Well, getting closer to a good fried haddock, anyway…

Popeye’s Chicken is moving into Kenmore Square:

I love Popeye’s.  Good news for my taste buds, bad news for my waistline.

Almost every project I’ve been involved with has required a scope change – a change to the original agreement between vendor and client due to some unforeseen change.

Maybe the client comes up with some harebrained idea midway through the project, maybe the people working on the project get too busy, maybe there’s a legitimate change that neither group could predict. When these scope changes happen, I usually think of Lord of the Rings trilogy.

If you’ve seen The Return of the King, you’ve seen the “winged Nazgul” that swoop down on the city of Gondor. They’re the big black “fell beasts” shown below:

In one of the “Passing of the Age” feature on the The Return of the King, Extended edition DVD, the filmmakers discuss how the scene came about. Apparently the production was moving very fast as the release approached, and there was a scene in the script for a single fell beast to swoop down over the city and rain terror and debris on the citizens of Gondor.

Weta Digital got the shot, read the script, and saw that there were 4 fell beasts instead of 1. Each one had to be visualized, produced, and digitized. The unshakeable release date for the movie loomed larger and larger, and the scope of the job had just quadrupled.

And yet, when the Nazgul fly over the city in the final movie, the audience falls silent in awe.

The Appendices on the DVD showcase the numerous other scope changes that caused chaos and all-nighters at Weta, such as:

• Producer Barry Osborne calling intense “all-hands” meetings of all departments to coordinate the varying messages coming from director Peter Jackson, as Jackson came up with new ideas during shooting.
• The number of shots going up as the deadline loomed – with 5 weeks to go, the effects group had more shots to go than the first 2 movies combined.
• Sound guys frantically coordinating the sound of each footfall of Shelob, the giant eight-legged spider, as the Shelob shots changed from day to day.
• Weta Digital adding trolls crashing through the gates of Gondor, despite the fact that the scenes shot had not been prepped for the trolls to be inserted.
• The special effects people hearing the line “The eagles are coming,” and realizing they had to design and produce eagles flying over the still unfinished army.
• The “silent wave”that the special effects team did as Peter Jackson approved the final shot of the ring melting into the lava of Mount Doom.

All of the filmmakers on the Appendices note the intensity, the tension, the fear and rank smell of flop sweat that infused the last few months. It sounds like a backbreaking slog that resulted in every team member pushed to the limit, and it was far from the ideal method of making a movie.

But the DVD goes on to show the movies sweeping the Oscars, the sense of pride (and disbelief) the filmmakers felt in their achievement, and the massive appreciation of the fans and the world at large. There’s a sense that although it cost them dearly, it was, as Ian McKellan says, “a journey worth going on.”

Because scope changes often result in chaos, but sometimes they result in great art.

I created a new “favorite icon” (or “favicon”) for this site, which should appear in the address bar of most browsers.

I started with the JG icon used for Flickr:

I shrunk that to 32px x 323px, darkened the left to improve the contrast, and created the following image:

I then used the Dynamic Drive Favicon Generator at http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ to create the favicon file, and uploaded it to the site.

Cool stuff! Favicons seem to be common these days, and it’s nice to have unique branding for my site.

I was shopping at IKEA the other day, and I saw the “Wrapping Table” below. The strips hanging from the ceiling are ribbons that you can use to wrap the packages on the table on the right.

It reminded me of the “Wall” piece by Rachel Welty, currently displayed at the ICA. A series of128,000 silver twist ties hangs from the ceiling in a 2 foot by 4 foot block, to create a sculpture that looks impressive but is made of cheap material; it seems like a solid silver mass, but yields with the slightest wind.

It makes a nice contrast with “two page spread,” one of a series of walls using twist-ties she’s collected over the years. The same material of twist ties, formed into two very different pieces of contemporary art.

More of Rachel Perry Welty’s can be found at her web site, at www.rachelperrywelty.com. She seems to specialize in taking everyday items and transforming them into works of art, using an almost obsessive manner of assembling them. Just observe “208,896 loaves,” made of individual bread tags.

As a final note on the Foster Prize – looks like the four finalists have a friendly relationship that extends to karaoke sessions, which reflects itself when they’re interviewed together.

For the ICA’s Foster Prize finalists, it’s all about camaraderie, not competition
They aren’t the Go-Go’s, but the four finalists for the Institute of Contemporary Art’s James and Audrey Foster Prize have got the beat.

Kelly Sherman , Sheila Gallagher , Jane D. Marsching, and Rachel Perry Welty — plus a couple of friends for moral support — have gathered behind two microphones onstage at All Star Karaoke in the Milky Way Lounge . The Nickel and Dime Band strikes up “We Got the Beat.”

I must say I’m glad I attended the Foster Prize presentation at the ICA – it gave me new eyes to view contemporary art.  Hopefully the next time I visit, there will be some presentation that could be equally as interesting.