This project just drips with PASSION. (Some people might say the all-caps is unwarranted but I feel there is no other way.)
I found myself involuntarily smiling and giggling while reading this. Reminds me of so many things like that summer I tried rendering the creation story from the Book of Genesis using Flash. That, too, had a story board! I never finished it but I learned a bunch of Flash tricks. Not to mention some practicalities like how it's really hard to draw with a mouse as well as the computational limits of a hand-me-down Pentium 4 with 256MB of memory.
The friendship aspect also reminds me of the story of a handful of iconic rock bands, how they basically started as bunch of dudes who found some ran-down instruments and wanted to play. And just played and the rest is history.
It's charming exactly because they didn't get paid doing it. In fact, _no one_ would pay them to do this. And yet they did.
Here's a shower thought I recently had. I was massively into skateboarding in the second half of my teenage years, up until I was 20-21 give or take. And while I was the typical computer nerd who wrote cli programs to solve his math homework, only recently I saw a potential connection between the two activities: street skateboarding(the post 1980's ramps and bowls) has a fundamental and striking similarity with hacking. When I say "hacking", I'm referring to the definition of the term:
In both cases people use things in which they were not meant to be used and in some instances some bizarre, strange, odd, ridiculous or completely outrageous results are born. And sometimes absolutely beautiful and mind boggling. Sure, you often end up misjudging your abilities or what is even realistically possible but the fundamental idea is completely valid for both activities. Now that I think about it, I kind of miss those endless summer nights of jumping over fences to get into some school's yard when it was raining outside and carrying and stacking benches and tables over one another and whatnot...
R.I.P. Steve.
Edit: Oddly enough, last year I managed to get my hands on this[1] and it immediately became a decorative element. The picture on the deck itself is a perfect representation of what I just said I think.
I skated street in the nineties (still do, shout-out to /r/OldSkaters) and have made that connection too. But I am chaotic good aligned so I was more into the building/tinkering side. So more "how can I repurpose this piece of trash to something skatable" rather than "how/when can I arrange stuff so I can skate this unexpected sculpture". I think this is more like hacking in the modern sense of coding/scripting just to create stuff for your own use.
In my case we are talking the second half of the 2000's. Mind you, I was significantly more interested in the skating from the late 90's and what was "modern" back then didn't have much appeal to me. I mean even the photo on that deck is from 1999 iirc and I can still hear the music from the video in my head every time I look at it. I really can't express how happy I was to get my hands on a limited edition deck, signed by both my favorite skater and the photographer.
Pretty impressive you are still doing it 20+ years later. I didn't want to stop but certain life events came into play and eventually it just became one of those things I used to do. For multiple reasons I have no intention of getting back into it but I will admit, I am somewhat curious to give it a try once and see if there is anything left in me.
For me, finding time to keep doing it, despite life throwing curve balls, is what keeps me from getting stuck in the nostalgia of it. So just beware that your nostalgia isn't keeping you from picking it up again. Because it wont be the same when you can't risk breaking an arm because of responsibilities, but it's still fun, just different.
It's awesome that you managed to keep going. For me it was a combination of my best friend from childhood passing away, a heartbreaker and ultimately moving back home in the other side of Europe in the beginning of winter, having to look for a job, sort out a roof over my head(and a ton of other crap) and by the time that had settled and snow had gone away, I was completely out of it. Though I'm still mildly interested in it. Old habits die hard I guess...
Cue Rodney Mullen’s TED talk: “Pop a Ollie and Innovate!”. If anyone’s in a position to draw such a comparison between skaters and hackers, it’s the Godfather of skateboarding.
Also, “This is Eric Koston”, the comparison is indirect, but the section around “we’re trespassers” resonates deeply.
I mean... the dialogue is hilarious and the acting is all over the place, but in a charming, cult-movie-esque way: I'm enjoying it a lot - a lot more than a lot of films I've paid to see.
I'm also really impressed with the filmmaking: shots, editing, stunts, and effects are all at least decent, and often very good, all things considered. The gunplay has this sort of low-budget John Woo vibe that I really appreciate, and I find it funny that it somehow manages to weirdly prefigure some of the aesthetic and style of The Matrix.
You must have had a ton of fun making this film, and I'm glad you've finished and shared it with us.
Stu Maschwitz is a legend, I have an old copy of his book "The DV Rebel's Guide: An all-digital approach to making killer action movies on the cheap". A little dated now, but it's a great read and a lot of the information and techniques in there still holds up today.
> As time sailed on, the likelihood that I could find a functioning computer with a SCSI connector dwindled to zero.
I just found an Ultra320 PCIe controller on Amazon, and there's all sorts of old hardware on ebay. Taking it to a data recovery company was probably the right call, though. Setting up all this hardware yourself is a hassle, and getting a disk image should be one of cheapest things a data recovery company can do.
I found myself involuntarily smiling and giggling while reading this. Reminds me of so many things like that summer I tried rendering the creation story from the Book of Genesis using Flash. That, too, had a story board! I never finished it but I learned a bunch of Flash tricks. Not to mention some practicalities like how it's really hard to draw with a mouse as well as the computational limits of a hand-me-down Pentium 4 with 256MB of memory.
The friendship aspect also reminds me of the story of a handful of iconic rock bands, how they basically started as bunch of dudes who found some ran-down instruments and wanted to play. And just played and the rest is history.
It's charming exactly because they didn't get paid doing it. In fact, _no one_ would pay them to do this. And yet they did.