Multiple Motives and the Mutilation of Emancipations

Multiple Motives and the Mutilation of Emancipations
Feb 25th, 2007


Most people know that Sonnyboo.com has free music & other downloads. It's odd, I get 15-17 emails a day (literally) thanking me for my generosity, and these days, a lone poster who feels that I am an evil bastard because I benefit from the promotion of my downloads.



Today I recieved my 17th email just on the ON THE LOT site alone since joining thanking me for the Royalty Free Music, I offer on Sonnyboo.com, which is my website. I was a musician from the time I was 5 years old. I started noodling with the piano, then the saxophone, then guitar, and everything else as I grew up. My sole purpose was to write music for movies. That's it. That was the sum total of my purpose in life until 1997 when I finally got my first chance to get my music on a soundtrack. The movie was AWFUL. I don't mean in a fun, Mystery Science 3000 kinda way, I mean in an ugly, so bad it can't even be laughed at because I want to put a fork in my eyeballs kind of way. I said to myself - "I can do better than that" and that moment redefined who I was. Everyone SAYS "I can do better than that", but I endeavored to do so. I spent a few years writing screenplays and trying to sell one so I could make my own low budget SLACKER/CLERKS/EL MARIACHI.

In 1997, I retired my songwriting endeavors. I had recorded 8 or 9 CD's worth of music where I played most or all of the instruments. I never really felt I connected with any audience at any time. Part of art, to me anyway, is to express yourself solely to get it out of you, and the other part is to express yourself in a way that communicates with other people. I didn't feel like a failure with my music, but I also didn't get fulfilled because I wasn't expressing myself in a way that other people understood.

In 2000, I started making short films. As crude and amateurish as they were, I seemed to be connecting to audiences much better. More people than not, understood what I was trying to "say" with this artistic expression. Going to film festival screenings, big and small (mostly small) really enhanced the experience as you get unadulterated feedback from the great amorphous beast known as an AUDIENCE.

After making short films for 2-3 years, I did what ever amateur does - I used © copyrighted music in my movies. Pretty quickly, I found the limitations in how littel you can do with a short with stolen music in it. The joy in working with musicians again and getting original music for my films. Original music made the films more personal and more unique, at least in a simple aesthetic way.

Once I was able to get TV distribution for several of my short films because I had obtained the legal rights to the music, as well as cell phone distribution, and other money making revenues - I wanted to make sure other people that want to further their careers were able to do so also. It's also a great promotion for my website & short films. Uh oh! The smoking gun! I admit that it is promotional!!!! As if this is something to be ashamed of. I genuinely want to help people AND I want to get name recognition for my site. I have been accused of being a marketing whore. Well, I am. But I don't see how that somehow negates the actual generosity of giving completely, true ROYALTY FREE MUSIC and other downloads for filmmakers on my site. I don't require anyone to watch my movies, and I don't even require any notification from filmmakers who choose to use my music in their movies.

Here's a newsflash - PEOPLE CAN HAVE MULTIPLE INTENTIONS!!!! I don' t have a problem giving away stuff for free and also use it to market myself. My dual intentions are not evil or wrong, at least I sleep okay at night knowing why I do things. I just don't understand why there are people on this site who stay awake at night, writing characters in their screenplays about it, and hounding my posts and blogs about it so I have to censor the replies.

Here's some irony - all I ever wanted my whole life was to have my music in movies. Years after I quit making music, that's when songs I wrote started appearing in literally hundreds of movies. I don't know exactly how to feel about that, but it's a mix of pride, jubilance, and of course a tinge of regret, but not enough to make me pick up my stratocaster and try to play again. I do NOT miss making music at all.


Ah, the spice of life. Differences of opinion.

In other news of the Boo...



I have been added as a guest speaker and on a panel or two with cinema greats Uwe Boll, Lloyd Kaufman (Troma), and more at the IT CAME FROM LAKE MICHIGAN film festival and indie film event. This will be a hoot. I'll get a table to sell my books and DVD's, etc. This will be kick ass. I love these kind of events and always have a ball. This time I want my woman there to help hock stuff. I always seem to sell more when a hot chick sits behind the table.





Thanks to the new GOOGLE ANALYTICS for website stats, I made an interesting discovery: Many Sonnyboo shorts are being used in educational institutions. Colleges like uses THE LINE OF MASCULINITY and the "Best of Sonnyboo Shorts" DVD and the class has to write an analysis. There are also links and mentions of me & the Sonnyboo.com site in High Schools (like Smithtown in New York) and also Ohio University, both online & even to students. I got an email from a friend whose professor at Devry mention my site by name during class. I feel so wierd having my stuff mentioned in educational institutions. It kicks ass, but it's odd.




Anywho... We're gearing up for the research trip to Europe. That's right, France and Germany and Poland for 15 days. We're doing research for a feature for 2008-2009. This is a true story about the Axis and one girl's story (not Anne Frank). In many ways I'm just along for the ride, but another trip to Europe on someone else's dime never hurts. I will miss the cats, but then again, I just made MP3's of an buttload of director's commentary tracks and compressed them down a lot so I have 48 hours of audio on my 1 gig MP3 player. Train trips and long flights won't be so bad.

The Boo's world is spinning faster & faster. Let's see what else we have to see until next time.

- PjR

Revisiting Re-Editing and Restitution

Revisiting Re-Editing and Restitution
February 13th, 2007


I have a movie for the IFC MEDIA LAB site, but it is 7 minutes and they wanted it down to 6 minutes, so that meant some cutting. I have never re-edited this movie & sure wasn't going to go back to the raw footage so I watched it to see if I could just make trims from the movie as is. Since there was no music throughout until the end section, it was pretty easy to just Razor Tool out some lines of dialogue, and some (invisible to me for years) awkward pauses. In one spot during the section with music, I had to make a cut, but that was easily overcome with a cross dissolve on the audio track.



Every now & then I tend to go back to my old shorts & re-edit them, mostly because I need to get some distance from my initial instincts of the first edit and sometimes from my own feedback during screenings. What's funny to me is that it's less what people say than how I perceive they feel during a screening. It winds up meaning very little to me actual criticism written or spoken, as much as how I feel the audience, as a collective whole, reacts to any given moment in a movie. When you edit your own material and you sit with it, you do lose perspective. It's when you show it to someone that somehow it renews your take on how the emotional intentions work or fail and you see how maybe a fresh eye can vicariously open your eyes to changes & mistakes.



So with this case, a short film about racism I made a few years ago called BITTER OLD MAN, I wound up making the movie a lot better. As I get more experienced as a filmmaker, I find that instead of being pretentious and making my "director's cuts" longer, I tend to make them shorter & tighter. Now that BITTER OLD MAN is now only 6 minutes, I've kinda fell in love with the movie again. It's not a light piece, but it's definitely the most personal movie I've ever made. I took elements from conversations with a good friend of mine, who has since passed (only 2 years older than me) and made this tribute to our many arguments of race and the fact that he went crazy when he found out I lost my virginity to an African American girl.

The only other time I've re-edited like this is when I got my distribution deal with BIG FILM SHORTS and they wanted more material, so I made a bunch of cuts and made shorter versions of my old movies as I felt they would play better shorter and some of the jokes weren't as funny as I wrote them at the time. I made money on every single short film I re-edited at that time, so it was definitely worth it to me, plus the movies seem to play much better since I re-edited them with a more experienced eye.

Well, I was just informed via Email that BITTER OLD MAN on the IFC MEDIA LAB is ranked in the current Top 10, so I feel even better about the re-cut.



I woke up today to see another mound of snow on the world outside Rossdonia. This caused me to cancel my editing class for the 2nd week in a row. This depresses me a bit. I'm sick of the snow and cold weather. It was late coming, but it sucks nonetheless.



Our little kitty "V" is no longer very little and has started to enter sexual maturity. Poor old lady Cousette has become his target of any urges he has. "V" has tried to hump her in front of many a house guest, so like me, he has no inhibitions. His fur matches his personality. "V" has mostly a dark exterior and a white underbelly, and his personality is mostly this troublemaking rogue brashness with a sweet and loving aspect when he gets tired. He hates to be held, at least until he gets tired and then he falls all over you to be held and take a nap on my shoulder (still). Cousette is just lazy, but finally getting completely over the loss of her brother, Spaz. Most of the day is spent policing the public displays of affection this week.



Poor guy is gonna get snipped soon…

Because of a few unexpected gigs, February has been a very good month for me. I've gotten on a few shoots, camera gigs, and other miscellaneous paid work. I was able to do something the other day I haven't done in a few years; I bought new clothes. Now, I didn't go hog wild, I only bought 2 pairs of pants (a shock to most who know me since I hate wearing pants) and 2 shirts. Clothes have been a very low priority to me for a few years. Since I have a girlfriend, the need to try to look more hip has lessened for me. Overall, I spent all of $40 on the new attire, but it was more than I've put out for clothes since 2003. Next up – a new pair of shoes! Come on paid gigs, daddy literally needs a new pair of shoes. FYI – I bought my first ever pair of cargo pants and a new pair of jeans that actually fit, since the last pair has been horribly oversized, and baggy and I always felt like a whigger-type with my pants always lower than my waist. I may actually wear pants more often since these new ones are both a lot more comfortable than I am used to.



I finally got my final illustration for the book. With it came the last spell & grammar checks, thus the near-final version is done. Time to send it off to publishers. I've only waited 4 months to finalize this baby. It needed fermenting, like a fine wine, only words and illustrations that needed less procrastination on my part. Now that I uploaded the latest version, along with a raise in minimum wage, I upped the price to $14.99 plus shipping. It's worth it. The book gives a lot of info and entertains; at least those who bought it so far liked it. A little over 100 books sold so far. The Boo is pleased.

As I await a little bit more info, my feature films will have more updates in the coming weeks. For 2008 I am considering a far more heavy and deep project. I want to direct a feature based on a true life book about the holocaust. Working on BITTER OLD MAN reminded me that I do like drama and like working with actors on the more emotional aspects.

We shall see what the future holds.

Keep warm & dry friends of Boo.

-=- Peter John Ross

Antagonistic Tendencies

February 1st, 2007
Antagonistic Tendencies



Well, first off the first thing to take note of in the world of Boo is the new site for the BLOG and JOURNAL ENTRIES – www.PeterJohnRoss.com. This was a wonderful birthday present from my best friend. It's one of those surprise gifts you'd never ask for but has a lot of meaning and uses you never considered. Big shout out to the Moe for this handy gift of a domain and site.

More so than usual, I am incredibly busy. I've been hired and been steadily working on editing a DV feature for a Dayton filmmaker. It's a fun feature from a first time director and I am definitely making a contribution, it's someone else's vision. I started with a rough cut of the whole movie, so I am really just doing the fine cut and then final edits, plus sound mix & sound design. This is where a lot of my time has gone because it's a paid gig.



The days of generosity are not as fruitful as they once were. I've sacrificed a lot of my time, energy, passion, and soul to other people's projects, and I have no regrets, but it's my time. I feel I've earned respect and also the right to charge for what I do, even to filmmakers. There's enough in terms of equipment and experience that I offer that make me worth the meager amounts I'm charging. Besides, food needs to be put in the fridge and on the table.



I have just made my formal call for Interns to get some help with the many editorial endeavors I have on my plate. There's just more work than one person can handle, and sadly very little of it is actually for Sonnyboo Productions ® or me. These are gigs for the greater good and other filmmakers. There's a 16mm feature from my past that I was not involved with, but have agreed to help out on with the edit. There's a lot to be done with a feature like synching sound to 7 tapes of raw footage as well as separating the clips into scenes and creating a whole organizational pipeline so that more than one person can make sense of the muddled mess that is the raw footage, sound, music, titles, etc. that make up a feature film.



There will be 2-3 interns working alongside myself & Micah on these projects as we kick off 2007 with the mountain of work here. I've (miracle of miracles) had interns before. This is the first time I've solicited them, though. I need the help and don't mind giving some edit time for free, a chance to get some other people trained and involved in the editing process. Much to my surprise, I have well over 20 applicants and I will actually have to make choices. This surprised me because I didn't think I'd get more than 3-4 people interested. Lucky for me there is a strong movement at the Ohio State University with their new film studies major and some fans of the Boo there spreading the good word.

With Horrors of War, we have hours of footage and interviews that never saw the light of day. I'd like the more experienced editorial interns to take a crack at making something of those that can be found on the internet or on DVD for the cast & crew who got left on the cutting room floor. We still have no clue how much of what we turned in will or won't be used for the North American DVD release (although I guarantee that no foreign market will even know we have DVD extras). Myself, I can't stand to contemplate spending minutes nonetheless hours staring at me or listening to chatter about HORRORS of WAR. It's "of the past" for me, but there's still an obligation to the people who threw down for us to get their time in the light.

I shan't go a rant, but I will say that I am yet again a target of someone's deep seeded emotions. On the FOX network's ON THE LOT contest site, I locked horns with a local filmmaker. Funnily enough, I said nothing harmful or derogatory, but this guy lost his Shiite as if I told him to spend more time with his kids or something. I confess to a deep seeded interest in the wackos who read this very blog often, make mention of it, or write about it or your faithful narrator, and then claim they aren't obsessed.



Let's face some facts. When someone says they are basing a character in their script on you over the past 3 years; that sends a pretty clear message: YOU ARE OBSESSED. I don't even base any characters on myself anymore. I have to write about people who are more interesting than some guy who spends most of his time on the Internet writing to obsessed fanatics. The truth is I still can't comprehend or relate to the people who find me or my writings online and then become fixated on my and my goings on. When I don't like someone or something, I tend to ignore it or stop paying attention, and then they/it ceases to be a problem. For some people, and good God, I mean more than I can count on my fingers and toes now, they want to explore this further and make a confrontation. At that point, I get interested for brief periods of time because I can't see what's so interesting about me. I love a good debate and the impending scrap, but then I get bored and move on.

I don't care if you only spend 10 minutes a week writing about me or my stuff, but please dear God, I hope you find a more fulfilling hobby. Thank God I have My Sexy Girlfriend Veronica ™ and a life outside of this virtual world where geeks are Gods and the sad & lonely find purpose in annoyance. You'd think I'd have a deeper understanding of the crazies by now, but I don't. I'm no closer to truly comprehending the mindset of the disturbed.



The great & powerful Scott Spears defines eloquently by saying that I am "polarizing". People Either love me or hate me and there's little in the middle. I am what I am, and I don't have a problem with who I am. I sleep well at night.

I was recently told that I will get what I deserve and that fate will play its role out. Sadly, this was meant to be a portent into the future for my demise, but based on the world I live in, I think I will get what I deserve, but my fate seems to be looking more positive. I've got financing for at least one of my features this year and the 2nd seems imminent, regardless it may happen too. When 2007 started, I was feeling the squeeze from a lack of paid work, but by Mid-February I will be doing well again, plus the Interns will help on the workload (who says they can't get help in Columbus Ohio???). In March I'm going to Europe on someone else's dime to do research on their feature, plus have a bit o' fun. In April, I get a new car that's been earmarked for me. Yup. I'm getting what I deserve all right.



The cats are dubious these days. I don't trust either of them for very long. Their alliances are fragile and our Rossdonia is held together by a thread of peace. Our troops are tired and want to come home, but the difference in beliefs is so strong, we can't let them police themselves. I tried training the cats to do their own security but they weren't trained properly. Our troops need more body armor, but the vice president failed to submit the proper requisition. Damn government!

Time to get back to the grindstone of editorial work.

Love and special sauce for all the peeps of Sonnyboo,
PjR, the real one