DIY film production tips!!!!

.WMV Hell

It started simply enough. I'd created a corporate health video for my company as one of our goals for the year. It was finished in a few weeks, looked great, and was well-received by my team. All that was left was uploading it to the company site, at which point El Roberto officially became a victim of the Mac vs. PC deathmatch. You see my company like most runs with Windows. And their system only plays windows media files or Mpeg 2 quicktime. It was also required for the vids to be compressed to under 50 mb(ha!). Our first issue was conversion. It is almost impossible to convert a mac-based video file into a decent-looking windows media file without plunking down almost $200 for a Flip4Mac program. We downloaded several converter programs from download.com, but the compression on all of them was crappy. If the audio wasn't muffled, then the video was ridiculously pixelated. This has been going on for almost two weeks now. Sleepless nights attempting to convert .mov files to .wmv and getting crap. Scouring endless Mac forums on converting files to .wmv and coming up with nothing. I could go on, but you get the point. Finally, after talking with some co-workers, I found out I could finangle myself some extra room on the network and did not have to necessarily post the vid on the website at 50mb or under. I could actually link to the vid at a much higher size. So tonight, we finally were able to create a slick .avi file that works in windows media player and is a decent size. Hallelujah!!! (Angels cry)

So some tips for you people out there attempting to convert Mac files to Windows Media compatible format: Don't do it!! Jk, but make sure you use a decent converter like FLV Crunch, and DON'T attempt to compress to anything under 100MB or you'll end up like us-hairless with high blood pressure..

Hello, Dolly!!

As the year comes to a close we're working to build up our gear cache...in addition to getting a second camera, a big focus for us is acquiring a dolly to utilize for long tracking shots. Unfortunately a professional one costs a gazillion dollars-definitely not in our budget. So we'll have to make do with a homemade one. Thankfully, there are numerous videos on the web detailing how to make an efficient and low-cost dolly and track. A cool DIY vid is below. Well for sure be making one of these in the next couple of months and posting our results. Ciao for tonight.

Sunday Sunday Sunday Sunday

Finally...someone agrees with us that The Royal Tenenbaums is one of the best films of the decade. Directed by Wes Anderson the The Royal Tenenbaums was definitely overlooked in Rollingstone's best 10 films of the decade list. It will be interesting to see if City of God will get its due.
By request, we will be posting a review of Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed a documentary by Ben Stein later this week.

Last round...

So I'm in the last round of the screenplay competition I enrolled in September. I finished 3rd in my heat once again, so I'm doing okay, although not as well as I'd like. My assignment in the last round is as follows: The Location has to be set in a nursery. A wig has to appear in the script at some point and the genre is ...drum roll please...OPEN!!!! Yeay!!! THANK GOD. The last 3 assignments have all been in genres I'm bad at: Horror, Monster Movie, and Science Fiction. Bleh..but now my options are much broader. I just got my assignment an hour ago, so I'm going to spend the rest of the night thinking of a killer story idea. Ciao!

Top Ten Movies of the Decade!!!

So Rolling Stone just came out with a "best of 00's" issue. There is a section devoted to the best movies of the decade which we were eager to check out, as Peter Travers is a good critic whose tastes generally run similar to ours. So here's their top ten

10. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

9. Mystic River

8. The Departed

7. Brokeback Mountain

6. The Incredibles

5. No Country for Old Men

4. A History of Violence

3. Mulholland Drive

2. Children of Men

1. There will be Blood

I'm a little meh about this list..its very male-centric. A lot of guns and violence driven films here..and Mulholland drive as number three??? What?? I appreciate an enigmatic film as much as the next person, but making it the third best film of the decade mainly based on its purposeful ambiguity seems a stretch. Anyways I won't spend a bunch space trashing their picks..however, we've listed out a few movies we think they definitely should have included on their top ten of '00 (besides Mystic River, ugh. Okay I'll stop. sorry.)

City of God - I can't believe this was overlooked. In my opinion it's the epic gangster film of the decade. Genius director Fernando Meirelles runs at breakneck speed with the tale of slumkids growing up wild and reckless, in colorful 60's Brazil. The movie is so much fun to watch-its like "Goodfellas" except with Brazillian street urchins.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Charlie Kaufman is a genius and the first mainstream screenwriter to make the human mind and nature his main subjects. And all director Michael Gondry's movies seemed culled straight from your most Ambien-induced dreams. Those two forces together made a magical, whimsical movie about the way our brain and hearts work. It's funny, bizarre, depressed and hopeful all at once. Plus it made you think, which is considered a fatal ailment in movies nowadays.

The Royal Tenenbaums-Comedic classic. Inspired hipster's Halloween costumes for the rest of the decade.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon- Ang Lee made an exquisitely shot film which I think re-ignited interest in the artistic Asian action film genre at least in the US. Although I have to admit after the 19th knockoff movie came out with the same "flying warrior" wire stunt tricks, I started to curse this movie.

Also, I noticed that for a magazine about music, it was strange that Rolling Stone didn't mention any music documentaries. Here's a couple we think they should have shouted out


Dig! Before Britney Spears shaved her head, or Amy Winehouse snorted coke in the middle of her concert, there was good old Anton Newcombe of The BrianJonestown Massacre pummeling his bandmates on stage in front of a packed house of records execs. This film (culled from 2000 hours of footage) is a breathtaking glimpse of a musical genius whose megalomania keeps his band from success even when it's being thrown at them. It's Celebrity Trainwreck 101.

Some Kind of Monster-Yeesh..these guys are such arrogant wusses.

On a personal note, we've had an intense week related to converting some large HD quicktime clips into 50mb windows media player files. It has been painful to say the least. But after much blood, sweat and tears, we've found a solution, which we'll share within the next couple of day. Ciao!!

DIY Film tips....