The new server is fully operational… Just like the second Death Star. I was able to finish up tonight, which is great since that will free up half my day tomorrow. All services are now functioning again, including FTP. Yay for me. The only thing left is to resurrect the old e-mail and migrate it into the new server (although the new server sends and receives e-mail fine). I’m sitting here, the clock has just pushed past midnight, and I ponder the next video project (besides the movie with Millard) while listening to Mozart. I’ve decided to film a short and submit it to the Tribeca Film Festival. Maybe I can get some recognition, or even win me some cash. It’s going to have to be quick, since the festival’s submission deadline is next Wednesday night. I’ll be shooting the short all day Monday (I took the day off). Sick...
Category: Studio
Server Serves No More
My server took a big, brown, stinking shit last night. Drive C: failed finally (the server’s only 6 years old for God’s sake). Luckily, all my data is stored on a D: and E: drive in the machine, so all I lost was the installed software and basic server configuration. I went to restore the data from my backup to find… the backup was corrupt. I suspect that the server failed in the middle of the backup. No biggie. I had a new server in house already, but was procrastinating the migration of the data over to it (I was going to retire the dead server soon anyway). So, last night I just accelerated my plans and started installing and configuring everything on the new box. E-mail is back up and running and some basic things like antivirus and such. I’ll be tweaking it more this weekend. The goal will...
Demo Done
OMFG, the Demo is finally done! There was a lot of hard work to get this thing just how we wanted it. I’ve added the video (MOV) to our Production site, burned the DVD master, and have begun archiving the Premiere project. With the Demo out of the way, I can finally begin looking at the full movie. I plan on spending some time finishing up some photo scanning tomorrow, then I’ll be diving right into the script and storyline, which will take be about a week to pound into shape. What else has been going on?... Well, I’m reading an excellent book that I borrowed from Millard called Whole-Brain Thinking (Ballantine) which is great. It’s a “self-help” style book that talks about people that are left-side of the brain vs. the people that are right-side of the brain, and discusses techniques on how one can successfully blend their two...
Color Me Done
I finished color correcting the Demo last night and should be able to view the DVD later today. It took a long time to balance everything out, and there may be a little more to do eventually. I also fixed some transitions and cleaned up how some of the stills move on screen. Millard’s flying back into town today from L.A. and I suspect over the next day or two he’ll want to get together to see the progress since he’s been gone. During the color correction process, I’ve learned that the process needs to improve quite a bit. Right now, all the color correction is being done manually in post, but it’s very difficult to get everything uniform and “natural”. I got some software and will be ordering a color chart that will be used at the beginning of each shoot from now on. This should make things much...
Editing, Migrating, and AJAXing
I'm continuing the work on the Demo each night. I'm now in the process of color correcting and adding visual effects to each scene and still. It's going smoothly, and I've decided on the exact parameters I'm going to be using for the various scenes. I should have the entire thing finished Saturday afternoon, including rendering the edits out and generating a viewable DVD. I have two projects slated to begin after that that are directly related to the Demo and DVD, but you're not going to get me to talk about them until the very end! Muwhahaha! After testing for the last two months, I've decided that the new Suncoast Studios server that I built is ready to be integrated into the network. I'm going to be working on that for the next couple of weeks, migrating the functionality off the old server on this one. The goal will...
Out From Under
Well, I haven’t posted anything lately because I’ve just been too damned busy. This past week I spent a lot of time working on the Demo. Millard’s flying out to L.A. tomorrow and taking it with him – I’m interested in seeing what Will thinks of it. He’ll be the first person to see the footage outside me, Millard, and Shauna. Tonight I’m marrying the cleaned up audio track to the footage and will master it all down to a DVD. Millard and I drove over to Melbourne on Saturday and shot our last set-based scenes with HisCheapMoves. Afterward, we went to Orlando and watched V for Vendetta on the IMAX screen there. Pretty cool movie. I’ll probably want to see it again. Starting today, I’ve decided to get back on track with my life. Principal photography for the project has pretty much wrapped, and I’m preparing to go into...
Busy, Busy, Busy
The last couple of days were pretty taxing on me. Making movies is definitely hard. There’s a lot more work that goes into it than people believe. We went on location to two places of business on Monday and Tuesday and we got a lot of footage. There are some seriously hilarious takes that will really add some levity to the film. I’ve recently been pretty happy with the production quality, considering that this whole shoot is being done on a shoestring budget. Millard and I talked about that tonight, as a matter of fact, and I’m starting to really believe that I’m getting to a point where I’m running up against limits on the equipment I’ve got. Not that I didn’t do my due-diligence on the gear before I bought it, but it’s just that I’m learning so much so quickly, that I’m outgrowing what I have. Which is...
Another Day of Shooting
Millard and I met up with Kathleen today and went over her character, discussing the psychology and motivation over some mid-day lunch at Denny’s. We talked for quite a while, then proceeded to Millard’s where we got everything organized and Kathleen got into wardrobe. We got to the location and set up, and shooting began around 4:00pm. Everything went very well, and we would have continued be we started to lose daylight and, subsequently, battery life. All in all, we shot about 70 minutes of footage, and I was very please with the shoot overall. I took a look at the video since this was the first exterior scenes of the project, and was quite happy with the quality. As the sun ducked behind the trees and direct sunlight on Kathleen was not apparent anymore, I re metered her and adjusted the camera which gives a pretty uniform look to...
Done
The stills have all been scanned and processed. There were a total of 289 stills totalling 337MB (all JPEGs).
Stills Still
Millard and I spent several hours Friday going through stills for the DVD project. We came up with some really great ideas too, and elaborated more on the story line. After we were done with the pictures, we conducted a Sir Millard Mulch photo shoot. Yesterday I spent about three and a half hours scanning, cropping, adjusting and cataloging the stills for the DVD. After my arm began to ache from all the clicking, I decided to call it a night and played some WoW for a couple hours. I’m gonna continue to scan today, as I’m about 1/3 of the way through the stills. I hope to be able to burn a CD by dinnertime tonight. Also, John is doing great. Shauna's down there right now helping him do some grocery shopping and such. I'm sure it won't be long before he gets cabin-fever again. Sick Thought of the...
