Happy Birthday - Ava Mae

Today is my daughter Ava Mae’s fifth birthday. She’s the youngest of our three children, the second surprise for us (with Lexi being the first surprise).
When we had our first ultrasound, they told us that Ava was going to be a boy. The second ultrasound told us she was a girl. Even though they promised us that they were pretty sure she was going to be a girl, I still wondered. But, they were right and Ava was a girl.
Now, here are a few facts about Ava Mae:
• She has, without a doubt, the loudest voice I have ever heard. Even when’s she’s whining, it’s loud. How can such a little thing be so loud.
• She will be featured someday on the TLC’s Hoarders. I thought I was bad, oh no, I’m just an amateur compared to her. Ava Mae has saved every scrap of paper that fluttered through her attention. I found old post-it notes that I had written on years ago stowed away in her room.
• Without an effort, she can be the life of the party, or…
• When she’s in a bad mood, she’s not content to just state her displeasure, no, she plans to take you and everybody else down with her.
• Ava Mae is the most likely to get Daddy in trouble. Sometimes its entirely accidental (accidentally telling Mommy that Daddy let her drink Diet Coke). But, there are those times where she gets me in trouble just to show me that she can. It’s as if she wants to make sure that I have no misgivings about who really runs this house.
• She is very much a hybrid of her brother and sister. Devin is analytical and will make a great engineer, scientist, doctor, or mathematician. Lexi is the head-in-the-clouds dreamer, very creative, life of the party, with her very own entourage of fans in tow. Ava is equal parts both of those.
• Ava loves ballet. She is obsessed with it.
• Ava is very anxious to start learning the piano. She can find middle-C faster than her brother and sister can.
• One of her favorite television shows was the episode of Arrested Development where Tobias paints himself blue to join the Blue Man Group. She always asks me to see the Blue Man episode. In fact, she has suggested that I write a story about Blue Man. I’ll get back to you on that one.
• On night, Ava stood up at dinner and recited the qualities that make you a leader. I tried to write them down – they were pure Ava-isms.

Being a leader is … someone who is nice to everyone
Being a leader is … someone who helps his or her friends
Being a leader is … brushing your teeth like the dentist says
Being a leader is … making sure have a fancy pony birthday party for each of your WebKinz
Being a leader is … singing songs about Jesus
Being a leader is … dancing to all the High School Musical songs
Being a leader is … being stylish
Being a leader is … going on the potty
Being a leader is … not pushing girls off the playground swings
Being a leader is … being a good line leader
Being a leader is … is being a leader
Being a leader is … going to Jacob’s house
Being a leader is … Lexi not letting me play hide and go seek
Being a leader is … not letting the aliens come into our house and take our faces off

Words to live by.

Happy Birthday Lexi - 7 Years Old

Last week was my daughter Lexi's seventh birthday. Lexi is my child that has the most creative mind. We homeschool our children, and one of the subjects that I teach is Music Appreciation. We take all three kids, and play different styles of music and talk about the music. We will talk about the genre of the music - with entire blocks on classical, rock, jazz, and most recently R&B. One of things we focus on (especially for classical, jazz, new age, or soundtracks - with no words) is to listen to the music, and close their eyes, and tell a story about what you think happens while this music is playing. Lexi is the most creative, and she often comes to me and tells me a story and asks that I paint a picture of this story. Here are some examples of paintings I did that were inspired from Lexi's mind.

The Code of the Eight - Chapter 1

This excerpt is the first chapter of my first novel I completed fifteen years ago called The Code of the Eight




Chapter 1


"In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so greatthat it would take many men many months to equal it."

Merle L. Meacham




October 17, 1990
Washington DC

The early morning sun filtered rays of light through the partially opened blinds. The sunlight illuminated the office above a storefront in the Georgetown section of Washington DC. The office was decorated in ornate cherry wood, with dark hunter green wallpaper accented by cherry wainscoting. Matthew Barber held the phone to his ear, leaned on the sill of the window, and looked out over the streets of old Georgetown. The shops across the square were already active. On the corner, a shop called the Banana Republic had a steady stream of traffic in and out. Several tourists wearing khaki hats and coats exited the store. Across the street, a fight had broken out between several artsy people with shaved heads and pierced body parts and a man dressed in black leather.
Matthew Barber barely noticed the commotion below as he waited impatiently for someone to answer the phone. Barber was in his early fifties and wore a conservative dark blue suit that looked as if he slept in it. Indeed, the suit had been slept in for several days in a row.
Simon LeBaron sat at a computer terminal. He was furiously tapping away at the keys. Simon was a tall, thin man in his early forties. His hair was curly brown, with just a hint of baldness. He had spent several days staring at this computer monitor, his eyes were straining to see the screen. The green letters on the black background of the mainframe emulation were becoming a blur now. He rubbed his weary eyes.
"Return code of 00," Simon said as he read the TSO environment processing messages on the computer screen. "It passed to the CPU."
"Damn it," Barber said. "Did we even slow it down?"
"No," Simon said. "It's too sophisticated for me to stop with an ad hoc COBOL routine. Whoever created this knew what they were doing. We're talking about a JCL running a proc with an imbedded routine running an encrypted COBOL program. I can't even read the code the encryption is so damn complicated."
"Damn it," Barber said again.
"What about the hardware infiltration?" Simon asked.
"No answer yet," Barber said. "I don't know what the hell is..."
Barber stopped in mid sentence, spun away from Simon, and listened intensely to the telephone receiver. "You've done it? You've got it? Good job. Now get the hell out of there."
Barber hung up the phone. "They removed the hardware from the unit. Try the program again," Barber said to Simon.
Simon pulled up a screen filled with cryptic green letters. Simon typed over several of the variables to modify the “run parameters” for the change in hardware. When he completed the necessary changes to the edit screen he typed the word "SUB" at the command line at the top of the screen. The two men impatiently leaned over the terminal, waiting for the results.
"How long should this take?" Barber asked.
"It shouldn't be too long. I adjusted the params to zero in on an anomaly that I already know will happen."
"When this is all finished, I'll ask you what that meant," Barber said.
Simon typed at the command line on the top of the screen.
=S.DA OJOB G711UC1*
The computer screen changed to display the statistics of the program Simon had just submitted. Simon continued to hit the enter key to check the progress of the program. The top of the screen displayed the total amount of the CPU utilized. "I'm at an exception count of 619. It should end around 800. My program is chewing up the CPU usage. We're at 94% right now. It shouldn't be that high. I don't think that's a good sign. That could mean the encrypted code is multiplying exponentially."
"How long will that be before it's done?"
Simon hit enter one more time and the screen went blank. A message in red text appeared at the top left hand corner of the screen:
JESLIB JOB 9483 COMPLETED WITH CONDITION CODE 00
"It's still going," Simon said.
"It can't be, the hardware is no longer in place," Barber said.
"I should have thought of that."
"What?"
"It doesn't matter in this situation that the hardware has is gone. The host system has the program in resident memory in its CPU. It doesn't matter that the hardware has been removed. Nothing has happened to clear that program out of memory," Simon paused. "Because of its encryption, I can't touch the source code, nor can I touch the extract files it creates."
"Why can't you?"
"It's a production based job, that's our protection against anything in our standard jobs. We used to have problems with programmers changing programs in the IRS system to give them a lessened chance of a random audit."
"They really did that?"
"You bet, and they were getting tens of thousands of dollars back in refunds."
"Is there any other way to clear it out?" Barber asked.
"There is the way we talked about before," Simon said.
"That's dangerous."
"Yes it is," Simon said. "But so is allowing this to continue."
"Shutting down the entire system is the only solution?"
"Yes," Simon said. "Otherwise, the program will always stay resident in memory, because these CPU boxes are always running. They never get turned off. This system is unlike most others in our government main frame network. Because the banks and investment institutions rely on information from this system at all hours of the day, it never shuts completely down for daily maintenance. It simply shifts off certain modules for a few minutes at a time while it runs maintenance. It's a process that takes most of the day on and off."
"You realize the fallout, don't you," Barber said.
"I can imagine worse if we don't shut it down," Simon said.
"I can't even begin to imagine all the ramifications, the iterations, or the permutations that could result because of this. It would be chaos," Barber said.
"We have to," Simon said. "But, it's your call, Director Barber."
Barber sighed and shook his head. "Do it," he said. "Shut down the Federal Reserve System."




New York Times
Headline
October 18, 1990

Stock Market Crashes
Bloody Monday

New York (UPI) - The New York Stock Exchange plummeted to new lows yesterday. An inexplicable series of events sent investors and brokerage houses scrambling to sell stock as prices plummeted to new lows.
Not since the great depression or the market crash of 1987 has the market suffered so much in such a short time. Analysts and technicians are uncertain exactly what happened. It appears there was a glitch in some computer systems early yesterday morning. Computer systems in the large brokerage houses are set automatically to buy or sell based on certain events, such as low prices, or lack of funds within a customer's bank account. The systems had trouble accessing any of their customers account information within the Federal Reserve System. This action triggered computer systems of many brokerage house's immediately to initiate selling stock short. When all the brokerage house's system began selling, the entire stock market and other financial markets went into disarray. Stock prices began to plummet to lows seldom seen in this century, even for ultrastable stocks such as IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. All the time this was happening, the brokerage house's computer systems were still trying to sell, thus driving the prices deeper because of the surplus in the supply of stock...


Washington Post
October 18, 1990

Two Men Found Murdered in Georgetown Office

Washington, DC (UPI) - Two men were found murdered in a Georgetown Office Monday night. Both men shot at point-blank range to the throat with a .22 caliber weapon. The two men are unidentified. Authorities do not have any clues about the identities of the two men.
Police Detective Robinson said in a statement. "Fingerprints, dental records, personal belongings in the office, none of them give us a clue about whom these men were." The names in which the men used to rent the office space have also proven to be false and a dead-end. The company name that rented the office was Sarah Douglas Services, who took possession only the previous week, paying cash. There is no record anywhere of any such company. It appears that nothing was stolen from the office. The only damage noted was a destroyed personal computer.
Authorities currently do not have any suspects or motive in the killing...

Back to Writing the Fenian Avenger (with a new concept painting)

A combination of a holiday at the beach, the kids crazy fall schedule of events, and health issues at home (and surprisingly, not mine) caused a break in my writing of the first draft of The Fenian Avenger. Perhaps it was a much-needed break. I was stuck on Chapter 34 for weeks.

But, all of that seemed unimportant as my wife Alicia started having some pretty scary symptoms from an irregular heartbeat. She was under a great deal of pressure, probably mostly because of a tennis event she was helping coordinate in Asheville. She was set to leave on a Friday morning, when she came down with this on Thursday night and wound up in the ER (a feat we repeated two days later). Between that and starting the kids on their home school program for the fall (which is more than a full time job in the first place, I’m a major slacker compared to her), that may have enough to raise the stress level to an all-time high. During that time, I scaled back on some things, came into the office a little earlier, got home a little earlier, helped take the kids to afternoon and evening events. We had tremendous help in the form of dinners and help babysitting the kids from our friends at ECPC and JFBC HSG (I feel like the government – that would be East Cobb Presbyterian Church, where we attend, and Johnson Ferry Baptist Church Home School Group, where the kids attend classes and are involved in sports and extracurricular activities. See, that’s too long, and exactly why I abbreviated).

Alicia is doing much better now. I wish I could have taken the last week or so off, as we used almost the last of my vacation time three weeks ago to go to the beach. I think one of the most relaxing holiday’s I’ve had was last year when we were supposed to go to Asheville (you see, it seems to be tied into going to Asheville) when Alicia required emergency surgery. Instead of cancelling the holiday, I just took it at home and took care of her. It was one of the most relaxing holiday’s I can remember (not for her, though).

But, it was nice this time scaling back and not being so busy, watching DVD’s of TV seasons that I picked out (I think she would grade me an A- on Burn Notice, an F on Mad Men, and an incomplete bordering on C- for True Blood). We spend time talking with the kids, talking with each other (Thought, I think she is sick of my stressing about Eamon Malone and the Fenian Avenger and that lousy Chapter 34 that won’t finish).

Now, I’ve returned to writing the Fenian Avenger now. And the break was just what the doctor ordered. As usually the case with me, I lose sight of what the first draft of a novel really is: A rough start-to-finish treatment of your book, if the moment leads you to write prose and dialogue, then go for it, otherwise terse explanations of what is happening in that passage or chapter will suffice.

Chapter 34 was a passage that was critical to the book, and I was becoming entrenched in the description of what was going on when it wasn’t truly necessary. The Fenian Avenger is a story in which a fictional current time Ireland that is mired in a deep depression in which one of the few industries that actually turns a profit is that which caters to Irish-Americans finding their roots. These people (that I am one of, though only a generation removed from being an Irish citizen) are often called Plastic Paddies, and desire to see the Ireland of their fantasies with happy Irish people dancing and signing in shiny green clothes. This Ireland is full of corruption in government as well in the police force, which is not called the police, they are the Garda (pronounced GAR-ad-ee), which is short for Garda Síochána na hÉireann, which is Gaelic for Guardians of Ireland.

Eamon Malone is a boy that was raised by a juggernaut corporation in Ireland called KOD, lead by the charismatic Kieran O’Dowd. Eamon is off the charts in IQ, physical activities, and artistic sense. His education and training are part of the mysterious Sons of Ireland by KOD. Eamon has parents, his father is a detective in the Garda, but it’s KOD that calls all the shots. When his father learns that Eamon is being trained in combat and how to kill, he threatens to pull his son out of the program. Well, what would any large corporation do in this case? Well, of course, remove the parents from the picture.

When this happens, Eamon escapes the training facilities. Angry and alone, he vows revenge against KOD and Kieran O’Dowd for parents. He meets up with enterprising Angus Shannon, a computer and electronics genius, and fellow Kieran O’Dowd hater. Angus wants revenge because KOD killed his parents and stole their scientific breakthrough which was the most complex and complete mapping and study of the human DNA (as Eamon learns this, warning bells go off in his head). Angus is limited in his pursuit of Kieran O’Dowd as the accident that killed his parents left him paralyzed in a wheelchair.

Together with Eamon’s fighting skills and Angus’ technology and hacking into every system, Eamon becomes the Fenian Avenger, fighting Garda corruption against the Irish people and hero of Ireland.

Okay, that sounds a little comic book-ish, but the more complete concept is quite long to go into. Thus, I really have to work on my 60-second elevator speech and query letter pitch for this book by the time it’s done.

Chapter 34 is right in the middle. It’s the crucial scene where the Fenian Avenger breaks into KOD corporate headquarters, which is secured the max like a fortress. Eamon and Angus were also forced to use the help of John Q, a former Sinn Fein lieutenant, who was able to get them access to the building in the form of an employee ID. Unfortunately, John Q used the Fenian Avenger smokescreen to steal company secrets on mergers and was able to profit by short-selling KOD stock.

Once inside, he discovers important clues about what Kieran is up to, and who is really is. Using Angus’ help, he is able to get by all the security systems. However, he misses one off-line security measure in Kieran’s office, a video camera that is motion activated and tied into an isolated computer. And it captured perfect images of the Fenian Avenger breaking into Kieran’s office and rifling through the files. Oops. Between that, and the evidence that someone stole inside information on a merger, that made the Fenian Avenger look like a criminal, rather than a hero.

Once this chapter was done by first draft standards, I was able to roll along and rip off another few chapters over the weekend.

I even revised an earlier concept image of the Fenian Avenger. Initially I was uncertain as to what he was going to look like, and the first image he had a fancy cape. I started to think to myself that this is a depression-era Ireland. I changed the cape for a long coat, and I think this makes a big difference. The Fenian Avenger is not a TV hero, he stays in the shadows, and he only reason he wears a mask is that he doesn’t want the Garda’s facial recognition software to spot him (as KOD is still searching for the lost Eamon Malone to finish creating the next generation of Irish men).

Devin in Art

Happy Birthday Devin. My son is eight years old today. I don't have much time to write, so I thought I would post some of the art I've done for him. Most of this was either done at request (the Fenway Park was his idea as he wanted a picture at home plate) or a result of a story the kids told me, and I rendered it in some artwork (some better than others).

Stealing the Witch's Crystal Ball

Finally finished with this piece that I wrote about in my last post. As I thought would be the case, the most difficult part was not the architecture of the castle, but the point of view and placement of the people (or monsters) that actually tell the story. The point of view for these are always critical, you want to show off the work you did on the castle, but in the end, it’s not the story. The story is Lexi getting the crystal ball and running from both the witch and her monster henchmen.

Working with a photo I took of Lexi on my iPhone, I turned her into a 3D model and placed her within the scene. With some difficulty placed the castle on a rocky terrain that I edited, trying to make sure the spikes didn’t cut through the castle. I created a bridge that spanned the gap, though it’s always difficult doing anything intricate with a terrain because it’s often very difficult to truly see where the upper spikes are, so that is basically try it, render it, fix it, render it, fix it again, render it. The bridge was supposed to be a flimsy rope bridge, and Lexi was going to be cutting it while the monsters are crossing. However, that was a much more difficult story to convey in an image, so I changed it to Lexi running ahead of the monsters.

The green monsters are creations I made that deform the face of a normal person to upturn the face (like an Orc) and make the ears pointy (like a goblin) and make them huge and incredibly strong (like an Ogre). The witch in the sky is really just a black form made in the shape of a witch flying on a broomstick.

The chasm that the bridge spans was originally supposed to be some smoky glowing liquid. And that is actually still there, but in the end with the point of view and dark atmosphere, it just wasn’t prominently visible and it really didn’t add anything to the end result. There’s a bridge there, you know that Lexi has crossed, and the monsters are crossing it now, and is it important to know what is beneath it?

The story goes as follows. The small village is terrorized by an evil witch. The witch has targeted Lexi’s family, and with her crystal ball, is able to see what she and her brother and sister are doing at all times, making it simple to catch them. Lexi decides to be brave and venture into the castle to steal her crystal ball to break it so the witch will not find it so easy to find them.

Storming the Castle - Sort of

Here’s a shot of my latest painting still in progress, a pure raw rendering with none of the final painting that I do over the rendering. This painting is based on a story that my daughter Lexi is making up. The concept is, and this is always subject to change either by me or Lexi, is that this is the castle of the evil witch. Lexi has just escaped from the castle, running from the highest tower, across a dangerous rope bridge, while being chased by Trolls. She wants the painting to be at the end of the chase, where she has just crossed the bridge, and she wants to be cutting the ropes on the bridge while the Trolls are still running across.

The good news is that the most intricate part is done. Designing the castle was difficult and tedious. But I’m rather pleased, as this raw rendering looks pretty good. The castle looks forbidding enough, I added a blue glow to it. The rock that it sits on is basically a terrain inverted with a smaller rocky terrain on top of it.

The bad news is that I’m struggling with exactly how to display the scene she wants. The rope bridge has to look random and dangerous enough, and I have to be careful of too many patterns, as they eye will catch that quickly. I have to build the terrain that is the other side of the bridge, which will be closest to the camera. Lexi will have to be kneeling down cutting the bridge (with the broom in her hand). I’m worried that her image will not be very big, and hard to see what she is doing. And then there’s the trolls. Well, I don’t want to think about them just yet. Then I need to think about the background, and this is critical as it can't take away from the effect of the castle and cliff it sits on.

This is why my paintings seldom end the way I anticipate they will.

The Story of The Fenian Avenger

My current literary project, titled The Fenian Avenger, found its beginnings in an unusual way for me. (by the way, the blog painting is a concept drawing as one of the scenes from this book)

Looking back on my completed projects, such as The Code of the Eight and The Trinity Covenant came out of the mythology and story of an agent code-named Diablo. The books chronicled his beginnings as an FBI sleeper inside organized crime, his infamous rise through the intelligence community, and his culmination with his involvement in the Project Integrity organization. Diablo and his stories came from a high-level concept that brewed over time.

Other books, such as the one I am editing at the moment The Franklin Castle, tells the story that had its beginning in a real life event in which I spent the night in one of the most haunted places in the world (Cleveland’s Franklin Castle) as part of a college scientific paranormal investigations unit. By the way, nothing happened to me that night in the house. The idea germinated with me for years to tell the story of people who go to a similar event at the Franklin Castle, with a scientific team that discounts the idea of personal experience. I even found a way to slip Diablo from my other books in (he never was allowed to have this much fun saving the world, so here he gets to help two teenagers solve the mystery of the house).

But, in The Fenian Avenger, I did something completely different. I had no idea what I was writing about prior to the first day I sat down and starting story forming. I let the roll of the dice determine theme and signposts and nature of the protagonist and antagonist. I had in my mind that I wanted to do a story about a superhero. Beyond that, I had nothing.

After a long weekend of hurricane outlining, I had the semblance of the treatment of a book. At a simple level, it was the story about a boy in an alternative version of Ireland, where there is great poverty and depression, and where the government and police (called the Garda Síochána na hÉireann, meaning the Guardians of Ireland or just Garda) is corrupt. His father is an inspector in the Garda, and has been warned off putting any more heat on a billionaire Irish businessman. In exchange for his cooperation, a Garda foundation offers to assist the inspector and his wife have a child, with the condition that the Foundation be allowed to educate and train him. From that beginning, Eamon Malone was born.

From a young age, Eamon is special. His intelligence is off the charts. Not only his logical and reasoning skills amazing, but also his artistic ability is incredible, playing Chopin at the age of three. Physically he is bigger and stronger than any other boy his age, besting his instructors by the age of ten.

As years go by, his father is still ridden with guilt over compromising his morals in return for this son. He learns that his son is being taught combat skills, and is concerned that the Foundation has engineered a weapon and not a boy. He attempts to pull Eamon out of the Foundation.

The act proves his downfall, for him and his wife disappear, leaving Eamon a ward of the state. As the Foundation attempts to come in scoop him up, Eamon escapes and hides with the aid of his friend Angus, who is confined to a wheelchair and lives a recluse life in an underground mansion and has illegal access to all important government computer systems. Angus, like Eamon, has a distaste for the corruption as the downfall of his parents were at the hand of the same corporate mogul that lost Eamon his family.

Together, they become the Fenian Avenger. Eamon the brawn, Angus the eyes.

As the weeks went by, and I spent more time with the treatment, I was able to add more back stories and character development to turn this into something more interesting (I hope) than a comic book.

Recently, I finished the first draft of the first part of the book (there are four parts in all). And I’m very pleased. My first drafts are not readable, but the starting of a brief narrative telling of the story. It’s meant to be simple, as I will often change critical elements and have to go back and change previous chapters.

As a writer, you often get mired in “downer” chapters. These are chapters that are important in advancing your story, but by themselves are not very interesting and often get chopped out and referred to in a flashback or dialogue. I’m three chapters into the second part, and I’m at one of those chapters. Suddenly, it’s not interesting to write this story and I’m not excited to get to lunchtime so that I can write a little more. It’s agony, and it causes me to adjust things in previous chapters (for the better of the book), but that’s work that takes away your forward momentum. I’ve been on the same chapter for a week, and I am so over it.

It is my goal to be done with this chapter by mid-week this week, and that is why I’m writing this. I want to move on to interesting chapters with the Avenger gets into danger attempting to find all important clues.

The Story of the Abandoned Mine

One of the things that my children and I do is make up stories. We do it in a number of ways. One variation consists of me coming up with a starting point, and we pass it from person to person, with each adding the next event. We find that this allows the story to go in a number of directions.

Another variation actually started during our music studies last year. We homeschool our children, and one of the subjects I teach is music. I felt it was important before they learned to play an instrument that they have an understanding and love for music. Our music class talks about genres of music, instruments, and a visual aspect of music. The visual aspect is them communicating what they see when they close their eyes and listen to this music. I found that they were quite good at making up stories. I started finding classical soundtrack music from movies, and that style of music inspired wonderful tales from my children.

So, I started asking for the kids to come up with a story, and I would paint a picture with them in it. I will publish some of those stories as we do it, and the artwork that has come out of it.

Today’s story is a tale of Devin’s adventure searching for treasure in the abandoned mine. He imagined that he found a map to a gold mine that had been abandoned and forgotten about for years. He bravely took his flashlight and entered the mine. After several turns, he happened upon a horrible scene, two skeletons of adventurers like him who had died in the mine. He was on his guard, which was a good thing as up ahead the wooden support gave way and nearly toppled on top of him. But still he managed to get by.

This painting was a lot of fun to do. It was interesting doing a concept of a long tunnel. I started with the infinite tunnel idea, but it didn’t look right for a mine. I wanted the mine to feel small and claustrophobic, and showing a turn ahead in the mine was a good way to do that. I liked the touch of the two skeletons, but struggled with the texture to show them. A standard bone color blended in too much with the dirt and overall color scheme of the mine. I ended up adding almost a blue tinge to the bones to make them standout.

I always struggle when I have to add a photo of a real model to my paintings. To my eyes, it never seems perfect. For this one, I took a picture of Devin with my iPhone just to use a test subject in the renderings. The photo was good, but grainy compared to our more expensive high-resolution digital camera. But the look was great, I found that I had to do very little with the picture of Devin other than cut out the background. He really looks like he fits perfectly with the scene.
I added the flashlight at the end in Photoshop by creating a very bright Adjustment Layer with Curves. Then only showed the beam path of the flashlight. About the only other things I did in Photoshop was add a photofilter that gave the scene a golden look, and added a soft focus look.