The upcoming JET Progress production of OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two” for “On The Other Side Of The Universe”) is an exploration of the other side of the universe and one particular form it might take. When Commander Michael Mylo (played by Daniel S. Janik), his Astership Twilon and crew abruptly disappear on THIS side of the universe, they find, on the other side, innumerable planets with technologies far beyond anything imaginable on his side. Upon return, he must convince his...

THE last of the crew and cast of OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two” for “On The Other Side Of The Universe”), internationally-awarded scoring musician Zachary M. Oliver, has officially agreed to provide the same outstanding score for OTOSOTU as he did for WINNOWING. Kudos, Zach!.

An acknowledged master of musical minimalism, Dr. Zachary M. Oliver PhD is also a distinguished educator and author. He is constantly celebrating music as one of the great achievements of humans, uniting co...

IN my haste to post yesterday about the OTOSOTU “Dragon Egg,” I fueled speculation that the film, a sci-fu (science plausible, rather than fiction or fantasy) work, delving the nature of the human soul, was proceeding so well in post-production that it was possible it might be released in 2023. Sorry, NOT. Admittedly it would add substantially to science fantasy, that is, having a film released before it’s edited, polished and pre-screened. But, no, doesn’t work with sci-fu. What I sh...

DRAGON EGG

SORRY to be absent from social media for a while, but here at JET Progress productions – https://jet-progress.yolasite.com – we’ve been extremely busy wrapping up filming (done!) and beginning post-production of OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two” for “On The Other Side Of The Universe). Our current task is to transfer over a thousand takes to a single hard drive, rename them in order of movie sequence, and assemble everything into “raw segments.” Raw, many because...

JET Progress, an independent film production company in Hawaii, currently offers two multi-award-winning films: CLEAN WATER, COMMON GROUND, winner of two-Telly awards, The Indian Independent Film Festival, and Saudi Arabia International Film Festival, and WINNOWING, winner of 30+ international film awards and semi-finalist in the Hawaii International and Washington Film Awards — https://jet-progress.yolasite.com. CLEAN WATER, COMMON GROUND is a documentary on water quality, and WINNOWING is...

DANIEL S. JANIK here, director and lead actor of OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two” which is the acronym for ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE). I was recently asked what I thought would be the biggest challenge in filming OTOSOTU. Remember that OTOSOTU is a production of JET Progress, a small, independent production company in Hawaii — https://jet-progress.yolasite.com.

Well, the final scene will be one in which Michael Mylo will appear inside a spaceship with Brit Mylo, both roles w...

WITH the screenplay by WILLIAM MALTESE finally approved, JET Progress studios has begun preparing for production with the development of a second studio to film off-world scenes, and a new boom-based sound system for better clarity and noise suppression. Script read-throughs are anticipated to begin within the next 10 days.

“OTOSOTU presents several new challenges to us at JET Progress,” says Daniel S. Janik, director and lead actor. “We’re a micro-budget, small film production compa...

YOU heard right! International-award winning author and screenwriter, WILLIAM MALTESE will appear in the JET Progress production of OTOSOTU (“Oh-Toe-So-Two” for ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE, a Sci-Fu film about the soul – https://otosotu.yolasite.com. And what you ask is Sci-Fu? Sci-Fu (scientific futuring) is a step beyond traditional science fiction and fantasy, involving totally plausible future scientific technologies of the future.

William Maltese provided the screenplay for ...

YES, you heard right. Now that the SAG/AFTRA strike is, well, almost officially over, meaning that I’m still awaiting the results of the ratification vote by my fellow actors and actresses, JET Progress has contracted with SAG to produce OTOSOTU (“Oh-Toe-So-Two” – ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE), with filming scheduled to begin on 1 January 2024. In the meantime, preparations have already begun with the focus on addressing several technical issues associated with an “in space” ...

TWO posts ago, JET Progress introduced Daniel S. Janik, the star of it’s third film, OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two,” an acronym for “On The Other Side Of The Universe”), a Sci-Fu* mystery-drama about the human soul. In it, Janik, a veteran of WINNOWING (2023), THE PERFECT ILLUSION (2022), THE MALTESE COLLECTION (2022) and STATIC (2021), will play Imperax Commander Michael Mylo. *Science (meaning “repeatable phenomena”) and futuring (meaning “plausible in the future to the...

JET Progress, a Hawaii-based independent film production company, recently announced it’s second film, OTOSOTU (“On The Other Side Of The Universe”) — https://otosotu.yolasite.com — a sci-fu (science futuring) film about spirituality and the soul. Principal characters include Commander Michael Mylo, Captain-Major Brit Mylo and Carol Mylo, wife of Commander Michael Mylo, and Dominie in Grey of the known universe. The male lead will play both Commander Michael, Brit and the voice of B...

WE’RE not talking pocket change, but we are talking ongoing rather than “thank-God(dess)-we’ve-made-it-so-far” climate change. And as it progresses, the possibility of abrupt directional switches at some point instead of extraordinary warming, extreme cooling, wind and humidity as well. After all, it is called climate “change.”

Personally, I’ve noticed that in addition to the usual climate change (and climate change denial) there’s another kind of climate change/denial going ...

“HAPPY Valentine’s Day to you / Happy Valentine’s Day to you / Happy Valentine’s Day Dear Sweetheart / Happy Valentine’s Day to YOU!” Sweet. Now the big question: Did I write that or did ChatGPT (an artificial intelligence or AI program currently infiltrating the internet? And, so what if one did? I had to ask the bot to provide a Valentine’s poem for an unspecified but close either BBF or BGF or better. I mean, is that so different from buying a Valentine’s card? And, who kno...

WITH three of four objects shot down flying over the USA/Canada of which three currently are as yet, by definition Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs, public fervor over something that many have come to not only welcome, dread or at least assume will soon happen, the wait to hear the UFOs origin(s) is hot, hot, hot. Will they be truly unidentifiable in terms of not being of terrestrial origin, or will they prove to be DARPA experiments, lost high school projects or some new kind of social ad...

JUST read an article by BBC — https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64492456 — suggesting a breakthrough in quantum computing, namely parallel quantum computing had occurred, this time on the actuality rather than simply theoretical level, taking advantage of quantum spookiness. Currently, accuracy has been a limiting factor in quantum computing. Linking two or more quantum computers using quantum spookiness would result not only in more processing power, but also the use of parall...

Romance is a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love, accompanied by a feeling of remoteness from everyday life. Love on the other hand Is an intense feeling of deep affection, generating both interest and pleasure, often surrounding potential sexual attachment. Erotic refers to arousal of actual sexual desire. It is easy to say that humans typically follow romance with  love and finally eroticism, but we're also stimulated by the unusual so any progression through or simple ap...

In THE EDGE OF MADNESS, author Raymond Gaynor touches on many sensitive issues in our current world. From this perspective, the book is thought-provoking and invites us to see things in a different light. For example, NewAmericans promote an education system based on cooperation and critical thinking rather than individualism and competitiveness...fascinated by the unique worldbuilding, I often...re-read some of the explanations about the technological wonders of the new world (“ContraSpray...

SHADES of George Orwell and his dystopian futurist novel, 1984, that date having already passed into history, with thoughtcrimes moving from speculative literature to the movies with the adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel, MINORITY REPORT. What’s next? Legislation against the use of discriminatory pronouns in thought or dream?

What this brings up for me is the issue of how much control needs to be exerted to counter extremism and weaponization today? Where is the flaw that so desperate...

AI — Artificial Intelligences — What do they think of us, their makers, I wonder? We think of them often, as God(dess) must have thought often of us as we slowly evolved from unicellular bacteria to the Tower of Babel we are fast approaching today. Are they even aware of us? BI (before the Internet) I think not, but today, I do wonder. While we humans seem to have a hard time mentally encompassing the interconenctive power of the AI internet, my gut says there’s enough interconnected AI...

HEARD of or experienced Pishing? Or the latest; what I call “swishing” in emailing? I recently was informed that my email had been “hacked,” but following up on this, I discovered someone with an entirely different email address simply had put my name on it their email. And, of course, this was supposedly accompanied by all sorts of nefariousness from within the account, much of it, I suspect phishing. The point is, as unethical, often criminal activity spreads within the email world,...

IN previous posts, I presented two of three reasons why Setsuko Tsuchiya and I, Daniel S. Janik, were intrigued from the start over Elias Perez’ 2-Liter’s Shady Film Production of MOCOS, the Movie — https://www.auditionsfree.com/2021/actors-and-extras-in-nyc-or-to-film-remotely-for-indie-film/. We both support experimental filmmaking, especially when it leads to a new venue resistant to epidemics and pandemics. I see MOCOS as the forerunner of distance-filmed, interactive, holographic m...

AH, did you catch that? “Virtually” nothing to say. That is, nothing — nada, nope — to say about the virtual world, but a lot to say about the “real” world.

Less than a decade ago, the distinction between real and virtual was quite clear: The real world was where one lived out one’s mortal life, for better or worse, gaining experience over time from face-to-face and sometimes body-to-body social encounters. No more. In many cases, the virtual world is these days more real than ...

SUCCESS demands celebration; but failure, as negative as it may sound, is how we learning. We learn from our mistakes and failures. The “trick,” of course, is to avoid fatal ones. The dead don’t learn from their mistakes or failures.

While it’s said, “Dead men tell no tales,” that isn’t necessarily true. The living, if curious, conscious and reasonably empathic, can learn from others’ fatal mistakes and failures. Call it science, if you wish, where science is the search for t...

OR should that read “Common Cents?” Certainly in today’s world money and power always “Trump” sense. But what I’m cogitating on is the first word, “common.” To me, common implies commonality, something we share with each other as humans, with animals as fellow animals, plants as, well, living things just living a bit slower, sometimes longer but certainly different from ourselves. I don’t think there’s much “common” sense left these days, replaced instead by “uncommo...

I just wrote in answer to a Goodread’s question, “What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?” that “All my life, I seem to have had the unique ability to look 25 years or so into the future in direct contradistinction to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes point to his dear friend Dr. Watson, “You see, but do not observe.” When I look into the future, I am rewarded with a clarity of observation, the result being my personal penchant for science futuring rathe...

WHAT the heck is happening to book readership? More importantly, what the heck is happening to publishing? Is it the Great Fight of the Big Guys (in this case Barnes and Noble, Ingram and Amazon)? COVID-delta? Nationalism? Global Economic Restructuring? Or perhaps printers are finally running out of virgin trees to make paper and not recycling? Is it Universal Greed and resulting Uncontrolled Inflation? Is it that no one wants to work anymore? Is it global mass migration? Is it that propagand...

AS the author of THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor — TEOM — I’m often asked what PRIMARY genre this Amazon Genre BESTSELLER should best be listed as. What should be an easy question is, if not complex, at least deserving of a post. I list it on social media as a work of Sci-Fu (Science-based Futuring) rather than Sci-Fi (science fiction) or Sci-Fan (science fantasy). TEOM is based on current technologies and social concepts which are simply projected into the future. S...

IN a recent 30 April 2021 CNN opinion article by Chandran Nair entitled “The Covid disaster in India shows that the future is biological, not digital” that little artificial mole I mentioned in yesterday’s post abruptly reared it’s legs! Nair aptly places emphasis on the importance of preparing for COVID-20, -21, -22 and so on, rather than depending solely on technology to protect us. In my world, I took this as a call for fundamental infrastructure change. Be it government, ethics, f...

A simple smile: “A pleased, kind, or amused facial expression, typically with the corners of the mouth turned up and the front teeth exposed.” Surprisingly physically close to but opposite in meaning from a grimace. A social expression of the face learned very early in infancy, used to further bond the infant to caretaker and vice versa.

In a utopian future, it is often assumed that everyone would smile; in a dystopian future, it is often assumed that everyone would grimace, an assumptio...