DISContent: Distribution Do's and Don'ts...

Gosh I love the Internet. It's really so helpful. Otherwise, I'd probably be watching TV. Or finishing one of four scripts we're working on.


First of all, this is Holly from www.kittenwar.com
I like to think Holly represents what Pushkin looked like as a kitten. But I digress.


Here's a big answer to a big question I had: DISContent: Distribution Do's and Don'ts...


I'm a bit jumpy about what our distribution prospects are for Bloodmask. We'll see. I mean, we have Ted Raimi, it's science fiction, and after editing and working on effects for six months, I still don't hate it!


We made the blogosphere! Well, I asked a question and it got answered.

Picture locked

We have four treatments and are banging away at some scripts. A space western (desert, androids, light sabres, mechs) based on Sweeny Todd (!). A Prison Planet movie. An alien invasion flick. And one which we started writing for Clare which is called "Dead Planet" right now.


We're about 25 days beyond my self-imposed schedule for picture lock. I keep promising that "this is the last movie I'm doing the picture edit on!" Hoo boy. It would be nice to have a real picture editor bangin' away on the thing so all I have to do is come in once or twice a week and make notes. But we're locked. Whew! We're locked! I keep threatening that any story changes we have to make will be done in voiceover.


Anyway, enough complaining. We are locked and we're getting music in the next couplea days and then it's a non-stop mixing party.


Who says I can't still be amused by my lousy camera phone?

Locked

All Bloodmask acts are locked. That is, except for the swordfight, which is about 8 more hours of work.

This is a good story. I like the aesthetic of the cgi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szfh1kiGjzE

Had dinner with my cousin Gabrielle tonight. Much fun was had by all.

This picture is from www.kittenwar.com

I bet Pushkin woulda looked like this as a kitten.

Just making some notes

These are for Laura to look at. And truthfully, we have to vett these things. But it's just a list of notes.

http://www.filmfinancialservices.com/

At the bottom of this article are some fun advertising numbers:

http://www.variety.com/ac2005_article/VR1117912578?nav=season&categoryid=1802

Here's some, er, data:

http://members.aol.com/joyousgrde/webpage/filmdatas.html

http://www.shorelineentertainment.com

www.lionsgate.com

Jeff Plunkett is the only one who can stand up to Ato Essandoh.

music and mix

 Well, at one time I'd said we'd have the whole movie done with DM&E's by now (July 15th). But we don't.

We have temp music for Acts 1 and 2, we have locked picture from Acts 1, 2, 3, 4, and halfway through 5 (of 8). We still have some dang composites to do -- displays, a scan of Aurora by Lucretia, and now we think some "soul reaching up out of Lexi's body" sort of thing which Maduka will have to do.

Laura got a webcam from her work and this is my self-portrait.

Boring Post - Video Levels

I found the most boring thing to ever write about! Video levels.

I'm also working on the new "paragraph" tag in html.

This will tell you more than you want to know about setup and video levels in general:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/video_levels_nattress.html

And if you read this thread carefully you will find this important piece of information regarding going from a CR601 color space to RGB:
"Avid's media is 601. If you want to work with it in RGB you need to remap the levels to RGB. Combustion's equivalent to Levels is "Discreet CC Histogram" in the "Color Correction" section of Operators. To remap 601 footage to RGB set the "incoming" (the upper sliders below the histogram" to black 16 and white 235. Leave the "output" (the lower sliders) to 0 and 255."

Isn't it lovely? This is how Daryl Boling feels about video levels.

Act Structure

The Sci-Fi Channel has an 8-act structure. It's much more restrictive than doing a feature where typically you only need to figure out how to break reels at about the 20-minute mark.


This is our breakdown of the structure:
Sci-Fi Channel act structure:
I. 18 minutes
II. 7 minutes
III. 8 minutes
IV. 9 minutes
V. 13 minutes
VI. 10 minutes
VII. 8 minutes
VIII. 9 minutes

Lindsey Roberts as Fiona in Bloodmask.

New Tractor beam

 Today computers aren't working terribly well. It's giving me a headache. But Maduka made a new tractor beam and it looks really nice. The stupid Epson printer won't let be print with just black ink unless ALL the colors are filled. So I bought a yellow and it decided that I needed Magenta too. I bought a magenta and it was the wrong kind. So I bought another magenta and then it said that three more inks were out.

It would cost me about a hundred dollars to print black on this DVD.


Ugh. And I'm just not getting any work done because, of course, firewire drives only work about 60% of the time. One is fighting me right now.

Meetings, suchly.

Had a meeting today with Dan De Filipo from www.nyoffice.net today. Talked about upcoming movie projects.

New Trailer

We've locked the trailer. Jeff Alley edited (and did voiceover.)


I have to figure out how to get text below the picture.


I've been enjoying the Opera browser, but it doesn't use the Yahoo toolbar (where I keep my bookmarks) and it's still a bit troublesome with some Google products.


We like to jump up and down and sing "The trailer is done! The trailer is done!"




http://www.braidwood.net/films/bloodmask/bloodmasktrailermedweb.mov


This is, of course, not an image from the trailer. Clare Stevenson as Aurora.

Getting the trailer together

We took delivery on a couple rough drafts of the trailer for Bloodmask. Jeff Alley made them. They super rock. We all feel much better now seeing the "movie" in trailer form. Do we use Flash or Quicktime now? I have no idea. But this weekend I have to mix the trailer and continue to work on trimming edits on the remaining reels.


I delivered the final mix of the Live Sidd CD yesterday.



Here's a picture of Ted Raimi from his first day on Bloodmask.

Fan mail

So, I wrote fan mail to a blogger! DISContent

Bill Cunningham's advice to make your picture wide-screen rocked our vole. Now our vole is rocked.