Posted on September 18, 2010 [Permalink]

After the major interruption of the last couple of days for the NHK filming, I'm now busy with the preparation of the tracings for the next pair of prints. Once I get them pasted down, I'll shoot some pics for the RoundTable, but there is nothing to see yet.

The filming went generally OK - a mix of the usual stuff, with the addition of a short episode up in the woods with me setting up my tent and then sitting there trying desperately to ignore the mosquitoes while they took some long shots of me 'relaxing' ...

We had a bit of a kerfuffle at one point though, when I had a standoff with the cameraman. We were at the part of the schedule where they needed a stack of my prints for shooting, and while I went upstairs to get them, they had started to put together a kind of stand with lights, for the filming. When I saw what they were planning, I refused, and insisted that we shoot them over at the wide north windows, under natural - and horizontal - light.

This is HD TV, so it is a very good chance to finally get the feel and texture of the prints exposed. But the cameraman didn't understand this, and wanted to do things his usual way.

We went toe-to-toe on it for a few minutes, but I wouldn't back down, and we ended up doing it my way. The camera guy - who seemed to have as much, or more, power as the producer - pouted for a while, and didn't want to cooperate, but after we shot the first few, he started to see the point (which he simply hadn't understood), and things went more smoothly.

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Anyway, about the title of this post - update to My Solitudes. While we were shooting those prints, the producer asked how he would be able to read the story, to help with organizing the program. (The Solitudes stories aren't online, just the prints.) I made sure that he got a .pdf of the set, but it did set me wondering what I should do about that. I have published my own set of books - text plus prints - but I do have the feeling that it would be kind of a wasted effort not to get the material spread around a bit more widely. This is especially true of the Japanese translation side, which Sadako and I spent a huge amount of time on, and which to this point has only been seen by a couple of dozen people.

I'd like to shop this thing around to some potential publishers to find out if there would be any interest (unlikely I suppose, but who knows ...), but simply don't have the resources (time) to do that, so I'm kind of stuck. Anyway, in an attempt to crack that door open just a little bit, I've amended the webpage for the first print in the set to include a link to a .pdf version of the story that goes with it. If you were not one of the subscribers to that print set, now's your chance to enjoy (well, at least to read) the companion story to that print.

Not sure though, where I should take it from here ...

Added by: Jan Kellett on September 19, 2010

Dave, have a look at Blurb,(blurb@email.blurb.com) or if you have a Mac, the Mac Book facility, they are on demand publishers and you could make as many books as you want.

Added by: Dave on September 19, 2010

I'm quite familiar with on-demand stuff, and have been using Lulu for a few years now to produce my semi-annual A Story A Week book collections. And I produce my own eBooks too - some of which are doing quite well for self-published stuff.

But I would like to think that a My Solitudes book might have wider appeal than what I can handle myself ...

Added by: Mark Mason on September 19, 2010

Well done on standing up to the cameraman, as you said, getting the lighting right is a vitally important aspect of viewing prints. You were right to stand your ground, especially as it's being filmed in HD. Hopefully viewers will at last get to see what is so difficult to get across online.

You should have shown him your set up for photographing your 'David's Choice' ebook.

Wish list request for volume 2 when you have a free minute ;D

Good lighting cameramen can be as important as directors, but also a good lighting cameraman would have immediately understood what you were wanting to acheive and grasped the opportunity to create something special.

Cheers,

Mark.

Added by: Dave on September 19, 2010

Wish list request for volume 2 when you have a free minute

A minute ... ??

What can I say ... I would love to put out a whole series of those things. After I did the first one, I sat and looked over my library shelf ... there is just so much to talk about, and so many stories to tell, even with a simple and inexpensive collection like this one.

But it's the same damn problem ... as a one-man shop - focussed on paying the bills - I just don't have the freedom to do all those other things, except as quick 'grabs' here and there (like the Urushibara thing over the past few days ...)

Sometimes I kind of picture a fantasy scene here - of what Mokuhankan could become ...

I get up in the morning, have my brekky, and as I finish, a young lady from our staff appears at my elbow, clipboard in hand. She gives me a run-down of my schedule for the day, which is going to be a full one, it seems (aren't they all!). I have my usual three hours to myself at the carving bench in the morning - that's an invariable part of each day for me. Then, after lunch and a little napper, the boys from our publishing division will have the sound studio set up ready for me to record next Sunday's essay for 'A Story A Week', along with a half-dozen items for the next 'David's Choice' eBook. She gives me copies of the images, so that I can be thinking them over while carving.

Around three in the afternoon, we will have a Mokuhankan staff meeting, to review how the previous week's work has gone, and to go over the plans for next week, looking at potential new designs for publication, and whatever else they might have come up with. We'll also have to make a decision on whether to go ahead with another edition of the Hyakunin Isshu poets' series, as one of our gung-ho young sales guys has managed to get a major magazine to do a feature on the prints next month. Some of the blocks for that series are getting a bit old, and it might be time to have them re-cut. We're also expecting that sometime during the meeting there will be a Skype call from France, where one of the young printers is on holiday. She's combining a bit of business with her personal time off (in return for an air ticket!) and is trying to find a few new galleries/shops to carry our stuff. We're hoping she's found some good new partners for us! Our web guy has also asked to speak; I think he is going to ask that we hire him an assistant. I've expected this for a while, as he's been a bit overloaded with work on the updating of our tool supply shop website, and has had to postpone yet again some new additions to our online Library that I had wanted done.

After the meeting, I have to get over to the workshop; a couple of the young printers have been getting a bit restless with the jobs they have been assigned, and are itching to work on something a bit more complicated. I'll review their recent work and see if I can come up with something suitable for their current skill level. It shouldn't be too difficult to find something, as the list of 'stock is getting low' prints in our catalogue is a mile long! And we're going to have to figure out what to do about visitors/customers who keep interfering with the work by getting a bit too close. We thought we had their permitted 'walkway' through the shop clearly delineated, but it seems not, and we're probably going to have to build some low barriers to keep them from touching things.

I then have a meeting with the manager of our little Museum/Gallery. Last month we got lucky on Yahoo Auctions, as - after years of watching and waiting - he finally picked up the final two prints in the '36 Beauties' series by Mizuno Toshikata, and he is organizing a display of the now completed set. He wants us to prepare some suitable matching prints that would sell well in the demonstration corner. But the main purpose of our meeting will be to go over the design drawings for the new 'Get Close Up!' desks in the museum library. We're planning a row of these desks, which will look kind of like study carrels, but which will have transparent tops. The person will use an iPad-like device to browse our collection catalogue and select the print they want to see, and our girl on the other side will then fetch it from the storage units behind her, and slide it under the tabletop. The illumination is arranged so that the print will be beautifully shown under soft raking light, with the iPad giving information and background (including audio) on what is interesting about this particular print. We think this will be a perfect solution to the problem of how to allow good 'access' to these fragile materials.

After we do that, I'm going to drop a little bomb on him - I'm going to propose that we make a little alteration in the entrance fee. Instead of just being for 'entrance' on a single occasion, I want to make it so that it allows repeat entry (unlimited) for the rest of the following year - a One Year Pass, for the same price as a single admission! Let's do what we can to encourage them to make repeat visits to see the new stuff on display.

The last thing my assistant has on her clipboard for me today is a meeting with somebody from city hall; they want to see more details of our plan to knock a hole through the wall into the space we have rented in the building to our left. They are a bit nervous because of the problem we had last year with the building on the other side, when we 'opened up' our lunchroom as a public bakery/café, and ended up having lineups in the street of people wanting to buy our baren-shaped chocolate cookies, not to mention Dave's 'original recipe' muffins! This time we want to make the new space into a kind of playroom/daycare center; a couple of the girls working for us are 'getting on', and there is no way I want to lose them when they make that inevitable decision to have a baby. If we can give them some kind of reduced hours package, combined with this on-site care, we should be able to keep them with us. And what the hell, things here at Mokuhankan Central couldn't get much more chaotic anyway ...

And I forgot! This evening we're having our bi-weekly evening Professional Development get-together. Tonight's guest will be xxx-san, who retired as a printer some 15 years ago; he's going to give us a short presentation on what it was like working in the Yokoi workshop in the postwar years. After that it'll be the turn of one of our own young guys to do a 'Show & Tell' based on something he has studied up on recently. They hated doing this at first, but I forced them through it, and by now they are getting used to it, and some of them sometimes come up with an excellent presentation. (We video these, and they are all available on the Mokuhankan website for anybody to watch.) Then it'll be my turn, and if recent patterns are any guide, we'll end up in a free-for-all discussion about something that was in this morning's newspaper, nothing to do with printmaking at all! But it doesn't matter; they are learning how to think on their feet, form sound opinions, and express themselves ...

It's very satisfying to see how our Mokuhankan 'family' has grown over the past few years. Our biggest problem now is how to handle the stream of applications we have from young people wanting to join us; we've had a lot of publicity recently, and many of the stories focus on how this is such a fun place to work. Even though a lot of the work can be quite tedious, and the pay is certainly not the best in town, the 'vibe' here is pretty good, and these kids look forward to getting here every morning! Just like the boss!

* * *

Umm ... What was that? Sheesh, just one beer with dinner, and look at what spills out ...!

Added by: Mark Mason on October 27, 2010

Hi Dave...

You must feel better after getting that out.

I should have read the small print on that 'spare minute' firework: 'Light the blue touch paper and run like the clappers!'

You did come up with a real gem in the middle though - 'baren-shaped chocolate cookies' - fantastic.

I know exactly what you're saying though, being a one man shop focussed on paying bills myself.

You do more for all of us woodblock juniors than everyone else put together. I hope you realise I was pulling your leg a little.

I'll keep my eyes peeled for future job vacancies at Mokuhankan Inc. sounds like my kind of place.

I suppose old Boots-chan was too busy on the world tour promoting his biography and signing the movie deal to oversee the print production department.