fuzzynormal

No. Living in a retirement home playing Bingo on Tuesday nights, but not dead yet.

Face to face, if someone said that to me at a film festival, it would be terrible. I’d probably be gobsmacked and just say something like, “okaaay” and walk away thinking, “man, that guy was cruel.” I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t feel like talking about a short documentary dog movie at that point. And along those lines, asking for advice from some people that consider me condescending might not be the best bet either. Certainly apologies to you if you’ve felt condecendent or patronized by me. FWIW, your writings here offer some of the better insight I’ve read. Any slight by me to you would have been unintentional.

I do proxy edits for everything in Premiere. Is it a waste of time? Not for me. I’ll ingest the footage and a day’s shoot will take about an hour to transcode into low-res proxies. Usually I do this in the evening. In the morning it’s ready to go. The proxy editing is very responsive too. Actual Source 4K footage is too laggy and slow. Editing that stuff is an exercise in frustration.

Exactly, and when one is ignorant of how to use either, it all becomes a big challenge. Not afraid of challenges, but the fact is I'd rather play with film-making ideas and gear rather than selling. Somehow I have to get to a balance that is effective for what I want to do. Do you have any advice from your experience?

Good on ya. Personally, I don't really feel intimidated by the notion of marketing, it just doesn't really get me excited is all. Perhaps if I ever did something and realized the cause-and-affect in a positive way, I be more curious, but it's mostly a "meh" for me if I'm being honest. So, gotta find a way to fix that attitude and try to have a run at some success. This is VERY important to DIY'ers, obviously. Just feel like I'm trying to hit a target and I'm facing the wrong direction most of the time; would love more advice to get pointed in the right direction.

You enjoy social media marketing? Can I hire you on commission!? ?

That hashtag is a bit of a “can of worms” when it comes to the history of this project. Luckily we now have #flyingfurfilm It’s easy to see how I struggle with social media. I think it’s a cultural/ageism thing. (Along with my curmudgeon attitude) I’m older so I sort of resent it, while anyone under 30 embraces it as part of their existence. They hardly even consider it, they just use it. Man, I just want to make movies, but now I gotta do all this other stuff? Yikes.

Well, I did update/change from the announcement video to a proper trailer. I also plan on making a new trailer-promo with a lot of positive movie reviews in it. In the meantime... FLYING FUR! Whoohoo, it’s great! Dogs! Airplanes! Happy Endings! Hooray! https://www.flyingfurfilm.com #FLYINGFURanimalrescueDOCUMENTARY! Hows that for promotion?

We’ll put it up on amazon after a few months of our VOD “direct” sales. I’d be curious what the net revenue per sale is on amazon, however. Still, you’re right, they’re a big sandbox, have the viewers, and offer a DIY route. I be curious how to take a run at AppleTV/iTunes. My understanding is that they’re a pretty substantial streaming service as well.

Have you done this DIY? Any ideas on how they got to millions of views? TBF, that “trailer” you referenced is a release announcement video so the subject could share the movie directly to his fans during the initial launch of the film. They’re already invested in the guy and know what’s what so its a direct appeal to his niche audience. We do have a standard trailer that we’ve been using elsewhere and we’ll be updating it later this week. But I agree. More storytelling for a general audience.

I don’t think so. What do you mean by this exactly? F me. I don’t even know what a relevant hashtag would be. You mean, like the title of the film? Something like #flyingfurfilm Not really trying to do this, just trying to make the film known within a niche market.

If you add up the “sweat equity” of professional time put into the production, it’s kind of crazy how expensive the film should be —but we all know the words to that particular song. I’m doing an accounting of the true film expenses next month. All of it. Travel, food, lodging, rentals, etc. Reckoning time. Yikes.

Okay, after years of corporate funnin’ and making a living that-a-way, had some savings set aside that really allowed me to devote a chunk of a year to making a movie and then self releasing it. From start to finish, it’s all a DIY effort from just two people, myself and my wife. So we know production enough to get by, but after we jumped through those hoops and made the product, I stepped into an arena that crushed my old ignorant ass: marketing and social media. I mean, I feel like what my wife and I do as filmmakers is decent, we’re not as accomplished and polished as some in the craft, but we enjoy what we do and are proud of it. ... But basically, we got a modest little film and can’t seem to find a strategy that allows me to sell it in any financially rewarding way. I’m a cook that’s trying to plate a decent meal, but can’t figure out how to leave the kitchen. Marketing and promotions, I feel so lost and stupid. We’d love to pay a publicist 20k and make their magic happen, but all the coins went into the production budget. Now what? So, I’d like to ax you’s guys to take a peek at my online naïveté. When it comes to promotions, where am I screwing up? Is it obvious to you? ‘Kuz it ain’t to me, and I’d love some advice. Links below. They show the current efforts. Mostly FB, IG, the usual suspects. I do dislike social media and my bias is probably betraying my ambition...? What do you see? Maybe more important, what do you NOT see? Thanks for your help! https://www.path88productions.com https://www.path88productions.com/film-screenings-calendar https://www.facebook.com/path88prod https://www.instagram.com/path88productions/ https://www.flyingfurfilm.com

As a person that lived before this nonsense all I want to do anymore is unplug from it --but I still have to make a living. So I'm gonna have to stick around. It's not the future I wanted, but what is?

Who really needs cameras during and after the fall of civilization? Immaright?

I want to know more about the dark secrets of Ken and Bambi.

I'm a manual lenses guy. I despise auto focus for my filming. Even when it works I find it more of a curse than a blessing. Weirdly, I like it when subjects move out of focus and someone on the other side of the lens makes an organic correction to maintain it. And I love a slightly sloppy but creative rack focus. It's a neat trick of the craft. I'd rather have imperfections created by humans than perfection created by programming. Am I simply justifying my anachronistic (read: old fart) attitudes or do I really have a legitimate point? Am I alone? Is anyone else attracted to this?

Yes, it is the complete freken bool sheit. I agree.

I used to have over a Terabyte on Dropbox and found it rather easy and reliable. Have GoogleDrive as well, but not a fan as much of how they've implemented their sharing. Either way though, they both work.

If we're going back in time 10 years, maybe pick up one of those 35mm adapters and mount it on any CCD camera...would that be allowed?

So, my brother has a channel of his kid playing the ABC's game. The little guy is obsessed with the alphabet and he's a charming good natured kid. So, bro started making videos with his son everytime the little guy wanted to play with his letters. At the end of a year they had made about 150 vids. Somehow the YT algorithm, or an influencer, smiled on their little channel and overnight their subscription rate went from 25 people to 75K; still growing. He turned on the monetize option and just received a check this month for $2K. My bro is a blue collar dude and scrapes by. This is like hitting the lottery a little bit. He puts in the work, sure, but he and his son both love it and they're getting paid for it now. He's making more videos than I do. And, if I'm being honest, they're more engaging than the dry corporate shit I usually do for pay. And, with the extra income he can actually pay a few bills on time for a change. OTOH, I'm an old creative and working under the traditional distribution model of filmmaking. My wife and I have tanked about 35K of our own cash into our latest documentary and we've made, maybe, 5K of that back. So, brave new world, y'all.

It's a tool. If you use it with consideration it can be effective. If you use it just because "it looks cinematic" then you're making a sort of lazy assumption. I tend to rely on it for a lot my shooting as I'm trying to make uncontrolled settings tamer by limiting what my viewer can see; focusing on what I want them to focus on. I've found it effective for some of my documentary work. I've also found deep focus great for a lot of my shots as well. Here's a simple example from a doc my wife and I shot 5 years ago on a GM1 and GX7: Nothing fancy there, but imagine if it was deep focus. You'r eye would go so many different directions and not be drawn to the smile. As someone that watches A LOT of film festival submissions, you know straight away when someone is behind the camera and making informed decisions. And, yes, a lot of crappy movies are shot by people that shoot deep focus because they're not even thinking about it. It shows. That doesn't mean deep focus is bad. After all, some of my favorite movies are from Sergio Leone. The skill to use the gear is far and away so much more important than any "X vs. Y" technical scenario. Wisdom will adapt to any situation. Ignorance won't.

Like Gregg Toland? That guy was such a hack.

Do they implement proxies like Premiere? I don't mind encoding low res proxies for my documentary editing work as long as I can output using the source files.