Ralf Schulze Blog

I discovered recently that a good, old friend of mine, Ralf Schulze, has a blog about his art called Aardvark Farms. Ralf and I met through the underground world of self-published comix. He was a New York guy hammering out his weird, purposefully offensive punk art (check "Wah Tem Eye" left) back then and our mutual desire to shock the rubes made us instant friends. Twenty years on, we are both reasonably responsible adults now with families and jobs and such, but both still hold on to that sharp, rusty blade, carving out our strange visions, but man, it is much harder to shock people now or even get them to notice. Lots of competition for eyeballs and the underground is no longer so under, nor dangerous, or exotic. Just another page to surf through...

OK HW

Progress...

I have actually been moving in what could be mistaken for a forward direction on my "Reluctant Sadist" book project. "Reluctant Sadist" was an underground, self-published comic that I did back in the late 1980s'. I printed seven issues before I got distracted by sculpting, but that's a story that'll be saved for the book. All the artwork has been scanned, plus loads of stuff that I did for other comix and even a nice chunk of scribbles and sketches. It's been a lot of fun to dig back through the piles and look at all that old stuff. I've finally made my pack-rat tendencies pay-off, as I have plenty of material for the book, including old reviews from "Factsheet Five" and "Small Press Comics Explosion". Next up will be getting folks who contributed to my old comic to sign release forms, so I can use their stuff. Then the hard part, I have to start writing.

OK HW

Night Vision

"Night Vision" was my second student film made as a final project for Film Making 102 at TCC Virginia Beach. This time we had to edit and have sound. This was back in the late 1980s, so editing meant physically cutting the film and using either tape or cement splices to join the new pieces. If you made a mistake, you were screwed, especially if you were working on your only copy of the film as all the students doing this project were. There was no "undo", no easy to make digital back-up. You rolled the film back and forth in the moviola and thought very carefully about the artistic choice you were about to make because there might not be any going back. Of course it was easier to think back then because there wasn't the consistent interruptions of Facebook or e-mail or cell phones, etc. The sound was accomplished by laying down all the music and dialogue to cassette tape and playing it back while projecting the film. It was closer to performance art, then cinema.

The original story of "Night Vision" was taken from an underground comic book that I published for awhile called "Reluctant Sadist". I had a ready made story already storyboarded so that gave me a big head start for this project. I also had an advantage in my then room friend and long time friend Colin Martin as he was (still is) a gifted musician and willing to take a run at acting, so I also had a star and music composer in house. Colin played "Sam" the nightmare-suffering lead and I took on the role of "Speed", his less-than-helpful, hyperactive roommate donning the hair farm. We shot all the interiors in our apartment with the black & and white dream sequences shot in and around the abandoned waterfront warehouses (long since torn down for luxury condominiums) in downtown Norfolk, Virginia. I couldn't afford the time or money for black white film, so I hit upon the idea of shooting the dream sequences on video, then filming them off the TV screen. This also allowed me to play with the brightness and contrast to give the footage a more dream-like quality. The final touch was looping the dialogue and Colin's fantastic music. As I recall, the student audience responded very well and the teacher was thrilled. Ah, glory days....

OK HW

The Last Piece

I recently dug out some old film and video projects I did way back in the 1980s and transferred them to the digital realm. This first one, "The Last Piece" was a final project for a filmmaking 101 class I took at Tidewater Community College. Originally it was an in-camera edit and I got an A, mostly because you could actually tell what was going on. A lot of folks' films were very dark and out-of-focus. One was even completely black, but that student had dropped out, so we all speculated that maybe he was making a statement. I eventually transferred mine to video and added the soundtrack by playing "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" soundtrack and voicing all the dialogue and sound effects. I also tightened up the editing just a bit and fixed one axis crossing mistake.

I had some good help getting this thing done. My sister Shyla ran camera and my good friend John Verhulst played one the pizza duelists. I was the other. Sadly, John passed on last year much too early at the young age of 45. As far as I know, this is the only film (or video) shot of him. He was quite a wild man in his day and looked good with a gun belt on even if it was a toy. Here's to you my friend. You are missed and remembered. OK HW