Sojourn into the Domicile

Just a few days before the new Cowtown Film Series left. I’m furiously putting the final touches on the show, with some animations, plus other accoutrements. The main show is ready, although I am still tinkering with the playlist order. We have a similar theme of people dying in several of the movies, so I’m trying to break those up some so they aren’t all in a row.

I’m jazzed because we’re getting some great press and good word of mouth. There’s 20 short films total, which is a lot. Most of the movies are of an exceptional quality compared to screenings I’ve done in the past. Everyone is upping their game this past year or two.

I can’t believe we got Time Warner cable to be a sponsor, nonetheless the Columbus Alive. They are finally starting to take local filmmaking seriously and that’s a good sign of things to come. Johnny DiLoretto is hosting the Thursday night screening from Channel 6/28 and Melissa Starker is going to host the Sunday show. It takes time and perseverance to build something and let it grow.



Unlike previous screening series and festivals I’ve done in the past, this has gotten significantly better over time. I’m a stickler for presentation, and the content is always the most important part. For the first time I’m not programming for “potential” but for what he really have. Filmmaking worldwide is at a critical stage where anyone can create something that rivals the big multimillion dollar productions. DISTRICT 9 was a short film with very little budget. Thanks to sites like VIDEOCOPILOT.NET, your imagination is your only limitation to creating amazing looking effects or style to your production.

I’m most excited because last night I tested the digital projector with my High Definition hard drive player. This will be my first screening in high def, 1080i. It will also be one continuous play from the hard drive and this machine works flawlessly. It goes from one clip to the next and there’s no hiccups or funky frames. I was terrified because it has HDMI output and the projector only takes HD from Component analog or DVI-I. I once had a 30” LCD monitor and I tried to go HDMI from the HD-DVD player to the DVI-I input of that screen. It never worked so I got paranoid that DVI only works the other direction, like from my Computer to the HDMI input of the new 42” monitor.




I got the device to work with a 23” DVI-I monitor at home, but I needed to test it with the projector and last night I did. It worked great and the picture was very sharp and clear.

I’m glad to be presenting everyone’s work in the best possible way. I always bring this up, but I can’t help but feel how incredibly disrespectful it is to not thoroughly test your presentation. Last night I watched 1 minute of every single movie, found a few hiccups that got fixed today, so that EVERYONE’s movie will play well, not just my own. This screening isn’t about making my movies look good and everyone else is along for the ride; this is about everyone helping each other out and making the community stronger as a whole. It’s my personal philosophy that we do better working together than to each try to do things entirely on our own.

Thursday looks to be the busier of the two screenings by far. In theory, we should have all 403 seats full. If just the casts and crew of the 20 films attended along with a friend or family member, that alone should fill the entire theater. How many will be there? Will we run out of seats? Will it be kinda full, but still a bunch of empty seats? I don’t know. I never know exactly what to realistically expect. I do my best to get the word out there, but I am not a professional marketing guru.

Sure, we’ve got a mention in the Columbus Alive, the Weekender in the Columbus Dispatch, and I’m going to be on Channel 4 news (again, for my 4th appearance in 7 years), but how many people does that tangibly equate to in terms of attendance for people that otherwise never heard of the show? I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m hoping for a killer crowd. It’s a free screening. That’s hard to turn down in this economy.

Talk to you all soon methinks.
Peter John Ross

Leaving the Bastian of Festivities

I got a side freelance gig this week, which was nice because our work has slowed some. Of course, inside of 12 hours, I have spent a great deal of this money already. I have been submitting the new short Accidental Art to several film festivals, even some big ones.

Here’s a big secret admission. I have never submitted one of my movies to the big festivals ever before. I think I submitted Bitter Old Man to Sundance in 2001, but that was it. As much as I like many of the movies I’ve made, I never thought they were good enough to be accepted to the top ten festivals (or even top twenty fests for that matter). Even the most recent material like Uncle Pete’s Playtime and Relationship Card, I didn’t think would warrant attention on the big film festival circuit. Now with Accidental Art, I have a little more faith. It looks like a real movie, not just because of the RED ONE camera, but Greg Sabo’s skill as a DP.

First, I made 30 DVD’s of Accidental Art Wednesday. Then I compiled a list of free film festivals, most of which have deadlines within the next 2 weeks. I weighed out the odds and decided to submit to several of the top ten film fests with this movie. It’s about time I at least tried. It cost money at a time where I have other things and future projects would be better spent, but there is a method to this thought process. I had to burn another 2 discs to meet all the submissions.



Getting accepted and even playing at the big festivals is an award in and of itself. I’m not into the competitions or winning awards, but I never dislike it when it does happen, but it is NOT a motivating factor. I drive myself with my own needs to improve and be a more effective filmmaker. Being allegedly “better” than someone else doesn’t do anything for me, nor does less experienced or subjectively more talented than me cause me to want to kick your ass metaphorically with a movie. These things seem so petty, small, and uninteresting to me. I can’t get motivated by that. Some people do and there’s nothing wrong in that… FOR THEM. If a driving force for making a movie is to cause envy in others, then I feel greatly sad for you. It’s somewhat pathetic and belies emotional and mental issues that need addressing.



I am motivated by telling stories. Most people who speak with me get that dull look in their eyes as I start to spin a story that goes on endlessly, BUT they know I love to tell stories. I make a trip to the grocery store seem like Lawrence of Arabia, even though no one else agrees with my belief in its epic nature. I enter film festivals and try to get press not to feed the ego, but because it’s business. In order to tell bigger, more ambitious movies, that takes $ Money. In order to warrant getting money, you have to play in the bureaucratic sandbox to work and play well with others (that have money).
I want to make movies, but I am anchored by a sense of honor in that I don’t want to lose someone else’s money to do so. So many filmmakers are selfish and want to make their movie so bad that they cut corners or solely want to make an artistic expression, which is fine if they are paying for it themselves. When you work with other people’s money, there is a moral and ethical obligation to do whatever you can to help get return on the investment.

That means a business state of mind. Making a movie is art. The creation is birth to a unique artistic expression. Once it’s done though, you have a product to sell. In this age of digital filmmaking, EVERYONE’s a filmmaker and there are millions, soon to be billions of movies out there. How do you make your movies stand out?



Film Festivals are a great way to show that unbiased 3rd parties selected your film and decided to put it in front of a paying audience. That means it is indicative of how some people believed enough in your vision to add a monetary value. The more festivals that accept and play it demonstrate a potential that you have a movie that crosses market places, and is potentially more suitable to audiences preferences. That’s not rocket science to figure out.

Massive Machiavellian Marketing

Finished Accidental Art’s 6 minute scene and it feels good to be done, although “done” can still be construed as subjective since I keep making these little adjustments. One of the last things done was a license plate replacement done digitally by TJ Cooley, but tweaking it takes hours and hours, then because of the proxies and HD editing setup, every file has to be re-rendered down the line. Each time I make a 1 frame tweak, it’s 30 minutes to render the 4K files, 30 minutes to render the 1080P, and 30 minutes to render the MPEG2 for DVD, and 30 minutes for the MP4 for the web, and so on. And yet, I cannot let this go without it being closer to perfection, at least my own definition therein.



I’m already set to send the 6 minute piece to over 16 festivals this week alone, not including my own Cowtown Film Series, which will mark its premiere screening. If I never get to make the rest of this feature film, I could be content with this as a singular piece. There is an ending to it, and you cannot really guess where it goes from there, but it does have a compelling story. In the mean time, I intend to get this seen. If it wins awards, so be it, as that is not my goal per se, but they certainly won’t hurt the fund raising efforts.

A fascinating technical tidbit, even though this is shot 4K and I’m creating 1080P masters, I’m particularly impressed with how this piece looks on the CRT (Cathode Ray Tube), older TV’s. When playing off DVD or via component video from the timeline, Jesus Marimba! This footage looks drop dead amazing. Part of it is obviously the down-sampling of picture information, but regardless, the look is staggeringly impressive.

I have made a markedly clear change in my methodology; quality over quantity. My own personal bar has been raised. I can’t look back much now. What was in my head isn’t as good as the movie I made, thanks to the entire crew, not the least of which was Greg Sabo’s camera and lighting work.





Johnny DiLoretto from Channel 6/Fox 28 and formerly from the Other Paper has agreed to host the Cowtown Film Series for the Thursday night show. Every time I do one of these shows, they get bigger and better. Getting the Alive to sponsor the event was a big score for me. I’ve never had that big of a sponsor before. Hopefully Time Warner will follow suit soon, if not then maybe next time.

So I just had several movies play at the MADLAB FILM FEST downtown. I wasn’t able to make it, but I was told it was a decent crowd, but that the DVD’s played kind of skippy. Apparently they didn’t read my MOVIEMAKER MAGAZINE article. It’s the whole reason I wrote it; to avoid presentations snafu’s like that. Oh well.

Peace to all the brothers and sisters suffering,
Peter John Ross

Arbitrarily Ascribing to Arrogation

Slowly but surely my movie gets closer to being finished. Sound mix is officially done. I did some interesting panning for voices and sound FX to match the on screen action. The toughest thing to do was to add some room tone noise to shots that were crystal clear. Since one angle of an actor was noisier than the reverse shots, that meant I had to add that basic sound to these shots too. I hate making something sound worse, but it’s a lot less distracting than hearing each cut go from a sound to no sound. It wasn’t particularly bad, but it was not my happiest moment. It happens on shoots.

Two title effects left to do. I did the scrolling credits last week along with some other titles, but the main title at the beginning and the one at the end needed some motion tracking and insertion, so that was something TJ finished off and emailed me the project files. Either tomorrow or Monday I’ll insert these shots, tweak them to fit the music score by Bill Wandel, and that will pretty much put this project to bed.

ACCIDENTAL ART

The title to my next movie is ACCIDENTAL ART. It will screen on December 3rd and December 6th as a part of the upcoming COWTOWN FILM SERIES. These 2 shows have come together so fast, my head is still spinning.

I got a call from the theater, and the owner wanted to know if I was going to do any Cowtown Film Series this year. I hadn’t thought about it, but I knew I wanted to screen ACCIDENTAL ART soon. Also, I had never done cast/crew screenings of REFRACTORY or RELATIONSHIP CARD. So I started to put feelers out for a few shorts I knew were out there and got a pretty immediate response.

Within 24 hours I had over 2 hours of short films to play. Not a one of these are 48 Hour Film Projects from Columbus 2008 or 2009. My sole purpose in avoiding those movies is because many of them have already played in movie theaters twice in the last couple months. I like to show material that most likely has not been played in a real movie theater. The real reason I make movies is to sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers and watch a story unfold in pictures and sound.

Since many of these movies showing will be cast & crew screenings, we didn’t want to charge admission, so splitting the box office with the theater was not an option, so we’re splitting the costs of renting the theater, as well as getting sponsors, many of which are already on board.


The biggest difference for this year’s Cowtown Film Series will be projecting in HD. Last year was on DVCAM tape, although great, is still a letterboxed 4:3 image with 720x480 resolution. This year we’ll be in 1920x1080 from an HD deck. I want the best possible color and detail, especially for the movie shot in HD. The colors and details should really pop off the screen.



I’m going to work hard to make sure the projection and sound is top notch. For whatever reason, I guess it’s respect for all the filmmakers’ hard work, I don’t want any screw ups or poor presentation. Few things in filmmaking are more disrespectful than not making sure you’re giving the best possible presentation to EVERYONE’s movie, not just your own. I was partly responsible for a screw up in the past at a similar festival, and I’ll never allow that again. It’s all in who you choose to work with, and I prefer professionals or people who care enough to work to make everyone look good.

The Cowtown Film Series is about the community. The selections this year indicate that the quality of filmmaking in Ohio has increased dramatically. While some local filmmakers are content to remake the same movie over and over again, most are pushing the limits of what you can do with a minimal budget.

Bilious & Brutish Interlopers

So we had a productive week here in the Columbus Film community. First off, the inaugural MOFA meeting, that’s Mid Ohio Filmmakers Association (imagine if it had been Mid Ohio Filmmakers Organization, it would have been MOFO). Now there speculation has begun that yours truly was behind this. I am not. All I did was take the several interested parties I knew of, who have dissatisfaction with the other film group, and put them in the same place at the same time. I have been asked my opinion on a few things, and gave said opinion, but the rest is on them. They did an amazing job putting together a meeting that, the Bar of Modern Art estimates, was over 70 people.

What an amazing contrast to the other Columbus film group! Their last meeting topped out at 11 people in attendance. Now, the two groups serve very different purposes. One is a social and networking opportunity, the other is basically a seminar and screening opportunity for first time or amateur filmmakers. Several people who are at more of a professional level needed a chance to meet and mingle with their peers and those transitioning beyond the confines of camcorder movies. I think both groups are important, and cater to a different audience entirely.



Strangely, one of the analysis I have come to reading people’s reactions is that it feels like, as it always does, people are drawing lines in the sand between the two groups. It always comes down to a kind of high school mentality for some people. It’s like we have the popular, good looking people forming one group, and the geeks and freaks in their kind of A/V club. Neither group is excluding anyone per se, but there are those feelings, whether self generated, or based on some tinge of reality, that cause people to feel cast out or unwelcome. I hope people overcome these mythical obstacles and just enjoy both groups for what they are.

Now the MOFA meeting was the night before the COWTOWN FILM SERIES week #5. I was afraid it would affect attendance, and it did, but we still hit our average of around 48-52 people in attendance for Johnny Wu’s THE RAPTURE. I was pleasantly surprised. Again, for the compare/contrast crowd, that was significantly more than the grand total for all combined screenings at a local film festival recently.



With less than 2 minutes before the end of the movie, the DVCAM deck seized up and stopped. I ran full tilt to the projection booth, saw the error message, so I unplugged the unit, plugged it back in, ejected the tape, expecting to see a devoured cassette unspooling, but it wasn’t. I pushed the tape back in & pressed play and it finished out fine. There’s nothing I hate more than poor presentation. I may have to switch over to DVCPRO and rent a deck if there are any more problems with this deck. I ran the head cleaner, but I don’t trust it. I have also put an offer out to purchase a deck that can play back DVCAM tapes, as a backup, but that cuts into the emergency funds and savings with the new Great Depression staring us in the face, but I am responsible singularly for the presentation at the COWTOWN FILM SERIES. I have to maintain the highest level of professional presentation. This is MY responsibility and I love other people’s movies enough to do whatever it takes, sacrifice something of my own, fall on the sword, to make someone else look as professional as I can make it.



Johnny always does an entertaining Q&A and he’s practiced at it, so I had very little to do or say. That was good, as I am getting burned out. After that show I realized I’m only at the HALFWAY mark. What the hell was I thinking? 10 weeks? This is a lot of work. I subconsciously knew what I was doing, but consciously, I have gotten older, more tired, and this is a massive undertaking. Is it worth it? Hell yes. I’m having a blast and so is the crowd. Even when the movie isn’t to the individuals liking, they still find merit or at least enjoy themselves at the after party.

Luckily, I got pretty far ahead on the work and the tapes. I have the next 4 Cowtown shows already completed and on tape…. Unless I have to convert them to DVCPRO, which will suck solely because of the time, but I will do what I have to do. As it is, I can just skate in, setup my system, and then we rock right into the pre-show. I have all the levels and connections all setup.

Today I’m buried “IN THE TRENCHES” trying to get this documentary finished. Finally my workload really is starting to drop off, which I thought would be a good thing, but it really isn’t. Business and freelance prospects are starting to feel the initial wave of the economy crash. In 3-4 months, we’ll all see the catastrophic effects of what’s happening with the stock markets. When the trickle down gets to “Main Street” (gotta love 24 hour news channel buzzwords), everything will dry up for a time. Expect Xmas to be dismal this year, but personally, I don’t get much into the season anyway.

Obviously, this blog is a minor form of procrastination preventing me from starting work on the documentary, so this is it.

Peace out,
Peter John Ross

RETRIBUTION AND REVELATION

Week four of COWTOWN went extremely well. JOHNNY APPLEWEED from Johnny Cotugno and Tamara Reynolds played for a packed crowd of over 200 people. In the short film line up, I added the SAD KERMIT short from Backwards Slate’s Max Goah. Man oh man did that hit well with the audience, as I knew it would. I programmed it after the Uncle Pete and Telemarketer shorts; you have to ditch your ego and program what works best and that piece I knew was a home run.

 

During the trailers, I did something a bit different. Since several of the audience members are repeat viewers, I felt that the trailers start to get a bit grating being the same every week. So for HORRORS OF WAR, I decided I’d mix it up since I personally have several trailers. Since it was a comedy night, I played the Japanese DVD trailer, and just in case the joke was lost, I added a title at the end that said “Now in English” and thankfully it got laughs, big laughs no less. Even more cool was that about 6 people approached me to say that the thought the trailer was so kick ass, they want to see the movie again.



The great and powerful short film channel MOVIEOLA from the Great White North has approached me about showing the new short films. I had not been quite the marketing whore I once was in that I never submitted the Telemarketers or Uncle Petes to them. Since they bought a British TV network too, this is a bigger outlet than it once was. Thank god I have a connection and history with them as competition for air time is fierce these days.

The big SUZUKI push ended. I’m blitzed. Even though this was a smaller order, which only meant that I did more of the work myself instead of bringing in more people to help. Now that the economy has crashed, only a few weeks off from my earlier prediction of Mid-to-Late-August, we can expect a serious draught in work for many in the film & video realm.

I had an interesting discussion relating to the effects of the economy on filmmaking on various levels. The “indie film” will die a pretty immediate death, from the $1,000-$1,000,000 stages. Private investment has just left the building as everyone’s property and stocks have plummeted. The mini-majors in Hollywood will be the first ones to feel the squeeze as the banks pucker up the credit.



What most people don’t realize about a major Hollywood film is that they are financed not by investors in most cases, but low interest loans from banks. Warner Brothers, Sony, Fox, and Disney have assets and values so they can get a loan, as opposed to private investment. That means that now that there is less credit available to banks from bigger banks, there is less money for Hollywood, even though they are, in a general sense, profitable. Since virtually every single “indie” studio had been gobbled up by the big studios, there ain’t no money for Indies either.

So with private investment, studio deals, all out of the option window, what can we do? In a lot of cases, just wait it out. Practice. Make shorts. What else is there? We’re screwed for the time being.

The home video market had already been decimated by piracy, gluttony of product, and a lack of profitability thanks to Netflix, Video on Demand, and alternate sources. It seems the very same things that widen our audience diminish our chances of fiscal success.



The future is unwritten. We face various forms of uncertainty. My prediction remains positive, as the unknown is the future. I know that the next generation, the next wave will be in the unexpected, unpredictable new form.

- Peter John Ross