Blog Progress and the AMC Series

I've been freshening up pages on the blog that came from the original site with things like new graphics, more resources, etc.  I've got a ways to go with that, but in the meantime...

So far, the most interest seems to be in the new series, Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches.  I thought while I'm doing fun stuff with graphics and finding more resources, it might be interesting to also give a running commentary.

Obviously, there are differences between the book and the screen.  There has been quite a bit of discussion about that.  Even my mother can be heard at times saying, "That wasn't in the book!"

So I will most likely start by doing some book to screen comparisons.  Some of those comparisons, I think, will be very interesting.

Here is a really neat animation of the house in the series that I found on AMC+'s Twitter feed.  I couldn't resist sharing it!

Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches on AMC: Some Glimpses

Under The Library, you will find a new page, Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches on AMC.  It is a collection of clips from AMC's YouTube channel about the series.  Enjoy!

 

From Solo intros y musica

The Parlor Remembers Anne Rice

I have redone my memorial video for Anne Rice, paying tribute to her by remembering her through her work.  I've added a few things here and there to improve upon the original as well.  The original is still available in the Parlor and First Street in 3D playlists on YouTube. 

The Animated Gallery

I've created and uploaded the animated GIFs of the rest of the Mayfair Witches.

Take a look!

 

Come Together - The Mayfair Witches

Since I uploaded the Gallery of Witches video, I've also cleaned up this page a bit, adding the maps straightened:

Rowan and Lasher's Trip, and Other Places of Interest

A Gallery of Witches

I've combined graphics by Jennifer Harris and Javi Trulove Sims with some AI and 3D graphics of my own to create a portrait gallery of the Mayfair Witches and added music from the film, Interview With the Vampire (1994). 

Also included are maps of some of the places in the world they moved through in a history of over 300 years. Four of them come from The Witches' Companion by Dr. Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D. 

The image at the beginning of the video is the actual Brevard-Rice house, where the novels are set. The thumbnail shows the house used for the AMC series, Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches and the key version of the Mayfair Emerald. The 3D version in the beginning of the video is a 3D model I made using 3D software. 

Many, myself included, have been inspired to bring the characters and their worlds created by Anne Rice to life. Here is a combination of some of those creations in one short video to introduce the Mayfair Witches. Enjoy!

 

 

Frost Waltz by Kevin MacLeod 

Libera Me by Elliot Goldenthal and the American Boy Choir from the film, Interview With the Vampire, 1994

Take a Look...Fun Stuff

I've begun a fun little project.  For images of each of the Mayfair Witches, I found some artwork by Jennifer Harris of the characters she made in Second Life.  The faces I've blended so that it's easy to tell these women are related, and then animated them!

Good Afternoon...

...The Mayfair Kitchen is up.

That about covers the pages from the original site that could be redone here.

Before I begin restoring the photo galleries (there are actually three), I'm going to be scouring the links that were transferred here from the original site.  Some of them are to pages on websites where the page no longer exists, sometimes because the site no longer exists.  I just went through the Mayfair Links page doing exactly that.  There are new links to add...lots of them!

This blog is organized a bit differently than the original site, so even the links to help navigate your way through the pages and posts of the blog need some fine tuning.  These are things I want to do before I start added a lot of new content.

Things to remember:

1.  Each link opens in a new page in your browser;

2.  The list of pages about a particular topic (for example, the Mayfair house) that are links will be at the bottom of the page rather than the top as they were on the original site; and

3.  You can always return to the Home page of this blog by clicking on the banner above. 

So look around, have fun!  If you have any comments or suggestions, there are a couple of ways to do that.  One is to leave a comment on a particular page or post.  I do moderate them myself, and all I ask is that even if you disagree, be polite...like a Southerner.  

The second is by email.  At the bottom of the menu to the right is where you can click on the book animation that will open the Contact the Parlor page.  Here, you will find the email address if you would prefer to contact me directly.

YouTube

I wanted to address the matter of YouTube right away. 

There will be a third option to contact the Parlor soon, as I am getting ready to add another type of media for content: videos.  Those will be on the Parlor's YouTube channel.  Content I make in a video format that is for the Parlor will be uploaded to YouTube and embedded here.

I'm reorganizing that channel and my next task is to change the banner and branding to its new name, Come Into My Parlor.  Hopefully, that will be done very soon.

It was my Digital Dollhouse channel, which I've retained as a section of the channel for videos of 3D models I've made.  If you watch the memorial video for Anne Rice, you might notice that the parlor, too, is a 3D model I've been working on for a while now.

If you have looked at Mayfair Witches in Pictures in the last few hours, you might have noticed I have added the trailer for the new series, Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches.  This is directly from AMC+'s own YouTube channel.  As I redo the channel art, you will see a playlist dedicated to things such as trailers and other video clips about the series on AMC+'s YouTube channel.  

What you will NOT see is me reuploading them to the Parlor's YouTube channel.  The Parlor channel does have a community tab and it does have the ability to host live streams, but this is something I have never done.  If I were to host live streams, it would not be to stream content like the trailers, video clips, and certainly not episodes as this is a policy violation and, if I'm not mistaken, a violation of broadcast regulations.  

Though I have never hosted live streams and do not appear in videos, even just doing a voice over, I have known several channels who do.  Whenever something like a movie or an episode of a TV show or documentary series or even a music video was played just for viewers to watch it together, YouTube would (and WILL) shut down the stream for policy violations.  

Channels have options for restarting streams when that happens, but it is best to avoid this.  The Parlor will abide by policy.

I do not foresee The Parlor hosting live streams at this time.  Perhaps someday, when Your Hostess does not view her webcam and microphone as demons summoned from Hell (commonly referred to as "stage fright"), there might be a venture into doing some type of commentary on various things in videos.  But let's not get carried away just yet...

Copyrights

Come Into My Parlor is and always has been US based and Fair Use is perhaps the biggest reason The Parlor and sites with content like it are able to exist.  I started this project by including a new page: Copyright Disclaimer.  

Of course, this is not a permission slip for a free for all. 

Fair Use can be tricky to navigate and it's not always clear if usage of certain intellectual property is or isn't protected by Fair Use.  The first rule of thumb is usually, "If you're including it in your own content for monetary gain, it's not protected by Fair Use".  The next one is "If you include someone's content in your own content, attribute at very least."  Third, "Even if you're allowed to use it under Fair Use and you attribute it, remove it if they ask you to.  You don't have to remove it, but it's best to do so anyway."

That's something I've always tried to do is make sure that wherever something came from, there's a reference and/or an attribute.  I often have to go back and make sure I have things properly attributed and sometimes I miss one or two.  

Graphics

I'm also working on listing some great websites I've used to make some really nifty graphics for the site on the pages you see those graphics on.  Like these two pages: The Witching Hour - The Mayfair House and Come Together - The Mayfair Witches.  

The graphic artist who made the image of the painting of Deborah Mayfair that you see at the top of the Mayfair Witches page has also made some images of other Mayfair Witches.  I need to find that site so you can see them as they are fantastic!

Once again, feel free to look around and enjoy!

~ The Parlor

 

Another Few Hours Later...

One more page done.  This one is the page 1239 First Street Sold (Archive).  It is a collection of real estate information on the Brevard-Rice house compiled from multiple sites listing the house.  I believe it's from around 2009.  There are more photos I have saved from real estate listings that I hope to add soon.

I do plan to include the images in a restored photo gallery.

I probably should have done the Mayfair Kitchen page at a time when it wouldn't make me hungry (I just had dinner)...

A Few Hours Later...

...a bit more progress.  The Witching Hour - The Mayfair House is up, with a hiccup or two.  There are several pictures that I'm having a hard time getting to a position that would reduce the amount of scrolling.  Maybe I should have kept the list of links to other pages on the site about the house at the top...

There are only two pages left to restore, and the photo galleries of the house and garden.  

The rose frame around the picture of the house is from a design by an extremely talented graphic artist, Moonbeamart, called "Autumn Roses".   

Back to the Parlor Desk...

~ The Parlor

Progress...

In the last week or so, I have managed to reconfigure this blog and either recreate and/or redesign pages from the original site.  Those can be found in the drop down menu above.  I've moved some things around, broken up some of the sections of pages into separate pages, and I'm still chasing down each and every link to make sure they work.  There are several, so I might have missed a few, but I'll find them!

If you do see broken links or images replaced by "Image Hosted By Tripod" placeholders, please feel free to let me know.  There is, in the column to the right, a way to contact the Parlor via email.

There is a lot to update, and I've also been doing some redesigns of the graphics from my original site.  Some of them look a bit different as I've made use of some fun image editing sites.  Many images have an edge fade to blend better with the black background.  I've also put frames on portraits, added graphics to better describe things, and (my favorite) have even been able to animate an image of one of the witches!

There are more images to animate, which I'm just thrilled about!

So far, I am concentrating on the pages from the original site, but I do have more ideas for more pages (Michael Curry, I'm gonna need one of those notebooks for this restoration project).  Here is a teaser I've been brainstorming for a while.  The houses surrounding the Brevard-Rice House.

People have observed that there are other houses in the Garden District that resemble the Brevard-Rice house in basic ways.  This, of course, includes the Soria-Creel house, which was used as a filming location for the exterior of the Mayfair house in the new series.  Some are more ornate than the Brevard-Rice house and some are not.  But what a fascinating glimpse into this particular building style this will be, don't you think?

The timing is excellent, because I am now about to begin working on the pages from the original site that focus on the Mayfair house (the Brevard-Rice house).  They are the last set of original pages left to work on.  Everything else has been moved and redone here.

Just for funsies, I found another thing to do with some of the images of the Brevard-Rice house taken in the 1930's and 1960's.  You'll see them as I finish each page.  You'll see less and less the Oops alert, which has an animated image of the front door of the Brevard-Rice house made to look as if no one's home and a sign to never mind the dog, beware of Lasher--with a cat sleeping in front of it!  

The other sign you see is taken from the cover of a book I read that is set in Rhode Island, and will be included on the Suggested Reading page.

Speaking of Rhode Island...

I have added some new pages as I went along, and one of them addresses the connection between the Brevard-Rice house and my family tree.  This was something I was completely unaware of until the last five years or so.  It is...what is the expression for this kind of story...a real doozy.  I didn't even know I had any relatives in Louisiana, so I would never have thought to look there.  Until I stumbled on a great uncle who changed one letter in his surname.

This has something of a connection to what turned out to be a ton of ancestors in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts.  The last one includes yet another ancestor, a great uncle (among others) who was hanged as a witch in the Salem Witch Trials.  I have been studying my family history for over 30 years, and in recent years, thanks to digitized records, genetic genealogy and sites like Ancestry.com, I've managed to learn more.

This, of course, means I hope to recreate the Mayfair Family Tree page with easier graphics and accuracy.  I made those at a time when I had to draw out the trees myself with photo editing software.  

There is a lot to do, but I thought an update on the changes around here would help explain what must seem like chaos at the moment.  Please keep checking back for more!

~ The Parlor  

Major Renovations to the Parlor...