Monday, December 5, 2011
SoundCloud
I finally moved on an ages-old suggestion by Threeboy to jump on SoundCloud and do some audio dumping. I've put up some of the back catalogue of musical and aural things I've come up with for various TrueNuff projects of the past - I don't think it'll just be final stuff though, I want to throw up some of the bits and pieces, the works-in-progress that make up the vast majority of the things I've actually recorded.
If it weren't for the deadlines of things like the video projects I don't know if I'd ever release anything as final. Perhaps I should rename my personal studio to "Development Hell."
J.Rai's sounds on Soundcloud
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
On Movember
It’s now the end of November, and thus comes with it the end
of Movember and its antics.
This was my third year participating in the fundraiser and
my goal this year was just to top my last year’s total (when I raised $440.)
This year I solicited friends and family and per usual, trying to be as
low-pressure as I could but maintaining visibility by trying to create some
kind content that people might wanna see and judge to be worthy of some kind of
recognition of the effort.
I did some promo in the weeks leading up to November 1 when
the activity kicks off. I put up some photos from last year, did some
blaspheming of my record collection, some fun with photo apps, and then The Grow
began.
The thing about The Grow is that it is unpleasant. I fell
that the idea of the Movember Grow is that it’s the little personal
sacrifice/effort, much like running a 5k or a rock-a-thon or whatever people do
for fundraisers to be novel now, and it gets sponsored as a reward for your
effort. There are rules (that a lot of guys skirt around in truth) that make The
Grow more obvious (shave clean on Day 1, no goatees, no chops) and yes, you
look awkward for the first few weeks. Some guys are lucky to fill in fast. I do
not. On top of that, there is a surprising amount of blonde hair in my ‘stache,
which I don’t get because I have rather dark hair. Very brown, at least. I had fairly
blonde hair when I was young though. Maybe because the moustache is so young (concatenated,
it’s only about 4 months old) it’s still quite young.
As usual, I got generous support from my family. We all want
to give now and then and our family’s been touched by cancer, and I don’t do
this kind of thing often so I suppose I don’t ask a lot. Thanks this year go to
my parents, and bro and sis, Gary, Linette, Jim and Fiona who all made me feel
better about the whole effort. As well, a lot of friends new and old threw in
too. Some of them were supportive from the start, others were coerced with my
new approach at a viral campaign this year (it worked!) – although I gotta say
guys, the comments, sharing and all are really great (hundreds of views, dozens
of comments, Facebook like sand re-shares) and thanks, but only like three
donations came out of it! Come oooooooonnn… okay, enough. I don’t like guilt-for-charity
any more than you guys do.
Anyway! This year was a great success for me, I crushed my
total from last year and will probably finish in the Top 10 of my work team!
This thing I find really interesting about Movember internationally is that
Canada has really embraced the Movember campaign. Worldwide Canada has raised
the most money per country by far (over $33 million, a $10+ million lead over
Australia and the UK, triple the USA total) and we don’t even have the most
participants!
Of course competition is not the key. All the money goes to the
right place, research (etc.) and the awareness and promotion of getting regular
checks is already reflected in my own friends and family. I want to thank every
person who donated, emailed, comments, shared a photo, linked my page,
re-tweeted a tweet and looked at my Movember page. You set the bar higher this
year for me, so next year, I’m gonna have to work it to push it higher.
Anyway, there's still time to donate if you're so inclined. It goes on weeks into December and if you think the effort was deserving, you can visit my MoSpace Page and donate online. You get an official receipt and everything! I will say though, I'm looking forward to shaving tomorrow. This thing is uncomfortable.
Stay healthy and thanks!
UPDATE: 3:40 pm EST Huge postscript thanks to Sarah, Iana and wee Jessica for their generous closing day donation and my first corporate sponsor ever, Flight Centre Cambridge! You guys have gotten me to almost DOUBLE my number from last year. I have to start planning the next campaign now if I ever hope to clear it. You guys are awesome.
UPDATE: 3:40 pm EST Huge postscript thanks to Sarah, Iana and wee Jessica for their generous closing day donation and my first corporate sponsor ever, Flight Centre Cambridge! You guys have gotten me to almost DOUBLE my number from last year. I have to start planning the next campaign now if I ever hope to clear it. You guys are awesome.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
King Kong Delta
...and we're back!
Finished my first shoot today with the new team. What team, you ask? King Kong Delta.
Impatient Theatre Company is rolling out a new project codenamed ITC Digital featuring several production teams all creating new videos in parallel. Hopefully with this much motivated talent we should be churning out a healthy stream of content very soon (first video already released!)
My production team is called King Kong Delta. I will be wearing the producer hat with them, due to my involvement with the mighty TrueNuff TV! The planning of writing meetings and shoots is a routine I'm kind of used to, and I can also contribute to the technical junk since we did the guerrilla DIY production game for several years, and we're working sans budget. WIN!
The shoot was a lot of fun: short, but it felt good to wear those shoes again. Out team is awesome and in the future we'll be casting people outside the group so it'll be good to work with various people and learn from each other.
So a little over a year later, I feel like there's enough going on to update here again. Not that I couldn't have found things in between, but if there's any relevancy to be had here then at least I should be allowed to be specific. Upcoming topics include more classes with Impatient Theatre, ITC digital, the Canadian Comedy Awards, and some other shows I'll be getting involved in. Hope to keep it interesting.
Finished my first shoot today with the new team. What team, you ask? King Kong Delta.
Impatient Theatre Company is rolling out a new project codenamed ITC Digital featuring several production teams all creating new videos in parallel. Hopefully with this much motivated talent we should be churning out a healthy stream of content very soon (first video already released!)
My production team is called King Kong Delta. I will be wearing the producer hat with them, due to my involvement with the mighty TrueNuff TV! The planning of writing meetings and shoots is a routine I'm kind of used to, and I can also contribute to the technical junk since we did the guerrilla DIY production game for several years, and we're working sans budget. WIN!
The shoot was a lot of fun: short, but it felt good to wear those shoes again. Out team is awesome and in the future we'll be casting people outside the group so it'll be good to work with various people and learn from each other.
So a little over a year later, I feel like there's enough going on to update here again. Not that I couldn't have found things in between, but if there's any relevancy to be had here then at least I should be allowed to be specific. Upcoming topics include more classes with Impatient Theatre, ITC digital, the Canadian Comedy Awards, and some other shows I'll be getting involved in. Hope to keep it interesting.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Festivals, classes, books and radio
So I'll start on the regular front: The Carnegie Hall Show. The summer's been an interesting season - while most shows take breaks because so many of the performers have opportunities to tour shows, do theatre festivals or follow the Fringe around, we too have lost each (and sometimes all) of our cast to other engagements during the summer but soon will have the whole gang back together, at least for a while. Not that the "original lineup" is the only recipe for a sure-fire show of course, we've had a slew of awesome guest performances.
The reunion of the cast is just in time though, as our show has been picked for both the Toronto Improv Festival and the Montreal Improv Festival this fall! Unfortunately, after some attempts at shuffling dates around we are unable to make the Montreal party - but there's always next year. Our Toronto date is September 23rd - Wednesday! That should be easy to make.
This week's show will be a bit of an experiment too, only in the sense of re-purposing the show as a fundraiser for a charity I'll be doing a bit of work with next month, The Sandals Foundation. Through them, while on a trip to the Turks and Caicos next month we'll be building community gardens and playgrounds in some of the less fortunate villages on the islands, and also doing a bit of environmental protection work protecting the local reefs. We're going to use this week's event toward a fundraising goal I've been challenged with through my office and we'll see what the community can provide us.
In other news, I'm in at Second City! By "in" I mean that they finally called me in about the great new Musical Directors program they've started up. They have a very cool series of workshops sharing the tricks and methods that the Second City shows use to involve live improvised music into their shows. I'm most excited about this because since I've just been making this up as I go along (which in improv, I guess is allowed!), I'm very interested to really talk techniques and go-tos with other more experienced Musical Directors. I'm already going to start more regular session accompanying classes in the training centre soon and I'll also be taking the classes while I'm there. It's very exciting!
Outside of improv, I finally got a copy of And Here's The Kicker which is a very cool book of interviews with the relatively nameless writers behind the most popular TV shows and comedians of all time. So far I've learned a lot about the development of a lot of the templates for today's talk shows, sitcoms and film comedies, but also the writers themselves are of course very funny and insightful. There's also a lot of little inter-chapter sidebars about how books get sold, jokes turn into jobs and a few "Whatever you do, don't..." lessons learned the hard way many times over by writers over the decades. I'm not even halfway through but it's already the most satisfying read I've found about writing since I finished Crafty TV Writing.
Also I've gotten back into radio in a big way lately by finding out about a lot of public radio shows in the states, notably The Moth and This American Life. I've wanted to do some kind of radio-format podcast for some time now and so many forms are so appealing, but I think I'd have to settle somewhere around radio play or documentary. Obviously those are both BROAD categories, but I just don't know the words to form the specific type that I'm thinking of yet. I've reassembled my portable recording kit so I'll get to start experimenting on locations again soon. If only I knew anything about documentary...
Until next time!
The reunion of the cast is just in time though, as our show has been picked for both the Toronto Improv Festival and the Montreal Improv Festival this fall! Unfortunately, after some attempts at shuffling dates around we are unable to make the Montreal party - but there's always next year. Our Toronto date is September 23rd - Wednesday! That should be easy to make.
This week's show will be a bit of an experiment too, only in the sense of re-purposing the show as a fundraiser for a charity I'll be doing a bit of work with next month, The Sandals Foundation. Through them, while on a trip to the Turks and Caicos next month we'll be building community gardens and playgrounds in some of the less fortunate villages on the islands, and also doing a bit of environmental protection work protecting the local reefs. We're going to use this week's event toward a fundraising goal I've been challenged with through my office and we'll see what the community can provide us.
In other news, I'm in at Second City! By "in" I mean that they finally called me in about the great new Musical Directors program they've started up. They have a very cool series of workshops sharing the tricks and methods that the Second City shows use to involve live improvised music into their shows. I'm most excited about this because since I've just been making this up as I go along (which in improv, I guess is allowed!), I'm very interested to really talk techniques and go-tos with other more experienced Musical Directors. I'm already going to start more regular session accompanying classes in the training centre soon and I'll also be taking the classes while I'm there. It's very exciting!
Outside of improv, I finally got a copy of And Here's The Kicker which is a very cool book of interviews with the relatively nameless writers behind the most popular TV shows and comedians of all time. So far I've learned a lot about the development of a lot of the templates for today's talk shows, sitcoms and film comedies, but also the writers themselves are of course very funny and insightful. There's also a lot of little inter-chapter sidebars about how books get sold, jokes turn into jobs and a few "Whatever you do, don't..." lessons learned the hard way many times over by writers over the decades. I'm not even halfway through but it's already the most satisfying read I've found about writing since I finished Crafty TV Writing.
Also I've gotten back into radio in a big way lately by finding out about a lot of public radio shows in the states, notably The Moth and This American Life. I've wanted to do some kind of radio-format podcast for some time now and so many forms are so appealing, but I think I'd have to settle somewhere around radio play or documentary. Obviously those are both BROAD categories, but I just don't know the words to form the specific type that I'm thinking of yet. I've reassembled my portable recording kit so I'll get to start experimenting on locations again soon. If only I knew anything about documentary...
Until next time!
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Beer Pop/Music
As I mentioned previous a couple weeks ago while I was in Vancouver visiting I hung with the TrueNuff boys and did some video-ing. While I was there James also showed me the newest addition to the merch store: a Cute little Japanese "safety bottle opener" they labeled as the "Beer Popper." We wanted to shoot some kind of commercial clip for the new item (even though by the time it went live they'd already sold half their stock!) We did land on an idea of something in the vein of Vince "Offer" Shlomi of ShamWow and Slap Chop fame:
What we ended up shooting was an improvised informercial pitch spot in that style. With a little clever editing on the dudes' part it came out this way:
Now one of the best things to ever happen to the Slap Chop brand was a killer video and music remix by the now-much-better-well-known DJ Steve Porter that was known as "Rap Chop"
So as an exercise in what I figured was inevitability, I thought I'd beat out the a) request for me to try doing a remix and b) the other fans that might just do one first anyway, and do my own. I wasn't going to do the auto-tune/vocoder stuff of the other one, I just wanted to edit, beatmatch and slice. While trying to make some drum beats for it though, I realized I was trying to replicate the beat from The Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" - so I figured screw it and I just decided to do a Mash-Up, which seems to be all the rage right now anyway (or at least it was, it may be on it's way out yet.) Here it is:
Doing the edit was a lot of fun and I forgot how much fun it was - I hope to find other little things like this to have fun with coming up.
What we ended up shooting was an improvised informercial pitch spot in that style. With a little clever editing on the dudes' part it came out this way:
Now one of the best things to ever happen to the Slap Chop brand was a killer video and music remix by the now-much-better-well-known DJ Steve Porter that was known as "Rap Chop"
So as an exercise in what I figured was inevitability, I thought I'd beat out the a) request for me to try doing a remix and b) the other fans that might just do one first anyway, and do my own. I wasn't going to do the auto-tune/vocoder stuff of the other one, I just wanted to edit, beatmatch and slice. While trying to make some drum beats for it though, I realized I was trying to replicate the beat from The Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" - so I figured screw it and I just decided to do a Mash-Up, which seems to be all the rage right now anyway (or at least it was, it may be on it's way out yet.) Here it is:
Doing the edit was a lot of fun and I forgot how much fun it was - I hope to find other little things like this to have fun with coming up.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Flashback to the west coast, future in the east
While I was visiting Vancouver a couple of weeks ago I got a chance to do a little drop-in work with the TrueNuff TV guys. Running a sketch comedy group as a business is a really tough go - be it with friends or business partners - because even when you're not concerned with making money, where that money goes or what you should do it is still an easy thing to disagree on. It's also really easy to get distracted by that and forget to make with the funny.
Sitting in on the shoot and making a cameo or three with the dudes was killer fun though. I miss being producing like that but also with messing around with my crew and having fun while doing it. There are some new videos over at TrueNuff TV going up right now that I jumped on board for, thanks for letting me back in, guys!
Back here in Toronto we're a couple shows in with The Carnegie Hall Show since our brief hiatus last month. Last night we filled the place to the rafters - sold out! It was amazing. Thanks to all who have attended and if you're curious, come on down! We're at the top of our game.
Well, as the fall is coming up (don't deny it, it's on the way!) I'm getting another opportunity with Second City - I'll be in as a Musical Director Apprentice (I've always wanted to be an apprentice!) in the next month, taking some workshops, working some workshops, and eventually sitting in on some shows and hopefully doing some on my own soon enough. Second City is a great hub for the comedy community, even if so many people operate outside of it's doors, it's a great gateway to smaller shows in our larger community and and a great resource for learning and networking. I'm really looking forward to being more formally involved with them.
When I started this blog I wanted to make it my development and writing blog, but that's coming slower than I expected and I've become so much more involved in related projects that I think I've been less able to keep updating, but I think other aspects of my work in the Toronto comedy community are just as interesting, so I'm going to keep up more info than I have been. Stay tuned!
Sitting in on the shoot and making a cameo or three with the dudes was killer fun though. I miss being producing like that but also with messing around with my crew and having fun while doing it. There are some new videos over at TrueNuff TV going up right now that I jumped on board for, thanks for letting me back in, guys!
Back here in Toronto we're a couple shows in with The Carnegie Hall Show since our brief hiatus last month. Last night we filled the place to the rafters - sold out! It was amazing. Thanks to all who have attended and if you're curious, come on down! We're at the top of our game.
Well, as the fall is coming up (don't deny it, it's on the way!) I'm getting another opportunity with Second City - I'll be in as a Musical Director Apprentice (I've always wanted to be an apprentice!) in the next month, taking some workshops, working some workshops, and eventually sitting in on some shows and hopefully doing some on my own soon enough. Second City is a great hub for the comedy community, even if so many people operate outside of it's doors, it's a great gateway to smaller shows in our larger community and and a great resource for learning and networking. I'm really looking forward to being more formally involved with them.
When I started this blog I wanted to make it my development and writing blog, but that's coming slower than I expected and I've become so much more involved in related projects that I think I've been less able to keep updating, but I think other aspects of my work in the Toronto comedy community are just as interesting, so I'm going to keep up more info than I have been. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Making it up as I go along
So another long stretch between posts, but a busy and exciting one!
The Carnegie Hall Show is still going great. We've been playing every week, nailing down what is essentially a new improv format, introducing our show to the community and the city at large and response has been very encouraging. I do think that lousy Toronto weather has kept audiences on the conservative side (size wise, not politically) so I hope that if this God awful weather ever breaks, then we'll get more happy people on the streets looking for fun things to do. Kensington Market is very quiet this time of year it seems.
Also, another ongoing yet irregular show I've gotten to play is the improvised soap opera Dysfunctional Utopia: A Serialized Romance. Directed by Ron Pederson, the improvised soap features over-the-top characters in a developing overdramatic storyline complete with adultery, conspiracy, murder and mad scientists - and we're doing it again this Sunday! Ghost Jail @ Clinton's on Bloor St.
On the writing front I'm still doing more reading about writing than actual writing, but I'm reading a lot. The latest book I've picked up is "The Way of Story" by Catherine Ann Jones - A book that while it contains some good reminders of the process of builsing outlines and developing characters that I've read in better books, there's a lot of new-agey type stuff about visualization and seemingly letting the story write itself, which I can't stomach to believe is actually very effective. As well, Jones packs the book full of self-congratulatory anecdotes about the few productions her career has consisted of, which do little to sell me on her advice since all the stories and ideas she's sold are never ones I would want to put my name on. (This isn't to say there isn't a market for writing a movie where Dolly Parton plays a country singer (what casting!) who dies and can't get into Heaven so has to go back to earth and do a good deed to get eternal bliss - but good God who would want to?)
More educational than any book I've read or heard of so far though has been the community of TV writer/bloggers that I've be uncovering. Alex Epstein has a great book and accompanying blog [Complications Ensue] about writing, the business of writing and (most importantly to me) the business of writing in Canada. Through him I also found Denis McGrath's killer blog of similar themes [Dead Things on Sticks] which also led me to blogs, groups and a killer weekly meeting of TV pros from Toronto. Last Friday I got to have a beer with Denis, Ed McNamara, Rob Pincombe and Rob Sheridan just because I showed up. This week was even bigger, plus George Strombo showed up. I've never been a proponent of networking (probably only because I haven't ever been good at it) but I feel like I meeting a lot of the right people to know a thing or tow about where to go and what to do once I actually have some product to show.
Anyway, Carnegie Hall is still every Wednesday and Ghost Jail is every Sunday. Come say hello!
The Carnegie Hall Show is still going great. We've been playing every week, nailing down what is essentially a new improv format, introducing our show to the community and the city at large and response has been very encouraging. I do think that lousy Toronto weather has kept audiences on the conservative side (size wise, not politically) so I hope that if this God awful weather ever breaks, then we'll get more happy people on the streets looking for fun things to do. Kensington Market is very quiet this time of year it seems.
Also, another ongoing yet irregular show I've gotten to play is the improvised soap opera Dysfunctional Utopia: A Serialized Romance. Directed by Ron Pederson, the improvised soap features over-the-top characters in a developing overdramatic storyline complete with adultery, conspiracy, murder and mad scientists - and we're doing it again this Sunday! Ghost Jail @ Clinton's on Bloor St.
On the writing front I'm still doing more reading about writing than actual writing, but I'm reading a lot. The latest book I've picked up is "The Way of Story" by Catherine Ann Jones - A book that while it contains some good reminders of the process of builsing outlines and developing characters that I've read in better books, there's a lot of new-agey type stuff about visualization and seemingly letting the story write itself, which I can't stomach to believe is actually very effective. As well, Jones packs the book full of self-congratulatory anecdotes about the few productions her career has consisted of, which do little to sell me on her advice since all the stories and ideas she's sold are never ones I would want to put my name on. (This isn't to say there isn't a market for writing a movie where Dolly Parton plays a country singer (what casting!) who dies and can't get into Heaven so has to go back to earth and do a good deed to get eternal bliss - but good God who would want to?)
More educational than any book I've read or heard of so far though has been the community of TV writer/bloggers that I've be uncovering. Alex Epstein has a great book and accompanying blog [Complications Ensue] about writing, the business of writing and (most importantly to me) the business of writing in Canada. Through him I also found Denis McGrath's killer blog of similar themes [Dead Things on Sticks] which also led me to blogs, groups and a killer weekly meeting of TV pros from Toronto. Last Friday I got to have a beer with Denis, Ed McNamara, Rob Pincombe and Rob Sheridan just because I showed up. This week was even bigger, plus George Strombo showed up. I've never been a proponent of networking (probably only because I haven't ever been good at it) but I feel like I meeting a lot of the right people to know a thing or tow about where to go and what to do once I actually have some product to show.
Anyway, Carnegie Hall is still every Wednesday and Ghost Jail is every Sunday. Come say hello!
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