Brian Doom, Director

In Production: April 2010

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:50:12 +0000

Preproduction is gaining steam for I WORK FOR NEMESIS and I’m very excited about our actors and our production team. Website to come soon.

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.

In Production: March 2010

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:02:30 +0000

We’re ramping up on a secret project called I WORK FOR NEMESIS!
Devious, Inc., a Hella Fresh production, is being submitted to film festivals – wish us luck!

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.

In Production: April 2009

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:43:05 +0000

March and April have been busy months!

We began March with finishing Principal Photography for Episode 2 of The Templetons, shot all on HD in a studio against a professional chroma screen. Work continues on that to get the effects done, as Writer/Cartoonist Matt Voss draws all the backgrounds. The Templetons Episode 2 was shot by Tom Krymkowski and will be screened / released sometime in Fall 2009.

April projects in production:

Postproduction continues on Hella Fresh’s production Devious, Inc. (which incidentally was also shot by Tom Krymkowski)
Matt Voss and I did a quick stint on Michael Schrecker’s music video for local band Fingermonsters (moving animated backgrounds)
In association with Scary Cow Productions, I’m lighting Digant’s Kasundra’s hysterical new “cult movie,” which this time is literally about a cult… shot by Tom Krymkowski. Hmm, is there a trend here?
We’re in “effects trials” preproduction for my personal project, a horror-themed short film. On camera is… uh… Tom Krymkowski. What is the deal with this guy?

Maybe I should get Tom to work on the Finger Monsters video!

In Production: February 2009

admin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:31:19 +0000

We’ve just finished the first weekend of shooting on the second episode of Matt Voss’ The Templetons, and boy does it look awesome. We’re shooting with most of the same stellar cast as the first episode, but with much better gear and a make-up department that kicks ass.

Also in the works: a short project with some gory special effects I’m running with other members of Scary Cow. I’ve very psyched about this project.

Of course, the editing and postproduction on Devious, Inc continues– it’s a long haul!

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.

In-Production: December 2008

admin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:09:41 +0000

At long last Devious, Inc. is in the can. We shot the last footage with Precious Moments in an apartment in San Francisco, and it was a bittersweet affair. Working with the Devious team has been like suddenly gaining an extended family that would make middle America’s head explode.

I am hard at work editing first the trailer, and getting some of the scenes together. The trailer will debut at the Scary Cow Showcase at the end of January 2009 (or beginning of February? Gah!). The release for the film is currently scheduled for Summer 2009.

I am also editing Alan Dunkel’s music video for “The Waiting Game,” which I’m pretty psyched about. That too will screen at Scary Cow.