Beefin' Up
Wow,
Even after going through and fishing out the good stuff from interviews and other footage I've still got 1 1/2 terrabytes of info. Alot of this is because it's DVCPRO50 format and some HD stuff but after backing up the files pre-edit I'm looking at almost 3 terrabytes. I still have to do some interviews, the soundtrack, composites, imaging, rendering, etc. All the hours of footage for doing a 90 minute movie with special features, etc. can really suck up the space. I'm giddy with glee because I was able to add more ram to my editing computer so now I'm up to 4.5 gigs. SWEET!
Hopefully getting the replacement HVX200 back since the one I purchased began crapping out. That means I can get back on track with shooting. Just in the nick of time too because I need to go to LA next week to get some interviews with a couple scrapbooking metal heads and Rhonda Anderson.
I'm getting busy enough where there's just no chance I can get stuff done in time with casual labor. I'm hoping to figure out a way to bring someone else on full time. Oh yeah, and they need to work for free until I can start recouping costs on this project. ;0)
wes
Shut In
Beautiful Day Today!
A welcome sunny Saturday and I'm stuck in the studio encoding and logging tapes from the shoot last week. The big shiny new HVX200 camera I went into hock and sold off my other gear for is making some goofy noises so I'm having to put other interviews on hold. DOH! I hope it can get serviced soon because I have a ticket and car booked to head out to LA and get an interview with Rhonda Anderson on faithbooking and with a couple rowdy metal head teenagers that scrapbook. I'm already strapped for cash and can't afford to rent a camera AND pay to get the one I bought serviced. The trip itself was never in the budget. Rhonda was scheduled to come up to Minnesota for some other interviews and I was going to grab her then or possibly piggy back her interview on a weekend I might be helping out with another project in LA anyway. Neither happened so off I go financed once again by the American Express and Visa corporation.
Good thing: I was able to pick up a screamin deal on two 500 gig Seagate Serial ATA100 drives: $279 apiece! So now I have enough space in the editing computer itself to hold much of the project plus an 800 speed 800 gig firewire drive to hold this pig of a project. Almost two terrabytles of storage sounds like a lot until you figure in 10 - 12 hours of footage each from two cameras in DVCPRO50 format plus some of the slo mo stuff I shot in HD is sucking up twice as much space, then there's rendered files, the 40 gigs of stills we have so far ( still not done shooting yet ) plus the compositiong, special effects, soundtrack, MPG2 files for DVD, etc. etc. It get's eaten up fast. So here I am with the old drives ( about 500 gigs for both ) to load into my old PC as a network storage device for backing up the raw project files. Oh Happy Day!http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Bad news: It REALLY nice out and because of a tight budget I need to rent my $250 / day deck to get footage into the computer on the weekend so I can work for 20 - 22 hours combing through footage and encoding it ( have to do it real time ) and only get charged a one day rate because the rental house isn't open on Sat. / Sun. Rent it Friday afternoon, drop it off Monday morning, one day rate. Everybody in my league does it because any media project is always scraping by... so no time off this weekend but hey, saving $250 is a flight out to LA.
Another good thing: An article I wrote for "The Lutheran Ambassador" made it into my mailbox today. I've scanned it and posted a .pdf of it if you want to read it. I'm very surprised they gave me 4 pages and put it right up front.
Download the Article
here.
wes
Thinking to Much
Here's a piece of a post I made in a two peas message board thread. I was just thinking out loud and asking questions. Maybe too many questions but that's my job in piecing together a movie. I should also mention I'm uncomfortable calling Scrapped a movie because I don't want to set up expectations of some multi million dollar visual piece of art. It's a documentary and I'm just a hack. ;0)
" I'm starting to see some under emphasized areas of scrapbooking. One is getting even more creative with the actual photographs, that is getting creative with the composition and colors, lines and textures. I'm a photoshop junkie and have been since version 2.0 over a dozen years ago. Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in all the colors, patterns and stickers and assemble a treatment around a photo. Ladies: Feel free to go berzerk in getting even more creative in the photo itself. I see so much amazing framing, angles, etc. in personal photos. Why is so much of the commercial scrapbooking world so conservative in the actual photos they use in articles, books and products? Good grief, scrappers are getting into sepia tones, bold statements in photography, etc. Why not get a little more edgy in representing them? Look at how much stylized photography goes into car ads, picture boards advertising departments at Target, TV program and movie ads. Scrapbookers are extremely creative people. They can handle some edginess outside of the safe marketing campaigns!
Whew, sorry. I'm a getting a little chatty and probably not presenting an articulate, big picture argument for my hypothesis but the deeper I go into this industry and talk with the corporate and end user worlds the more I have ideas about scrapbooking being even bigger, more personal, more creative and more fun than it already is. Maybe hard to imagine huh? Think of it this way, you guys are artists and authors. I get fired up thinking about what scrapbooks by Andy Warhol, John Steinbeck, Georgia O'Keefe and even Hellen Keller might look and read like. Think about Leanardo DaVinci, he kept scrapbooks right? He has volumes of his thoughts and drawings, struggles and successes all jotted down in journals. In some ways a younger generation is catching on to the concept of them having a voice to the world through technology on the internet like myspace, blogs, etc. but my fear is that they're constantly moving at a faster pace of information assimilation, a diminished awareness of permanence, ability to judge value in some information and discard worthless, incorrect or unhealthy infomration since it can have an equal voice on a level playing field these days. Maybe scrapbooks are exactly what our kids need in a way bigger than we might see?"
Happy Easter!
wes
Sorority Sisters
We went and shot a Delta Phi Scrappa event yesterday. AMAZING. Lorna Klefsaas and her friends Krista and Tom pretty much set up the event exclusively so we could tape it. It was the most elaborate "set" I will probably ever be able to shoot on. Over a hundred ladies dressed in hot pink too over the Radisson hotel in Plymouth and went berzerk with scraps of paper and embellishments flying in every direction. Being so close to so many touchy feely people freaked me out a little, well that and running a film crew on our first shoot of the week, being on camera for a TV crew, being surrounded with people with questions, gear malfunctions AND learning how to scrapbook for the first time... it was a long 16 hours for me. The people were great, the vendors were great and I was amazed at how real everybody was. I sure hope I didn't cheese anybody off by saying somthing wrong or being a jerk. I was uncomfortable being in front of people - even more so in such a foriegn environment, over whelmed, over worked and underpaid. I wouldn't change the experience for the world.
Songs of the Day: David Crowder Band and The Descendants
