Too much week, not enough weekend

Got a call Thursday night to see if I could work on Caprica late Friday. I had said that I had an early morning on Saturday so I couldn't if it might be late. The agent tells me it's a 4:00 call and shouldn't go long, and it'd be a huge favor for him if I could make it. I say yes.

Call time: 7:30 pm. Wrap time: 4:30 am. Class time: 10:00 am (In North Van). God Damnit.

Interesting show though. Without giving too much away... well, I guess I can't say much because there's a lot of weird stuff about the show that nobody's talking about. But there's enough widespread info about it to say that it's supposed to take place about 50 years before Battlestar Galactica, before their planet explodes or whatever and they're on the run from killer robots.

As for my class, I took the Vancouver Film Industry Orientation weekend class that the unions require you to have. It doesn't really pertain to Vancouver specifically really, except for a little P.R. info about why we're supposedly so great, but I'm told that the ticket I get for taking it might be worthless in Ontario because... well supposedly IATSE Toronto is jealous of Vancouver getting all the work or something. I dunno. Turns out the union thing isn't a big deal anyway because the number of non-union shows being produced in Vancouver has been on a steady rise in the last few years, so you don't relaly need to be a member to work on most of them.

Wish I'd known that before I sat around waiting for them to return my bloody phone calls.

Will Wright talks "Spore" and the evolution of game design

While waiting for my AirCare passage ($45 for a 20-second diagnostic? That's $8100/hr by my count!) I was listening to Q on CBC Radio and today's episode had a cool interview with Will Wright, designer of SimCity (now open source!), The Sims and the upcoming Spore, hailed as perhaps the most anticipated video game of all time (By who? I don't know.) In it, he discusses a lot of his ideas surrounding his unique approach to Game Design, widening gamer demographics and the new experience of emergence in the gaming experience (or something like that.)

Is a fun listen for anyone who's interested in video game design, or all the new kinds of video game style that are emerging these days, with the Wii and such. Have a listen to it here.

Another dead end...

So I was perusing the CanDevs Ontario directory looking for Toronto-based developers that might be on the lookout for an Audio Designer (me) and I found a few that look like they're accepting applications but on a couple with explicit postings looking for them.

So I'm doing my due diligence and researching the companies I'm applying to so I can at least know what I'm talking about in my cover letter and applications, or (if it ever happens) if they actually call me back. One company, Pseudo Interactive, starts looking very promising to me, in that they are a "small" company with about 50 employees and seem to be expanding their development force - and then I guess I got the "too good to be true" moment. It looks like a deal falling through with publisher Eidos caused the ground to fall out from underneath them and they had to shut down. God Damnit. Just when things started to look promising. I even sent in my resume and demo reels anyway but the emails fucking bounced. They're phones still work though (I got an answering service) so maybe I should try seeing if they're really gone for good.

And it's not as if they hadn't put all their resources into locking up that deal (which was probably a sweet one for them) they would have gotten it anyway, so they were probably fucked if they did and fucked if they didn't.

Guess it's back to the CanDevs.

Extras

So I'm supposed to work on Battlestar Galactica on Tuesday. Kinda neat, though I didn't know they were still filming that. I mean I know the last season just started, but I thought that show had a longer production cycle because it's like 50% CGI. Of course, I've only seen one episode so I can't say that for sure.

Got a gig!

So I'm playing a set at a fund raiser for Magnetic North tomorrow night. It's a private thing so no, I can't get you in, but that's okay because I'll basically be doing my cruise ship cocktail set. One of those things where - as I say - I am to be heard but not listened to.

I've been told that's a sad way of describing it. As if "cruise ship cocktail set" isn't.