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
 
I've jumped into revising the pilot episode of the sit-com that I'm working on with a client. I'm still waiting for his notes/feedback - expected this coming weekend - but decided to do a bit more work on it in the interim. I really like the project (no, I can't say what it's about 'cause it's not MINE in terms of ownership even though I'm credited as writer) and I can actually SEE what it would look like. Of course it's a long long LONG way from there to actually seeing it on a screen, but hey, it's a step in the right direction.
 
I'm preparing my team for the 48 Hour Film Project in Los Angeles. The 48 is a film competition where you have 48 hours to write, shoot, edit and deliver a 4- to 7-minute film. It takes place next weekend August 6-8. I'm still looking for an editor (Premiere preferred) and a sound designer. It's an unpaid gig by the rules of the competition, but a fun experience producing something in such a short time period.
 
Relaxing weekend or working on something? ;)
 
I just finished my Script Doctoring class homework. Next, I will be writing the next few pages of the feature I'm working on. I don't know if the class is helping me while I'm writing the first draft, but I believe it will come in handy once I start the rewrites.
 
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Not so much putting "pen to paper" as the teeth of a mechanical excavator to heavy clay soil in pursuit of my Grand Plan ... and then having to put things on pause because some of the locals decided to stage a sit-in protest!

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In fact, I've been making quite a bit of progress on the Grand Plan, but action at the expense of words. Speaking of which, time to boot up the chainsaw and take advantage of this lovely October weather before the summer comes back.
 
My whole house is decorated for christmas and I'm filming a scene next week. Going to use those chocolate colored gels that I talked about a while back. I think it'll be a great light for christmas dinner.

Just finished watching an annual computer game tournament for Dota that was 40 million dollars this year.
I have about 5k hours playing the game and its fun to watch the pros. It was a crazy year.

The top 3 dogs all lost in exactly the same fashion to this underdog team. lol. all 3 of them the exact same way, its like they werent paying attention or were too arrogant to think it would get them too.
 
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The initial 5-month shutdown last year was stressful, and it also meant no new content for networks and studios. The new stuff already completed or in post, ran early in the shutdown, so the absence of new content was a little delayed. Still, it put them all behind and itching for new content. When production companies figured out how to get back on set/location safely with COVID protocol, a lot of work came pouring in and has been, honestly, packed since then. Just wrapped the second shooting block for one series, and we’ll go back for the last two weeks of season 3 in December.

Corporate shoot yesterday and another on Friday, sound design for a commercial tonight, and a couple of travel shoots coming up between now and December. It’s actually nice to have a little breather right now.
 
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I'm working on integrating a bunch of different plugins into UE5, and trying to get them all to work together without crashing. It's a difficult program to jump into, because of so many different versions, and so many of the subsystems only working on one version or another. I now have 4 seperate installations of the same program running in parallel.

They moved all the controls on the latest version, and now all of the tutorials are broke. Going to be a long week.
 
It's felt like a very slow couple of weeks here on the forum. Does anyone have anything going on?

Way too much going on! Have just returned home after a fortnight of (metaphorical) firefighting for people who didn't take my advice six years ago; and that after two weeks of my own wailing and gnashing of teeth after my motorhome (and home-office-away-from-home) engine decided to have a major mid-life crisis 15 minutes after being given the all-clear for the next two years. :cry:

But this relatively sudden, eerie calm is affecting just about all the forums I visit. I reckon that Facebook outage the other week was really the aliens rebooting our brains after an upgrade, and some people just weren't ready for it ... 👾
 
Yikes! That certainly sucks. Hope you were able to (more or less) resolve the problem.

Yes ... with the application of large quantities of plastic of approximately 85x55mm, and much compromising on my usual value-for-money researches. Am somewhat peeved that I made those compromises on the back of a promise that it'd be back on the road by the last day of the month, so that I could get to a three-day music-and-dance event that I've been waiting two years for (and for which I secured the second-last all-weekend pass) ... only to receive no update at all from the mechanic until after my last possible departure date. :angry:

But measured against the misfortune suffered by @Alcove Audio it was a relatively minor event. Am hoping that there's some good karma waiting for me around a corner somewhere, seeing as I gave my ticket away for free to someone I've never knowingly met, but who sent me a very sincere thank-you message after the event.
 
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I think this is a good thread. In a way it's the entire forum in microcosm, nice to have a central place to get small updates about what everyone is doing!

Today I'm working on expanding my knowledge of procedural ecosystem population. It's a technology that can be used to create typically work intensive scenes more quickly. Like using a paintbrush to create a forest. With some programming, you can swipe the paintbrush across a hillside, and a row of trees appears, swaying in the wind. A force multiplier for virtual set designers.

 
Today I'm working on hardware upgrades and financing. With black friday sales starting early, it's annual maintenance month. It's a pretty hostile market right now with GPU's selling at double list price at every retailer, because the shortage caused by coin miners, and it's just days upon days of research to optimize a workstation purchase, and set up a 30 month loan for a single computer. Tribulations aside, this is the year I can finally achieve some things I've tried to accomplish for over a decade. Primarily virtualizing filmmaking to a point where geography and budget aren't the severe limiting factors they once were.
 
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

Film Production: On Set of 'Pendant'" by vancouverfilmschool is licensed under CC BY 2.0
I finished editing episode one of my series psycho6 yay 😁
 
I'm filming an indoor gunfight on saturday.. i want to shoot a blood cannon onto a plexiglass panel in front of the camera when someones head gets blown off with a shotgun. and I want to do some splatter on someones face and also on a cabinet.

never even used a blood cannon but i did buy a compressor and i have a bunch of different types of ingredients for blood and hopefully i can put together something convincing that doesnt stain my cabinets.
 
I'm 75K words into my book... And? I gotta tell ya. This is the best decision I've ever made. The feeling of not having to worry about the unofficial rules of screenwriting is amazing. The feeling of not having to write for a Reader is amazing. The freedom of writing fiction is AMAZING. LOL. No, nothing I'm doing has anything to do with filmmaking... In fact? I just turned down a job for what would have probably been an easy script-doctoring gig.

I hate working on other writers' stuff...

I spent the last year learning about writing fiction and breaking down bestselling books within my genre. That means I didn't just throw spaghetti against the wall and hope for the best. I managed to "find" spreadsheet breakdowns of publishing houses that they use to break down prospective novels they want to sign. I found 4 out of the 5 publishing houses. From them, I created my own master spreadsheet. I then took the top 5 books within the genre I'm writing and broke those down in order to see their structure... Not just story telling structure but chapters, characters, locations, etc.

VERY EYE-OPENING. I only mention all this because this is in fact exactly what I did back in the early 80s when I decided to learn how to write screenplays. Reverse-engineering is just how my mind works.

Yes, I still read screenplays... ALL THE TIME in fact. LOL. I'm still involved with a production company and we stopped using Professional readers a very long time ago because quite frankly... We missed a few opportunities because of those readers. LOL.

The more I do this? The more I can see I just no longer have the motivation to deal with Hollywood and all its under the table rules. And now? Everyone is so worried about insulting some particular demographic and it just doesn't feel good anymore.

I gotta say... Writing fiction has caused me to rediscover writing all over again.
 
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