Unbeknownst to the crew (though I’m sure someone had to notice me balancing a camera on my knee), I grabbed a few shots of the storyboard presentation during director’s prep.
Riding on the waves of micro-loans, this short doc contest is for films profiling an entrepreneur (they don’t explicitly say, but it seems they want entrepreneurs that live in a poor society, not the next .com start-up). Films only need to be 2-5 minutes for YouTube posting for a shot at the grand prize of $20k.
Collection of three competitions, including a UK contest, screenwriting contest, and 24 short contest.
Good primer on photo permits, which has a lot of similarities to video/film. Hand held is generally fine but things get more complicated when you start putting stuff on the ground. Scott’s post also covers what’s fair game to film from public property, which goes for both stills and moving images. Especially with documentary work, it’s good to keep up on the rules when some rent-a-cop tries to kick you off a sidewalk.
Even if you don’t like the final image, Photoshop tutorials are good for picking up techniques. This selection covers a lot of different styles, so the odds of finding something useful is in your favor.
Kind of like a book club, but with movies! Each week someone picks a film and then the other members post their reactions. Cool idea.
Nice collection of free icons. They advertise it as being for iWork and iLife products, but it’s just a collection of PNG images, so you can use them anywhere.
DoF Demystified from Videopia on Vimeo.
This is a Film School group on Vimeo that offers a lot of video tutorials covering filmmaking, lighting, special effects, etc.
EW offers their take on the 25 gadgets and innovations that have had the biggest effect on pop culture since 1983. At the top is the DVD Player, Napster, and TiVo.
Game Boy is 20, below Avid and Body Motion Capture. Shouldn’t that be higher? Doesn’t every kid have a hand held video game? Last I checked they weren’t walking around in green spandex surrounded by 20 cameras, cutting their film non-linearly.
[Editblog]
I’d need two of these - one to build and one to store. I’d also need a crash mat because I’d have fainted.
As noted before, it’s back to producing mode. This is the same director that I produced The Treasonist for (where I got a free bus and Dodge Magnum).
Here’s the one-line synopsis:
A messenger in the Napoleonic Wars contemplates his future after accidentally discovering he is destined to become a great artist.
This is what I’ve mainly been working on:
Casting
Aaron (the director) looks through our actor database to find people he likes. I set up the auditions (and keep us synchronized with Google Calendar), they come in, have a read, we talk and then make a decision. The choices have been pretty slim to find someone that looks right and can pull of a convincing Russian accent.
And of course we need extras. Aaron’s an After Effects whiz, so we only need about 10 and he’ll replicate them to create 10,000.
Locations
I’m really excited because this is the first film I’ve produced where there are multiple locations and the director didn’t have a specific place in mind.
Our main locations needed are a field and tent interior. The tent will be on the sound stage. We’ll actually be using two fields, one for the large daytime scenes, and another for a night scene. The night field is a wooded backyard, so we can draw power from the house for lights (since we don’t get generators).
Here’s a video of some of the possible locations. The first is the backyard field. The second is one we found just driving around.
We did find a promising park, and they were fine with filming except we couldn’t have weapons of any sort, which wasn’t fine with the script and leads to…
Weapons
This is more of a production design task, but it’s affecting where we can shoot. The PD team has done a great job of finding period guns. They even found a cannon with a guy certified to fire it. Once Aaron found this out there’s been a slight script tweak. When the park told me we couldn’t have weapons, I didn’t even bother mentioning the cannon.
Horses
What period army would be complete without horses? We have a few horse leads with people willing to let them be in the film. We just need horses that are used to people and won’t freak out.
And of course there’s lunches, craft service shopping, and since we’ll be out in the hot field - fans, bug spray, Easy-Ups and anything else to add outdoor comfort.
When you major in film, you sort of become the official video guy for the family, like editing stills and video your grandfather shot in Israel.
The good thing about an A/V clueless family is the most minor tasks, like making a cut, amazes them, so they’re pretty easy customers. Until they give you weird video files from their still camera.
It all started off well. I brought my grandfather’s photos and videos into Adobe Premiere, and began editing under his supervision. He used to do old-school 8mm editing, so an entire production package in a laptop blew him away.
The footage played back fine, though when I rendered it, it would play back a little choppy. I thought this was the computer being funny (real funny), so I continued editing. Yes, this is the point to shake your head.
Lesson: If the shit doesn’t work on a small scale, making it bigger and investing more time isn’t going to fix it.
You know where this is going. I finished the 20 minute long video, went to export, and guess what? Yeah, it was choppy.
I’ve finally fixed it. Five days later.
If you want all the technical juice, the video was some sort of MPEG Premiere didn’t like. I tried converting the original footage and relinking it to the stuff I edited, but no go. Just to see if something else would take it and I could re-edit it, I tried Final Cut and iMovie, but nothing. I’m kind of happy that didn’t work.
My solution? Export the video as Filmstrip. When I bring this back into Premiere, it still plays choppy. But when I render, boom. Smooth playing video. Export the audio, re-sync them, and yes, boom.
The final product. But I warn you, you will probably want those 20 minutes back.
![[del.icio.us]](http://coffeeandcelluloid.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://coffeeandcelluloid.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://coffeeandcelluloid.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Google]](http://coffeeandcelluloid.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://coffeeandcelluloid.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Email]](http://coffeeandcelluloid.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)