Dark Mode Now (Sonoma) and Then (Mavericks via my Flavours theme Post Pro)

Even back as far as System 9 we were obsessed with theming our Macs. BBX Mercury was one the hottest themes by legendary designer Max Rudberg. System 9 also had a decent built-in theme engine with custom highlights, desktop pictures, and even sounds. In 2013 I started playing around with Flavours by Interacto. My goal was to design a theme geared to post production professionals who preferred a darker GUI as many came from a Discreet Flint/Flame/Inferno world, like myself, and knew how helpful it was to work within a GUI that isn’t bright white like After Effects, Commotion Pro, and even the early commercial version of Nuke. For a brief period I was on the Nuke beta team to provide feedback. Most of my suggestions revolved around the GUI which was bright white with floating palettes. Take a look at any compositing setup these days. Everyone has gone dark, preferably charcoal. While on the After Effects beta team for quite some time I remember when we got them to add the first version of darkening the GUI with direct slide ability for the user to adjust for personal taste. That first incarnation’s darkest tones weren’t even half as dark as the AE GUI is today.

It’s been 10 years since I first released my free Flavours Post Pro theme. Post Pro was bundled along with hundreds of other user themes in their final release of Flavours 2.0. Unfortunately Flavours only went as far as Mac OS X Mavericks. Moving past Mavericks Apple tightened up the core system files causing theming to be impossible. So, we waited, and waited, and eventually in 2018 Apple released Mojave with a true Dark Mode. The latest version in Sonoma makes me smile as it’s quite similar to the Post Pro theme I designed back in 2014.

EYES:/ONLY℠ Levels Up

Things are getting exciting at Vinson Design. In order to accommodate future level ups I have officially changed the name of the Vinson Design Publishing Company “EYES:/ONLY℠” to “EYES:/ONLY℠ ENTERTAINMENT, LIMITED.”

EYES:/ONLY is now a Vinson Design Entertainment Company with aspirations to illuminate our universal, collective spirits. So friends, let’s gather around the campfire for awhile, and then let’s go to the movies and share our stories. See you there.

AWAKE film treatment inspired by half a century of mind-bending events is underway. While it does incorporate a heavy dose of historical fiction, the story aims to inspire the universal spirits connecting each one of us to the mosaic tapestry of the cosmos.

Coming Summer 2024

Quick Brown Fox fx is poised to leap “over the lazy dog” mid-2024.

David felt it was time to build a new creative offering from the ground up. Light and fresh with a hint of wit and dash of cunning the fox embodies David’s spirit full of zeal and adaptability. His career has spanned traditional graphic design, branding and identity systems, and the expansive, ever-evolving worlds of branded motion media.

Officially launched in July, 2024.

“Love Letter” — An OpenAI parody inspired by “Church Chat” on Saturday Night Live

In response to all of the unnecessary AI bullying going on from the AI “artists” I decided to take an alternate, or “alt-man” PSA-style approach using parody to comment on this serious cancer growing among us. What concerns me most, however, is the overarching preaching going on from the creators of these tools. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, disturbs me the most as his revealing commentary exposes his distorted, heavily black and white thinking.

Below is a recent treatment pitch I wrote for “Church Chat” on Saturday Night Live involving ChatGPT and its OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Maybe one day soon they’ll decide to use it or possibly spark an idea of their own parallel to the subject matter presented here. It would be a dream if they brought back Dana Carvey for the skit delivering his campy Church Lady and her obsession with “Satan!” Enjoy the YouTube Cold Open below my treatment from this beloved classic skit on SNL.

When first writing this skit concept I had no idea that the Ides of March was being observed two days later, Friday, March 15th. Some things just can’t be scripted. It was a clear sign of karma’s signature. So thank you, universe, for putting a proverbial cherry on top of this brief comedic treatment.

I wonder if Sam Altman is superstitious?

“Beware the Ides of March,” said the Soothsayer from William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. “Beware the Ides of March,” the Soothsayer said a second time. Caesar thought the Soothsayer was “a dreamer” and did not take these warnings seriously. Caesar’s death later comes to fruition on the steps of the Senate. The conspirators attack him from all sides with Brutus delivering the final wound.

“I believe the phrase was...Lucifer in the flesh. Well isn’t that special.”

— Dana Carvey as The Church Lady on the Saturday Night Live parody “Church Chat.”

The Heart of The Ark of the Covenant

There’s more to the Ark of the Covenant than meets the eye. Its whereabouts have been shrouded in mystery for thousands of years. It’s quite fitting that acacia wood, the Ark’s primary building material requested of Moses by God, literally contains a heart-shaped center. There’s a hidden love language contained within its dimensions. 45 inches in length x 27 inches in width x 27 inches in height. 27 is my lucky number and is considered to be one of the most significantly spiritual of the Angel Numbers as it relates directly to the Holy Trinity. The length is significant in that by adding 4 + 5 we arrive at a sum of 9 which is also 3 3s. 3 + 3 + 3 = 9. 3 x 3 x 3 = 27. Three-thousand years ago God spoke directly to Moses with very specific instructions for the construction of the Ark. Exodus 25:10–16 states in the Standard Christian Bible:

ACACIA WOOD HEART

10 “They are to make an ark of acacia wood, forty-five inches long, twenty-seven inches wide, and twenty-seven inches high. 11 Overlay it with pure gold; overlay it both inside and out. Also make a gold molding all around it. 12 Cast four gold rings for it and place them on its four feet, two rings on one side and two rings on the other side. 13 Make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. 14 Insert the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark in order to carry the ark with them. 15 The poles are to remain in the rings of the ark; they must not be removed from it. 16 Put the tablets of the testimony that I will give you into the ark.”

ABOVE AND BELOW : Ralph McQuarrie’s Bible illustration of the Ark of the Covenant as seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981.

“Well, I mean that for nearly three thousand years man has been searching for the lost ark. It’s not something to be taken lightly. No one knows its secrets. It’s like nothing you’ve ever gone after before.”

— Denholm Elliott as Dr. Marcus Brody, Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981. Story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. Screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Visual effects by Industrial Light & Magic. Set design by Norman Reynolds.

Sound Design Bites

“The lightsaber was, in fact, the very first sound I created for A New Hope. Inspired by the McQuarrie concept paintings, I remembered a sound of an interlock motor on the old film projectors at the USC Cinema Department (I had been a projectionist there). The motors made a musical ‘hum’ which I felt immediately would complement the image in the painting. I recorded that motor, and a few days later I had a broken microphone cable that caused my recorder to accidently pick up the buzz from the back of my TV picture tube. I recorded that buzz, and mixed it with the hum of the projector motor. Together these sounds became the basis for all the lightsabers.”

— Ben Burtt Q&A, FilmSound.org

Hearing familiar, overused sound bites is far more common now that budgets are getting cut across the board. You’d think there was a broader library for the giggling children snippet used in Gladiator when Maximus was dreaming of the wheat fields. I hear that sound bite in nearly every other film or episodic I watch. The days of Ben Burtt crafting the sound of a lightsaber through experimentation have gone by the wayside. The days of hundreds of real extras and magical matte paintings allowing our imaginations to expand and run wild are now in the rearview mirror. Now replaced with cheaper digital versions which no matter how accurate the simulation, it’s still just that, a computer simulation.

There’s a reason why the craft of filmmaking is taking a U-turn back to its roots. Digital works to a degree, but the best way to build dreams on screen is to not put all of the proverbial eggs in one basket. Use all techniques available and weave a tapestry of realized collective imaginations. The art of film is truly the art of play. We don’t really go to work. We play with our toys and every now and then stumble across a breadcrumb of originality. Vanilla ice cream is fine, but it so much better when it’s layered with fudge sauce, Red Hots, and sparkling sprinkles. Say no to vanilla and embrace the layering of styles bringing sound design back to its heyday when wielding sound design as a mad scientist was paramount.

Window to the Soul

We’ve heard for centuries that the eyes are the window to the soul. If that’s the case, then the heart and soul of Hollywood is coated in green screen-tinted glasses. So often, we see green rectangles reflected in glasses of our favorite characters, not only in episodic streaming, but even running rampant in Hollywood blockbusters. However, some VFX houses have attempted to do justice to this ongoing issue. Nearly every movie or episodic streaming show is shot digitally, quite often utilizing green screen. Some compositors will overly blur and remove the chroma in the reflections on the character’s sunglasses as can be seen in Hot Tub Time Machine. Since artists cannot just blur out unwanted green screen reflections in a character’s clear eyeglasses some will attempt to shift the hue so that it that might potentially match a reflection from a light source found off-camera in the surrounding scene.

Wonder Woman 1984, 2020, missed the boat in a variety of scenes where the green screen reflections clearly seen in Cheetah’s glasses weren’t disguised in post-production.

In Wonder Woman 1984 Kristin Wiig’s character can be seen in a variety of scenes with a blatant stamp of raw green screen reflections in her glasses. It’s a glaring misstep in modern day cinema, and it’s more common that one would think. In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny from Disney’s Lucasfilm, the character Voller, played by Mads Mikkelsen, has a recurring series of scenes throughout the film with saturated, magenta reflections in his glasses. Since there is no light source in the scene with this tint this series of reflections was an attempt to remove the obvious green screen. Sometimes, even when the characters aren’t shot against green screen, some of the set pieces and background elements are. In some cases, even on-set monitors are to blame for introducing these visual blemishes. At least the VFX artists working on this Indy film took the time to attempt to tweak the chroma values of these glaring windows to the soul. I think it’s ironic that Voller’s eyeglass reflections were tinted magenta in Dial. I wonder if that color was intentional as it gives a nod to the concept of one wearing rose-tinted glasses. Did it become a visual symbol of his passion to discover and experience the truth to Archimedes’ time-bending dial?

Lucasfilm’s artists tweaked the reflections in Voller’s glasses in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, 2023, by shifting the reflection’s green hue to a saturated magenta.

In Hot Tub Time Machine, 2010, the film’s compositors tracked the sunglasses and applied a heavy blur in order to disguise the apparent on-set reflections in them.

Remember the old man on Saturday Night Live portrayed by Dana Carvey that complained that the current state of life wasn’t even close to how great things were when he was growing up. He’d say things like “Back in my day…” Well, at 51 I feel that I’ve become that same grumpy old man except I am complaining about: inch marks being substituted for quotation marks, jiggly retiming, strobing, incorrect motion blur, HDR overbright distractions, business card-sized billboard type, green screen reflections, and logo homogenization with a side order of overused sound libraries leaving us, the audience, wanting less, not more. Quality rather than never-ending quantity of rehashed stories, each tweaked in order to pander directly to certain groups of people. It applies to all things, especially to storytelling. Prove to us that original stories still exist; something new, original, and exciting. Please stop pandering to the “modern audience” by shifting all of our favorite stories attempting to have your content less controversial. How about ignite the passion that existed in film for decades? Story. Dialogue. Blocking. Twists. Turns. Cliffhangers. Infuse what we loved about movies from the past. Dare to go against the grain of pandering to the masses.

“Run for it Marty!”

Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd took us “OUTATIME” via Doc’s plutonium-charged 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 on this day in their first film in the Back to the Future series. The story was written by Robert Zemeckis, who also directed, and Bob Gale.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Doc. Ah...are you telling me you built a time machine...out of a DeLorean?”

— Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, Back to the Future, 1985

“The way I see it, if you’re going to build a time machine into a car why not do it with some style?”

— Christopher Lloyd as Doctor Emmett Brown, Back to the Future, 1985

Equations of Love

For 51 years I’ve been known by my doctors, family, and friends as manic, depressive, schizoaffective, overly dramatic, extremely emotional (thank God for DBT), and sometimes quite eccentric — even bordering on beyond help. In all truth I was quite insane as defined by The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM). Yet my personal psychiatrist from six years ago even posed the idea that I may not have a mental illness at all. She felt I was possibly just an intelligent guy with an overly active imagination. Also, to note, she was also the Medical Director at my local hometown’s mental hospital. At this point I have to be completely transparent. To know me is to know I don’t hide behind anything, let alone a series of diagnoses.

I was recently watching the story of John Nash via the film A Beautiful Mind, 2001, starring Russell Crowe. While many moments proved so familiar to my own series of mind-bending madness and revelations, it was in John’s final speech which summed up my own life thus far. Speaking directly to his wife, Nash sums up his fascination of numbers, equations, and endearing love itself. Russell’s delivery was quite extraordinary:

“I’ve always believed in numbers; and the equations and logics that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask: ‘what truly is logic? Who decides reason?’

My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional…and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: it is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found.

I’m only here tonight because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons. Thank you.”

— John Nash as portrayed by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, 2001, directed by Ron Howard

(Right) John Forbes Nash, Junior (June 13, 1928 – May 23, 2015), an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, real algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and partial differential equations.

“Ben Day” by Potlatch Paper

Potlatch Paper produced this little gem in the mid-90s reminding creatives that we’ve all “Ben” there. The diabolical clients, the endless Whoppers. Ben Day, the world’s greatest designer, gives his in depth perspective as to the creative processes that taunt and haunt him to the very core. He draws us into his world where the Happy Hamburger Helper Hand reigns as his supreme advisor.

“This story is not true. For all his vibrancy, Ben Day does not exist. But we think a little piece of him lives in the hearts and minds of all creatives. Where an idea, fragile as it is, can be nurtured beyond the confines of mere capitalism, helping us move forward as a people...until, of course, a client crushes your little idea like a bug.”

— “Ben Day,” Potlatch Paper Company, 1995 film written and directed by Dana Arnett and Bob Rice

I STILL HAVE MY ORIGINAL “BEN DAY” BUTTON AND PLAYBILL FROM THE MID-NINETIES.

“Would you say: ‘hey Mister Da Vinci...Leo, we want Mona there to show some teeth?’”
— Kyle Colerider-Krugh as Ben Day, The World’s Greatest Designer

VSA Partners, LLC posted “Ben Day” Potlatch Paper — Short Film on Vimeo for all of us to enjoy ad infinitum.

Remembering Our Superman

Christopher D’Olier Reeve (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, film director, author, activist, and best friend to Robin Williams. The dynamic duo were first roommates at Juilliard which led to their lifelong friendship. In 1978 Reeve starred in Superman: The Movie, while that same year Robin Williams landed in his egg-shaped spaceship as Mork from Ork on Happy Days in “My Favorite Orkan.” In the fall of that same year Robin Williams and Pam Dawber arrived in our living rooms across America in Mork and Mindy. Today we remember and celebrate Christopher’s legacy. He will always be our Superman.

I was quite fortunate to see both of my childhood heroes years later as an adult. Christopher Reeve gave a talk one year in the late nineties at the Broadcast Designers Awards. He embodied a spirit unmatched. He truly was a super hero and super human. When my daughter was quite young she gave us tickets (via her mommy) to see Robin in Atlanta. Every moment was so fresh and new. He didn’t recycle any of his material from previous comedy tours.

Both of these super folk will forever be in our hearts for they gave us the recipe to truly fly and follow our dreams. I haven’t worked a day in my life. Every day is just another chance to dream and play on my own stage, and every now and then, fly. :)

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, they then seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”
— Christopher Reeve