Pulling The Podcast Set Together

Live-action instead of chroma screen for the sets

A ton of unexpected developments since I got to Appalachia means I have to adapt and work with what I got. You don’t give up because your plan derails, you just adapt the plan to achieve success. This is the most important thing they ever teach civilians to make them into soldiers.

My excavator was an absolute disaster. The guy was a special needs mongoloid behind the wheel of a rock cutter. He trashed my land and the neighbors driveway as well. That was supposed to be step #1 of a simple three-step plan. I had it budgeted to the penny to be in place by end of June to start shooting. This guy basically crashed the entire schedule and left my neighbor incredulous about the damage he did despite never having given me his bond and insurance details. What a nightmare …

I figure I am going to start anyway and when my place is ready, switch to that as my permanent base. In the meanwhile, I am improvising and getting this show on the road.

Originally I planned on green screening the background but having green hanging everywhere is very distracting. I shot some test footage and it was throwing me off. I could not be natural in front of all that green. I don’t want to do fifty episodes of VAULT-CO against chromakey.

This is designated my “study.” I am converting it into the podcast set slowly but surely. Shot some test footage.

That wall behind the faux rock canvas is around 12 feet underground. So is most of the building I am in, good deep rock shelter except for the front. I think they call it a partial walk-in basement most places. It’s good enough for now to start the podcast, the sooner the better.

Have so many subjects to cover and the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It took me fifty years to get to this stage, time to go live. Even I admit this now. Not going to let the apocalypse start without Vault-Co being online for the remnant.

Pipboy mascot for good luck. Have a ton of retro computers I am still hooking up and mounting terminals for.

I have now reached the production value levels of a 1970’s Saturday morning live-action series … which is good enough for me. Anything but chromakey. I think it is obvious Vault-Co is going to win at least ten million Oscars for it’s incredible set design.

That “steel support beam” in the corner is getting a makeover but this pretty much shows you what you can expect. A standing desk in front of all this will be where I conduct most of my business during episodes.

I have some lighting scrims I may use to give it some colors and shadows but the current concept is more than good enough.

Got so much junk to haul I have to use every available inch I can find in my quarters. Got my Vault-Co uniforms hanging up here in the closet across from the study ready for action. My expensive storage food in buckets is stacked here.

Got plastic bins that came from Australia stacked to the ceiling in the other room. Hoping to clear out my storage rental down here I used as a temporary cache and find room to get the rest of them out of there. I’ve got retro tech I collected over 20 years in these bins. Many bins were designed to constitute episodes of Vault-Co for subjects like security, camera networks or seismic detector grids you can plug’n’play into Vault-SYS or run independently until then.

For some reason I tried to get my Augason cans into every frame of the first episode to show off my favorite “famine gravy.” Up top that is an incredibly rare portable audio amplifier for the CD-715 geiger counter which will feature prominently in many episodes. Shipped from America to Australia and now dragged back into the country …

I hope to finish all this up next week. I have to go to the Veteran’s administration clinic on Friday just to let them have a look at me. I thought it might be good after almost dying three times the past year to go for a checkup more often than once every fifty years. I want to stay healthy for the next fifty years so I can do all the episodes properly.

Thorium reactor that powers the entire operation. Okay, I lied. It’s just a glass kettle I bought last week to make tea.

Just like a crack dealer, the first episode of VAULT-CO is going to be free. After that, paid subscribers only except for select episodes I consider too important to charge for access.

The first episode is all about food storage — and — prepare to have your mind blown when I explain to you why every single video you have ever seen about mylar bags and oxygen absorbers is a total loss and why they are all doing it wrong! I actually read the instructions and know something NONE OF THEM KNOW. (Except maybe Mike Adams at Brighteon.com)

If things go according to plan, there will be sooper-seekrit episodes for VAULT-SYS when it comes out that only the eleetz are permitted to see as Founding Members!

Matthew 7:6 KJV

⁶ Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

Policy on this is biblical. I have realized after twenty years planning this show, I do not want it up on Rumble or Reddit just yet. That is going to be more trouble than it is worth. It is going to be hardcore rock troops only, the real thing, the remnant. I do not want to see my episodes end up in the tragedy of the commons. The mouth-breathers will not be invited from Reddit.

I have sent four emails to the estate for Isao Tomita requesting permission to use tracks from “Catastrophe : 1999” as the main theme for Vault-Co. Some of you on the old site know I have been planning to do this for at least seventeen years. I don’t know if it is the language barrier or there is nobody answering at that email address. Tomita was one of the most amazing composers of the last fifty years in my estimate for his unusual sound. Isao passed away in 2016 while I was still trying to stabilize my situation to get the first episode out. That happened with my game Grimoire, where some of the biggest fans died during it’s 25 year development cycle. Blame my ex-wife for throwing off the production schedule for a (couple) decades!

I was planning to do Vault-Co as public access television on the weekends when I was 12 years old. Then life happened.

If I don’t get an answer I may go forward since the original movie has lapsed into the public domain and Isao Tomita seems to have released his works into same before he died, which you would expect in the legacy of such a visionary genius.

In case you have not seen it, the inspiration for the Vault-Co podcast comes to a large degree from the zeitgeist one of the most disturbing cult triptych head movies ever made about the apocalypse … the totally unclassifable madness of “Catastrophe : 1999” which I have watched a hundred times and still don’t know exactly what it was all about. The last ten minutes remain the most disturbing and evocative vision of the end times I have ever seen. If you would like to see this amazing train wreck of a film, it is up now on the internet archive :

https://archive.org/details/the-last-days-of-planet-earth-1979

Without his score, the movie would probably have vanished from memory a long time ago. With the Tomita score the movie becomes something apochryphal and somehow clairvoyant. It seems to be about our era right now, not the year 1979.

If I get knocked back on the score, I have two suitable substitutes in the wings to use as the main score and both of them very good signatures for the series.

You can laugh at all this madness I call my avocation if you want but always remember …

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• Regards, Tex