Brian Doom, Director » news

Accessible Cube Puzzle

admin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:15:48 +0000

I know this has nothing to do with I WORK FOR NEMESIS or Devious, Inc., but I had to share this:

A few years ago (2002?) I made this “accessible” cube puzzle by simply gluing/drilling an existing cube. The goal was to get an intuitive sense of “where the cubes went” when a face was turned – by holding the back and viewing the front, the cubist can sense all faces at all times. This makes the design ideal for puzzling in the dark (which I did) but also as an enhancement for the visually-impaired without sacrificing usability for the sighted.

Additionally, many “blind” people are not entirely blind, so any bright color differences would help them visually distinguish any two faces. To this end, I removed the red face, replacing it with black, because in dim light it looks too much like orange. Arguably I could have done the same with yellow vs white, or green vs blue, but the textures were different enough it wasn’t necessary.

Note that if I had used a simple braille solution with the labeller, the result is quite unusable – a single turn and a given braille character is read as a different letter, if it isn’t already sideways. And reading braille backwards on the reverse of a cube… tricky.

Each face has a unique color, shape, and texture, with the each face’s modification material chosen for ease of recognition relative to the other faces.

color	shape	texture	made with
yellow	round “mushroom”	smooth, wood	wooden screw-hole (furniture) plug. The wood is close to yellow, anyway! The texture lends a organic feel – my original design concept was to have “pure materials” for each face, but the “metal” face (cut brass) was too much of a pain to get into a uniform shape.
green	flat	smooth, plastic	DYMO label – it’s just R and a number, like “R4″, because it’s reminiscent of electronic schematics (resistors)
blue	flat with round fluff	circular, fluffy	self-adhesive “coaster dot” for under appliances – I couldn’t find anything blue, so I had to settle for green. Although the effect is still easily distinguishable from the green face, this is why I chose the green face to be the default “flat” face.
orange	raised circle	tacky rubber	transluscent self-adhesive non-skid “dot” for under appliances – color stays orange
white	raised square	(less) tacky rubber	self-adhesive non-skid “dot” for under appliances. Fortunately there was a shape much different from the round transluscent dot!
black (formerly red)	protruding (screw)	metal screw, sandpaper	this was the most labor-intensive face – the screws cannot be drilled too far in, because they would interfere with the mechanism. But they must go in far enough to stay embedded in the plastic… the screws penetrate the plastic and are bonded with resin glue in the hole. The sandpaper is glued.

Since then, the cube modification scene has blossomed, with puzzle designers like Tony Fisher and M. Oskar van Deventer using resin casting and 3d printing to make shapes not even based on the original 3×3 Rubik’s cube.

Cult Fiction online

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:25:31 +0000

The award-winning “Cult Fiction,” directed by DC Kasundra, is available for viewing online.

I lit this film with Stan Ng, and it looks pretty good, if I say so myself! Tom K was the DP.

Watch for my 1-second “background artist” cameo!

Cult Fiction from Dead Set Films on Vimeo.

S is for Psycho wins

admin — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:32:35 +0000

Digant Kasundra’s S is for Psycho won the major prize at Scary Cow 7, along with another film called “die Mekaniks.” a film which had something like between ten times and twenty times our budget! Those guys rented a bus, rented the Palace of Fine Arts, an entire theater, and had a hellish drive to the desert that they ruefully told us about at the afterparty over drinks. Good work guys!

In other news, I’m hypersensitive to this since I did the color, but be sure and watch our version online, since the projection color was slightly off (!). Compare to the 1970′s TV show Starsky and Hutch– I actually collected a database of freeze frames and we corrected consumer-grade HD to look like 1970s film-shot TV, a nice yellow look.

Now Playing at Scary Cow Showcase 7

admin — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:02:17 +0000

Join me and the rest of Scary Cow for our 7th Showcase, screening at 2:30pm this Saturday, February 7th, 2009, at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. Buy tickets here while they last; this show will likely sell out.

What do I have playing here? Well:

Digant Kasundra’s S Is For Psycho, a hilarious homage to 1970′s buddy-cop shows. I was the Director of Photography on this one and did the color.
Alan Dunkel’s music video for Tony Maddox’s song “The Waiting Game.” I edited the first cut of this one.
The trailer for Devious, Inc., a feature film produced by Hella Fresh Films, due out this summer. I edited the trailer and did the color and effects; I’m cutting the feature even now.
Currently missing: a clip from the Huun Huur Tu documentary I crewed (lighting). They’re still editing this one. They shot a week’s worth of footage, so it’s understandable.

Tarot Terror aka “Fate’s Hand” (2000)

admin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:15:48 +0000

Noah Zimmerman and Heather Pocaro star in a silent comedy thriller about love and fate. Noah knows the mysterious girl in his class likes him — but every time he sees her he has demonic hallucinations! How will he deal with their forbidden love?

Shot and edited on 16mm film as part of a class taught at UC Extension in San Francisco, “produced” by our teacher, the illustrious experimental film director Dominic Angerame. Other names of note on the crew: John Vasicek went on to write and direct the feature film “Voyeur,” and Nina Chaudry produced the documentary series “Wide Angle.”

Curation note: I don’t have a separate page for this on this site because it’s a very early work, and I directed a very small part in it — specifically the dream sequence.

Somewhere I edited a version of this (on a linear editing system even!) with a soundtrack, but since I don’t know where that tape is, nor do I own the rights to any of the music, it will remain un-internetted. Music selections included parts of the soundtrack to “Hellraiser II” and parts of works by the quirky klezmer-flavored Tin Hat Trio.

The Templetons wins at Scary Cow 6

admin — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:41:18 +0000

The Templetons won a couple prizes at Scary Cow Showcase 6, including “Best Special Effects” and “Outstanding Original Score,” but also including a “Judge’s Award.”

And five hundred bucks. Woot!

The Templetons: Final Cut

admin — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:12:13 +0000

I am very pleased to announce the completion of the final cut of The Templetons.

After a few hundred hours, I completed the final edit and tweaks to the visual effects. After a bunch more hours, Jeremy Shafer (of JRS Presents) completed the final sound mix. I mainly sat behind him and read his superhero comics!

We’re sending The Templetons to various film festivals, but we’re having a local screening at the Scary Cow Showcase 6 in October, probably at the Victoria Theater.

Matt Voss, creator of The Templetons characters and comic book, is pretty keen on making more episodes, so we’re getting cranking on that one as well.

Vote for our Watchmen Commercial

admin — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:36:52 +0000

As previously mentioned, Diane and I made a short commercial for a contest for “The Watchmen,” a movie based on the bestselling comic book by Alan Moore. The movie in question will be released in 2009, and the winning entry will appear in the background of the movie!

The catch: the entry has to be voted in. So we’re counting on our friends and fans to help make this a reality!

To watch and vote for our movie,

go to http://www.youtube.com/user/watchmenmovie
click on “Vote” in the purple area
in the “Search for the video” box type “briandoom” (or click on “next video” until you see it)
the name of the video is “Nostalgia by Veidt (30s ver…”
When you see our video, click the little “thumbs up” sign

Thanks for your support!

Scary Cow 5 & The Templetons Trailer

admin — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:50:16 +0000

Scary Cow Showcase #5 on Sunday was very fun; we screened all the movies at the Victoria Theater, to a sold-out house!

Digant Kasundra’s Cursed (on which I was the Director of Photography) won 2nd Place in the Phase One category, which means we got a token cash prize. Very cool. That short will be visible with all the others on the Scary Cow web site, “soon.”

The trailer for The Templetons also screened, to rave reviews. I’ll post the trailer soon, on the page for The Templetons.

Nostalgia, by Veidt

admin — Sat, 31 May 2008 06:10:54 +0000

In between rendering the “1923 remix” of The Artist and continuing work on The Templetons, Diane and I shot a quick entry for a contest related to the upcoming movie adaptation of The Watchmen, due for release summer 2009.

One of the characters, Adrian Veidt, “the smartest man in the world”, was once a costumed hero but now is a captain of enterprise. He has many businesses, and one of them is a scent called “Nostalgia.” The producers of The Watchmen provided a number of assets (including green-screened product shots) for a bunch of different products, including shoes, the Veidt airline, and the Nostalgia perfume. The contestants post onto YouTube and a few entries will appear in the background of the movie.

So here’s ours. Be sure to vote for us here on their YouTube channel between June 2nd and June 20th!

go to http://www.youtube.com/user/watchmenmovie
click on “Vote” in the purple area
in the “Search for the video” box type “briandoom” (or click on “next video” until you see it)
the name of the video is “Nostalgia by Veidt (30s ver…”
When you see our video, click the little “thumbs up” sign

30 second version:

alternate, 15 second version (don’t worry, it’s not votable so there will be no confusion):