Pejorative Sagaciousness

I’m finally done sharing my cheer with the various families. I’m cranky and sleepy, but I’m going to party with some friends tonight. At least I have some new Blu-Ray’s and DVD’s to keep me company. I can finally see the extended cut of 24:REDEMPTION, the new Kevin Smith “A THREEVENING WITH KEVIN SMITH” which has been hilarious so far, and of course DEATH PROOF in HD along with INDIANA JONES and the inaugural Blu Ray CRITERION COLLECTION which is Wes Anderson’s BOTTLE ROCKET, which I cherish. The highlight is DR. HORRIBLE’S SING ALONG BLOG on DVD with “COMMENTARY: THE MUSICAL”. The sounds of Cannonball Adderly belting on the sax have set the tone for my weekend and I want to just take a day to myself and watch some movies in peace.

Once we get to January 2nd on through the rest of the year, I won’t have much time to rest or relax. Things will start to get busy rather fast. The wheels rotate ever onward and I’m ready. Several ideas ferment like a fine wine. Committing them to writing has been less and less cumbersome of late.



Some end of the year stats, as The Tale of Years in Rossdonia would not be complete.

The Cowtown Film Series was successful on many levels, including financial (although I need to still get a check from the theater… my bad). It was more work than I set out to do, but it was worth it. I feel good exhibiting the features and helping where I could with seeing some movies get completed that might not have otherwise. I am committing to doing another run of features in 2009, I just don’t know when yet. It won’t be 10 weeks, that’s for sure.

As already stated, I defeated my enemies. Those guys suck. Apparently, this statement in an earlier blog was taken out of context and ruffled feathers of people who fancy themselves my adversaries. I can think of nothing funnier than some guy I haven’t even taken into consideration or months got riled up, wrote blogs and then posted a multitude of comments all over my Funny or Die account because he so arrogantly thinks that I was talking about him. Imagine the arrogance it takes to read a blog and assume they are being addressed by capriciousness and vague notions.



Speaking of my blog, I average around 140 readers a day on all the various sites combined. That’s surprising. I only write these both as a cathartic expression and because I hate the impersonal sending of the same emails to friends and family of what I’m doing with a “cut and paste” function {CNTRL-C then CNTRL-V}. I have found that posting a blog and updating people via that conduit has been effective for the 10-15 people I intended to reach when I started. Now I had no clue so many other people were interested or reading. Even more confusing is the anguish and obsession it spurs in the few readers that are more akin to Lee Harvey Oswald than my more normal onlookers.

The UNCLE PETE videos were what I wanted them to be. I am pleased artistically and business-wise. They are in contract to be represented along with HOW TO DEAL WITH TELEMARKETERS via a Canadian-British agency that license short films for TV, web, cell phone, etc. I’ll give them a chance, as I’m still getting money from my old representation, but I’d like to see how different companies do. I’m thinking of dropping BIG FILM SHORTS as a distributor. They have been later and later on payments. Now they’re incommunicative at all, so I’ve stopped recommending them for representing short films. BLIP TV has been consistent and now matter how big or small, the checks come in quarterly and they always clear. I still made over $1,000 overall from short films for the year, and that’s just from my old material. Now that I have and will have more material as the 2009 goes on, I’m hoping to see an increase in income for shorts.

I’ve been working full time as a director/producer/editor for over 7 years as my sole income. Getting paid to do what you love to do has been one of my greatest accomplishments. It didn’t used to pay that well, but lately it has gotten better. I’m surprised the economy downturn hasn’t pinched my wallet as hard as I thought, but it has hit some and will continue to decline in ways for several months. I think more people would find their bliss if they could do what they want. My sincerest thanks to Scott Spears for making the last 2 years much more stable and reliable.

I can’t believe still that IN THE TRENCHES OF AN INDIE FILM is done. That’s something that was looming forever. I think subconsciously I was not giving my all into new projects or moving on until that was done. I promised myself it would get done. No one held my feet to the fire. Not many even cared I was doing it, but it meant something to me. Soon it will be on sale on AMAZON.COM (in a few days no less). Once I laid this puppy to tape the other day on a DVCAM master, it was like a release. I started deleting all the duplicate files on my internal and portable hard drives, knowing I’ll never have to need these again, and I was relieved. It was an invisible chip on my shoulder that needed released into the world.

GOODNIGHT CLEVELAND was another one of those albatrosses that needed to be taken away. We finished it, we screened it, and I deleted it. Seems like I have established a nice pattern for finishing feature length projects. This one was bittersweet in that the director wanted nothing to do with it, but so many other people involved were thrilled to see it complete. Giving Tim Lucas, an executive producer on the film, a DVD when he came to town was just as big a goal as screening the film. His closure meant as much to me as George’s.

The Cats of Rossdonia live on. My life with felines grows and develops into a strange and twisted tale that boggles the mind. I have learned much of unconditional love both for and from my little boy Vladimir Jack Bauer and his little black heart.



2008 was the year of shedding the past for me. Fulfilling all of my old promises, cutting loose the negativity, defeating my enemies (those guys suck), and moving on. I have plans. No one can stop me. 2009 will do it.

Conflagrations of Incendiary Individuals

I am so immature. Today My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ and I stopped off at McDonalds on the way to a Xmas family thingy. Whilst there I was getting a refill of my Orange Lava drink and a small 5 year old boy with both his parents was saying “I want a fruit drink! I want a fruit drink!” so I says to the kid “Oh yeah, well I HAVE a fruit drink….” And walked away. Moments later, as I sit back down with My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ I hear that same kid screaming at the top of his lungs in protest. Apparently he didn’t get his fruit flavored beverage. Well kid, it sucks to be you because I got another refill after that. I so rule and the only thing that kid did better than me was suck and go thirsty.


Last night I wrote four chapters of my new book. It’s a dissertation on multimedia today, how we got here, the affects of it all, and the influence of popular culture upon itself. I have thoughts, and I want to get this out there too. Some of my writing about television have been picked up and read. I was surprised to get a phone interview over a blog I wrote about the state of television today (several months ago) and it was printed in Media Biz’s last issue.

Speaking of which, several events in the world of Television need to be addressed. First off with NBC’s announcement that Jay Leno will move to prime time will have ripple effects on the traditional TV business model. A little backstory, a few years ago Jay Leno discussed with NBC a possible retirement date of Spring 2009. NBC, in the interest of saving money decided not to revisit the conversation with Jay to see if he was still going to leave and just pretended it was a done deal and announced it. Conan O’Brien is set to take over the Tonight Show as was pre-ordained. That is until Jay Leno decided he didn’t want to end his run.



Combine this with a completely altered landscape of network television. Execs fully acknowledge that the business model has been changed permanently. The Internet is not just a fad. If last year’s writer strike proved anything, it’s that people have a lot of alternatives to the old reliable network TV. DVR’s and Tivo ™ have also reshaped the landscape in a way that even VCR’s didn’t do with 90% saturation in the market in the United States from the 1980’s to the last few years.

Jay Leno is going to be Monday through Friday, but at 10:00PM, thus eliminating 5 hours of programming… and their production costs. One hour dramas, which typically play the 10:00PM timeslot and have for decades, these cost a lot of money, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million per episode. In some cases, the shows are not owned by the network themselves, so DVD sales and syndication returns belong to someone else. Warner Brothers produced E.R., the 10:00PM slot holder for NBC for 15 years, and NBC (now NBC Universal) doesn’t see a penny from DVD boxed sets or the repeat airings on TNT, or whatever Turner cable network airs the syndicated episodes.

So what does this mean? NBC is cutting down their programming and annual production budget by a significant percentage next year. If they are successful, the other networks will follow. With the recession in full swing with little sign of let up anytime soon, expect cable networks to similarly cut back.



And now for some MORE bad news in Television. SAG, the Screen Actors Guild looks to be promoting the idea of a strike for all union actors in January-February 2009. Last year’s writer’s strike was crippling to the industry and it has not fully recovered from the aftershocks. One of the things it revealed is that the current crop of the most coveted demographic of 18-35 year olds are a fickle bunch. Take away the shows they like, they are more likely to replace them with something else than demand a settlement. Everyone loses.

So if SAG goes on strike, it’s my belief they might hurtle the television industry into a more permanent loss of viewership for the future. If shows like 24 or LOST get interrupted by a strike, the fan base might just hang up their spurs and call it a day. There is a chance that since the majority of the membership of SAG is day players and the people who need the minimum wage for union actors, the strike might not go through. These are the people who cannot survive the current economic climate without a regular payday and hopefully don’t want to cut off their nose to spite their face.



Everyone can lose in this scenario. It’s the wrong time SAG. I understand that they are fighting for revenues of the future, but they aren’t there with the Internet yet. Fight for them when everyone can afford the struggle, not now. The tactic of trying to squeeze right now won’t work and the studios deep pockets will get lean soon enough.

This isn’t even taking into account the basic idea that the entire system of television has been eroding for decades. Once advertisers figure out that they are not getting their money’s worth from commercials because less and less people are watching, but they are paying more and more money – watch out. Television’s business model is outdated and crumbling before us.

Disavowing Jurisprudence

When things move again, they move fast and mightily. On my plate already is post production on a quick green screen short I tossed together this past Thursday night. I wanted to make a commentary on the ever giant Wal-Mart and the media. I was greatly inspired by seeing a TV “news” segment that was glorifying and miraculously sponsored by a hospital during the 11:00 O’clock media coverage that used to be called journalism. This cynicism and sick sense of humor keyed off a new bit. I wrote it quick and called in some actors.

Today I shot the background plate for one section of this bit. My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ has been tinkering with IN THE TRENCHES OF AN INDIE FILM documentary relentlessly since the screening a little over a week ago. She wanted to re-order all the scenes to make it flow better, plus we really agreed with most criticism from the screening which was that the Fly-On-The-Wall B-Roll segments were too long. They cause the overall pacing to drag and people lose interest. I think these sections could be equally effective in less than half the time.

The other thing needed was more on Post Production. I short-changed the entire process in the documentary that played. It was 3 minutes of montage with a quickie voice over to cover the entirety of post. Now we took some of the existing “educational” web docs and fashioned them into the movie proper. Sections on ADR, M&E Tracks, and why & how we deleted scenes fit into the scheme. The actual “editing” process is still skipped a bit, but on a DVD I can use the WebDocs of editing as bonus features.

Speaking of which, the goal is to sell DVD’s of this documentary and DVD as an educational tool. Many people who want to get into making a feature length film can get in depth with the process and really feel what it’s like to take the plunge. Creative and practical decisions with footage make for a demonstrative movie at a budget level more people can relate to as opposed to the huge multi-million dollar productions that are beyond more people’s grasp.

The final touches and clean ups for My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™’s edit are completed and we’re about to start the encoding for DVD process later tonight. Last night I worked on the DVD art and setting up the distribution with Amazon.com. My goal of 90 minutes has been met, and we’re even 3 minutes shorter than what played barely over a week ago at the Cowtown Film Series, and that’s with 14 minutes of new material ADDED to the movie. It’s another feature I produced, and that’s a goal met.



On the downside, I reviewed footage from much earlier in the year. I had always intended to do this short film but since it relied on snow, it was incredibly difficult to put together. I gave someone a shot at D.P. and after supervising the first few shots I gave over the reins and focused on working with my 7 year old actor. I digitized the footage shortly after that and was disappointed, but didn’t feel rushed to edit this piece. As we enter winter I wanted to re-examine it after not seeing a frame for months. Looking at it now, the footage was not as bad as I remember, but it still falls very far below the standards I am setting for myself for the future.

This puts me in a quandary. I will absolutely not use a frame of this footage and if this short is to be resurrected, it will be re-shot entirely. The stars may not ever align to make this happen again, but I would rather not release anything that is below my current standard of quality. I have to tell my nephew that this piece will never be done. That is not something I look forward to, but I can’t do it. I don’t even have enough footage to cut something together just for him. I don’t blame the D.P., as it was my shoot and making sure the shots I want are there is my job, no one else’s. Let’s just say that my trust of camerapersons understanding me has gone down. I will be absolutely sure I’m getting what I want for all my projects. This is a stinging reminder of my role with the camera as a director.



I’m hoping to get a sole music cue for my new little greenscreen experiment, and I have to create some graphics, plus key in the back ground and I will have a new piece on the market by the end of the week, if not sooner. I love having a greenscreen and studio I can just walk into and shoot on next to my edit suite. I don’t want to take these things for granted and not only let them inspire my creativity, but I need to ACT on these inspirations.



I love being burned in the flames of inspiration right now. 2009 looks to be quite a kick ass year; recession be damned. This year, I defeated my enemies, drank their blood, and sang the songs of victory to the lamentation of their women and children. Next year I conquer more worthy foes and loftier goals. My banner is raised, as are my standards. Let’s just watch as it all unfolds.

To my acolytes of Boo,
I wish you the best

Peter John Ross

Idyllic Permutations

My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ has been ill all night, making for little sleep. After the last month of various ills on my own behalf, I can now return the favor. Plans for chicken soup, bedtime stories, and the TLC enter my purview.

COWTOWN has officially ended. I delayed the final screening for various reasons, not the least of which was my inability to walk at the originally designated time. Combine that with factors that contributed to the delays on the documentary, and we had a recipe for postponement.



I did finish the feature length 92 minute documentary. I felt rushed and disinterested. So much of anything relating to that movie feels like it is “of the past”. I am a different filmmaker now. I see so many things I would do differently now and the helplessness of being unable to change them just creates a pool of disappointment, even though there are many things I am still proud of.

After the screening, as sitting with an audience with a movie for the first time will do, I was bequeathed many ideas and concepts for improvement. I was little motivated to act on them, but My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ has been, so she took over a massive re-edit of the documentary. So far, I would say it is greatly improved, but I had no intentions of screening this again. It was simply something I said I would do and I wanted to finish it. I keep my word. I promised to make this movie and it has less to do with anyone else’s expectations or interest as it was to placate my inner promise.

I do have the potential of releasing a DVD of the documentary, as more of an “educational” piece for indie filmmakers. It would be something I sell on the website or possible through AMAZON.COM. The idea of potentially sending it to a few small festivals has also been suggested. I’m not as enthused as I was, but the newer edit seems to have potential.

It’s amazing how you lose sight of things from your original intent to the final product. I had a “MAKING OF SCENE 6” documentary early in the film, even though it took place in post production, which is a major weakness of the overall documentary. We had little to no coverage of the post production process, so I threw together a small, short segment on it. I knew it was short changing the process, but My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™had the idea of placing in some of the educational Web Docs to tell more of the story of post production and I agree that it is a good idea, as long as we keep the running time around 90 minutes. That means major cuts to other aspects of the documentary, which generally is a good thing since the movie feels “long” and not in a good way.

The movie already has a massive re-ordering since the screening and the “B-Roll”, fly-on-the-wall segments are being chopped down to half the run time to avoid redundancies and a sense of being “boring”. All I wanted to capture was the sense of what it’s really like to be on set of an indie film and I think I achieved that, even in the “first draft” edit that screened.

I now feel free to move on though. I have a shoot this Thursday night for a new quick clip, something in the world I feel compelled to comment on. I need to get a few shots to finish off a short I started last March, although quite frankly, I’m disappointed in the footage shot, but it might be salvageable.



I’m writing a new book, I have several new small & large projects “in development”, meaning I really am working on creating a few shorts and planning the next year’s production schedule for what I want to get done. Now that I’m back on my feet (literally and figuratively), I want to get started on the next phase.

I met with an old Bank One buddy for lunch the other day. That sparked so many ideas. I realize that I don’t really know too many normal people anymore. Most people I spend time with are a bit Bohemian, not at all conducive to the writing about normalcy. To hear the names and remind myself of what the “normies” are like really help inspire me, both to write and tell stories about. Some people are made for mockery and others to be exalted.

And one last stain of vitriol to be addressed… I find it completely refreshing to see some of my worst enemies yet again palely following my footsteps. Nothing in life makes me feel more pleased than to see some of these people, who complain bitterly and loudly about how I do things, and then turn around and use these same methods of marketing and promotion for themselves. Sometimes my methods work, at least they work for me. For some to cry like babies that it’s shameless self promotion, and then do it themselves; perhaps they need to consult a mental health physician as the self loathing might be indicative of some real problems.

What can I say? Some people are followers no matter how original they think they are. It’s no wonder most people don’t waste any time taking them into any kind of consideration.