Wednesday...some time in the United States

Aloha dear reader!

Yes, it's been a while [standard pre-amble for many a blog-post]. I must confess, I've been spending a lot of time with my other blog, but that's no reason for this blog to be jealous. It should be happy for me; I've been extending my creative energy into the world in the most productive way I can conceive [Freudian readers, please enjoy this sentence], and that has been my principle way of dealing with the various little (as well as overwhelming) life issues which have swarmed upon me and infiltrated my soul as of late.

However, since this is not an appropriate venue for expressing my issues -- even though it would really be a bargain for both of us -- I'll just stick to business here, and if you're really interested in experiencing the creative impulses of a suffering soldier who is fighting to get a grip on this thing called life, I urge you to follow my other blog. I promise, this one won't be jealous. As far as providing details of my personal struggles, that's off of the table at the moment, suffice it to say they deal with relationships and good old fashioned money.

Now for the sauce! In addition to my article which will be in an upcoming issue of Fangoria magazine, I've contributed an article and some ditties to Rue Morgue magazine. I'll keep you posted on street dates / issue numbers. As for TITO, I heard back from the Fantasia Film Festival...and they thought the acting sucked, but at least it wasn't a formal rejection. [Note to self: stop acting in your films]. But there's still hope for the project; two rejection notices are pending! In any event, that's certainly enough negative reinforcement to make working on The Making of TITO into an uninspiring chore. Still, I've got some decent material to cobble together for it, so it's still a possibility...

Currently, I've been pouring a lot of energy into yet another high-concept project [Note to self: perhaps if you created fewer "high-concept" projects and more "paint-by-the-numbers" ones, you might see an increased critical response and a modicum of money]. Anyway, this one is a sort of musical film project. I've written a series of songs which tell a metaphoric story. So far, I've workshopped and recorded several versions of the first two songs, and I'm pretty enthusiastic about continuing to develop the songs and then eventually produce a live-action / animated film to show the story.

Whelp, I guess that's about it for the news. There are other things in the planning, but since there always are, I'll just share what I've done and what I'm currently doing.

What? It's Monday...In December?

Someone recently informed me that they visited my blog, which reminded me that I have one. Sorry, dear reader, if you've been waiting long...

Okay, let's have me catch you up on what's been going on in the world of Dervish Pictures (ie. Scott Oliver Feinblatt). A cursory spin around the Dervish Pictures website will reveal to you that I've been doing some photography and musical tinkering.

Obviously, I know a few things about photography. Or, if it wasn't obvious, then it is now. My mother used to be a professional wedding / family / boudoir photographer, and I learned a few of her chops as well as having my own flair for nature / artistic photography. So, anyway, I added a photography section to the site.

Some of you are also aware that I am a musician. I used to write / record music under the moniker T.he O.range M.an. The productivity of this phase of my existence essentially stretched from 1992-2004. All of the music that was recorded after 1993 was done on an 8-track Yamaha recorder, which I recently discovered no longer works. Upon taking it to local technicians and calling the Yamaha dealership, I was laughed at and told that such things belong in the past.

Luckily, I had mixed and dubbed just about all of those tracks onto a minidisc recorder (my earliest form of digital media). Unfortunately, when I went to transfer those discs to a new format, so that I could update my archives to a more contemporary digital source, I discovered that my minidisc player / recorder no longer worked. So, I shopped online for a used mini-disc player. I landed one at Amazon for about 25 bucks.

After I began the task of transferring somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 hours of music, it occurred to me that - while I used to mix my songs and slap 'em on cassette tapes for my friends and artistic peoples everywhere - I had a bunch of material from my early years in California (circa 1999-2004) that I had never shared with anyone except maybe my dad and a couple of friends.

So, I narrowed down a cross-section of my favorites, did some digital re-mastering and bounced them down into a new mix that I posted on my site.

In other news, Outtake Reel officially became available through Amazon (and allegedly other retail outlets as well). As far as other film projects go, I've been chipping away at a few different script ideas, but overall I feel like I've got my creativity cruise control on; I'm doing stuff at a moderate pace, but I'm not currently in the fast lane.