ENTRY #136
YouTube and Feedback links added 02.12.09
 
 
5:03 PM, Friday, August 3rd, 2001:
 
No, it's not done...just everything I can do until we know about our guest star. After a week of incredible highs and great discoveries and creations, I now get to sit for probably close to a month and hope to hear from Charlotte before I can complete the show. But let's cheer up shall we? Because this was a SPECTACULAR week. And let me tell you - 4tvs is magic. Magic like Copperfield baby. I feel as a chemist would I guess. I know the elements that go into it, I know how much of each element and how to time it...but when it all comes together, I'm still amazed at the result. POOF!
 
 
What a week. I put over 60 hours of work into The Trinitrons in only 4 days. I'm finding that my work ethic is just above and beyond a normal human. To put it in perspective, I turned down meeting Stevie Wonder, Magic Johnson (both came to Callendar's within a week of each other), and a free trip to Disneyland to work on this project. My rationale? I'll be meeting those people on "my terms" if this baby turns out right...
 
And sweet JESUS is it turning out right. I, Adam Kontras, do hereby SWEAR TO YOU, that this will "stun" everyone who sees it. Shock...amaze...you name it. You've never, EVER seen anything like this. And why am I saying this?
 
Well I set-up an overnight render so I could watch the opening act (9 minutes) fully rendered in 4 screens when I woke up Thursday morning. The reason it's taken so long just to get to this point, is because each one of these tvs has a multitude of special effects within them that have to be rendered, synced and completed individually - then mastered to tape - before I can scrunch them down into 4 corners of the screen. I'm saving them all full screen just in case I have the opportunity to do this in High Definition one day... That basically quadruples my normal workload - but in the long run will be worth it. Well I had the opening act done but had to wait to finish Spencer's TV because of the legalities of showing a TV show in one of the TVs for a minute. Spencer needs privacy while he changes and we flip to "Full House" for a few moments. It's a nice set-up to a joke and a perfect foreshadowing of the end. ;-) Anyway, so I sat on the first act and moved on...finished close to 20 minutes worth until finally last night I could go ahead with the Full House bit and then FINALLY rendered the 1st act overnight.
 
What I awoke to was slightly reminiscent to November of '98 when I thought of 4tvs. I was still half asleep when I sat down to the computer to press play - and it took about 2 minutes...but then it hit me. This overwhelming feeling of awe. As if I hadn't done 17 4tvs sets before, right? But this was much different. The second the TVs open their curtains and start parading around their sets - you can't help but smile. Remember in Roger Rabbit when at the end of the opening cartoon - Baby Herman just walks off the set and into the real world? It feels like that. Then as you watch each TV say their lines to each other SO PERFECTLY TIMED you'd swear to GOD this is 4 different people, that smile starts to turn into an open jawed GAPE. Then the kicker of all kickers...it's not edited. These are one-takes done in every sense LIVE. It's like great theater. It works on such a professional level that network television seems wholly approachable - if not "changeable". By that I mean, this could be one of those TRULY unique concepts that grabs everybody's attention nationwide. How it translates to the small screen still escapes me but honestly, these first 9 minutes (even without seeing/hearing LIVE ADAM interract), is SO much more entertaining than most of the shit on TV right now. Granted I'm a weeeee bit biased here, but I'm also logical to my CORE. This is it. This is special.
 
Bottom line, and I'll stop babbling about this, is that I am THE most self-critical person I know - and I am in complete and utter awe. It's becoming increasingly difficult for me to sleep. It's also been really difficult to not bring every single person I know at this apartment building into my apartment to watch this shit. As you may have guessed (ahem 136 entries later), I'm not one to keep things to myself. But I'm trying oh so desperately to hold off here, so when I actually perform this - people will have the same sense of SHOCK I had yesterday when I saw it all work. Incredible.
 
Back to reality...I've finished the show all the way up to the point in which the guest star enters. This is where I absolutely dreaded to be. I have a feeling the weeks will just start to slip away, and I can do nothing to help further this process. I am growing my goatee back for Cameron (which we need to shoot the guest star's part), but in order to finish the rest of the show I need to be LIVE ADAM who has a sort've van dyke-ish goatee. He appears in the opening bit as well as a special sequence during the final song. I can't shoot THAT footage without shaving some of "Cameron's" goatee - which I obviously can't do because of the guest star. GRRR.
 
So now I just sit, hope, and pray. Ticky, ticky, ticky, tocky... but you can enjoy the video. It's a clip of Spencer's fantasy set. I was trying to put together part of the dialogue, but it just doesn't come off online very well. Too much missing scrunched down so far. It's just as well though...it'll be a great suprise when you all finally see it.
 
But please don't ask me when. :-)
 
Adam 
 
original video file
 
AUGUST 2001
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