com for further information and biographies of the judging panel.

I’ve written a short script of about 3 minutes, I will have to find out if that’s long enough. I tried to go for something that should be cheap to shoot, but will need a gun and knife props and a stunt co-ordinator... I’ve copied it below the formatting sort of got lost somewhere. If I do get around to shooting it before the deadline for the competition, it might change a bit but you can get the idea from this script.

The Shot

Written by Harry McGeough

                                                                                                                                FADE IN.

EXT. STREET - NIGHT

It's an empty street lit by street lights.

A VICTIM, wearing black and sunglasses, is walking down the street.

A MUGGER, wearing a hoody and scarf over his mouth, jumps out and threatens the victim with a knife.

                                MUGGER
            Hand over your wallet And give me your mobile.

                                VICTIM
            No.

The mugger looks puzzled and brandishes the knife in front of the victims face.

                                MUGGER
            I'll cut ya.

                                VICTIM
             I need the mobile for my job and I'm not giving you my wallet.

                                MUGGER
            Give me your phone or I'll stab you.

The mugger jabs the knife at the victim.

                                VICTIM
            I told you. I need it for job, see.

The victim holds up his gloved hands.

                                MUGGE
            So your wearing gloves, you can get another phone. Give it to me!

                                VICTIM
            It’s dark. I'm wearing shades and gloves, because I have a scary job.

                                MUGGER
            It's not worth dying for, you can get another phone.

The victim puts his hand inside his jacket.

                                VICTIM
            OK you want my phone? Take it then.

The victim pulls out a gun with a silencer and points it at the muggers head.

                                MUGGER
            Shit! Forget it mate.

                                VICTIM
            You have to ask yourself did he fire 5 shots or 6?

                                MUGGER
            You didn't fire any shots.

                                VICTIM
            So I have a full clip, drop the knife.

The mugger drops the knife and starts backing away.

                                MUGGER
            It's not worth me dying over a mobile phone. Forget about it, mate.

                                VICTIM
            If you run really fast maybe you can outrun my bullet. I'm going to count to 5, then take the shot.

                                MUGGER
            Don't kill me man.

                                VICTIM
            1.

The mugger turns and runs up the road.

                                VICTIM (CONT’D)
            2,3,4,5

The victim fires the gun and hits the mugger in the back.

The muggers falls over face forward. He starts crawling up the road, leaving a trail of blood.

The victim walks up to within a few feet of the mugger.

                                VICTIM (CONT’D)
            Did you guess my job yet?

The Hitman aims the gun at the muggers head.

                                MUGGER
           No! I don't want to die bro.

                                VICTIM
            You're in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I'm on a job and I can't have a witness.

The Hitman fires at point blank range into the muggers head.

                                                                                                                                FADE OUT.

                                    The End.

FCP X First Impressions

I’ve just started editing Megachrist.com footage from script table reading and I’ve installed the 30 day trail version of FCP X 10.0.1 to see how it works. I used FInal Cut Pro 7  for editing Pub Crawl movie. I’ve archived the footage and saved the project files from Pub Crawl. Which means I now have enough hard drive space, about 500 GB, to edit the  new footage.

I saw a demo of Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premier and Avid Media Composer, put on by BECTU. My gut feeling is actually Apple FCP X seems to do most of what I want and there are no real problems for me to move from FCP 7 to FCP X. Apple FCP X Film Editor was he cheapest at £199, out of the three I saw in the Demo.

Premier does look like a very good program and I can see that quite a few professional Film Editors, not happy with FCP X will move to it. I liked the demo and could see that I could use it and would be happy enough. Except for the price, I found it a bit hard from the website to workout what price is, as you get a 50% discount if you put in code “switch”, So I think it’s about $900. A demo of Adobe Premiere is available on Adobe’s website.

Personally I didn’t get any reason for why I would want to use Avid Media Composer. It seems Avid is really liked by Film Editors who already use and know Avid. Fair enough, but I haven’t and don’t, so see no reason to get Avid. It costs about £1,900 compared to £199 for Apple FCP X. By all means check it out for yourself on Avid’s website

OK you may like Premiere or Avid, but I think I’m either sticking with FCP 7 until till it breaks or upgrading FCP X if I like it enough to make me shell out 200 quid. For me that’s a lot just now.

So back to what I’m doing at this moment. I think I’ve uploaded my files into FCP X. Why am I unsure? Well I uploaded a tape that was one long clip and I can’t see it in the Event Library. When I try and quit program, FCP X informs me that it is busy rendering something, even though I have nothing in my project timeline. So if I quit, am I going to lose something?

As I wasn’t sure where my imported tape had gone too. I imported it a second time. I can’t see either of the file imports. I mean it should be 60 minutes long, so I should be able to spot it. I found where I think FCP X has parked the files on my Hard Disk. It is in my user account under movies / Final Cut Events / New Event / Original Media.

The first thing I notice is that the files I dragged in from iPhoto where not actually in this directory, but alias’s pointed to the source files in iPhoto library. there may well be a way to get FCP X not to do that, because it seems like it will be messy when I want to archive project in the future.

The reason the movie files where in iPhoto is because when I plugged Canon 550D into my Mac, iPhoto popped up and downloaded the files from the camera. I did try using a USB SD card reader, but it didn’t recognise one of my SD cards. Plugging camera in with USB lead worked best.

On location it would be useful to have something, either a PCMIA SD card Reader or a USB SD card reader. That would allow off loading what’s on the SD card, while camera is still be used to shoot more video footage. The PCMIA seems a better fit for my Apple laptop, but USB SD card reader is cheaper.

On the Megachrist shoot it was the first time I’ve used DSLR camera. I don’t have a “RIG” or any add-ons, so I used the camera hand held or on a tripod. At first I thought that the camera would auto focus, which meant early shoots where... out of focus. I didn’t really get what I wanted which was close-ups. I didn’t have the other Camcorder set up for the right wide shoots. The sound I got seems useable. Some of the video footage is OK, but I really want to re-shoot it again.

I know I need to get more batteries and SD cards for Canon 550D before next shoot. The batteries seem cheapest on Ebay or Amazon. Prices for SD cards seem to be average of £1 a GB. I forgot to bring USB SD card reader, so I couldn’t re-use SD cards by uploading them to laptop. I had 2 SD cards, but one was too slow being a class 4 card. I only realised this when I looked at footage from card. Really should use class 6 or better still class 10 cards.

Some of the movie files have a yellow exclamation mark on them. I have no idea why. FCP X seems to be telling me that something is wrong, but not what is wrong. I know I really should read the manual, but I’ve got out of the habit, as most things seem to work mot of the time and I can figure out how to make them go. Even if I actually figure out how to use them wrongly and in a way that takes more time to use.

The manual for FCP X is on Apple’s website. My first impressions of FCP X is that I like it, even though I don’t know how to “make it go” yet.

Finally Wrapped Post Production on Pub Crawl Movie

I’ve finally wrapped Post Production on Pub Crawl Movie.

I’ve been using FCP 7 to edit the movie and I now have a Widescreen 235:1 version, a 16:9 version and 5 30 minutes Pub Crawl TV shows.

I have archived the FCP project file and the scratch capture files to a 330 GB Hard Drive and now I have 500 GB free on my iMac’s internal Hard Disk.

I have some footage that I shot from the Megachrist.com script reading but before I download it from the camera, I’m going to install the Apple FCP X 30 day trial.

I used a Canon XHA1 to shoot 1440 x 1080 HDV on 2 Mini-DV tapes. The new FCP is supposed to be able to import from a Firewire device so I was going to use that to import my video footage.

I also used a Canon 550D on the shoot. It was my first time using a DSLR. Now I know I need to buy more SD cards and batteries, before next shoot. The DSLR went through 2 set of batteries, while the film camera only used half the power of one battery. The 550D files are already on my Hard Disk. I plugged the camera in and Apple iPhoto imported the video footage as if it where photo’s.

I didn’t have any other crew so I used tripods and operated both cameras and recorded sound on the Canon XHA1, using a gun microphone on the camera and another mic on the table. I was surprised by how good the sound on the 550D was just using the on-board microphone.

THe Megachrist.com worked out great from my point of view. I hope the actors will also get something out of it. The script has gone from 109 pages to a faster 87 pages. The beginning and ending are better. The main prophet characters now enter earlier into the story, Moses enters on page 9 now.

I’m planning to do a re-shoot in the near future, but I might wait till after the new year. I want to see how I get on with editing the footage that I have before doing a re-shoot.