My Love-Hate Relationship with Digital Media

I started this journey of independent production before digital had become nearly as accepted as film, especially for feature movies.  Even television shows were separated into the categories of "lesser" sitcoms and talk shows that used a 3 camera, shot on video, mixed "live" and tweaked in editing format vs. those that were shot on film and transferred to video for editing, more like a theatrical movie.  Usually film was reserved for serious dramas, but some notable sitcoms, such as "Cheers", were shot on celluloid for atmospheric effect. 

Especially back then, film was a much more expensive affair than video.  It not only cost more as a format, but took longer, was more "light hungry" and didn't allow for live switching from one camera to the next while recording a master tape.

Snapshot of some old film cameras given to me over the years.

Back in my day!

Even way back when I used to ride my Brontosaurus to college classes I knew that video "was the future".  I knew it would eventually rival and likely replace film as the go-to format for production.

What I didn't see coming until about sophomore year was the "digital revolution".  Someday, digital editing would make doing movie like F/X super affordable for everyone.  The 90s became a golden age of cheesy glowing visuals all over television thanks to devices like the "Video Toaster"

Chroma-key (Blue Screening and Green screening ) were put into the hands of everybody with enough cash for a fast computer or a decent home "switcher".  I had a Videonics that I used on my first few films.  I wonder what Joel Wynkoop every did with that.

The Early Days of Production.

I shot my first few films when SVHS was still the format of the masses, but finally, just before I produced "The Lunar Pack", I received my first Digital Video camera, a Sony Digital 8, as a Christmas gift from my wife.  I was AMAZED at the quality (looking back now that makes me sad) and shot with it immediately, producing two shorts and eventually the Anthology movie, "The Lunar Pack".  The first few things were still transferred to SVHS for editing, but finally, for the werewolf anthology, I sprung for a Sony VAIO with a whopping 16GB hard drive (you read that correctly) and did my first digital edit. I recently backed that entire computer up to a thumb drive I bought for about 10 bucks.

I LOVED the "lossless" video editing.  Compression was still a thing, but the idea that what I shot would look nearly the same when it got to the final tapes astounded me. (DVD was just coming around.  The laptop could burn "VCDs".)  We used to lose so much quality during edits because every effect took a "generation" of tape to get and those cost quality.

I LOVED the effects I could apply. My vampires exploding into bright white lights were certainly an improvement over my attempts at making this happen on my previous movies.

And I LOVED the ability to adjust audio levels in post, although I abused this privilege terribly at the time and clearly had no real idea of what I was doing.

What I HATED was the memory consumption.  Still do.  As memory has gotten cheaper, digital photography and video has gotten more prevalent. Quality has gone up, and so has the amount of memory needed. Everything we do now is digital and there are precious few hard copies of anything.  We live in a digital world with monthly subscriptions for "gigs".  When was the last time you looked at a "developed" photo?

Gone are the days of video tapes and rummaging through tiny little cassettes to find old masters.  Now you have to keep transferring masters to new hard drives or cloud spaces and hope they don't crash or get lost.

Which brings me to my current situation.

Kids Today.

"Jack vs Lanterns" is being composed from over 7200 files shot over the course of about 720 days. (Not nearly that many shoot days, just spread out that long.  We probably had three shoot weeks total with principal photography being about two. )  The amount of digital information is massive.

While working on it last night I noticed a lag in my laptop.  This has happened before, usually when a scan decides to start while I'm working, but a quick check showed that my operating system hard drive was filling up fast.  I had never emptied the thing.  So, now I'm sitting here waiting for the 4000 files I'm moving over in order to clear space to finish copying, so that I can delete them and get back to work, hopefully on a quicker machine.

Old guys get nostalgic.

Not seeing the physical copy of stuff I'm about to send into the ether causes me distress.  It's silly, I know, but I grew up in a tactile world of film and then video.  Neither of these were ever as "sure" or indestructible as my memory makes me imagine.  I had entire rolls of film lost to leaving them in closed cases on a window sill in college.  I remember cameras used to back up a tape about 2 to 5 seconds every time you "stopped" recording in order to keep a constant signal and so you might lose the end of a scene if you weren't careful. Magnets were terrifying and 800 ISO film was susceptible to airport X-Ray machines no matter what the TSA agents said.

Tape was far from perfect, but you could hold onto it.  Capturing footage from tape automatically backed it  up.  The tape was the original and now you had a digital copy.  It was time used to pre-edit and log footage.  The process has changed a lot, but with HD and 4K looking as good as they do, having access to DSLR cameras and affordable lens options and being able to do so many visual F/X in my home office, I wouldn't give up the advances for anything.  I feel like today's filmmakers are spoiled, but really, they're bogged down with so many options that being able to just tell a simple story and learning  how to use camera angles and music to set the mood are getting lost in the shuffle.

It's a brave new world and the people born into it will hardly notice.

Anyway, this was mostly the result of my other computer being  held up. I guess I'll catch up on some outdoor time while it finishes.

Audio on Windy Days

While editing "Jack vs Lanterns", I came across a scene we shot on a particularly windy day.  It was a tight day, so there was no rescheduling to be done.  The shoot had to happen then.

In the past I have shielded microphones from wind in some pretty creative ways, including driving my car around to the location and placing the mic and recorder inside while pointing it out the open window.  We did that for the scenes under the tree in Alien Vengeance and it was far more effective than I expected.

In this particular situation, that wasn't an option, so we handled it like this instead.

Links

The Cult Goddess Blog: http://cultgoddessmagazine.blogspot.com

The Indie Streams Reviews Blog: http://freecinemamoviereviews.blogspot.com/

Indie Streams Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/IndieStreams/

Hocus Focus Productions Website: www.hocusfocusproductions.com

The BCinemaTV Talks Podcast: http://www.bcinema.tv/podcast.htm

Let's Talk About the Weather - and How That Affects Filming

This week the BCinemaTV Talks Podcast had us speaking Christian Jude Grillo.  Christian is an all around artist.  He writes, produces, directs and makes music (now under the name PuppySlut).

The Topic: As one does with many conversations, Tina begins the interview by asking Christian how he is doing and the topic of the crazy "Spring" weather the East Coast has been experiencing came up.

This strange weather is worse this year than in the past, but it's hardly new.  I find that since I've moved out of Central Florida the weather has become less and less predictable. To a filmmaker this is wrought with problems and Jack vs Lanterns ran into most of them.  To hear how the weather affected some of Christain's productions listen to the Podcast.

Was that Snow?
A lot of shooting on JvL was scheduled around when out of town talent could be here.  Anjanette Clewis had time in January.  We don't generally get a lot of snow here in January, but during her short stay we got our fair share.  I finally wrote a new scene in using the snow just so we wouldn't lose an entire shoot day. I spent that afternoon cancelling an rescheduling other talent because the drive to the house was dangerous and then shoveling the driveway in case we needed to get out for any reason.

The following day snow and ice were still a concern in nearby Asheville, but we had a location that we weren't going to get another shot at, so we HAD to shoot that day.  Fortunately, Brewier Welch has no trouble driving in the snow and GRIM got Anjanette and I around no problem.  It even hauled the equipment, which we then had to carry over ice to get into our location.  Fun!

Added sequence due to snow

Wind:

One brilliant idea I had to give a larger scope to JvL was to include a "festival".  It's a movie trope that all of these horrible things happen during a big festival in a small town.  Who am I to ignore such a tradition?  The difference here is that neither the festival nor the Gala are even under a threat of being cancelled because of the killer pumpkins.  Nobody in town knows about the trouble long enough to make a stink about it before falling victim to a gourd over the head.

My idea for the festival set was to set up tents on my cousin's land (Thanks Sprinkle Family) and film the close  ups there and then cut that in with festival stock which I already had.  It was a good plan except for one thing.  A wind storm that was blowing our tents down long before we were finished filming.  I was forced to finish the shots indoors.  Luckily, my wife had been keeping track of the weather and warned me about the impending storm.  I had shot background plates first so we were able to match things up pretty neatly.  

On Location before the windstorm hit us hard.

The Rain!

The "slight rain" we were expecting the last night of filming did not give us quite as much warning as we needed to correct that nightmare, however.  What we got instead was a near monsoon.  The rain fell so hard it washed away parts of my driveway.  When you see a bunch of disjointed, rewritten (that night) studio shots in the finale it's because we were forced to film those in studio "on the fly".  We had figured we could around a little rain, but a "little" was not what we got.
I had scheduled a pick-up day, but a cast member had been surprised with a gift for that day and it was "non-refundable".  I was left either shooting in studio or adding about 20% to my budget in order to reimburse someone for what everyone else saw as a pleasant surprise.  It was kind of like my own personal "Superman's Moustache" in "Justice League".  

So, in the end unpredictable weather can really change  your plans and if you don't have the money (and thus the time) to throw at the obstacles  you have to be creative just to finish the movie, which I haven't even accomplished with Jack vs Lanterns  yet.  I'm pretty sure I have shot everything I need, but I definitely didn't get to shoot everything I wanted.  The movie will never achieve the vision I had while putting it to paper.  Everybody complains about the weather, but only supervillains ever actually do anything about it.

There are no days off in filmmaking.

There are no days off in filmmaking.  Okay, there are, but you don't really get to plan them.  Days off are days that get canceled due to weather or when you have to not write, plan, shoot or whatever because your "day job", home or family obligations are pulling you in a different direction.

The Plan: Today I planned as a "day off" from writing, shooting and mostly editing because my wife is off and I have a  hot water tank being installed in the basement. It's right under my office, noisy work and making Chaya, my dog, crazy.  If you read my last blog, you also know it's an expense I don't need right now.

I decided I'd work outside while they work on the house, then run some errands and then have lunch with my wife, come home, maybe edit a bit, but mostly spend the day taking care of the homestead.  A cold shower this morning, which I thought I would be fine with, proved this was not a job I could put off.

How the Plan "Went South": To start things off, they arrived about 90 minutes later than I expected.  They called to tell me that they would be about 30 minutes late.  By the time they had gotten here at least half of the work outside I planned on doing while they were here was done.

Add to that the job which was done on my wife's jeep last week seems to need a bit of adjustment.  The new brakes are smelling like they're still binding a bit. Hopefully a twenty minute adjust will do it, but it will be in the middle of the day now during those errands I was hoping to run.

Finally, even the break from film wasn't meant to be.  A potential client, which I can really use right now, called just before these guys got here.  So, a return call after the house gets quiet is in order.  It's a good change in plans, but proof that planned days off don't often happen as ENTIRE days off when you're in business for yourself, especially when you run multiple businesses at a time.

Sometimes you get away with just working the morning or evening and my wife has gotten better at covering entire days for me when I have to dedicate myself to specific other jobs.

You never know: This person that called me today is someone I spoke to years ago about maybe collaborating on something or doing a project for hire.  After a few months I honestly thought he had just changed his mind.  People sometimes lose interest in projects, especially after the estimates start coming in.

But you never know.  Will this turn into something? I hope so.  Will I be the person for the job?  I'm the person for every job, except brakes and water heaters, apparently.

Meanwhile, it looks like I have this weekend off at the cabin, so I can edit, but that can change with one person deciding they need a quick get away to the mountains, so we shall see.

Bills - What a Great Motivator!

When you're a "creative", inspiration can be hard to come by or sometimes overwhelming easy.  Some days you may not have anything you feel compelled to write about, talk about, film, paint, carve, etc, etc. Other days, you may have so many ideas swimming around in  your head that you just don't know where to start.

Inspiration to focus and get moving can be difficult to summon up for any job or business in which you make all of the decisions.  Like, managing properties or a retail business.  Some days you just won't feel like doing anything and if there's no work that immediately needs to be done it's easy to say, "I think I'll take a mental health day."

But there is one great motivator to get you off your ass and hustling.  Bills.  When  you own stuff, things break.  Some of these things you will be able to fix yourself, but others will require the touch of a professional.  In fact, lots of times a pro is the cheaper, not just easier, solution.

In a situation when three or four of these instances start to pile up, and they usually do in the Spring for me, a "mental health day" is a day when business is good.  It makes the promotional and equipment spending that runs businesses even more frightening because you want that cash for paying for repairs, but it makes every sale, rental, written word, edited sequence, booked guest, etc, feel like more of a triumph than usual because you know what that money is going to accomplish.  Saving money for a "rainy day" is nice, but grabbing an umbrella just in time to divert a deluge from soaking you is priceless.

My "Check Engine" light came on yesterday after I left work at the cabin.  I haven't had a chance to run the codes yet.  I'm pretty sure I know what the problem is, and if nothing sticks too hard, I should be able to handle it myself.  Yet it looms over me while I wait to find out.  I just had two repairs done by other people on Nancy's Jeep.  Not something I like passing off, but our new mechanic is good, reasonable and these were jobs that I was not equipped to handle on my own.

A couple of other things have decided that this is the month they need a bit of "going over" and we're still waiting on bills from the Florida rental to know what insurance covered and what it didn't.

All in all, I'm inspired to work my tail off the next few days.  Right now though, I'm waiting to get our next podcast recorded. We have a pretty cool guest today, who you will be able to read about in the CGM blog later, then we're dropping off some donated furniture from the cabin to the local Pet Rescue thrift store and hopefully after that I'll know when my appointment with a repairman is to address a rather expensive home job that will likely increase the house's value by a bit.

Anyway, if you were every considering buying a poster, DVD, or my book, this wouldn't be a bad day to do it.

Now, off to look and see if I can fit in a freelance transcription or two between scheduled gigs.

The Prime Video Shuffle

Amazon now calls all of its video services "Prime Video", meaning it's harder to let know people know which movies are included with their membership for viewing.  Before I would just say, "Watch it with Prime" and people who already paid for free shipping knew they could also see my movie "for free".  More like prepaid, but really, I get about 9 cents a viewing now, so close to free.
Hey, if you watch one of movies as an illegal download, send me a dime and we'll call it even.

Now available on Amazon Prime (Again)

My titles have been on Prime now for anywhere from a few months to over two years.  Many of them were near a decade old when I posted them, so they had already had their runs.  Prime gave them a new market and they did well, for awhile.  Once the numbers drop, however, the race to bring a new audience to them begins again.

For the Alien Vengeance movies I did this by adding a new short related to the series every month until I ran out.  Recently, the numbers for Alien Vengeance II: Rogue Element had fallen so low it was hardly worth keeping it as part of Prime.  So, we removed it.  This was never meant to be a permanent move, but rather to cause a "scarcity".  When movies are in a person's list for too long they become like DVDs you own, but never opened. You wanted to see them, so  you added the title, but that day you chose to watch something else and you've been watching new suggestions ever since.  When that movie suddenly shows up without the little "Prime" sash showing that it's included, you realize that titles cycle out of the system sometimes.  The next time you can see it for "free" maybe you won't wait.  At least that's the idea.

Every watch is engagement and engagement is the magic that gets the title in front of other people.

Of course, I could always pay for promotions and marketing.  All I would need is money.  The trouble is, how would the money best be spent?  Do I promote the single title or the landing page?
When every movie made the same amount of money per minute, promoting the landing page made sense.  No question.  Give people the choice of any of your titles and let them watch as much as they want.  Now, however, each title moves tiers based on minutes viewed. So, choosing the most popular title and trying to push it past the point of tier 3 makes the most sense (until it tops out and then you want to push another title because after a certain number of  hours per year, your titles start earning bottom dollar again.)

As you can guess, this all gets a bit complicated.  For people pulling in $75K per title per year it may be worth all the work.  For those of us making significantly less, it's a balance that has to fit into a life that requires other work, other sales strategies and other outlets.

For now, Alien Vengeance II: Rogue Element is back as an "included with Prime" movie.  If you do watch it, please, review it.  Even if you hate it.  Reviews are "engagement", so, like a child who acts out in class, I'll even settle for negative attention.  It helps pay the bills.

The Trouble with Travels

Everyone should travel.  Near or far, we should all attempt to broaden our horizons at least a little.  Seeing places in pictures and  hearing about them on shows will never be the same as being there and interacting with the locals.

In fact, I think things like satellite radio and cable television have taken a bit of the fun out of travel.  Local radio can give you a taste of an area even while you're just "passing through" in the car and local television used to be a real eye opener, especially when there was a local access channel to enjoy in a motel.

As a creative though, the trouble with traveling is that these new experiences, new locations, different places and histories all trigger your desire to create a world with this new place as a starting point.  That's fine for photographers who take the photos on a trip or a writer of books who can take ideas home with them and put them to paper.  The problem really presents itself as an issue for those of us who work in film.

"All Wrapped Up" has some stock footage used for Egypt (a place I've never been), but also a couple of shots taken while I was on vacation in Scotland.  Scotland and Ireland have great landscapes.  They have vast areas and castles that make an American feel like they've slipped back in time.  Many of their fairy tales and legends are the basis for some of ours, but different in key ways that spark the imagination.  The trouble is, without a significant budget, filming there will never happen for me.  Heck, I have a hard enough time going back on vacations.

And this sort of thing happens everywhere I go.  Lunch out? If the restaurant is unusual or has personality, you can bet I'll want to film there. (Look for an appearance by Pop's Diner in Jack vs Lanterns).

Interior Shot at Pop's Diner, Hendersonville, NC

A farm? Mountains? Old train museum? Horses? When can I shoot a Western?!
 It's like every vacation becomes a location scouting mission.

Trips to nearby towns, up to NY to visit family, back to Florida to see other family all bring me in contact with new people, places and experiences that by default I want to add a monster a to and make into a movie.  It's hard to keep up with my own brain sometimes.  Keeping track is tough and scheduling things is even tougher.

Maybe it's why I've become a bit of homebody lately.  I need to finish up on ideas from past trips before I take too many more.

Huge Indie Sci-Fi Undertaking! But Not By Me.

Joel D. Wynkoop and I worked together quite a bit when I lived in Florida.
If you listen to our BCinemaTVTalks Podcast episode you can learn how he and I met and we worked on together. That's the extent of my part in this edition of my "production diary".  Today I'm really here to announce a product for Joel.

Anyway, "Joel D. Wynkoop's The Other Side" is a sci-fi series he did all on his own.  Wrote, Directed, Starred.  I had nothing to do with it, but recently I found out that it's now available, the entire series, all ten episodes plus extras, on DVD.

Comedic, ambitious and, of course, action packed, "Joel D. Wynkoop's The Other Side" is a big budget sci-fi story produced on a very independent budget.  With creative special F/X and a myriad of Tampa locations, the multi disc sets are bound to be fun for those who love retro sci-fi, but want to see new stories.

Trailer for episodes 1-3 below.