A look back on 2008 and a few of the characters that came about.

I decided that being the frugal student that I am, I was going to make greeting cards for the holidays. Follow along and make your own fireplace greeting card for the ones you love during this holiday season!

Happy Holidays!

I had the midterm blues, and it inspired me to write a song about it, and then make a music video for that song. Here it is:

Yet another part in a series about producing your own short film. In this video, I looks at the production binder, and how it is a necessity to creating a short film, or any video production.

I was watching “The Jamie Kennedy Experience”, trying to understand if I had dropped my funny bone in some gutter or whether it had been anaesthetized by the show’s patently laborious humor. I found myself wishing instead that “Kids in the Hall” was still on the air when my friend turned to me and asked:

“So, got any plans for Halloween?”

Suddenly, I felt a resistance much like I used to feel when my mother would suggest we go down to Angelo the Barber and get that ‘mop’ of a haircut down to a more respectable buzz-cut size. Now, last year I went to the Mod Club’s Halloween bash and I must admit it was a pretty amazing experience. People were decked out in just about any costume you could imagine-- from historical figures like Stalin and Lenin to a costume that looked as if Sauron from Lord of the Rings had made his suit of armor entirely out of glow-sticks. Yes, glow-sticks. It was truly, truly amazing.

Yet, the thought of dishing out twenty bucks for some club and then more money for a costume just was not doing it for me. It’s not that making one wasn’t an option. I just didn’t want to DO it this year. So I as tried justifying this to my friend, who looked at me as if I was dead inside, I thought, (putting my glass of Omega-3-rich Soy milk down) am I too old for Halloween?

So I made a list of:

1. You would rather call it an early night instead of staying out late trick-or-treating… and it’s a Friday.
2. You insist on washing the pumpkin and all the tools used to carve it outside with a bleach solution just to make sure you don’t catch ‘the E.Coli’
3. You argue that All-Hallows-Eve could be better-spent indoors trying out those new Martha Stewart scary-cookie recipes.
4. You prefer to watch Mike Myers in ‘Austin Powers’ on Halloween night, rather than the more appropriate masked killer Mike Myers in ‘Halloween’
5. People compliment you on your wart-nosed witch mask when you don’t have the heart to tell them-- it’s not a mask.
6. Trying to put on the too-tight leather pants of your ‘Crow’/Eric Draven costume from your high-school days causes you to pass out from the lack of circulation (which, incidentally causes you to rule out that leather dominatrix corset).
7. You figure that a costume made entirely of reflective tape is a ‘cool and safe alternative’
8. You still think going out as Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader is remotely interesting to anybody
9. After running up the stairs to your first house, instead of yelling “trick-or-treat!” you ask breathlessly, “do you have a home defibrillator?!”
10. While stealing a nap on your front porch, you wake up to costumed children saying, “Cool dead-guy decoration!” as they poke you with a stick.

I'm producing a series of videos on the making of a short film for students. This one is about breaking down your script for production.

At the rate that camera technology is changing, it makes little sense for someone on a student budget to go out and buy a camera when one with better resolution, lens quality and more convenient footage acquisition is almost always lurking six months around the corner. The large video camera manufacturers are almost constantly engaged in a game of one-upmanship to provide better cameras and better price points for a range of amateur and pro-level users alike. There are a variety of pros and cons on whether you should buy or rent a camera, but it all boils down to your individual needs.

WHY BUY?

Knowledge is Power

Owning your own camera allows you to have it with you at all times, which allows you to learn the ins and outs of the camera and its features. When you’re renting, the clock (and the meter) are running, which makes most people rely on the camera’s default settings. Having the time to customize your own settings can allow you to create unique looks that could help your picture stand out.

Time is of The Essence

If you’re doing work for other people, having your own camera can allow you to function as your own business, which is good if someone who is hiring you on short notice. It’s a nuisance when you have to call rental houses to see if their equipment is available and often clients that are bogged down by their own time constraints don’t want to wait around while you figure out where you are going to get your camera from.

Mo’ Money

Renting out your camera or yourself as a freelancer is a good way to pay off money spent on buying the camera. While you can also negotiate a price for your services that will cover your rental cost and ensure that you make some money for yourself, be realistic. Clients are also privy to how much a camera will cost to rent and they might rent it themselves and find their own cameraman to do the work for free. It’s good to be reasonable, especially if you’re just starting out. Sometimes the experience and the chance to show your stuff can lead to more (paid) work down the road.

Write it Off!

Cameras can be declared as an expense if you are a registered business. I’m not sure if the same applies to rentals (if anyone knows this, please let me know!) If you’re leasing the equipment, those payments can also be claimed as business expenses.

WHY RENT?

Times WILL get Tough

The nature of freelance work and personal projects can mean lots of down time. A friend of mine who makes corporate videos has been out of work for stretches as long as four months! Also, finding or writing a story and developing it can take some serious time and usually the poor camera is just sitting there waiting to be used. Renting on a per-project basis is often a good idea especially if you don’t have some sort of plan or reserve of cash to cover your bills when times get tough and the projects are trickling in.

Cameras don’t suffer Broken Hearts

Renting is like being single. You can walk in to a rental store and not feel committed to any one particular camera. In fact, many rental houses will let you sit in with a camera, provided that it is not rented out, so that you can play around with it and get to know it while asking the all-important questions of the professional staff that are at hand. Oh, and luckily cameras don’t suffer from broken hearts.

The Right Tool for the Right Job

Different projects often require different tools. Cameras are no exception. Some of them have exceptional low-light performance, while others may be better at capturing slow-motion. Video is also rife with a myriad of video codecs, so it pays to do your research to see if the codec that your camera shoots in won’t choke your video editing program’s CPU.

YouTube It!

There are a load of tutorials and footage tests posted on YouTube as well. All you have to do is type in the name of the camera and you’re sure to find shots using the camera you’re curious about in a variety of shooting conditions.

At this point, it makes more sense for me to rent than buy, but I’m also a bit impatient. I like just grabbing the camera and going out and shooting whatever suddenly occurs to me. Also, rental houses usually ask for pretty substantial security deposits if you’re renting their equipment, which can often be a third of the cost of the camera itself!

Most student credit cards don’t have the monstrous limits to support the deposit required of certain high-end cameras, which limits them from accessing the good stuff. Thankfully, most rental houses offer student discounts, which help ease the pain. As a solution, you can get a parent to us their card for the security deposit and usually the rental house will allow you the student rate. I’ve done this on many occasions, which has allowed me to make some good quality stuff. Now if only I could get MY limit down…

My newest video...

I recently finished work editing for an independent filmmaker who had shot on high definition because she felt that having a film shot on a high quality format would improve her chances of the film being taken seriously when she decided to shop it around to potential buyers on the festival circuit. This is almost exclusively the route taken by many independent filmmakers who know that it is all fine and dandy to be able to accomplish the feat of even making a film in the first place, but getting that film seen is an entirely different beast altogether.

Getting a film seen can mean many things, especially nowadays with the Internet having become a forum in its own right for filmmakers to get their work out there. Festivals have been around longer and obviously with that comes a certain level of prestige that attracts and receives the support of many industry people that any filmmaker would give an appendage to be in the same screening room with, breathing the same air.

It got me thinking; mainly because I’ve been working on a project of my own that I’ve been writing and trying to get shot in the fall to take advantage of some really atmospheric fall scenes and the beautiful ambiance that overcast late season light provides, but also I’m feeling the pressure because a few significant deadlines are approaching. I’ll want to do a good job on the film and not rush it just to make some deadline, but I have to say that I have known some who don’t take the time to do a good job and you can imagine the result because of that.

This applies to just about anything in life. Like it or not, deadlines are a part of life, but you have to believe that if people are going to see what you’ve done then the time you spend on it inevitably affects the result. There have been cases, myself being one of them, where being under the gun actually motivates you to think creatively and more productively because you are aware of the limit you have in front of you. There are other cases too where you (super important) prioritize working on something consistently and over time you see it grow and mature into an idea that you could never have conceived in a more compressed time space. I’m sure theories abound on this subject on time in relation to result and I’d love to hear your own ideas, but I have to say I’m leaning more and more towards allowing myself to enter into something like a ‘relaxed discipline’ where I’ll treat my project in this way:

• I’ll have a notebook handy. When an idea comes, no matter where I am, I can jot it down. These notes come in handy later. Trust me.
• I’ll return to the idea mentally, every so often through the day or the week. It turns into a sort of mental exercise and thinking about it turns into a habit. I become aware of the idea in some of the most interesting places and situations, which can yield some unexpected associations, which I might even incorporate into the idea, taking it to different places.
• Avoiding intense thinking sessions that have large gaps of days or even weeks is useful, because a long period of time of being away from an idea is like stuffing yourself with food after going without for a long time. The effect is the same; it’s too overwhelming and you might miss out on those intricate details that make an idea fuller and more robust. Little mental warm-ups keep the brain limber and flexible enough to spring easily into action. (Insert exercise analogy here).

Last but not least, if all else fails and I’m getting nowhere, I’ll just scrap the idea all together. Remember that notebook I mentioned? This is where you can go back to those random notes and maybe find some interesting nugget that will start the brainstorming process all over again and create a thread that you can take up and follow outside that crazy maze of ideas. Everyone is different and that is what I’m after, what’s your ‘method’ if there is one or does there need to be one?

If you’ve ever had to undertake any sort of project, once you’ve overcome the blank page you know that preparation and organization can save your life when it comes to getting through to the end. The script is your blueprint that you can show to friends or to those financially fortunate individuals who can help you bring your idea to the screen, so it’s important to have a clear, organized layout that just about anybody can look at. A properly formatted script is almost a must if you’re going to show it to a potential investor, or if you’re serious about entering competitions that can win you some coin and help finance your project.

Script as the gateway to getting money and Interest in your project

There are a number of great websites where you can submit your script and have it compete for prize money but my favourite is an organization called the Wildsound Festival. They have a site, where for a fee; you can submit a completed film or your screenplay. Your screenplay then has the potential to be read by professional actors and viewed by film investors and producers who could be your future partners in getting the money required to get your project off the ground. We have to be realistic though, film is a competitive industry and Wildsound accepts submissions from everywhere, so if you’re a student, you might want to check out the Student Shorts Film Festival. This festival was actually started by a friend of mine and his student buddies and has grown successfully over the last 8 years, specializing in student submissions. More on festivals in the next blog…

Back to Basics: GET ORGANIZED!

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Not only can a million things go wrong when you actually DO get the wonderful opportunity to shoot your project, but there are obstacles that need to be resolved at the earliest stages, one of them being writing the script. Notice how I didn’t say writing a GOOD script. The ‘goodness’ of your story will depend on your own creative juice and ability to write and is largely dependent on whose reading it. Just because someone says your idea sucks, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plow ahead and believe in it. (I smell another blog coming…)

One thing that IS pretty standard is putting your script into a format that is readable and adheres to the normal format. This will depend if you’re writing a TV, Theatre, Music Video or Film script, as they all have their own format and for good reason, each media has its own special requirements. They ALL need to communicate these requirements to anyone who is going to get involved. Putting yourself on a need-to-know basis is fine, but it doesn’t always jive well with others.

GET ORGANIZED, FOR FREE!

There’s a great site I came upon that offers a program called Celtx. This has ready-made, feature-rich templates to make screenplays, storyboards, schedules and sticky-notes that you can attach to your screenplay when you have a moment of inspiration that you need to get down fast. It’s available in over 15 languages and they have a project sharing site where you can post your script, storyboards and so on, so other people can comment on them.

Just check out this one guy’s project about a therapy group for monsters. Celtx supports Windows, OSX and even Linux for the avant-gardes out there.

There are a lot of professional scriptwriting programs like Final Draft, which can cost an arm and a leg for a student, but Celtx gets the job done and it’s free. The industry is pretty unforgiving when it comes to deviation from the standard, so in this case, you might have to buckle down and find a way to manage your story and break it down in a format that someone can read and say ‘I get it’.

Most festivals require you to have a properly formatted script, so it literally PAYS to become pretty good at writing one that can still communicate the ideas and emotions of your inspired story before you even think about finding any kind of money to make it a reality.

I know YouTube has entrenched itself as the website for anyone who wants their video to be seen by a large audience, but getting an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel isn’t necessarily a guarantee that you’ll make any money as an entertainer. I think that YouTube has become way too oversaturated, which can present a problem if you want to stand out from the pack.

I do believe that a good video will stand out and generate some kind of buzz among people, but how many of the right people are going to see it? You might say that every person is potentially the ‘right person’ and I won’t deny that word-of-mouth can be a powerful ally in garnering interesting your work, but there IS an industry of professionals that do what you do for a living and most of them might not be bothered to troll through hundreds of thousands of videos to get to yours.

I think of YouTube as a good general testing ground, however, there are other great sites where people who actually work in the same field as yourself, can see your work. Vimeo is a great site I came across for those who are looking for exposure and critique from their peers. The great advantage to this site is that if you shot your film in HD, their site allows it’s members to show it at that very same quality, which is great if you’re a cinematographer and you really want people to appreciate how you painstakingly lit your movie.

The trouble with YouTube is that it shows movies in Flash, although now you have a ‘high quality’ option, I still don’t think it’s optimal for the aspiring pro. Just check out this cool video shot on the new RED camera of skaters jumping off stairs. I just love this site; the option to watch films in HD is phenomenal. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the REDcam, I’m going to be doing a little article on it soon. I will say this though; it will bring film-like images within closer reach of even the tightest student budget.

In the meantime, just check out this short film by Ayz Waraich, shot on a prosumer level HDV camera for under a thousand dollars. This shows what you can do with a short, snappy story and a little Final Cut Pro know-how. It’s inspirational to see what a little imagination and technical ingenuity can create, but the key is to get yourself out there and put your stuff wherever you can. Don’t just settle for the sites that are popular, seek out ones that are made by and for people that have the same interests as you do. I’ve found the criticism and feedback to be indispensable to making me want to get better at what I do and sometimes mutually beneficial working relationships can be made.

I’ll be looking more into where you can go to get industry professionals to look at and critique your work (and maybe even buy it!) as well as websites, online festivals and methods to improve your craft at this level and the ones that will come.

Here's the sequel to Spare Change, a video that I made a few weeks ago... If you haven't seen the first part, please have a look!