#mike bogdanowicz

[ourflagmeansbts]

Source (Season 1 - June 11th 2022)

lightironpost: Happy #Pride Month! For #FramegrabFriday, check out a few stills from #OurFlagMeansDeath and insight on final color from #LightIron Supervising Colorist Corinne Bogdanowicz. "The look of the show is very filmic, with a softer contrast and warm undertones. There is a lot of sky and water visible, so we took care to make sure the blues were not too vibrant or distracting. Much of the series takes place on pirate ships, so we had fun making each scene feel a little unique while maintaining an overall vibe for the show. I worked with the DPs ahead of the shoot while they were doing testing with LED walls. We made sure to view the test footage in 4K HDR so we would be able to see any issues or artifacts that might come up. Their DIT made an SDR LUT to use while shooting, and I made a corresponding HDR LUT to use for HDR review of the footage. The main grade was done in HDR with DP Mike Berlucchi (@MikeBerlucchi) supervising. We worked to integrate the footage with the LED walls with the VFX that were being done. We had some fun with parts of the show that could fall away from reality a bit. Some of my favorites were the flashbacks that differed with saturation, a very red nightmare scene, and a green fog. The show is a brilliantly shot collaboration, with a beautiful look that enhances the characters and locations." Dailies & final finish proudly supported by #LightIron Los Angeles. Cinematography by Mike Berlucchi and @cpusheck. Showrunner: David Jenkins. 🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️

[dentalrecordsmusic]

DRM Unplugged: Exploring Musicians & Mental Health with Mike Bogs of Babe Patrol

In this guest blog series, Dental Records Music invites any and all alternative musicians to share their experiences with mental illness in order to shed light on the issues and hurdles they must face in order to create and perform. If you would like to read more and follow our series, check out this link. You can also check out PunkTalks.org for information on getting help and support if you are a musician who is struggling.

The following is a guest post by Mike Bogs, the guitarist for Babe Patrol. This is his story.

Most people will observe the “rockstar” lifestyle as being thrill-driven, so that any form of personal suffering is subsequently a direct consequence of living their life “on the edge.” However, in dispelling this warped delusion, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Sometimes the actual truth is difficult to face, and mental health, especially, is not discussed honestly enough. Unfortunately, we exist in a reality in which we have lost many of our beloved musicians and artists to absolute measures of self-harm, such as substance abuse and suicide.

Creatives continuously suffer excess anxiety over the scrutiny from those who are verbally critical of their craft. Even more debilitating though, is the potential of self-doubt and how it takes a toll on these talented individuals’ personal worth. It is difficult to understand how something so negative can come from someone with such a positive impact on others. For a lot of people, unless you are actively engaging in creative activity as your main passion on a daily basis, it’s confusing to figure out how these self-endangering behaviors can fester within an individual. 

In working creatively there is a struggle of intense ambivalent emotions that occur. An artist can not create things that do not come from an emotional place without also feeling vulnerable. When you are emotionally invested in your work, it can leave you defenseless to a variety of mental strife that is created both from outside influences and internal doubt. During a thriving creative process, you enter a flow state, and enter into a manic-like state. Ideas can come from anything, creation can start with nothing at all, and this phenomenon can be extremely euphoric. This sets up a scenario, where the extremely low feelings will become an inevitability. As a musician and guitarist, I identify with this in enduring  my own struggles with bouts of depression resulting from the intensity of these emotions.   

Fortunately, my musical abilities have been invaluable to me in building confidence and have created a platform for me to form incredible relationships with other musicians and admirers alike. However, as is the nature with any passion driven project, these skills can also develop into a curse of sorts if you do not keep your mental health in check. For me personally, after my more immature years the fantasy of becoming a glorified rockstar seemingly became a delusion. At a certain point, a realization begins about the amount of sacrifice and effort one has to endure just to become a self-sustaining musician in today’s world. Most all artists will deal with countless instances of playing disappointing shows, releasing records that go undetected, and most debilitating of all, spending money without any prospect for a guaranteed financial return. After years of playing in many defunct and unsuccessful bands, I had moved away entirely from performing music for a brief period of my life.

It had driven me to stop participating in bands for a period of time to become a solo “bedroom musician”. In doing so, my new musical venture and goal was to pursue my passion for music by writing songs on my own. I worked vigorously in recording music on my computer while simultaneously educating myself about audio production and mixing in the hopes of releasing my own music. However, my biggest strife eventually became weighing the value of my work, as self-fulfilling projects can start to feel insignificant. One can really start to question if there is any point whatsoever in writing and releasing anything you’ve done before making it available to the masses. I soon developed a habit of denouncing my own songwriting by destroying more material than I was creating. It had gotten to the point where I was taking entire albums length of songs that I had recorded and permanently deleted those files from my desktop. Within them, I had everything mapped out precisely where I envisioned it and spent countless hours and sleepless nights figuring out how everything should be, all for a self-defeating act of eliminating it from existence entirely. By committing myself to an action that extreme and literally proceeding to destroy what I intended as my own personal “masterpiece”, so to speak, can be a tremendous blow to endure. Inevitably, actions like this have plagued me for years with ceaseless anxiety about my own self-worth and fallen into periodical depressive states from my inability to have something “show something for myself” in the form the music. 

The manners in which I’ve learned to cope with these disappointments spawned from further struggles when I had gotten back into playing in bands. Although I am a perfectionist to a certain degree, I play every show as if it was my last and thus free my mind from all outside concerns. I put great anticipation into putting on a great performance for everyone who will attend and hopefully try to give them a meaningful memory, or a brief moment of enjoyment at the very least by showing my energy when the power of music takes over. However. after every single set I play through, I suffer the post-show blues. After rehearsing for hours and then playing a show, I reach a feeling of elation on stage to the point of having quasi out of body experiences. This would be immediately concluded with self-defeating thoughts and feelings, I developed an aversion to accepting any praise from others. I used to deal with this either by drinking heavily or abandoning my mental participation to the fullest extent by dissociating myself from the event entirely. This ended up being an outright rude way to behave around people and at times became reckless and potentially self-endangering. 

It took me a while to realize that there was a clinical understanding of this phenomenon called Post-Performance Depression, PPD. After becoming more aware that this affliction is shared among all performers I developed a concern for others. So I started dealing with my own issues by supporting others with theirs and learned that having meaningful conversations was my saving grace. 

I proceeded to make it my mission at shows to try my best to get to know the other musicians there. Too often people put up the mantle of competition between their co-artists in a bout for the most attention, or appreciative claim. Conversely, for me, it became an opportunity to get to know the like-minded individuals who are fueled by their own suppressed passions. Coincidentally, I soon discovered from these talented individuals that they go through just about the same charades when dealing with their own personal material. Similarly to myself, they are uncertain, self-deprecating; especially to the songs that they internally hold so precious to themselves. After identifying and empathizing with others I would be comforted in knowing that I was not alone in the ways I felt. It was difficult for me to understand at times how someone else so talented can feel this way about themselves and hide their creations. So in realizing my own personal struggles I became most rewarded in working to inspire those around me and convince them that they needed to share their art with the world. 

I also think it’s important to realize that there are really only a few people out there that seemingly have the power to bring you down. It could be the internet trolls, who hide behind their illuminated veils with the sole intention of devaluing an artist’s work. Although, I think it is important not to fear criticism or suppress how you truly feel about something in a critique, the magnitude of malicious intent is what separates the predatory cyberbullies from the actively participating music critics. It may also be your peers, the ones that know you well and also don’t. Every artist implants a fantasy in their mind about what the big show might be like, the gratitude you possibly could receive from others if they share their enjoyment in your performance. Or the big release date, the day you finally reveal to everyone what you have been laboring on during your free time. It’s unavoidable to over analyze how your work may be interpreted. But it's so important to mature yourself in taming these fears and persisting to continue working and sharing what you love. 

Just as suppressing the severity of your mental state by not talking about what's affecting you to other people, I truly believe that concealing your musical talents and songwriting creations will have the same impact on your mental state. It’s contributed much to my own suffering but I have learned, that although coping with these fears can be unavoidable sometimes, it is important to speak honestly with people you trust and who will not judge you for how you are feeling. By concealing my music out of paranoia, I’ve done not only a disservice to myself, but more importantly and the hardest to realize, I’ve let down my supportive peers in the music community by not sharing. There is always someone out there awaiting something, new and original and they will find value you never realized that is within your own work. This prospect has become so important to me now in continuing on with my own artistic development. It has given me the determination to support those in the community that are not alone in this journey of discovering their self-worth. I truly encourage everyone to become more aware and help those that are suffering. Even the smallest actions can make all the difference in the world.

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Mike Bogs is the guitarist for punk band Babe Patrol. You can follow him and check out Babe Patrol’s music on Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music. Be sure to follow the band on Facebook and Instagram as well to keep up on their travels. 

If you or someone you know is a musician and struggling with mental illness, check out PunkTalks.org.

Follow DRM on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

[mhsn033]

Stars sign open letter supporting Polish LGBT rights

Image copyright Getty Photos

Image caption L-R: James Norton, Isabelle Huppert, and Margaret Atwood

Creator Margaret Atwood and actor James Norton are among the many noted names who hold signed an birth letter in toughen of Poland’s LGBT communities.

Published on web arena Wyborcza.pl, the letter calls on the Polish government “to pause concentrated on sexual minorities”.

Addressed to the EU Price’s president, it requires “speedy steps” to defend LGBT rights in Poland.

Polish president Andrejz Duda has acknowledged the LGBT motion is “extra detrimental” than communism.

The Polish government has in most cases ancient inflammatory language against the LGBT team.

Poland would not currently recognise identical-intercourse unions – whether or not those are marriages or civil unions. Identical-intercourse couples are also legally banned from adopting younger of us.

The letter, signed by dozens of writers, filmmakers and actors in conjunction with Ed Harris, Pedro Almodóvar, Deborah Levi, Isabelle Huppert, Anne Enright, Stellan Skarsgaard, Mike Leigh, refers to protests earlier this month.

The letter reads: “On Friday, 7 August 2020, 48 persons were arrested in Warsaw – in some circumstances quite brutally – and detained on the grounds that they’d participated in a violent illegal gathering.

“Genuinely, they were engaged in a tranquil recount in solidarity with an LGBT activist named Margot, who had been arrested for adversarial a homophobic campaigner’s van. Her team had also placed rainbow flags over statues, in conjunction with a statue of Christ.”

Image copyright Reuters

Image caption A statue of astronomer Copernicus changed into decked out with a rainbow flag and an anarchist face veil (pic: Marta Bogdanowicz/@Spacerowiczka by technique of Reuters)

Top Minister Mateusz Morawiecki denounced the activists at the time, saying the statues symbolise values which shall be indispensable to millions of Poles.

The letter adds: “Homophobic aggression in Poland is rising because it’s condoned by the ruling event, which has chosen sexual minorities as a scapegoat without a regard for the safety and effectively-being of voters.”

Final month, the EU acknowledged it might maybe well shriek funding to 6 Polish cities that declared themselves “LGBT-free zones.”

Helena Dalli, the EU’s commissioner for equality, tweeted: “EU values and classic rights should always be respected by Member States and suppose authorities.”

Apply us on Fb, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you hold got a story advice email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

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