Enough

I’ve had some passing interactions with friends in various parts of their careers and lives recently. Some are retiring. Some are losing loved ones (far too many of those this year). Some are leaving tenured jobs, either for new opportunities or just because they feel it’s the only real choice left to them. There’s a […]

The quick and dirty video

There’s an entire mini-industry around short, crappy films… and when I say industry, I don’t mean that the filmmakers themselves are making any money off it, but groups like the 48hr film fest have been staying in the black for years… with many spin-offs and other short competitions. Why is this? Not as much because […]

Celestial Bronze? Percy Jackson sword experiment

Finally got around to trying something I’ve been planning/thinking about/working towards since last Fall: Using some of the Sur Fin Chemical aluminum coloring treatments on some Rogue Steel Leafblade swords I built up from blanks. This was all kick-started by hearing the rights to the Percy Jackson musical The Lightning Thief was going to start […]

MoCap Project!

Yes, it has been over a year since my last post here, so this is probably long overdue, but I realized that sharing a page is usually more algorithm-friendly than sharing a YouTube link, so perhaps it was time to dust off the ol’ WordPress blog. It’s been a long, hard few years for many, […]

Yep, still here. Mostly.

Hanging in there, like most folks I know! Just closed out my first directing gig in the age of Covid. Was assigned by my department with the intent of being a quick staged reading, going up the second week of classes… but I really didn’t want to offer just yet another Zoom meeting with people […]

Lockdown

Oof. It’s been a heck of a long year, these past nine months or so since my last entry. Fall actually got me in trouble a bit, over-extending myself. Between the book deadline, directing a show, and multiple fight choreography gigs, I short-changed the time and brainpower and sleep required to do my best work […]

Fall Cornucopia

My horn of plenty overfloweth! A professional life, especially one associated with the gig economy, is always a balancing act. Even before you add in family and other considerations, there’s the uncertain dates on gigs, the auditioning for multiple overlapping projects in the assumption you won’t get most of them (and the pleasant yet panic-inducing […]

Spring Projects

The end of my first year teaching at Case Western! Grades are in (nobody failed), teacher evals are in (I didn’t fail either, apparently), shows happened and nobody died doing my fights. I get points for that, right? It’s opening weekend for the musical (not the opera) Aida at Karamu House, which marks the first […]

Checking in and Sharing Links

    News of the Fightdesigner: Props stuff has been busy, after a lull that was partly explained when I realized I didn’t check my spam folder for all of February. Mixed in amongst the website contact messages about sexy singles, bitcoin, and increasing my web traffic were a few legitimate rental inquiries, most of […]

Falling on Ice and on Video

Tis the season for ice yet again! Record-setting cold here in the upper midwest, but right before that it warmed up enough for some of the snow to melt, and some rain to fall, so sidewalks and other non-salted areas became sheets of ice. And with that, once again I’ve become a published expert on […]