blog What are you working on today? Community Blog

Big or small! On a film shoot? Writing? Whatever!

If you do something for your film, even something small, every day, it WILL get made! Eventually. ;) Let this blog help you.

Don't procrastinate! Even something as small as proofreading or shopping for batteries counts.

So what are YOU working on today? Post below! And if the answer is nothing, think of something!

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Film Production: On Set of 'Pendant'" by vancouverfilmschool is licensed under CC BY 2.0
 
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I have three days off between shows. Moving from competitive baking to competitive distilling.

So I’m taking the dark days to finally get off my arse and clean out the basement, which became a shoveroom of random boxes of random crap which I need to Marie Kondo like there’s no tomorrow. It’s been a long time coming, but the end result is that I’ll be able to finish it in (electrical is already pretty much run, flooring is in the garage, and I’ll just need drywall and fixtures) and move my ProTools/FCPX suite from the spare bedroom upstairs to a nice, spacious studio downstairs.

And I’m starting the build on a new sound cart, which is always exciting.
 
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I finished my stint at the 48 hour film fest a couple of days ago, which was interesting. Met some cool people. Not a big fan of the contest format, but great to make film with other people.

Since then, I've been working on character animations, introducing new animals, filling sets with humans, trying to build automated laser turrets, buildings that grow as you watch, a fractal based planet, a giant central control computer room for the maze, light bulbs that flicker automatically when you walk by them. I also got a tiger kit, and am building that now, so the cat can have some kind of antagonist during it's jungle trips.

Still working about 10 hours a week on the special music elements for SP. Obviously I have plenty of music available, but I've been working on this one specific technique for about 18 months, that creates a unique sound that can be kind of a trademark. Hopefully I can demo that soon. It's interesting. I always played extremely fast, but needed to play slow and melodic for this, so I found a way (by gradually building up extreme dexterity) that I can do both at once. It kind of sounds like what would happen if Joe Satriani tried to cover "The Wall" by Pink Floyd.
 
AcousticAl said:
I’m taking the dark days to finally get off my arse and clean out the basement, which became a shoveroom of random boxes of random crap which I need to Marie Kondo like there’s no tomorrow. It’s been a long time coming, but the end result is that I’ll be able to finish it in (electrical is already pretty much run, flooring is in the garage, and I’ll just need drywall and fixtures) and move my ProTools/FCPX suite from the spare bedroom upstairs to a nice, spacious studio downstairs.
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In a parallel universe, a couple of weeks ago I decided to shelter from the oppressive heat and do some gentle demolition in the shade. The end result was a significant deviation from The Plan for this month, and I've now made good progress in converting my former chicken shed and piggery into my future retirement home. All the crap is gone, internal doorways are opened up, attic has been insulated and re-floored (for the benefit of the rooms underneath), half the electrics are in place, and the underfloor heating pipework is laid and ready to be covered in concrete today (if my little helper can be bothered to get out of bed - the poor fellow, trained in IT, isn't used to working 17-hour days of real work like his dad! :evil: )

Unfortunately, this creative building work has undermined some of my cinematic ideas, as I had hoped to use the sheds as potential locations for shooting a few "grotty, grungy, dungeon" scenes that feature in a couple of shorts for which I have screenplays actually outlined.

Oh, and in the meantime, Windows 10 took advantage of my distraction to update my laptop and kill my graphics drivers :grrr:, so I'm back to using my old, slow and creaky but ever-so-reliable Win 7 machine.
 
Built 30 square miles of desert and canyonland. Filming a demo of that. Big outdoor areas allow some really epic drone shots. Trying to compress 40 minutes of source footage into a 3 minute reel right now. Going through a hundred different wind sounds to find the perfect mix for the scene.
 
I spent time going over my 3D calculator to make sure I still agree with my thinking when originally wrote the thing 10 years ago. The 3D calculator is akin to a light meter in the sense that it helps you see the results of your photographic work while, in a sense, working blind. In the days of actual film, the light meter aided in setting the exposure for the image you were capturing. My 3D calculator aides you in setting the 3D window; the near and far distances before the camera, within which the 3D standard will be maintained. The thing that's cool about the 3D calculator is that it calculates near and far limits based on the maximum screen size and viewing distance that you tell it. In other words, you can calculate the 3D window for images that will be shown on a 40 foot screen viewed from 16 feet away or a 2 foot screen viewed at 3 feet away if you want and you can be certain that the disparity between the left and right images will be within your accepted 3D standard. With the calculator you can set the resolution of your data to as little as 1 inch or as much as something ridiculous like 5 feet. You can specify your lens size and even a CMOS or CCD sensor X factor, Interocular distance, and a few other things...

anyway, that's what I did today :)
 
indietalk said:
Big or small! On a film shoot? Writing? Whatever!

If you do something for your film, even something small, every day, it WILL get made! Eventually. ;) Let this blog help you.

Don't procrastinate! Even something as small as proofreading or shopping for batteries counts.

So what are YOU working on today? Post below! And if the answer is nothing, think of something!

1627489251076.png
ed
Film Production: On Set of 'Pendant'" by vancouverfilmschool is licensed under CC BY 2.0
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i already completed my latest short film called DETOUR TO LIFE which can be watched under VIDEOS and i added it to my youtube channel.
and again i find myself trying to find ways to grow my channel so it can be monetized. as you probably know youtube requires a minimum of 1000 subscribers and a minimum of 4000 viewing hours before videos are monetized. i think i found 1 loophole for small channels like me.
RUMBLE does not have these restrictions. it monetizes straight away. however RUMBLE is smaller than youtube and getting views there is even harder. there seems to be a way around that. if you give RUMBLE exclusive rights for your film, including youtube, then rumble will pay you for the views you collect on youtube. of course if you don't have many views on youtube the problem still remains. so if anyone knows how to grow a youtube or RUMBLE channel please let me know. thanks.
 
AcousticAl said:
Not sure if anyone else noticed, but the industry took a nosedive last year.

So, yeah. Q1 has been a painfully slow start to 2024, after a lean Q4.

Time to diversify the income stream…
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Worked on a French documentary back in January. Still waiting to get paid on that one. International clients always take a painfully long time to pay. It was an interesting day, meandering around the world’s most powerful supercomputer. But yeah… I really need to see that check come in.

I finally built out my Pro Tools suite last year. New space, new gear. And I’m now working on getting back into sound design and post work, in addition to my primary location sound work. Just got to build the client base.
 
AcousticAl said:
Worked on a French documentary back in January. Still waiting to get paid on that one.
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Was it a for a French company and/or in France? If so, under French law the default maximum period for settlement of B2B invoices is 30 days, after which daily interest and administrative fees can be added. As the natives are pretty good at enforcing their rights with menaces, a foreigner's polite reminder will usually encourage the accounts department to sign off on the necessary funds.

But a check (or even a cheque)? Don't think I've seen one of those for about fifteen years! :shocked:
 
CelticRambler said:
Was it a for a French company and/or in France? If so, under French law the default maximum period for settlement of B2B invoices is 30 days, after which daily interest and administrative fees can be added. As the natives are pretty good at enforcing their rights with menaces, a foreigner's polite reminder will usually encourage the accounts department to sign off on the necessary funds.
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Good to know! It’s actually for a very well-known production company in Paris.

Do you happen to have a reference point for that French law? I’d love to email them a link.

I’m still waiting to be paid. They sent the deal memo and al the other “paperwork” after the shoot, and it was then that I saw their nominal payment terms are Net60. I had already invoiced them the standard Net30 at that point. So, fast forward well past 60 days and I finally get an email response… one of the forms they sent needed to be returned as an Excel spreadsheet, not as a PDF. But she didn’t bother to tell me that when I initially emailed all the stuff to her. So I sent it as an Excel document and have since received zero communication.

But a check (or even a cheque)? Don't think I've seen one of those for about fifteen years! :shocked:
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I use that term loosely. “Seeing the check come in” these days means seeing the direct deposit hit the bank account. Even though everything’s digital these days, on most sets we still call it a paycheck.
 
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Yeah check, paychek just means getting paid. Like how a film is a video or movie! 😀
 
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