So tone of voice doesn’t come out in written communication. I’m sure you already knew that, but just in case you didn’t, it doesn’t, especially on Facebook wall posts.

It was the director, Charles’, birthday. His film has two locations - a plantation house interior and exterior. The interior is secured - it’s an amazing 170 year old inn downtown. For the exterior, he wanted to use Goodwood, a private mansion turned museum. This would be one or two shots to serve as establishing shots. We drove over there one day and spoke to the director. Our conversation went something like this:

C47: Hi, we’re from the Film School and were wondering if a small crew could come by in a few weeks to get a shot of the exterior of the house.

Director: Well, we usually don’t like people filming here.

C47: It would just be a small crew, not the normal large size, and we’d just need to get one shot of the outside. Should take about 30 minutes and we’d never have to go inside.

Director: Oh, well what day would it be?

C47: Either December 2 or 3, whichever works best for you.

Director: Oh, well that weekend we have holiday events and the place is very busy.

C47: The third is a Monday, would that be better?

Director: Well, Monday, yeah, that might work. Let me get your information, I’ll talk to the other directors about it and get back to you.

So we gave him our information, but never heard back from him. This was where we stood on Charles’ birthday. So I wrote him a message, saying to celebrate his birthday Goodwood called and wants us to film there, which they hadn’t and I was just being sarcastic.

Since tone doesn’t come out online, he thought this was true, which made me feel terrible for getting his hopes up. So now I was determined to get this location. I went to their website and looked up the Director’s e-mail. I started an e-mail correspondence with him, and things began to look promising. “The directors weren’t too excited about you filming here, but if you can do it Monday I think we can work something out.”

I arranged to meet him after the Thanksgiving break to sign the location agreement, and with that both locations are secured and I redeem myself as Producer.

Tickets are now on sale for the seventh annual FCPUG “SuperMeet” to be held January, 16, 2008 from 5:000PM - 10:00PM at the Mission Bay Conference Center, as part of the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, CA. This event promises to be the single largest gathering of Final Cut Pro users and Gurus in the world.

“The Mission Bay Conference Center is the largest venue we have ever had for one of these Macworld SuperMeets,” said Michael Horton, founder of the Los Angeles Final CutPro User Group. (lafcpug) and co-organizer of the SuperMeet. It is a brand new state of the art facility and the interior space is magnificent and spacious. This will be a sort of a Mini Macworld devoted entirely to Digital Video filmmakers and editors.”

The agenda is “Super Secret” according to Mr. Horton, but will be revealed shortly before the event date. “We can promise you this though,” he added; “There will be demos of new products, Final Cut Studio Tips and Tricks, show and tells, plenty of networking opportunities, and of course, our world famous Raffle with prizes totaling over $35,000.”

Tickets are only $10.00 per person and includes 2 raffle tickets. Tickets are on sale online only and it is expected this event will sell out. Food and cash bar will be available throughout the evening. Doors open at 5:00PM and this event is open to anyone who wishes to learn more about Apple’s Final Cut Studio or meet people who know more than you do.

For more information as well as a link to where to buy tickets, visit the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group website.

Source

• Realized director’s prep presentation is in two days, have to get busy #

Day two of production. It’s an outdoor shoot, so when the sun’s gone, the day’s over. It’s the last shot and covers an entire scene.

The camera is inside an ambulance looking out through open doors at a guy whose daughter was just loaded. The doors close, letting the camera peak through the window. The ambulance starts to pull away as a police car pulls up and arrests the guy. The ambulance drives around a bed in the road and the film ends.

All the elements were in place - camera was ready, actors knew what to do, crew was positioned at opposite ends of the road to hold traffic. We’re about to go for picture when the Second Assistant Director comes on the walkie.

“There’s a ranger woman here and she’s really pissed. She’s heading down your way.” The director and I leave the ambulance to see what’s up. An SUV pulls around the bend and stops in the path of the shot. Before our director can win her over, I hear the words “I need to see a permit.” This wasn’t a deal breaker - we had a permit and were allowed to film, but the sun was setting and a delay was something I didn’t order. Out comes the walkie. “Can you please send the producer down here with the permit.”

“Do you guys know you are blocking the entrance to a public park?” No. “I’m driving by and I see the gate to the park closed.” The producer pulls up with permit in hand and producer hat on. “Hi, how are you today?” She takes the permit and looks over it. “No one told me someone would be filming out here today.”

She scans over the permit. I can see the director frustrated and worried. “Right here, number five - you agree to not prohibit the use of facilities.” Apparently, when I told number two to hold traffic when we go for a shot, he pushed one of the gate arms out to do what I intended a hand to do. This drew a little attention, specifically that of this ranger, and rubbed her the wrong way.

Despite our apologies and confession that this was a misunderstanding and we never intended to prohibit anyone from entering, she pulled out her pad. “I’m going to let you off with a warning.”

Our gaffer was letting us know we had to go or we’d lose all light. At this point I reasoned if this ticket writing business eats our time, we lose the light and shot, so if I said something that got us kicked out, nothing would really be lost. As First AD I had to try to get things moving.

“Excuse me, I hate to do this, but would you mind writing the warning around the corner?” “No, I’m gonna write it right here,” she said as she flipped her lights on. This was official business.

With the sun almost gone we didn’t’ have time to wait around. I told the director we had to get something, so we decided to go with the shot and just cut when the SUV comes in frame. We still had enough room for the police to come, we just wouldn’t be able to hold it until we went around the bend. This was settled, so we ran back to the ambulance and got ready to go.

We got a few takes in before the ranger finally left. With everyone back at their post, I made sure to mention not to block any cars.

According to the light meter we had enough light (and thankfully, footage) to get a few full takes in.

We got it in the can and production of the first F3 was wrapped, though it took quiet some time for my nerves to finally unwind.

IndieWire has a great summary of the Gotham nominees for “Best Film Not Playing at a Theatre Near You.” It’s a sad commentary that five of the more intriguing films I’ve read about (or, in the case of one of these, seen) are films that have received no distribution beyond film festivals.

The films are:

Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland
Lanre Olabisi’s August the First
John Fiege’s Mississippi Chicken
Jeremy and Randy Stalberg’s Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa
Chris Fuller’s Loren Cass

Unfortunately, the article, which was meant to promote the exhibition of these films at the MoMA, only went out in indieWire’s email service today, after most of the films have already screened. The only remaining screenings are Frownland and Loren Cass. If you live in New York and you don’t want to miss these screenings you get the screening details here.

Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy Enterprises, has donated $2 million US to the University of Southern California to fund an archive to preserve student films and historic documents.

The money will also create an exhibition space in the new headquarters of the university's School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles. The archive, which already bears Hefner's name, holds more than eight decades of student films, including works by famous alumni such as George Lucas.

Hefner, 81, has already been generous toward USC's film school, donating $1.5 million in 1995 to create the Hugh M. Hefner Chair for the Study of American Film. He also gave $100,000 in 1992 to create a course on film censorship and has contributed millions to film preservation.

USC was also the recipient of a $175 million donation from alumni George Lucas last year. The amount included $75 million for the construction of new educational buildings and renovations of existing structures at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and a $100-million endowment for the school.

Sources: USC news and CBC

Over the last month or so I’ve needed to send and receive a lot of large files (Final Cut project files, songs in AIFF format, DVD burn files, and so on). By “large” I mean in the 20mb - 4gb range. These files are usually too large to be sent via email because of file size limits, using an FTP site can be a hassle (as David Pogue has noted), and sending files via DVD-Rom via mail or FedEx is (comparatively) slow and pricey.

For me, the solution has been to share these large files via a few of the several services that exist online. I have used YouSendIt, FileFactory, and Pando. All have worked just fine.

The first two are file-hosting sites; Pando, on the other hand, is a stand-alone application. It requires a (free) download, but it also allows for the sharing of much larger files.

If you find yourself needing to share large files and don’t know where to start, a fairly comprehensive listing of file hosting sites is available on Wikipedia. You can also check out this article, which surveys some of the main services.

For the past three days at The Film School we’ve been having Crew Drills. Crew Drills are basically a two hour run through of an F3 set. That’s enough time to set up, get a shot or two, and then take everything down for the next show.

It accomplishes a few things. The entire crew gets to meet and work together. But more importantly, first years get to learn how a set runs and get mentored by second years on how do to things, such as set up a dolly track, file paper work, load a magazine, etc.

It was a lot of fun and was nice to be back on set. It also makes you realize that things are happening. Someone put it quite well - this is the beginning of the rest of our college experience. Good-bye sleep.

When I was looking through the new edition of The Filmmaker’s Handbook, I noticed a lot of little changes and additions. An example: In a list of equipment to bring to the set, in the lighting category I noticed one addition: “dimmer boxes.” I can’t argue with that — dimmer boxes help one light with finesse, and they’re fairly easy to come by.

I went to the trouble of making a couple dimmers (aka “hand squeezers”) myself about a year and a half ago. I made a couple of 600 watt boxes, as well as a 1000 watt box. The supplies I got from the local home improvement store, though I remember that the 1000w dimmer was not widely available. If I remember correctly, I built all three dimmer for about $100 in supplies. They would have been cheaper, but the 1000w dimmer was considerably more expensive than the 600w.

In retrospect, instead of making those boxes, I would have been better off simply purchasing one of the many dimmer boxes or router speed controls (which can be used as a dimmer box) that are commercially available. They’re cheaper, they’re probably more reliable than anything I could build, and the heavy duty router speed controls can handle more power than the ones I built. Plus, the router speed controls have a safety fuse, which my self-built dimmers lack.

Shopping for some last week, I ran across lots of varieties. Here are some:

Dimmer Boxes:

Ikea Dimma - 300 Watts and under - $7.95
Note: Not useful for most motion picture lights, but if you just need something for practicals, these are nice and cheap.

Smith Victor - DC-1 Dimmer Control - 600 Watts and under - $23.95

Router Speed Controls:

Harbor Freight Tools - 15 Amps and lower - $19.99

MLCS Router Speed Control - 15 Amps and lower - $20.95 and $28.95, respectively, for the “home” and “industrial/commercial” use boxes

Grizzly G3555 Router Speed Control - 20 Amps and lower - $31.50

Rockler Router Speed Control - 20 Amps and lower - $39.99

If, however, you wish to build your own, you can find instructions in Blain Brown’s Motion Picture and Video Lighting, 2nd Edition (p. 241) and, of course, there are plans aplenty on the ‘net.

Hi dear readers,

this is a very personal post to all of you :)

You must be wondering, why is this kid updating his blog so randomly? Has he got bored...or is it writer's bloc?

Well, neither. I sure cant get bored of anything related to filmmaking - an emotion I'm sure is shared by all passionate filmmakers, film students and film buffs! As for writer's bloc, to be honest - that's an impossibility as well because all my posts aren't original (duh!)

Sometimes my stuff is 100% non-duplicate, like today! At most times, its a mash of borrowed knowledge from books and internet that I mould into presentable form and publish it here...making the language as coherent as possible. Sometimes, due to lack of time, I just copy and paste! However, whenever I do that, I make sure I attribute it to the people concerned, or link to the blog or website. Do point out if I missed someone.

This blog started off in November 2006, which obviously means...



So congratulations..to all of you! Yes you, the readers, who commented here, who read this blog, who e-mailed me with words of encouragement, who pointed out mistakes, filmmakers and film students, editors, cinematographers, screenwriters...I've had a varied audience. Every one doesn't comment, every one doesn't contact, and yet I'm aware that you came and read this blog. Here are some visitor stats to this blog in the last 30 days:

Well above you see a pie chart of the various different browsers (mostly FireFox and IE) used by people visiting us. Also, importantly, how actually people are getting to this blog. Well google has been kind, so we get got 71.4% people coming via search engines in the last month! Let's see something else below:

Above, the no. of people who visited us in the last 30 days from various parts of the world (only the top 10 cities during that time period).

I really feel exhilarated and triumphant when I find people from across the world, from various timezones, coming to this blog.

By now. you understand the graphic too well. I'm glad to see a good number of Mac and Linux users hitting up here! In fact, there's more Linux and Mac than Windows Vista!

I started out with this site with a sole dedication to digital filmmaking, but somehow, I could no hold on to it. We delved into various other branches of films and film technology. I hope you're not offended, coz I'm not! And now to the apology...

I do apologise for updating so randomly and making eager readers wait so long between posts. I've got a regular job at a prestigious sports channel now (since Septmeber, 2007 actually) and therefore my free time has become lesser and far between. Forgive me, and be prepared for delayed but definite updates!

And now, to the proposal...I want to make a short documentary film and have an idea in mind. Would it be feasible, if I asked for contributions (in the form of donations or share in profits, i.e. if at all its profitable) to the readers? Of course, the contributors will definitely see their names in the credits of the movie. Its just a proposal..maybe more of an experiment, if it works out, then what the heck! We'll make it more organized, with a good method of statistics and profit distribution...What say?