Racing the Season

Last year about this time I wasn't "overselling" my cabin because I was trying to save it as a location for shooting Jack vs Lanterns.  I figured March wasn't really much of a time for us to have visitors anyway, so no loss of revenue by closing it to shoot. Well, much like this year, the weather was unpredictable and we lost a lot of those nights to rain or freezing temperatures anyway, so the shooting didn't get done.

Michelle Prenez Kicking bad guys in my "Blue Cube" for Jack vs Lanterns

Seasonal Work.

This past week I had planned to film out there, but we got a last minute booking.  I'm not so rich that I can turn down a few hundred dollars (like I did last year), so I decided to finally bite the bullet and shoot the remaining the scenes in my blue cube that I use for the Inside HFP episodes.

Having another  job that's basically seasonal causes a bit of a race at the end of winter.  I should only have two days of real work when someone stays.  Before check-in and after.  If there's very little turn around between guests, that drops to one day because cleaning up after one guests also involves checking the place out for the other.

Last weekend was our first guest of "the season", so when I got out there, the place needed some fixing.  A wind storm had destroyed a screen door and so we had to get it put back together with some new parts before the guests were due to arrive.  That guest managed to break a chair.  Fortunately, my next group is small and fine being down a chair because Nancy and I prefer to buy either Made in the USA furniture and/or sturdy used.  (This chair was one that came with the original set which came with the house.)  Newer stuff doesn't seem to be made to the standards we grew up with and buying used at least helps local charities or entrepreneurs and upcycling efforts. Things like this, however, eat into time that in the winter I would have had free for just editing and writing.  Unfortunately, I never seem to be as inspired when there isn't sunshine outside of my window.


The Solution?

I'm really  hoping to find a manager to take over this little unit here (we have one for our place in Florida), but I know from experience that they probably won't tackle small issues "in the moment" like I do and I like to be able to do that. I think it makes for a better guest experience.  It's just interfering with other projects too much at this point.  I spend a lot of time "on call" and I don't book the cabin as often I could if I didn't worry about not being on hand to deal with little issues that may crop up.  It takes a lot Nancy's time too.  At least a good portion of that time we're working together, so while other couples golf or whatever, we fix stuff and shoot movies.

New Projects.

I started the new podcast this week, right after our last guests checked out. You can read about it in the Cult Goddess Magazine blog.  Tina Berg is working on the next episode as I type this. We're sort of in "Pre-Launch" mode with it right now, doing some pilots while I get my feet wet, but it should become a regular thing soon.  I look at it sort of like an expanded version of "Cult Goddess TV" from a few years back.  If you are an independent director, actor, writer, special F/X artist, make-up artist, jack or jill of all trades or any other independent artist and think you'd like to be on the show, contact me with a DM.

If you have a guest you'd like to hear from on BCinemaTalks, comment below and we'll see if we can make it happen.

Last week I also released the movie, X-24, to Amazon. It's a short film, which we shot in one day just after Halloween last  year.  I'll tell you all more about it in another blog.  I need to go shop for chairs now.
Our UK readers can watch it on Amazon Prime in the UK here.

Look for this photo for the blog on the production of "X-24"

The Multi-Job Shuffle - Mixing work with your passions

This time of year I usually try to make about writing because we're coming up on the slow season for my other business, people tend to have less time to travel for work during the holidays and the weather is a bit too unpredictable to schedule a lot of outdoor scenes.  Yet, I still find days, when even just writing, an indoor, not too costly, activity I can do by myself, is hard to schedule.

I have to meet a  guest mid-day today.  That leaves a few errands to run before hand and means I have to be available to answer questions or solve problems most of the weekend.  Mostly a great schedule for writing.  Except, I have some personality quirks that interfere.

One, when I start writing fiction, I can get kind of caught up in it.  An interruption leaves the world I'm creating in limbo.  I may be in the middle of my characters facing a monster or defusing a dirty bomb.  Nobody wants to leave that sort of situation mid-action to go to the grocery store for some paper towels.  It's a problem I can largely get over, but I do find myself avoiding it if I know my other job(s) will start before I think I'm finished.  Like right now, I'm blogging because I know I can finish this before I have to leave and even if I don't, I won't be leaving fictional characters in the lurch if I don't.

Two, for the movie review blogs, I need to watch a movie.  That's 90 minutes of a day gone.  I can get some other stuff done, but if I do, I'm not being fair to the movies I'm reviewing.  So, I miss a few of those a week. I can't watch the types of movies I review when I'm with family and friends unless they're the types who enjoy those movies too.  It's not fair to them and again, not really fair to the movie to have someone constantly interrupting me to talk about what they're reading on the phone because retro-independent-B cinema doesn't interest them.

Three, the CGM blog isn't getting a lot of news.  Maybe I'm not pursuing it enough.  Maybe we're not popular enough yet to be a place filmmakers and artists want to submit to and maybe, just maybe, the same slow down that makes this my "writing season", makes it less likely new and interesting things are happening in other parts of the indie world.

That said, content counts.  The more quality you put out the more loyal followers you'll gain, but you can't discount  quantity either.  I have clicks here and views on the YouTube channel even on days I producer nothing.  Why?  Because with enough content you're bound to have something floating around on the internet that someone, somewhere is looking for on any particular day.  Keep that content flowing and you can help people find information they need, keep them entertained, keep a steady flow of viewership and even have it happening on your days off.

If you see a big busy season approaching, stocking up on content and setting it to publish on specific dates is a way to go.  You need to either plan it to coincide with the date it will publish, like a "romance" movie in February, or make it general enough that the information isn't likely to change between when you create the article and when it posts.  Setting up weekly posts for March-October would be a good way for me to spend time in January and February.   So, don't be surprised if things slow down here, but do feel free to comment or write to me if you think I'm letting too much time slip by and have let the blogs down.  It usually happens at some point in the year and it takes me forever to "re-launch" them.  Blogs, vlogs and anything "serial" is like long term financial investing.  They do best when fed into regularly and are allowed to continue to grow.  They need adjustments with market trends, but the main factor to success seems to be a constant building upon the foundation you put down.  Any big lapses or withdrawals cause a need to rebuild and the loss is exponential. (Did I use that word correctly?)

Alright, heard my phone ping.  I may need to head off to work now.