November 30, 2024 • 34 mins
In this episode, Jose and Laurel talk about how negative things can make it hard to be creative, and some of the ways combat that. They also discuss the expansion of their recording area and their new teleprompters. Plus, they give an update on a big milestone for their company: submitting their application for an Epic MegaGrant.
Teleprompter: GVM TQ-L Teleprompter from Procam
Software: PromptSmart Pro for iPad
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Laurel?
(00:01):
Yes?
I don't feel like working.
Okay, let's talk.
All right, hey, welcome to our podcast.
So one of the things is that we've tried
to utter our podcast to rss.com.
Yes.
And so you might be listening to it from there, I think,
and funny thing, Laurel can tell you what happened with that.
(00:25):
Yeah, well, I've never been good at those
are you a robot things,
but this time it was just a checkbox and I still failed.
And they thought that we were spam.
So they froze the account while I was in the middle
of trying to set it up.
And so I wrote them and was like,
I don't know what happened.
Maybe it just timed out.
And they were like, nope, our computer flagged you as spam.
(00:47):
I'm like, okay.
They said, tell us a little bit about your podcast.
So I did.
And they said, oh, you're fine.
You're good to go.
I'm like, yeah, okay.
So we're gonna start posting our episodes to rss.com
and see how that goes.
And today is November 6th, 2024.
Yes, it is.
A couple of things came to mind.
(01:09):
One is it's the day after the election.
And I have something to say about that, not political.
So if you are on either side,
if you're on either side, do not worry.
This is, you know, our goal with this podcast
is not to be political in any way.
Our content is for everybody.
(01:30):
And number two, I don't know if we have ever gone back
and said what we do, like what our business is
and why we're talking about creative stuff
and any of that stuff.
I think we did talk about that.
Okay, we'll have to review a little bit,
maybe, you know, back some episodes
(01:51):
and see what we talked about.
But.
Yeah.
But the thing that I thought about
in the related to the election
is that obviously there is a big portion of this country
that didn't get the outcome they wanted from the election.
(02:15):
And because of that, I know that there is, you know,
people get depressed, you know.
If it didn't go their way.
And I realized that there are certain things
that make it less likely for you to want to be creative.
And I think certain life events,
(02:38):
like I remember being in a workshop one time
where the author, you know, it was a famous author,
was saying, you know, if you wanna be a successful writer,
stay married, you know.
And, you know, he was married, he happened to be married.
(02:58):
And I think what he was saying,
and he explained it a little bit, was that
when you go through something like divorce or, you know,
maybe there's a loss in your family or friends or whatever,
it's just incredibly hard to be creative.
(03:19):
You know, there's.
Yeah, whenever you're dealing with a lot of stress, you know,
any kind of a change, then it can be hard to be creative
because then you're worried about the future.
And to get into a creative space,
you have to be able to let go of, you know,
what's going on around you and focus on your work.
(03:42):
And it can be really hard to do that
if life is super stressful.
And we've had situations where, you know,
whether it's money that you're worried about,
or I know that there are certain jobs that I've had
where all my creative juices are just gone
because, you know, it's a stressful situation during work.
(04:05):
Especially if it's, you know, negative stressful.
I mean, even positive stressful, like, you know,
if you're heading up to a wedding or, you know,
looking forward to something important that's big,
even if it's good, it can be distracting.
But if you're worried about something
or dealing with something negative, even more so,
it just sucks the creative juice right out of you.
(04:28):
And some people I think are good at turning, you know,
things that happen that are bad into, you know,
that's how they get their ideas, for example.
But we have found that boring sometimes is better, right,
for creative things.
Like, it's a funny thing, but if I'm driving somewhere,
(04:49):
and especially if I know the path,
so I don't have to think about where I need to turn
or pay attention to the things
because the car is almost an autopilot
as far as my mind goes,
that's where I get my best ideas a lot of times.
Right, and I think that's why a lot of people talk
about getting ideas in the shower
(05:10):
because you don't have to think.
You know how to wash yourself, you know,
and you don't have to think.
You know how to wash yourself, you know,
and so then your brain is just sort of free
to come up with ideas.
It's like my brain has multiple things going on
at the same time.
And one of the things is just worrying about life.
(05:31):
And of course, that one is really hard
to shut down certain times,
but certain times it's just like,
I get used to like worrying about,
okay, where are the kids right now?
What is, you know, what are we gonna have for dinner?
What are we going to, you know,
how are we gonna pay this bill and that bill and whatever?
And if I don't shut that down,
(05:54):
then my creative thread can't go on.
And so I shut it down by doing things
like driving somewhere or like exercising
or, you know, things that I'm like,
okay, I'm here, I'm stuck.
I don't have to worry about all those other things.
(06:14):
Because I can't do anything about them now.
I can't do anything about them right now.
And that allows my creative juices to flow.
And what's interesting is, I mean,
those stressful times in your life often
are the fodder that the stories come from.
But when you're in the middle of them,
(06:34):
it's normally not a good time to try and be creative.
And so, you know, we've kind of laughed
because for a long time when Jose started writing stories,
all of his stories were fish out of water stories.
And a lot of that probably went back to
moving from Puerto Rico to Michigan.
(06:55):
That's right.
When he was a freshman in high school.
And so even though they were, you know,
fantasy stories or sci-fi stories and crazy funny plots,
a lot of it went back to that.
But he wasn't writing it in the middle of that, right?
This is a few decades later.
Yeah, that would have been really hard.
Especially because I couldn't write in English yet.
(07:16):
But yes, it is the same idea.
And I think it's particularly difficult after an election,
at least this is, you know, for me,
because whether you, you know,
if you're on the losing side, for example,
some of your identity is wrapped around your choices
(07:39):
for, you know, who you vote for.
Like you think of yourself one way, you know,
and this is gonna be sound really silly,
but I'm gonna use the example of sports, you know,
because there was a time that our team was losing
and you can really wrap yourself around sports.
(08:03):
And I think that's the same thing with politics
to the point where you're like identify with your team.
And if you are a loser, you know, a losing,
in the losing team, then you,
your tendency is to feel like that's me, you know,
I lost, I don't know why you're kind of
maybe laughing at that.
(08:25):
But there was a time with our team
where I was just like, I don't get it.
You know, we try, we have one of the best coaches,
we have some of the best players,
and yet no matter what we do, we are always losing, you know?
Yeah, I think, I mean, there is some of that identity.
(08:49):
The team that we root for has historically been a good team.
And so some of that is like, wait a minute, who am I?
If we're losing now.
Right.
And some of it, you know, going back to elections,
whether your side wins or loses, that change,
if there's a change of administration,
(09:11):
there is that uncertainty, what does this mean?
What's gonna change?
What's gonna change?
And you almost have to redefine yourself,
is what I think, like in your mind,
because so much of your creativity
and is about who you are.
And you have to like separate, I think, yourself from that
(09:32):
and say, you know, I'm still trying to create things
that are family friendly, that are, you know,
positive, funny, you know.
And humor horror.
Humor horror.
I'm still trying to entertain people, no matter who it is,
no matter what you think the election says
(09:56):
about our country or not, or whatever,
you can separate yourself and say, no, this is who I am.
I'm gonna continue going forward, you know,
writing my material and doing whatever, you know.
Because in the end, other than placing your vote, right,
(10:19):
which takes 10 minutes or something,
not including time in line or whatever,
but you don't have detailed control over the politics.
And so once you've voted,
you can really just put it behind you and say, okay,
(10:40):
whatever happened, happened, the rest of it, you know,
good or bad has nothing to do with me.
And so now I just need to live my life and see, you know,
yeah, there's another administration change.
What does that mean?
I don't know, but we'll find out.
And in the meantime, let's, you know, let's get this done.
(11:00):
But just like with sports, it is really hard because you,
and you don't want to get wrapped up, you know,
it seems silly to get wrapped up in sports, you know,
or whatever.
I don't know, growing up in my household, it was not silly.
It was very much identity.
Right, you have your identity, you have your team,
(11:22):
even though you're not out there actually playing
or anything, you know, and I'm using sports
because we really don't want to talk politics.
You know, we want this to be a friendly environment
where everybody can listen to it.
But especially after, you know, an election time,
(11:43):
you feel like, wait, what is, you know,
am I still the same that I was before, the day before?
You know, yes, I'm still the same person.
Am I going to still create stuff?
Yes.
I know a few years back with our team, it was weird
because I mean, it wasn't even just the identity.
(12:06):
It was the depression.
Yeah, yeah, there is, it's a really silly thing again,
you know, where you're like, you know,
we went to the same school, we were like cheering
for our team and so much of your identity, you know,
is again, I keep apologizing because it seems silly,
(12:26):
but so much of your identity has to do
with the college you went to.
Yeah, if you're, you know, if you're into sports
or if depending, you know, whatever you're really into,
you can get your identity tied up into external things
that you have no control over.
I don't control who the coach is.
(12:49):
I don't control which players get injured.
I don't control how good they are.
I don't control the recruiting.
I don't control their schedule.
I don't control what the pundits say about them.
You know, never, you know, it'll never be that they will go
and look at the cameras and say, you,
we need you for this next play.
(13:11):
No, all I'm doing is sitting on a couch, you know,
cheering with some friends and eating some chips
or whatever, but it could be anything.
It could be like a scandal at your school, let's say.
You know, you graduated from a university
and now they found out that, you know,
some evil coach was doing something or some professor.
(13:34):
Or lately it seems like a lot of doctors
that work with schools are doing awful things.
Yeah, they're doing awful things.
And now you realize that part of your identity
is wrapped up on the fact that you went to that school
and it just brings you down.
Like it just makes you depressed.
Like you're walking around and it's like, oh my gosh,
(13:56):
you know, yeah, I went to the same school.
You know, I might've even known some of the people.
Oh my goodness, you know.
And that whole thing kills creativity so easily.
You know, like you're like, all of a sudden,
am I writing the same jokes the next day?
You know, like, am I, who is even my target audience now?
(14:18):
You know, like.
And certainly, as we mentioned at the beginning,
much more serious things have a much more serious impact.
I mean, if your family, you know, someone in your family
is dealing with health issues,
it can make it almost impossible to separate yourself
from your concerns and focus on your writing,
(14:42):
you know, whether it's for scripts or stories or whatever,
or if there are some serious financial things
going on with you or even with a family member,
that can make it really hard,
even if you can't help the family member
or even more so if you're trying to make a decision.
You know, what am I going to do to change the situation?
(15:07):
It can make it hard to work.
And if your financial situation is based on your creativity,
then that's a real problem.
But even if it's not directly,
even if you're still working a day job like Jose is,
and then trying to be creative on top of it,
then that exhaustion of dealing with the stress and the work
(15:32):
and trying to be creative
can just make it all seem so impossible.
Yeah, so I'm sitting here thinking about practicals,
you know, like if I had to make myself a list.
And sometimes, you know, I want you guys to know that
we're not experts, we're learning this stuff as we go along.
(15:53):
You know, we are involved on a day-to-day business
of being creative.
But sometimes, you know, this is like our therapy,
you know, talking out loud about it.
But, you know, I think one thing to remember is like,
boring is good for creativity.
(16:15):
I mean, honestly, a lot of times,
you know, I'm sitting in a boring meeting,
you know, let's say, during work,
and I get all these ideas, you know,
and the meeting doesn't require me to, you know, again,
it's shutting down that the worry thread
(16:36):
and all that stuff that's running in your brain
so that your creative side can come up.
But also realizing that while you're going through it,
while you're going through the experience,
hey, this is gonna be material for later,
but right now, you sort of have to give yourself permission
to, whether it's to grieve or to be depressed,
(16:59):
it's one of those times where you're like,
what am I, you know, who am I?
I haven't changed, you know, from day to,
from one day to the next.
I'm still the same person.
I'm just going through the situation right now
and I'm going to absorb it,
and I just know it's gonna be material for later.
(17:19):
But also getting away from it so it doesn't absorb
your whole brain.
Right, if you can, yeah.
Yeah, well, mentally, you have to get away
from everything at times.
I mean, whether it's, you know, giving yourself
a dopamine burst by getting in some exercise
or just walking in nature or, you know,
(17:42):
you have to refill your tank or you will burn out.
You cannot always focus on the negative things
in your life because even if it's something
that you need to make a decision about,
you can't constantly be focusing on that.
You have to give your brain a break.
Yeah, totally agree.
(18:03):
And then knowing that you're going to use that,
that's going to change you in some way,
that it's going to help you with it,
and then later you're going to be able to,
you know, capitalize, do the boring thing
in life again.
Hopefully your life will get to a point
where it's boring, the money's actually,
(18:26):
you know, whether you have a good job or not,
you at least have some money coming in,
you at least know where food is coming,
and all those things.
And, you know, and that allows your brain
to actually relax and start thinking
of creative things that you can do.
(18:52):
Yeah, and so sometimes, you know,
what you can do when you can't write is you can read,
or, you know, watch something or listen to something
that, you know, helps both with handling
whatever you're going through,
but also that will give your brain a break
so that you can keep mentally healthy so that later on.
(19:15):
And it just, it feeds your creativity,
it feeds your well of language and of people.
I mean, you know, getting outside of your own head
is the best thing you can do creatively most of the time,
because unless you're just writing memoirs,
and I think probably even then,
(19:36):
you don't want to only see things
from your own point of view.
You have to be aware enough of other people
and of other perspectives to write good stories.
Okay, so we're still figuring out our format here,
but part of what we want to do with this podcast
is talk about gear as well, you know,
(20:01):
things that we're using and maybe give a status
on what's happening right now with the studio.
Right, yeah, we actually made some changes recently.
We put up a larger area with the sound curtains around.
(20:23):
It lets us both get in there and record at the same time
before we were planning to do most of our recording
one at a time.
And then we saw a bunch of videos where,
who was it, Pixar?
Who tends to record in pairs?
And they were talking about how much better
and more natural the dialogue comes out that way.
(20:47):
And so we set it up so that we can both do our audio,
record our audio at the same time.
Yeah, that way we can see each other.
And I think it helps.
We haven't recorded an official session,
but we did a little bit of a practice
and I could tell right away that I just like recording,
(21:09):
not by myself.
I do not like creative things where I'm by myself
in a room or in an enclosed space
and I have to be creative without sharing the experience
with someone else, I guess that's what it is.
Yeah, even if the other person is just on the other side
of the curtain hitting record,
(21:30):
it just, almost everything that we are recording
is someone else interacting.
I mean, they're fictional, but it's,
we're recording interactions, it's hard to do that
without having interactions.
It's, right, it's conversations.
And so one of the pieces of gear that I actually
was thinking of talking about today,
(21:51):
and I guess I'll just go ahead and talk about it,
is our teleprompter.
You know, it doesn't seem like a big thing.
Actually, you know, we'll put the name of it on the notes,
you know, that's what everybody says.
Right.
But one thing we discovered, which is kind of cool,
(22:13):
if you ever, if you're into doing facial mocap,
we use our iPhones to capture our faces.
The iPhones run a program that uses the LiDAR,
I think is what they call it.
The LiDAR is like this laser technology
that hits your face and finds bones and expressions.
(22:34):
It's basically sonar with light instead of sound.
With light, yeah.
This is not a technical podcast for,
at least not for something.
And what we wanted to know was,
can we put that behind the glass of the teleprompter,
because we need to be able to look straight into the phone
(22:58):
to be able to get the facial, you know, capture.
And at the same time, we need to be able to see the video,
the reference video that we use,
that tells us which lines we have to say.
So a reference video is basically a video recording
of the scene we're going to do with captions
(23:21):
in different colors for each of us.
And so the teleprompter has a hole in the back of it
where you can fit a camera.
And so we stick our phone in there as the camera.
And then we have an iPad with the reference video.
And so we play the reference video
(23:42):
and we record on the computer
with the information from the phone.
Before we were trying to view the reference videos
on a screen behind the microphone.
And what ends up happening is that your eyes
look at the text.
And so you're not looking straight into the phone
(24:05):
that is capturing your face.
Right.
But now that we're using the teleprompter.
You're looking straight at it.
You're looking straight at it.
Yeah, and I mean, it seems small
because you're just looking slightly above the other way.
But you notice it in the characters,
the eyes are always slightly off.
Slightly off.
And so that was a cool thing
(24:26):
that I wanted to share with people
because of the fact that we didn't realize
that it would work, but we just tried it.
We put the phone that captures our faces behind,
you know, in the spot where the camera would go,
which is behind the teleprompter.
And it works.
The lighter goes right through it.
Yeah, we weren't sure if the lighter would, you know,
(24:47):
bounce back and say there is no face there.
We just have a flat piece of glass,
but it goes right through it.
It's very cool.
So now we put the microphone on top of the teleprompter.
And you know, it works.
And we can use the teleprompter for other things.
We're recording Laurel's book, for example.
(25:08):
Right.
And the software we're using is Smart.
Prompt Smart Pro, I believe.
Yes.
And it's got this really cool feature
where it hears your audio, hears what you're saying,
and scrolls the text automatically.
Yes.
And this is for the iPad.
It reverses the text also.
(25:29):
So it's pretty cool.
It is pretty cool.
It's funny because sometimes when we're doing
the reference videos, occasionally it won't notice
when you say a line.
And so when we're recording for our mocap, facial mocap,
(25:50):
sometimes we do extra takes because we're like,
okay, it's not scrolling.
I haven't memorized the whole thing.
Sometimes we have to say, hey, I said this line,
so that it will automatically scroll.
But it's pretty cool because sometimes I noticed today,
I sort of jumped a paragraph and it found the text,
(26:12):
where I was, and scrolled it to that position.
So that's great, and that worked out.
Anyway, teleprompters work for facial capture.
They do, and they make it a lot easier.
Also separating facial capture from body mocap
(26:32):
makes life much simpler.
Okay, a quick update on our journey
with Bacon Wrapped Avocado.
The company that we do animation for, that we own,
is called Bacon Wrapped Avocado.
And we just had a really big milestone.
Yeah, last week we finally turned in an application
(26:55):
for a big grant that we're hoping to get.
So that has been one of our goals since we started,
was to get enough done to have a demo of our application
and a video demonstrating our demo.
We have been working on those two things, the demo,
(27:17):
which is basically our application
that we're trying to complete and lets us,
it's like a movie player, I guess.
Yeah, so in that case, application refers to app,
for the MediQuest headset.
We have an app that will play our movies.
And so our team of four have been working on this,
(27:40):
not only that, but actually showing an episode.
So we've put together an episode.
And then, yes, we had to build, you know,
make a video showing our application,
which in itself is very difficult,
because getting footage from inside the application
in a way that can be seen in a VR headset is complicated.
(28:05):
Right, so if we had wanted to make a flat demo video,
that would have been much easier.
But since our whole product is focused on, you know,
the 3D aspect being integral and necessary,
you know, not just having gimmicks
where something flies at your face or something,
(28:27):
but you actually being in the movie
and being able to, in our application,
move around in the movie,
we wanted even the video to give at least some of that.
Now in the video, you can't move around,
so we do have some cuts.
But we did find a tool that lets us make 3D videos
(28:48):
inside the Unreal Engine environment.
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
It's basically like, you know,
you're going inside the virtual reality world
and putting a camera inside that can shoot 360 3D videos.
And from that, you actually record
(29:10):
as if you were inside the, anyway, it's sort of-
It's complicated.
It's very complicated.
And then we had to have our Unreal developer
do some special things to try and record the heads-up display,
so that you could record the menus,
because that's the sort of thing
(29:30):
that you normally can't see, you know, a player's menu.
So even the little camera we put inside the environment
was not recording specific player's menus.
So then we had to get footage of that.
And it was actually a good learning experience
to get through all those hoops
and make a good demonstration video.
(29:51):
So we had to create the application,
create the content for the application,
create the video showing.
All those things have taken us close to three years of work
while we're doing our own, you know, jobs and family.
Everybody's working part-time on the project
(30:13):
and doing other things.
But the four of us stuck with it,
and we finally got something out.
So now we need to wait about 90 days
to find out whether-
It's a yes or a no?
Yeah.
And, you know, either way,
we're gonna wanna try and raise some more money
(30:34):
from other sources,
but it would certainly be a nice validation
as we go to other places to be able to say, you know,
well, we have this one and this is significant.
Somebody believes in this project,
so now, you know, do you wanna be a part of it?
And it becomes more of an invitation.
(30:54):
We're doing something awesome.
And even in this, we were trying to express that,
that this really is a very cool project
and to invite other people to be part of it
as opposed to, you know,
begging for money to allow us to do it.
It's part of selling the project is believing in it.
And when you believe in it,
(31:15):
then you realize that allowing people to invest in it
is an opportunity for them.
But this ties back into the topic at the beginning
because I think asking for money for your project
and worrying about money is one of those things
(31:36):
that affects your creativity.
You know, like I've noticed, at least for me,
you are, you go in a different mode, you know,
when you think, oh, you know,
how are we gonna fund this project?
That's a worry that you're not creating content
around the same time.
(31:57):
You know, you're, maybe you are for the sake of promoting it,
you know, that's a little bit of creating content,
but you're definitely not in the state of mind
where your like ideas are flowing
because you're spending the time worrying about
how to actually fund the project.
(32:19):
I think that's one of the hard things in, you know,
being an entrepreneur in a small business
is switching from, you know, administrative or marketing
into creative and for me,
particularly from marketing into creative
because marketing is not something I'm naturally good at
(32:42):
and there's a lot of things that you can do
and a lot of research you can do
and a lot of things that need to be done
and for me, that's just stress
and so I can like lose myself for like a week,
just getting bent out of shape, worrying about marketing,
trying to figure out things about marketing,
(33:02):
trying to find platforms for marketing, you know,
and then I'm like, okay, well,
now I haven't done anything creative for like five days
because what I've been doing is trying to make
these little ads that all suck
or at least appear to you
because they're completely ineffective,
(33:23):
which I don't know how else you would judge them
and it just tears me up and so then, you know,
trying to come back and say, no,
marketing may not be my thing,
but I can be creative, we can do this,
trying to focus back on that.
I think we should definitely have like the beginning
maybe of our next podcast talking about business and art,
(33:47):
you know, and art and how they're in conflict sometimes,
you know, I think that's a pretty good topic.
Yeah, and people talk a lot about work-life balance,
but within your work, right,
you have to have a business creativity balance.
Yes, right.
All right, well, I think I need to get back to work.
(34:07):
All right.
Laurel?
(00:01):
Yes?
I don't feel like working.
Okay, let's talk.
All right, hey, welcome to our podcast.
So one of the things is that we've tried
to utter our podcast to rss.com.
Yes.
And so you might be listening to it from there, I think,
and funny thing, Laurel can tell you what happened with that.
(00:25):
Yeah, well, I've never been good at those
are you a robot things,
but this time it was just a checkbox and I still failed.
And they thought that we were spam.
So they froze the account while I was in the middle
of trying to set it up.
And so I wrote them and was like,
I don't know what happened.
Maybe it just timed out.
And they were like, nope, our computer flagged you as spam.
(00:47):
I'm like, okay.
They said, tell us a little bit about your podcast.
So I did.
And they said, oh, you're fine.
You're good to go.
I'm like, yeah, okay.
So we're gonna start posting our episodes to rss.com
and see how that goes.
And today is November 6th, 2024.
Yes, it is.
A couple of things came to mind.
(01:09):
One is it's the day after the election.
And I have something to say about that, not political.
So if you are on either side,
if you're on either side, do not worry.
This is, you know, our goal with this podcast
is not to be political in any way.
Our content is for everybody.
(01:30):
And number two, I don't know if we have ever gone back
and said what we do, like what our business is
and why we're talking about creative stuff
and any of that stuff.
I think we did talk about that.
Okay, we'll have to review a little bit,
maybe, you know, back some episodes
(01:51):
and see what we talked about.
But.
Yeah.
But the thing that I thought about
in the related to the election
is that obviously there is a big portion of this country
that didn't get the outcome they wanted from the election.
(02:15):
And because of that, I know that there is, you know,
people get depressed, you know.
If it didn't go their way.
And I realized that there are certain things
that make it less likely for you to want to be creative.
And I think certain life events,
(02:38):
like I remember being in a workshop one time
where the author, you know, it was a famous author,
was saying, you know, if you wanna be a successful writer,
stay married, you know.
And, you know, he was married, he happened to be married.
(02:58):
And I think what he was saying,
and he explained it a little bit, was that
when you go through something like divorce or, you know,
maybe there's a loss in your family or friends or whatever,
it's just incredibly hard to be creative.
(03:19):
You know, there's.
Yeah, whenever you're dealing with a lot of stress, you know,
any kind of a change, then it can be hard to be creative
because then you're worried about the future.
And to get into a creative space,
you have to be able to let go of, you know,
what's going on around you and focus on your work.
(03:42):
And it can be really hard to do that
if life is super stressful.
And we've had situations where, you know,
whether it's money that you're worried about,
or I know that there are certain jobs that I've had
where all my creative juices are just gone
because, you know, it's a stressful situation during work.
(04:05):
Especially if it's, you know, negative stressful.
I mean, even positive stressful, like, you know,
if you're heading up to a wedding or, you know,
looking forward to something important that's big,
even if it's good, it can be distracting.
But if you're worried about something
or dealing with something negative, even more so,
it just sucks the creative juice right out of you.
(04:28):
And some people I think are good at turning, you know,
things that happen that are bad into, you know,
that's how they get their ideas, for example.
But we have found that boring sometimes is better, right,
for creative things.
Like, it's a funny thing, but if I'm driving somewhere,
(04:49):
and especially if I know the path,
so I don't have to think about where I need to turn
or pay attention to the things
because the car is almost an autopilot
as far as my mind goes,
that's where I get my best ideas a lot of times.
Right, and I think that's why a lot of people talk
about getting ideas in the shower
(05:10):
because you don't have to think.
You know how to wash yourself, you know,
and you don't have to think.
You know how to wash yourself, you know,
and so then your brain is just sort of free
to come up with ideas.
It's like my brain has multiple things going on
at the same time.
And one of the things is just worrying about life.
(05:31):
And of course, that one is really hard
to shut down certain times,
but certain times it's just like,
I get used to like worrying about,
okay, where are the kids right now?
What is, you know, what are we gonna have for dinner?
What are we going to, you know,
how are we gonna pay this bill and that bill and whatever?
And if I don't shut that down,
(05:54):
then my creative thread can't go on.
And so I shut it down by doing things
like driving somewhere or like exercising
or, you know, things that I'm like,
okay, I'm here, I'm stuck.
I don't have to worry about all those other things.
(06:14):
Because I can't do anything about them now.
I can't do anything about them right now.
And that allows my creative juices to flow.
And what's interesting is, I mean,
those stressful times in your life often
are the fodder that the stories come from.
But when you're in the middle of them,
(06:34):
it's normally not a good time to try and be creative.
And so, you know, we've kind of laughed
because for a long time when Jose started writing stories,
all of his stories were fish out of water stories.
And a lot of that probably went back to
moving from Puerto Rico to Michigan.
(06:55):
That's right.
When he was a freshman in high school.
And so even though they were, you know,
fantasy stories or sci-fi stories and crazy funny plots,
a lot of it went back to that.
But he wasn't writing it in the middle of that, right?
This is a few decades later.
Yeah, that would have been really hard.
Especially because I couldn't write in English yet.
(07:16):
But yes, it is the same idea.
And I think it's particularly difficult after an election,
at least this is, you know, for me,
because whether you, you know,
if you're on the losing side, for example,
some of your identity is wrapped around your choices
(07:39):
for, you know, who you vote for.
Like you think of yourself one way, you know,
and this is gonna be sound really silly,
but I'm gonna use the example of sports, you know,
because there was a time that our team was losing
and you can really wrap yourself around sports.
(08:03):
And I think that's the same thing with politics
to the point where you're like identify with your team.
And if you are a loser, you know, a losing,
in the losing team, then you,
your tendency is to feel like that's me, you know,
I lost, I don't know why you're kind of
maybe laughing at that.
(08:25):
But there was a time with our team
where I was just like, I don't get it.
You know, we try, we have one of the best coaches,
we have some of the best players,
and yet no matter what we do, we are always losing, you know?
Yeah, I think, I mean, there is some of that identity.
(08:49):
The team that we root for has historically been a good team.
And so some of that is like, wait a minute, who am I?
If we're losing now.
Right.
And some of it, you know, going back to elections,
whether your side wins or loses, that change,
if there's a change of administration,
(09:11):
there is that uncertainty, what does this mean?
What's gonna change?
What's gonna change?
And you almost have to redefine yourself,
is what I think, like in your mind,
because so much of your creativity
and is about who you are.
And you have to like separate, I think, yourself from that
(09:32):
and say, you know, I'm still trying to create things
that are family friendly, that are, you know,
positive, funny, you know.
And humor horror.
Humor horror.
I'm still trying to entertain people, no matter who it is,
no matter what you think the election says
(09:56):
about our country or not, or whatever,
you can separate yourself and say, no, this is who I am.
I'm gonna continue going forward, you know,
writing my material and doing whatever, you know.
Because in the end, other than placing your vote, right,
(10:19):
which takes 10 minutes or something,
not including time in line or whatever,
but you don't have detailed control over the politics.
And so once you've voted,
you can really just put it behind you and say, okay,
(10:40):
whatever happened, happened, the rest of it, you know,
good or bad has nothing to do with me.
And so now I just need to live my life and see, you know,
yeah, there's another administration change.
What does that mean?
I don't know, but we'll find out.
And in the meantime, let's, you know, let's get this done.
(11:00):
But just like with sports, it is really hard because you,
and you don't want to get wrapped up, you know,
it seems silly to get wrapped up in sports, you know,
or whatever.
I don't know, growing up in my household, it was not silly.
It was very much identity.
Right, you have your identity, you have your team,
(11:22):
even though you're not out there actually playing
or anything, you know, and I'm using sports
because we really don't want to talk politics.
You know, we want this to be a friendly environment
where everybody can listen to it.
But especially after, you know, an election time,
(11:43):
you feel like, wait, what is, you know,
am I still the same that I was before, the day before?
You know, yes, I'm still the same person.
Am I going to still create stuff?
Yes.
I know a few years back with our team, it was weird
because I mean, it wasn't even just the identity.
(12:06):
It was the depression.
Yeah, yeah, there is, it's a really silly thing again,
you know, where you're like, you know,
we went to the same school, we were like cheering
for our team and so much of your identity, you know,
is again, I keep apologizing because it seems silly,
(12:26):
but so much of your identity has to do
with the college you went to.
Yeah, if you're, you know, if you're into sports
or if depending, you know, whatever you're really into,
you can get your identity tied up into external things
that you have no control over.
I don't control who the coach is.
(12:49):
I don't control which players get injured.
I don't control how good they are.
I don't control the recruiting.
I don't control their schedule.
I don't control what the pundits say about them.
You know, never, you know, it'll never be that they will go
and look at the cameras and say, you,
we need you for this next play.
(13:11):
No, all I'm doing is sitting on a couch, you know,
cheering with some friends and eating some chips
or whatever, but it could be anything.
It could be like a scandal at your school, let's say.
You know, you graduated from a university
and now they found out that, you know,
some evil coach was doing something or some professor.
(13:34):
Or lately it seems like a lot of doctors
that work with schools are doing awful things.
Yeah, they're doing awful things.
And now you realize that part of your identity
is wrapped up on the fact that you went to that school
and it just brings you down.
Like it just makes you depressed.
Like you're walking around and it's like, oh my gosh,
(13:56):
you know, yeah, I went to the same school.
You know, I might've even known some of the people.
Oh my goodness, you know.
And that whole thing kills creativity so easily.
You know, like you're like, all of a sudden,
am I writing the same jokes the next day?
You know, like, am I, who is even my target audience now?
(14:18):
You know, like.
And certainly, as we mentioned at the beginning,
much more serious things have a much more serious impact.
I mean, if your family, you know, someone in your family
is dealing with health issues,
it can make it almost impossible to separate yourself
from your concerns and focus on your writing,
(14:42):
you know, whether it's for scripts or stories or whatever,
or if there are some serious financial things
going on with you or even with a family member,
that can make it really hard,
even if you can't help the family member
or even more so if you're trying to make a decision.
You know, what am I going to do to change the situation?
(15:07):
It can make it hard to work.
And if your financial situation is based on your creativity,
then that's a real problem.
But even if it's not directly,
even if you're still working a day job like Jose is,
and then trying to be creative on top of it,
then that exhaustion of dealing with the stress and the work
(15:32):
and trying to be creative
can just make it all seem so impossible.
Yeah, so I'm sitting here thinking about practicals,
you know, like if I had to make myself a list.
And sometimes, you know, I want you guys to know that
we're not experts, we're learning this stuff as we go along.
(15:53):
You know, we are involved on a day-to-day business
of being creative.
But sometimes, you know, this is like our therapy,
you know, talking out loud about it.
But, you know, I think one thing to remember is like,
boring is good for creativity.
(16:15):
I mean, honestly, a lot of times,
you know, I'm sitting in a boring meeting,
you know, let's say, during work,
and I get all these ideas, you know,
and the meeting doesn't require me to, you know, again,
it's shutting down that the worry thread
(16:36):
and all that stuff that's running in your brain
so that your creative side can come up.
But also realizing that while you're going through it,
while you're going through the experience,
hey, this is gonna be material for later,
but right now, you sort of have to give yourself permission
to, whether it's to grieve or to be depressed,
(16:59):
it's one of those times where you're like,
what am I, you know, who am I?
I haven't changed, you know, from day to,
from one day to the next.
I'm still the same person.
I'm just going through the situation right now
and I'm going to absorb it,
and I just know it's gonna be material for later.
(17:19):
But also getting away from it so it doesn't absorb
your whole brain.
Right, if you can, yeah.
Yeah, well, mentally, you have to get away
from everything at times.
I mean, whether it's, you know, giving yourself
a dopamine burst by getting in some exercise
or just walking in nature or, you know,
(17:42):
you have to refill your tank or you will burn out.
You cannot always focus on the negative things
in your life because even if it's something
that you need to make a decision about,
you can't constantly be focusing on that.
You have to give your brain a break.
Yeah, totally agree.
(18:03):
And then knowing that you're going to use that,
that's going to change you in some way,
that it's going to help you with it,
and then later you're going to be able to,
you know, capitalize, do the boring thing
in life again.
Hopefully your life will get to a point
where it's boring, the money's actually,
(18:26):
you know, whether you have a good job or not,
you at least have some money coming in,
you at least know where food is coming,
and all those things.
And, you know, and that allows your brain
to actually relax and start thinking
of creative things that you can do.
(18:52):
Yeah, and so sometimes, you know,
what you can do when you can't write is you can read,
or, you know, watch something or listen to something
that, you know, helps both with handling
whatever you're going through,
but also that will give your brain a break
so that you can keep mentally healthy so that later on.
(19:15):
And it just, it feeds your creativity,
it feeds your well of language and of people.
I mean, you know, getting outside of your own head
is the best thing you can do creatively most of the time,
because unless you're just writing memoirs,
and I think probably even then,
(19:36):
you don't want to only see things
from your own point of view.
You have to be aware enough of other people
and of other perspectives to write good stories.
Okay, so we're still figuring out our format here,
but part of what we want to do with this podcast
is talk about gear as well, you know,
(20:01):
things that we're using and maybe give a status
on what's happening right now with the studio.
Right, yeah, we actually made some changes recently.
We put up a larger area with the sound curtains around.
(20:23):
It lets us both get in there and record at the same time
before we were planning to do most of our recording
one at a time.
And then we saw a bunch of videos where,
who was it, Pixar?
Who tends to record in pairs?
And they were talking about how much better
and more natural the dialogue comes out that way.
(20:47):
And so we set it up so that we can both do our audio,
record our audio at the same time.
Yeah, that way we can see each other.
And I think it helps.
We haven't recorded an official session,
but we did a little bit of a practice
and I could tell right away that I just like recording,
(21:09):
not by myself.
I do not like creative things where I'm by myself
in a room or in an enclosed space
and I have to be creative without sharing the experience
with someone else, I guess that's what it is.
Yeah, even if the other person is just on the other side
of the curtain hitting record,
(21:30):
it just, almost everything that we are recording
is someone else interacting.
I mean, they're fictional, but it's,
we're recording interactions, it's hard to do that
without having interactions.
It's, right, it's conversations.
And so one of the pieces of gear that I actually
was thinking of talking about today,
(21:51):
and I guess I'll just go ahead and talk about it,
is our teleprompter.
You know, it doesn't seem like a big thing.
Actually, you know, we'll put the name of it on the notes,
you know, that's what everybody says.
Right.
But one thing we discovered, which is kind of cool,
(22:13):
if you ever, if you're into doing facial mocap,
we use our iPhones to capture our faces.
The iPhones run a program that uses the LiDAR,
I think is what they call it.
The LiDAR is like this laser technology
that hits your face and finds bones and expressions.
(22:34):
It's basically sonar with light instead of sound.
With light, yeah.
This is not a technical podcast for,
at least not for something.
And what we wanted to know was,
can we put that behind the glass of the teleprompter,
because we need to be able to look straight into the phone
(22:58):
to be able to get the facial, you know, capture.
And at the same time, we need to be able to see the video,
the reference video that we use,
that tells us which lines we have to say.
So a reference video is basically a video recording
of the scene we're going to do with captions
(23:21):
in different colors for each of us.
And so the teleprompter has a hole in the back of it
where you can fit a camera.
And so we stick our phone in there as the camera.
And then we have an iPad with the reference video.
And so we play the reference video
(23:42):
and we record on the computer
with the information from the phone.
Before we were trying to view the reference videos
on a screen behind the microphone.
And what ends up happening is that your eyes
look at the text.
And so you're not looking straight into the phone
(24:05):
that is capturing your face.
Right.
But now that we're using the teleprompter.
You're looking straight at it.
You're looking straight at it.
Yeah, and I mean, it seems small
because you're just looking slightly above the other way.
But you notice it in the characters,
the eyes are always slightly off.
Slightly off.
And so that was a cool thing
(24:26):
that I wanted to share with people
because of the fact that we didn't realize
that it would work, but we just tried it.
We put the phone that captures our faces behind,
you know, in the spot where the camera would go,
which is behind the teleprompter.
And it works.
The lighter goes right through it.
Yeah, we weren't sure if the lighter would, you know,
(24:47):
bounce back and say there is no face there.
We just have a flat piece of glass,
but it goes right through it.
It's very cool.
So now we put the microphone on top of the teleprompter.
And you know, it works.
And we can use the teleprompter for other things.
We're recording Laurel's book, for example.
(25:08):
Right.
And the software we're using is Smart.
Prompt Smart Pro, I believe.
Yes.
And it's got this really cool feature
where it hears your audio, hears what you're saying,
and scrolls the text automatically.
Yes.
And this is for the iPad.
It reverses the text also.
(25:29):
So it's pretty cool.
It is pretty cool.
It's funny because sometimes when we're doing
the reference videos, occasionally it won't notice
when you say a line.
And so when we're recording for our mocap, facial mocap,
(25:50):
sometimes we do extra takes because we're like,
okay, it's not scrolling.
I haven't memorized the whole thing.
Sometimes we have to say, hey, I said this line,
so that it will automatically scroll.
But it's pretty cool because sometimes I noticed today,
I sort of jumped a paragraph and it found the text,
(26:12):
where I was, and scrolled it to that position.
So that's great, and that worked out.
Anyway, teleprompters work for facial capture.
They do, and they make it a lot easier.
Also separating facial capture from body mocap
(26:32):
makes life much simpler.
Okay, a quick update on our journey
with Bacon Wrapped Avocado.
The company that we do animation for, that we own,
is called Bacon Wrapped Avocado.
And we just had a really big milestone.
Yeah, last week we finally turned in an application
(26:55):
for a big grant that we're hoping to get.
So that has been one of our goals since we started,
was to get enough done to have a demo of our application
and a video demonstrating our demo.
We have been working on those two things, the demo,
(27:17):
which is basically our application
that we're trying to complete and lets us,
it's like a movie player, I guess.
Yeah, so in that case, application refers to app,
for the MediQuest headset.
We have an app that will play our movies.
And so our team of four have been working on this,
(27:40):
not only that, but actually showing an episode.
So we've put together an episode.
And then, yes, we had to build, you know,
make a video showing our application,
which in itself is very difficult,
because getting footage from inside the application
in a way that can be seen in a VR headset is complicated.
(28:05):
Right, so if we had wanted to make a flat demo video,
that would have been much easier.
But since our whole product is focused on, you know,
the 3D aspect being integral and necessary,
you know, not just having gimmicks
where something flies at your face or something,
(28:27):
but you actually being in the movie
and being able to, in our application,
move around in the movie,
we wanted even the video to give at least some of that.
Now in the video, you can't move around,
so we do have some cuts.
But we did find a tool that lets us make 3D videos
(28:48):
inside the Unreal Engine environment.
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
It's basically like, you know,
you're going inside the virtual reality world
and putting a camera inside that can shoot 360 3D videos.
And from that, you actually record
(29:10):
as if you were inside the, anyway, it's sort of-
It's complicated.
It's very complicated.
And then we had to have our Unreal developer
do some special things to try and record the heads-up display,
so that you could record the menus,
because that's the sort of thing
(29:30):
that you normally can't see, you know, a player's menu.
So even the little camera we put inside the environment
was not recording specific player's menus.
So then we had to get footage of that.
And it was actually a good learning experience
to get through all those hoops
and make a good demonstration video.
(29:51):
So we had to create the application,
create the content for the application,
create the video showing.
All those things have taken us close to three years of work
while we're doing our own, you know, jobs and family.
Everybody's working part-time on the project
(30:13):
and doing other things.
But the four of us stuck with it,
and we finally got something out.
So now we need to wait about 90 days
to find out whether-
It's a yes or a no?
Yeah.
And, you know, either way,
we're gonna wanna try and raise some more money
(30:34):
from other sources,
but it would certainly be a nice validation
as we go to other places to be able to say, you know,
well, we have this one and this is significant.
Somebody believes in this project,
so now, you know, do you wanna be a part of it?
And it becomes more of an invitation.
(30:54):
We're doing something awesome.
And even in this, we were trying to express that,
that this really is a very cool project
and to invite other people to be part of it
as opposed to, you know,
begging for money to allow us to do it.
It's part of selling the project is believing in it.
And when you believe in it,
(31:15):
then you realize that allowing people to invest in it
is an opportunity for them.
But this ties back into the topic at the beginning
because I think asking for money for your project
and worrying about money is one of those things
(31:36):
that affects your creativity.
You know, like I've noticed, at least for me,
you are, you go in a different mode, you know,
when you think, oh, you know,
how are we gonna fund this project?
That's a worry that you're not creating content
around the same time.
(31:57):
You know, you're, maybe you are for the sake of promoting it,
you know, that's a little bit of creating content,
but you're definitely not in the state of mind
where your like ideas are flowing
because you're spending the time worrying about
how to actually fund the project.
(32:19):
I think that's one of the hard things in, you know,
being an entrepreneur in a small business
is switching from, you know, administrative or marketing
into creative and for me,
particularly from marketing into creative
because marketing is not something I'm naturally good at
(32:42):
and there's a lot of things that you can do
and a lot of research you can do
and a lot of things that need to be done
and for me, that's just stress
and so I can like lose myself for like a week,
just getting bent out of shape, worrying about marketing,
trying to figure out things about marketing,
(33:02):
trying to find platforms for marketing, you know,
and then I'm like, okay, well,
now I haven't done anything creative for like five days
because what I've been doing is trying to make
these little ads that all suck
or at least appear to you
because they're completely ineffective,
(33:23):
which I don't know how else you would judge them
and it just tears me up and so then, you know,
trying to come back and say, no,
marketing may not be my thing,
but I can be creative, we can do this,
trying to focus back on that.
I think we should definitely have like the beginning
maybe of our next podcast talking about business and art,
(33:47):
you know, and art and how they're in conflict sometimes,
you know, I think that's a pretty good topic.
Yeah, and people talk a lot about work-life balance,
but within your work, right,
you have to have a business creativity balance.
Yes, right.
All right, well, I think I need to get back to work.
(34:07):
All right.
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