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...
Category: Studio
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...
Cataloging Complete
I finally got around to cataloging all the video we shot so far for the new project. I’m averaging about a 2:1 ratio (2 hours to catalog every 1 hour of footage), which isn’t all that bad. I put together a short sample video for Millard, who stopped by last night, for the sole purpose of inspiring us. It helped me, and I think Millard was psyched too. I spent most of the day Saturday vegging out, as I was exhausted, and that night watching a couple hockey games. Yesterday was spent cataloging the video, and then Millard and I watched Van Helsing and Zoolander. I’ve decided to create daily Suncoast Studios goals for myself, which will help me get some things off my plate. Sick Thought of the Day: Monkey bone in the hole.
Elves, Screens, and a Spyder
Yesterday I hooked up the new broadcast monitor, digital to analog converter, and camera. I got an ultra-accurate picture on the monitor and decided that the cabling I have was good, but not good enough. I ordered a really rare, 1990’s industry cable to hook the converter up to the monitor. Other than the fact the picture could have been crisper, the monitor was dead-on for color and chroma/hue. Tonight I calibrated both of my LCD monitors on my main editing workstation with my new Spyder2. I'll calibrate the monitor on the servers and Shauna’s LCD tomorrow or Saturday. I spent some time playing Dungeons & Dragons Online tonight. All I can say is that this game is absolutely beautiful and I really enjoy playing it. However, I got really tired (yawn) and had to stop. So, I figured I’d blog and go to bed. Goodnight. Sick Thought of the...
Cabling
For some crazy-assed reason I decided to re-cable all the audio and video stuff in the studio. I did it for three reasons: First, the cables were a complete mess and needed to be cleanup and organized a lot better. Second, nothing was labeled, and with all the power, USB, audio, and video cables under the desk, it got to be difficult to know what I was unplugging. Lastly, I needed to fix a problem with the audio. I tracked down the audio problem to an adapter and replaced it. Tonight, I’ll finish tying all the cables and will be finished. Ah. I got new barndoors and gels for the tungsten lights. I’ve put one light together and it makes all the difference. I’ve also got a monitor/television calibrator coming this week along with a digital to analog audio/video converter. My BNC cables will also be in late this week...
Getting Organized
I've decided today to start getting some things organized. I'm going to dedicate most of the day tomorrow for that. The studio needs to be cleaned up, I have several new tapes to log, and I have a bunch of bills to pay. I'm going to focus on all that plus get a haircut and go out and run a couple of errands all before 5:00pm. After that, it's the beginning of the Friday night deflate. The Pitts scenes went extremely well. I was very pleased. Sick Thought of the Day: Baby spiders in the bed.
Pitts
I'm getting ready to go down to Tvaarksanianica in about 30 minutes to shoot some scenes with James Pitts. I also ordered a broadcast monitor last night for monitoring the camera during shoots. Sick Thought of the Day: Sushi
