The Reality of Our Lives

Good morning everyone!

So it is finally done! I’ve finished my project and I just want to say it was a huge pain in the ass, but I’m happy it came out pretty well.

First off I should probably thank my models because this wouldn’t have been possible without them. One of the hardest things to do was not telling them what was going on at all. I had told them that basically I was making a series of flipbooks and a very basic storyline if you could even say that. The fact that they trusted me enough (minus one person) to go along with the whole thing was pretty astounding so I’d like to thank them all. They didn’t even know what they were really doing until they showed up and I can’t remember how many times I heard, “So what are we doing?”

So anyway, now on to some fun facts.

1) It took 975 pictures to make this
2) I didn’t think we had enough to make a video that would last the half the song, but it pretty much went through the whole thing.
3) We did all the pictures in one day.
4) It’s hard to get people to do something you can’t really explain to them.
5) I really wanted this to be a surprise to everyone because I feel like whenever I do a Mattbert Show it’s fairly well announced on all levels.
6) One reason I wanted to do this project was because I always wanted to do a stop animation type project, but after seeing all the really really amazing ones on YouTube I was pretty discouraged. (I’ll leave a list of my favorites at the end of this post)
7) The main reason I wanted to do this is because I really wanted to make something that could possibly cheer people up. As the video says it’s pretty depressing out there. Plus the media is saturated with depression be the news, music, movies, tv shows, and I could go on forever. I thought we could use something a little more uplifting.
Also, I just want to say I’m pretty tired of hearing people complain constantly about how they have the most horrible lives ever. Well, shut the fuck up! No matter how bad your life is there is always someone facing with worse. It’s hard to be happy all the time, but what is the point of living a life of complete misery most of the time. “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very rough mean place. And no matter how tough you think you are it will always bring you to your knees and keep you there, permanently, if you let it. You or nobody ain’t never going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. If you know what you’re worth, go out a get what you are worth. But you’ve got to be willing to take the hit.”
8) I kind of want to redo this whole thing all over again someday a lot cleaner. Although, I like the way it came out for the most part it’s best to think of this as a prototype.
9) There’s a few mistake you can see peppered throughout the video. After spending weeks, timing, editing, and testing the picture I’m very well aware of this, please don’t feel the need to tell me.
10) In the lego piece you can see I wrote something on my wrist. It says, “Write list.” A reminder to make the list that was at the beginning of the video.
11) When we did the photo shoot we were in the middle of about a month of constant rainy/gray weather. This was probably the only day it was actually a beautiful day out, which I thought was pretty amazing. It made the whole thing a little more special for me.
12) We took some of the pictures at a different frame rate so some of the video is pretty jumpy. Specifically the post it notes and the bomb.
13) I didn’t have a title for this for the longest time, which added to the length of me making this video. Without a title I couldn’t really name the files, but eventually I just picked Codependency and shortly after I named all the files LiB (Life is Beautiful). It wasn’t until pretty much the very end of the project that I came up with the real title. I was reading my old notebooks from high school when I came across a short story I never finished called “The Reality of my Life (Version 1.8675309)” which was named after The Reality of My School, one of the more important writing projects in my life.

Anyway thanks for watching and I hope you don’t completely hate it. Wootz!

Here's the list of my favorites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBjLW5_dGAM or anything else by PES for that matter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywu1DeqXTg4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzU3NjDikY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY


The world just spins along…

Mattbert Project

So, I'll be doing a project involving photography. I'm trying to keep everything about it as secretive as possible so all I'm going to tell you is this:

I will be taking pictures.
The pictures will be put together to make a story book.
It's nothing big and the end product won't be that great, but it's something special to me that I really wanted to do so don't get to excited to see it.

That's all you need to know until I've finished the project. If you want to know more that's too bad. And if you happen to be helping me on this project well then... you'll just have to trust what I am doing. I know that's hard given the few facts I just gave you, but you don't have to be apart of this if you don't want to.

For those of you that are helping I thank you so much for helping get closer to a goal of mine. I'd prefer you just wear normal clothing, but you can wear whatever you want to the photo shoot, but normal clothing will work out best. Nothing too fancy or showy. Also, another note is that you may be in a single pose for a good amount of time and this project is going to take some amount of patience, especially since I'll be trying to figure things out as we go.

Anywho, thanks to everyone and when I finish I hope at least I enjoy it cause I'm sure no one else will.

Eight

So he won his eight medals. Can we stop talking about him now? How much can you cram him down my throat? And really? Is he the "greatest" athlete of all time? What about anyone in gymnastics who have to train on the floor and on the rings and on the horse ect. I'm generally more impressed by anyone who gets a gold in all around gymnastics than swimming. Heck I'd be more impressed if he won a medal in ping pong. You're like two feet away from your opponent trying to hit a tiny ball flying at you at great speeds trying to read your opponent blah blah. Or even if he won a medal in any other event besides swimming. I get it. He's a good swimmer. I expect him to win medals in swimming.
Do we really need to call him the greatest? How do we know there isn't a better swimmer who doesn't have the opprotunity that he did. How do we know that a shaolin monk who has been training his body all his life, but could care less about the Olympics isn't a better athlete?
By the way, let's stop talking about Tiger Woods while we're at it too.

The world just spins along...
Mattbert

Ask Mattbert 8/9/08

Q: Do you wear boxers or briefs?

A: I wear both... Simultaneously... With a thong.


The world just spins along...
Mattbert

Warped Tour 08

Morning everybody. Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been busy. And when I write "busy" I really mean I'm not actually busy, but lack any energy to do anything productive with my life.

But anyway, on to the real reason for this entry. On Wednesday I went to the Warped Tour as part of Spot Jackie Chan. I went with my lovely friend Lambert (pictured below) and her friend Ashley.Had an awesome time although I got rained on. I met a lot of old fans which is awesome and made some new ones too. It's too bad I had to leave a little early because there were some people who wanted to meet me that didn't. I guess there is always next year and whatever is in between. If you didn't meet me and wanted to and are reading this contact me and maybe if you can convince me I'll show up to a concert of your chosing. And sorry to anyone that was calling me. I'm pretty oblivous to my surroundings and kind of death. Add that to the fact I had no energy and I'm surprised I hadn't completly ignored everyone by accident.

Another thing I got to do was pass out a lot of copies of my book (Really wish I got to do the Matbert Show DVD) AND at least one person e-mailed me to let me know he read it (I imagine all the other copies are in the trash) AND he is actually pretty much the only one to ever send in a picture. (You know who you are (Again Pictured Below)) So to him Giant Enemy Crab Salute to you kind Sir or Madaam.

Got to see the two bands I really wanted to see which were Ore Ska Band and Reel Big Fish and they fucking rocked. I even got the autographs from OSB. And of course met a lot of cute girls whom I can only guess were all underage.

I think the only downside was that I didn't spend that much time at Truth, mainly because the MC guy there was annoying in my opinion. I wanted to stab him in the face. But I do want to stab most people in the face so that's not fair to say.

Anyway, I think I might be adding a couple more post next week to make up for lost time. Oh, don't forget to check out SpotJackieChan.com to see the pics you coxswains.

The world just spins along...

Mattbert

My favorite picture!

I need more allowance!

So it's almost about a month from my first wedding photoshoot. Also, I spent 1200 dollars on my camera so I have no money. I can't wait for it to arrive on Monday. Got my check for the government. Here's a picture of me and Maryellen connecting...

Also, it's good to note that in a couple of weeks I'm going to Warped Tour. Hopefully I won't die there. And one more good note: In Diablo 3 your character wears pants.... Just another article of clothing my character will be wearing that I won't.

Weekend Report

So.... pretty good weekend. I went to Providence to see Less Than Jake and Goldfinger. Awesome show. There is a video on my YouTube account of me crowd surfing and me on stage. Also, on a related note, I went there as "Jackie Chan" so there is a page for that on SpotJackieChan.com and I got to meet a very friendly and very cute girl named Jessica whom I'll probably never see again.
I bought a new camera. The Canon 40D and I'm just waiting for it to come in the mail. Very excited. Maybe that means I'll be posting newer pictographs soon.
Also, Diablo 3 was finally announced after 8 years. It'll probably take another few years before it is out though, but I'm glad to hear they are working on it.
There's kind of a lot I want to say right now I just really don't feel like typing it out.

The world just spins along...
Mattbert