First Impressions

I like to bring people into the room without explaining it and then see their reactions. Then I try to explain it and see the reaction to that. Having shown about 10 people so far, it's almost worth building it just to see the various responses.

I've got everything from laughing to staring to weirded out to wow this is awesome what is it.  Justin B saw it and when I explained what it was he asked if I needed content creators. YESSSSSSSSS!  I'm glad a not even half-baked prototype with a poor elevator pitch can inspire people to want to be involved.

So yeah, if you want to create content anyone... let's talk!

The current elevator pitch is something like: It's this room you go into, you have a bunch of experiences and then you leave enlightened.   Other suggestions??

All Benches Done. Speakers up next..

I got the third bench done and cleaned the space up some....looking good!

Next up is getting the 6 speaker surround sound up. The wires aren't long enough so I've got to see about getting extensions. Not sure if that will make the sounds quieter or not. 

Here you can see the front of the room. A speaker on each side, subwoofer in the middle and a center speaker. To put the small ones in the upper corners of the room I'm going to maybe need to build or get a thing to left up the subwoofer because it is attached via some weird cable to the left speaker and I'm not sure about extending that cable. Hope I can figure this one out quickly...  Also I have figured out how I will attached the speakers but that will come in a later post.

Screen up

With the help of my friend Emily Summerfield I got the white fabric up for the screen.

It had a bunch of folds and wrinkles when it arrived from UPS. I tested ironing them out but that took forever so I just through it in the washer and dryer and it came out much better. Here it is attached only at the top of the wall with staples. I'm sure I could get it flatter, but we're not going for perfection on the prototype here.... we're going for finished!

Two Benches Done

I got two benches made, but ran out of wood for the third. Went down to home depot and got some and left it like this.

Here's what it's looking like from the entrance. The rug was to protect the floor some, but it's adding some needed character.

sdf

Todo list

Here's the todo list for the week:

• Put the benches together (got the wood this weekend, waiting on amazon parts)
• Put the screen up
• Build projector holder (done)
• Put the sound system in (maybe.. not sure if it will work or what kind of cables I'll need)
• Meet with Christine Chen (done)
• Try some editing software
• Hang black plastic with lights on ceiling
• Get others to help (this week or next)
• Move more stuff out of the ER room into the living room or elsewhere (drums and keyboard #2, I'm looking at you...)
• Pull out the scripts and review them. Try not to cringe on how strange an idea this is. 
• Keep going.

Looking for help

Because I am doubting the revenue of the calendars this year, I really need to hustle on the eureka room and get it out there. I'm hoping to have a full prototype by the end of March, maybe April. The big question now is the films and how long those are going to take me to hack together.

There's a lot of stuff that needs done still and if anyone wants to help on any of it, I would love the help.  Areas include:

• Build out. Not just construction but decoration and ideas on construction.
• Music. At first I'll likely just find songs that seem to fit the scripts and see how that works, but if you want to write some instrumental music (on your own, since if I have to do it I'll just borrow recorded music) then great.
• Scripts. You can review mine or write your own.
• Figuring out where the hell we'll put this thing, how we will put it and what sorts of legal bs we have to deal with to get it out there.
• MORAL SUPPORT. If you just want to come by and hang out and tell me it's going to be awesome, that would be super helpful. This is a ridiculous idea in many ways and some days when I'm looking at the homemade plastic room thing I have in my house I just think.. ugh.
• Supplies. If you have some kind of interesting lights or chairs or something let me know.

Films

I met with my friend Christine Chen yesterday who owns a film production company called Moth to Flame. I asked her for some low-budget ideas on how to get some videos made fast and cheap, especially ones that will potentially need a lot of animated text. She gave me some good suggestions. I think no matter what I do, I'm going to have to learn some software. I'm not opposed to that but don't want to get too off in the weeds. Looks like adobe creative suite is the best bet to get the animation done, but to work it into imovie (which I know has animated text, but it's not enough for what I want to do). Going to be working on that this week.

Also, the bench parts and surround sound stuff is supposed to arrive today. Yay!

Projector Stand

The projector needs to be up high, so that if/when people stand up in the room, they don't get too much in the way of the projections. This requires it to be about 7 feet up, which I had a few different ideas for, including using a mic stand. I tried that but it was just to shaky.

Then I thought about building out a sort of tower to put it on, which then became just an extra wall on the back with a connecting "roof", but that seemed excessive. I came up with this solution which might not be the strongest, will work and is out of the way because I have limited space.

I love amazon

I had my friend Jen over to show off the porch out back that I had added. The door was open to the eureka room room and she asked what that was. So I had to let her into the room... After her initial wtf-is-this-mike reaction, which was mainly her just staring at me and laughing awkwardly for about ten minutes (probably wondering if I was going to murder her... the black plastic gives the room a more than slight ominous murder-room sort of feel), I explained the project.  She actually thought it was cool, so I'm adding her to the prototype guinea pig list.

She suggested bean bags instead of the benches that I had in mind to build (though no idea how to build) and also mentioned getting surround sound, covering the ceiling in black plastic and poking it with holes to look like stars (great idea) and some other ideas.  She also mentioned that I had a stud right in the middle of the entrance.

After she left, I got on amazon and found a cheap surround sound speaker set (6 speakers), some cheap fabric for a screen and then looked for bean bags. They are pricey, like $30 for a kids and $60 for an adult. So I looked for benches and found these awesome things:

http://amzn.to/MODl7q

You get 2 plastic frames, then you go to home depot and buy 2x4s and put it together. Genius.  I bought 3 pair. I hope to have 9-10 people in the room at once.

I originally was going to buy this movie screen fabric for $60, then one of the commenters said just get it from a fabric store. I found it on amazon as well and only spent $20. It might be a less good product, but this is a prototype after all...

I need to keep receipts and post the current expenses on this.

Monday I meet with Christine Chen to talk about cheap and fast ways to make the 25 short films I need to make for this thing. I'll probably just do a few and see how that goes first.

I need to set a goal of when this hits the streets. Or some milestones. I must get this out there this year, hopefully by summer.

Finished plasticing all walls

I got all 4 walls plastic'ed now and it looks pretty good and has a nice feel. The light is completely blocked out with simple 3.5 mil black plastic from home depot. It took 2 rolls at $10 each. Way cheaper than trying to get fabric, plus the width was 10 feet which matched the height of the room.



The photos and videos don't show it well but here's one:

 

Plastic walls

My friend Raj and I had tacos this morning. Afterward he came over and I showed him the project. He offered to help! Going to need to take people up on offers like that!

Worked on the walls that afternoon. Plastic seemed the cheapest way to create walls quickly for the prototype...

The living room is now the music room again.

Had to unmusic the music room some because it was getting crowded to work... still have some stuff in there:

But moved all this out to the living room. 

The funny thing is that I moved here to have a music room because I was tripping over my stuff in the living room in the last house. But once I had a music room I never went into it much and didn't play as much. Now that stuff is back in the way I know I'll be playing more. (And this post was written retroactively so I can say yes it's true I do!)

Framing out

Realized I bought 92" instead of 96" 2x4s. Means I can't frame out every 32" as planned and there's some extra space at the end. Given that I'm skipping every other stud in a standard frame, it's a little shaky.  Going to see if I get the size right before I make it sturdier.

Took me a couple hours to do just this. Was going to quit, but didn't want to go to bed having it look like such a lack of progress.  Ate some food and forced myself to get another wall up.  That only took about an hour. Came out pretty good. 

You can see the chairs where I'm testing the seating arrangement. Currently thinking 9-10 in a room might be good. The more people I have the less I have to charge, but the more people I have the less intimate it will be. This seems like a good starting point. Plus the model can be transitioned to a standard trailer.

Upcoming: 

- Getting it all black plastic'ed up so I can see what the shape will be.  

- Getting more shit out of the music room so I can move around.

- Thinking about enlisting help of friends that want to pitch in. My handyman skills are slowing me down. Hoping this blog might be a good place to get some suggestions from people.

First home depot run

Started the materials buying today. Jeff helped me pick up some of it in his truck. Started making space for it in the music room.  I don't hardly own any tools so had to buy a saw. Putting it together with deck screws so I can get it out of the room/house later if I need to disassemble it.