fuzzynormal

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.

One of the guys I do a film festival with used to be a park ranger here in town. He still assists film crews on local shoots like this: He assures me that working with the state parks is pretty straightforward. They'll indulge just about any request, even the Indie ones. Cheers

Film scanners are affordable. It's not too hard to DIY negative development either. If you're doing B&W it's even easier.

Ha! I get to wear my old man badge now! "Back in my day we spent over 100K for shitty 640x480 non-linear editing and we LIKED it!" Hey, things are pretty sweet when you're on the other side of the gate.

There's no "one trick" to making this efficient right out of the gate. It's esentially the same thing as learning a language or learning the guitar. You practice and you learn techniques that allow you to succeed. Those techniques and that style depends heavily on what kind of person you are. If you're good, you hone a sense for grabbing your "selects" and it gets you to the end-game faster, but you have to develop that muscle. FWIW, your project is big, but still modest compared to what typically gets shot for a doc. I hate to think what my footage-to-final ratio usually is...100:1'ish? I'd rather that offered as a Leone reference. Man, loved the way that guy did things.

A better question to ask, in my mind, is "do any of these examples make a big enough difference to truly matter to you?" For some, the answer is "sure," but for the stuff I do, at the budget I do it, I say "nope." That said, I like "E."

Y'all are probably well aware of this suggestion, but FWIW, I always lift my darker levels a bit with Fuji files in Premiere using "fast color corrector." I'll push "output" blacks up 8 and bring down the highlights to 235. From there I'll tweak some mids too, depending on what I'm trying to match. FUJI colors are nice, but the levels from my X-Pro2 are quite different compared to what comes out of other cameras. None of this is probably germane to your problem, but if you can recover your details in h.265 to your preference and the issue is at least consistent, you'll have a rough work-around. These sorts of hardware/maths issues are why, even though it's painfully slow, I typically like to render my important work using "software only." That might be worth a test. I know my PC does all sorts of frustrating things when I'm trying to export using hardware acceleration. So much so I just can't trust it.

FFS