movie making on my own

Just a quick something.

I found this article while preusing the web that lists some free software on it. It has celtx on the list, so I assume from this it’s a good list. I like celtx a lot.

The list

cinematrix looks good but when I tried to look it up it seems they decided not to release a free version after all. Can’t find it if they did.

I downloaded the Audacity program and played with it a little. It reminds me of Soundforge, though it’s been a long while since I played with soundforge last, and it’s not nearly as extensive.

OMG, I made front page of Desoto Appeal :SQUEE: I take back anything bad I ever said about newspapers or Desoto County—not that I ever said much bad about them.

As to the purpose of this blog post: Unless you live near NYC or LA where no one cares about your short film, it’s a good idea to contact the local branch of your newspaper. Especially if the film is being shown somewhere, anywhere. The worst that’ll happen is they’ll ignore you. The best is that you’ll have a kick ass front-page photo of yourself to frame; and also to teach you that you need to learn better posture…and sit with your good side to the photographer.

To contact your paper look them up online. The Desoto Appeal lists a fax number for reporting a news tip. Since I utterly despise the phone, I decided to fax them instead of calling. In the case that your paper doesn’t have a website, contact information is usually listed on the paper itself. It’s a pretty simple procedure getting yourself in the paper (at least the local one).

It’s also a lot easier than most people think, or at least than I ever thought. You make contact. You say “I’ve done such and such”. A reporter either calls you or makes a meeting time to speak with you. That’s about all there is to it. Oh, and make sure you sit with good posture when you speak to the reporter or else everyone in your city will see what crappy posture you have.

Desoto Appeal has an online version: Here’s the story.

scan of newspaper:

My brother is pretty heavy into Poetry. This was one of his. If you are wondering about the funny noise in the background, it’s because he decided to record himself next to our mother’s air machine :eyeroll: And yeah, that’s him in the picture.

Trailer time:

Makeup for this movie, by the way, owes a good thanks to Duane P. Craig. He sent me lots of tutorials on how to do the makeup for the dead people. He’s cool and down with the zombie knowledge.

Sorry, need to go off topic one more time.

[edit: U.S. department of state blog, has some really interesting discussion of things to implement in order to help darfur out]

I got an e-mail the other day from savedarfur.org. They’d asked us to text Clinton about Darfur. She was doing some special thing taking texts to collect questions the public wanted addressed. In the e-mail savedarfur relayed this reply to the subject of darfur:

“What actions will the U.S. take to resolve the crisis in Darfur and bring President Bashir to justice?

In the last few weeks we have seen the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of President Bashir; the expulsion of aid organizations that serve the people in the internally displaced persons camps; and harassment of citizens of European countries as well as the United States. The ICC was created to amass evidence and reach conclusions as to culpability and bring indictments where appropriate, which it has done concerning President Bashir and his role in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur and other government-sponsored activities that have created misery in Sudan. To avoid such misery from getting worse in Darfur in particular, we need to see a return of those aid organizations that have been prevented from continuing their life-saving work in that region.

But we know that this is just the first step. I had a long conversation with the Belgian Foreign Minister on my recent trip to Brussels about Sudan and other conflict areas in Africa and what can be done. This is a matter of real personal concern to me and I know to President Obama as well.

Our hope is that we will come up with new ways of supporting and encouraging positive changes in Africa for the betterment of the people there. But it is going to be a challenging time.”

So, after five years of violence, death and mayhem we’ve made such progress as to have had a nice long talk with Belgium. It’s not very encouraging and that’s all I’m going to say.

—
udate on a more positive note:
After two posts of what were essentially rants on darfur, just wanted to post a piece of better news…well hopefully better news. There’s been an envoy appointed to the Darfur Issue.

Here’s an article with more indepth information

More reading online popped up that Bush had an envoy to Sudan back in 2006. So Envoys to darfur aren’t a new thing. It’s a step in the right direction. However, we are still awaiting a shove, a leap, a running bolt, more so than a step.

I was clever for once. I faxed a letter about “The Legend of Milton Blocker” showing at the Li’l Film Fest to the Desoto Appeal (local newspaper). A reporter called back and I have an interview Tues at 10am. I don’t expect too much out of it. I had contacted them before about an art exhibition of mine at the library. They had contacted back about that one too. What resulted was a small article on page five. It was surrounded by so many ads I would have glanced over it if I’d not been specifically looking for it. So, the same thing might result here.

Don’t get me wrong, newspaper articles about my work don’t hurt my feelings. I can always cut it out and pretend it wasn’t shoved between 8million ads in an attempt to hide it.

A slightly off topic post for today. Subject: Darfur. In regards to the situation over there, WTF? Apparently the international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Bashir. His response? To throw out several of the human aid organizations in Sudan. What a way to prove to the world that you’re an asshole. This whole thing just really boggles my mind.

I could go on for awhile but I’ll keep this brief since it’s so totally left field for this blog. Here’s a link that discusses the current situation in Darfur. For those interested Michelle has several blog posts about this. I’ve found it hard in the past to find current information on Darfur. Just doing a search of “Darfur” brings up articles from 2006. It’s a little different over there since then, however the amount of death doesn’t seem to have changed.

Anyone have any ideas as how to “save Darfur”, as they say? Apparently talking to politicians doesn’t really do much as we’ve been talking to them for the past five years.

Movie Maker is free and comes on most all PCs. I think this is why it gets overlooked. For all it’s drawbacks it still gets the job done for a simple movie. Movie Maker has the basic transitions you’ll need and the ability to extract the audio from a video clip. Also, if your computer has a fire wire port you can capture direct from your camera and then place the finished product back on the Mini-DV tape. This is useful because some film festivals still won’t take a DVD as a submission format, despite it being 2009.

The Good

It’s very simple to use. This is because it lacks bells and whistles and any really sophisticated functions. However for a beginner who just needs to cut their teeth on learning out to cut and dissolve things together in a fashion that isn’t crappy—this’ll do that.

Another good point is that it extracts audio from a video clip within the program. Click on the clip with the audio you want and drag it to the audio/music track and voila, only the audio remains on the storyboard.

Oh, and it’s free.

The Bad

If you are editing AVI, or any other larger file type, and making a movie longer than 5 minutes expect the program to crash a lot. I counteract this by editing together five minute segments, saving them, and then importing them later into one file to send back to the Mini-DV tape or to DVD. However, when doing this, beware. Movie Maker can only save a copy of a movie so many times before some really ugly pixilation occurs. For example, you save copies of those five minute segments, that’s copy 1. Then you import them all together onto the timeline to save as another file, that’s copy 2. Then you import the full version back into movie maker to add some extra effect or audio and save it again, that’s copy 3. Go beyond about 3 copies and you’ll see some parts begin to pixilated. The more copies, the worse it gets. It drives me crazy.

The other major drawback is there’s only one extra audio track. Meaning if you want sound effects and music playing together you’ll need to make a copy with the music added, save it, and then re import it to add the effects. See the above paragraph, for why being forced to make extra copies is bad.

Conclusion
If the end goal for your movie is youtube, Movie Maker is good for that. If you are making something short without a lot of effects, Movie Maker is good for that. For learning to edit and some first time experimenting, Movie Maker is good for this too. About anything else and you’ll want to search for something better. You’ll probably have to bite the bullet and buy something. However this does not mean you have to spend $600 dollars for Final Cut Pro. There are plenty of good alternatives out there for less, in the $50ish range like Sony Vegas. Also search the freeware websites and see what you come up with.

Before I end, a question for all you people out there in the webshere, what’s your favoirte video editing program?

Banner photo by Saine
stock.xchng

I’m lazy, so instead of writing I decided to make a list of cool articles I found while scouring the internet.

Subject: Screenwriting Blog: Unknown Screenwriter
link
A friend of his is a Reader. He shares an e-mail he got from the Reader on what Readers are taught to look for when reading a screenplay—namely what traits make them pass on a screenplay immediately.

Subject: Interview with a director Blog: Fast Cheap Movie Thoughts
link
An interview on Jonathan Lynn on directing “My Cousin Vinny”. At the end the interviewer asks if there’s any advice that Lynn can give to making a low-budget movie. He gives some good tips.

Subject: Screenwriting Help Message Board: Simply Scripts
link
This is basically copied and pasted screenwriting checkpoints from “The Screenwriter’s Bible”. Very useful. Never actually used them, but I keep intending to.

Subject: Flashbacks Blog: Script Secrets
link
Advice on how to, and how not to, use flashbacks in a movie.

The List:
100 Best Blogs for Film and Theatre Students Blog: Best University
link

Something else:
Screenplay format: link
Outlines the basics of screenplay format.

Good news: The Legend of Milton Blocker, that short film I’ve been yapping about a lot on this blog, was accepted to Li’l Film Fest 9. Cool ranch beans with Doritos, that’s fantastic. Thus if you live in the Memphis area, you should so come see Li’l Film Fest 9. Details:

Li’l Film Fest 9
Where: Brooks Museum of Art
When: Sat. March 21st at 2pm

They’ll be showing 12 shorts, all five minutes or less.

I’ll tell you the acceptance e-mail I got was a thrill because I’m on a list along with Morgan Jon Fox. For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Fox is one of THE names in the Memphis film community. Truthfully, I don’t know much about him per say. However, you can’t wander around the Memphis film community for too long without running into his name somewhere. It’s just there. It’s all over the place.

I did see one of his movies that played at the Memphis Indie Festival last year. “OMG/HAHA”. Yes that’s a movie title. Doesn’t it make you smile? The movie had a very different structure, very abstract. Which was the point because it’s a moive that explores the aspects of life in this current age. The big thing in the current generation is the internet, a very abstract, ADD tailored contraption.

Here’s Fox’s profile on Live From Memphis. You’ll see he’s got some good credits to his name.

Anyway, to come back from my tangent, here’s the line up of Li’l Film Fest 9.

“Chuck, from Craigslist”
dir. Morgan Jon Fox & John Tom Roemer

“CottonBallLand”
dir. Corduroy Wednesday

“El Regalo” (The Gift)
dir. Angel Ortez

“Journeymen”
dir. Arnold Edwards II

“Just the Facts, Ma’am”
dir. Donald Meyers

“Lady in Blue”
dir. Kyle Henry

“Lady in the Lake”
dir. J. Lazarus Hawk

“An Exemplary Look at Memphis, Tennessee - Free of Charge!”
dir. G.B. Shrewsbury

“Snipe Huntin’”
dir. Eric Swartz

“The Chronicals of Memphis, The Hunter”
dir. Anupam “Al” Lahiri

“The Last Casualty”
dir. Jon W. Sparks

—-see here’s me——-
“The Legend of Milton Blocker”
dir. J.H. Sprenkle
___________________

“Wierd Tales of Shelby Forest Vol. 1 - Thrill Hill”
dir. H.G. Ray

Also, in case you haven’t been around on this blog for awhile…or at all. “The Legend of Milton Blocker” is a short about the founder of Olive Branch, MS. Milton goes crazy after his child dies, digs the corpse up, and hides it in his house. The movie is told mock documentary with a hyper, scatterbrained narrator. It’s a comedy…kind of.