The Veracity of the Muse

I am hoping to finish my edits on the drama this weekend. I didn’t chip away at it much because, thankfully, we had a lot of work this past week for Ye Olde Day Job. I love that I edit for a living. There are far worse ways to make a living. I enjoy what I do a lot. In the current climate of economics, I am grateful to be doing something that I love and get paid to do it. I edited some TV spots, a TV show, an actor’s reel, and an instructional video. There’s even variety in what I get to work on, so it’s not really boring.



Most of the computer graphics design work has come in for the comedy short from TJ Cooley. I cannot wait to get this one done. I played a rough cut for a friend of mine who has been, shall we say, not at all fond of any movie I’ve made. This is someone who I work with professionally creating graphics and doing freelance editing for. He thinks every short and my feature are beneath me and the skills he thinks I have. He doesn’t think I’ve made a single thing worthy of praise. Until now that is. Even without the graphics, which is integral to the piece, he thought it was the best thing I’ve ever been involved with. High praise indeed, especially considering he hasn’t seen the finished piece, plus I have not done the pickup shots for it.

I am pretty impressed with several of the music videos for the Ohio Film Office’s competition. They asked for Ohio bands and Ohio filmmakers to combine their talents for a music video contest. There are some amazing clips out there. It makes me proud of our statewide community. So much untapped skill being applied to a mutually beneficial application between filmmakers and musicians.

Today I volunteered the studio to a non-profit, everyone’s donating for free shoot. It’s for an urban outreach program. The real sacrifice was being here at 8:00AM on a Saturday (or any day before 11:00AM for me). I am sleepy and tired.



This weekend I hope to show My Sexy Girlfriend Veronica ™ the classic CASABLANCA. She’s never seen it and I’ve only seen it twice. I got the HD-DVD of it for $3, so that will be a treat. I also rented the Blu-Ray of AMADEUS, so I’m hoping between tonight and tomorrow we can get through both movies. AMADEUS in 5.1 DTS Surround should kick some serious assage.



I saw WATCHMEN. It was good. I like a perspective on the super hero mythos that analyzes some psychology and addresses the flaws in the comic book logics. The idea of “right and wrong” not being black and white, along with what a hero is, are all subject to examination, which to me is the spice of the genre rarely tasted.

Oh well, need to do something more productive than writing this drivel.

=- Ross

The Man-gina Chronicles

Last night’s shoot went great. That’s 2 in a row where things were pretty much spot on. We shot in my parent’s house and that was odd because there are pictures of me from all ages all over the house, so it was like a “Ross Museum” or more akin to freak show as people tried to figure out where the svelte good looking teenager disappeared into the fat hairy guy who must have eaten him.





Because of the rush nature of putting this together, I did not get to rehearse and that does bother me. I very much prefer to work for at least an hour or two with actors without a crew standing by or working so we can build some kind of rapport, and work without a net. There needs to be an environment of trust so that when we talk about things I like or not like, and what they prefer and want to try, we can experiment and talk without it being under pressure or with an audience. I don’t want an actor to be self conscious if I tell them I don’t like something they are trying because with 10-12 people watching it might seem like I’m shooting them down and embarrassing them. Similarly, I don’t want to have an argument if they don’t like the way I want a line to be read and we’re in the thick of the shoot with me behind the dolly, camera, and bank of monitors.







Now for this shoot, we shot with the Sony Z1U. Since I have Cineform’s ASPECT HD codec, I read up on it and they recommended shooting in the European PAL format of 25CF (cine-frame) mode. This is a Sony workaround to get the “film” like image, they shoot in an HD PAL format into a 50i image, and my software can extrapolate the 25 progressive frames from it and converts it down to 24 frames per second, but then re-works the audio so that it keeps the pitch normal without slowing it down too. It’s all very technical and makes sense to me. If you’re reading this and feel dumb, that’s okay. Maybe you are, or at least you aren’t as super-duper intelligent like me. Or maybe if you watch Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica and the techno babble makes perfect sense to you, we can be friends. It’s a miracle I have a girlfriend, and if I have to tell you that the last 2-3 sentences contained incredible amounts of sarcasm, then you are in fact dumb and that’s not a facetious stab.







What is cool for me about working on some shorts again is trying out several HD camera makes and models. As I gear up for 3 features later on, I want to have some firsthand experience with several cameras and see how they edit, handle color correction, effects, etc. Before I shoot on another feature, I will have seen how these cameras’ footage looks projected too. All of this combines to make more informed decisions about what to shoot the features with when the money is on the line. Shorts can serve a VERY important piece of the process and be multi-beneficial if you use your noggin.







I am proud of John’s sister Joanne Fromes who is doing well with her first few projects as a director. Again, My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ had to work, and there is some tension over the amount of time I spend with this young nubile girl. The editing sessions will begin tomorrow and she’ll see that not many hot young chicks are into hoggin’ it with the biggies. It’s very weird to not be the director on these pieces and just a co-writer and producer. I’m having a blast anyway. Maybe I’ll stop directing and only produce. And maybe it will rain beer.







I’m still waiting for this PAL 50i conversion to 23.976 Progressive frames to finish conforming the .M2T files to .AVI. I’m telling you, if that sounds like Chinese to you, then you need to get busy studying CODECS. Your first assignment? Tell me what CODEC stands for!





Peace and B WILD,

Peter John Ross