Still Winter, Thanks

We had a nice snow yesterday that resulted in work getting canceled and also has me thinking of skipping SCA practice this week (long drive + dicey roads). But it did given me a chance to get ahead on some production work, play in the snow and watch a movie.
We also spent about a hour playing the snow as a family; made a snowman and went sledding in the back yard.
I guess February is going to have a relaxing end. And then it's on to serious work and training as March comes in like a lion.

The movie we watched was Crash. Overall it was a good movie and would be an interesting conversation piece. But I think as a whole the movie tried too hard to connect too many people and ended up feeling a little artificial as a result. I am big fan of events drawing diverse characters together, like Thirteen Conversations About One Thing or 11:14 or even Traffic. But in this case there was no event to link the the characters, as in Conversations or 11:14, but more of a theme like Traffic. Both Crash and Traffic have serious social themes, racism and drug abuse respectively, but while Traffic wove a tapistry of characters together into one story whose themes were expressed through use of lighting and color, Crash felt like it had scenes more set up to talk to the audience then to create a narrative, and used conicendience to force the viewer to look at themselves rather than organically reaching a new understanding, which I think would have been more powerful.
End result: enjoyable, important, but could have been better and done more.
3 of 5 stars.

Puppy Movie

I finished a short movie, about 1 minute, that I shot with my son last Thursday. I was going to edit it over the weekend, but ended up spending my free time at a martial arts festival. The festival was great, I got to do some animal Kung-Fu and then some other stuff on movement and power generation that I hope to be able to bring over to my SCA fighting.
So I spent about half of today cutting it together the 1 minute movie. It was nice, but it also got me thinking about film making. I think that my main stumbling block is the collaborative nature of making a movie. I'd like to do some more movies with my son, perhaps a short series. And while I can write a script, direct and run the camera I would need more actors. I'd thought I was on to something when I found a local list-serve for amateur film makers but after a week there are three members, not very encouraging.
So, I think that at this point I'm going to give myself the goals of generating footage for very short movies with my son on Thursdays and having it cut together by Monday. Of course I'm also about to start gearing up for crown tournament in May, so that means more rigorous training, exercise and focus on SCA.
Anyway, for now here's the movie:

Big Shot

Okay, I'm way behind on personal projects because of paying clients and the SCA. Paying clients are good and I have some short turn around stuff that has to get done, but hopefully I'll be able get Drake to cooperate with me so I can get some footage of him for a 30 second movie I want to do. Post that Friday if I can get it done.

As for what I have been working on, here's something odd. The guy who owns the event company where I get most of my freelance work right now wants to be on this show called Big Shot Live. So he had me put together a video for him so he could enter. I've tried linking to the video: here, but the site is horrible and the link seems to dump you on a front page where you put in your zip code so it can direct you to your local station hosting the contest. Then it sometimes goes to his video and sometimes dumps you somewhere else. So if your on the wrong video you may have to click over to the TV Host section and find the KMotsko video. Then you have to register before you can vote. Overall, a lot of work to ask of people when I'm not really getting anything out of it.

For the videos, there seem to be two types; the most pathetic and desperate people I've ever seen and people who are already professionals in their field are looking for a break to get into the big time.

But if you're really interested in seeing the kind of stuff I'm getting do to right now (when it's not a wedding, birthday party or school play) here you go:

You can't make me learn the alphabet!!

Okay, I was going to try and make a short movie with my son today, but he ended up spending more time at the library and shopping for valentine's day gifts than I had anticipated. So, perhaps we'll do the movie over the weekend and I can post it Monday.

On another note, the boy doesn't know his alphabet yet. And at this point I'm starting to think that he's actively refusing to learn it. Nine months ago when he knew EVERY car from the Cars movie and most of the Thomas the Train trains, I thought well it's because they're exciting and he's been exposed to them for a while. Then it was christmas and he got some of the Ultimate Marvel guide books, and within a week he had learned 20 new Avengers and X-Men (who he can identify in color and black & white). So I thought maybe if I paired the Superheroes with letters then they would be exciting and he would start to learn them through association. That project has stalled out, because I stole images to make it and now I need to find a place that will ignore copyright to print the book for me. Yes, I could just draw the superheroes myself, but at the pace I'm working now, I would finish the book until my son was in high school, and that's really a little to late to be working on the alphabet.

But the thing that's really gotten me recently is that he's gotten in to Transformers (since the Superbowl) and has learned about 20 Transformers. And he's been watching the Star Wars movies with his mom and has about a dozen characters from those movies.
How is this different from the superheroes? Well, first he will learn songs (for Spiderman, Batman, the Transformers, Row Your Boat, Twinkle Little Star, Lollipops) as long as it's not the alphabet song. That seemed a little odd to me. But the final straw was the droids from Star Wars. Their names are just letters and numbers. Well, my son will combine them into words, like "Free-PP-O" (C3PO) which makes him sound like he's protesting the unjust imprisonment of Protocol Droids.

Playing the Fool Trailer

Here's the trailer for the short film "Playing the Fool" that I'm working on. I know this isn't a new project, but it is a new trailer, and I think the project is just about done. The audio needs a little work, mostly in sync and I'm going to need a score, but I think that the pace and edit are pretty much done.
If anyone wants to see the film as it is right now, I'd be happy to send you a copy as I am looking for input before I start sending this out to festivals.

The more things change . . .

So, I've been away from the computer for about a week. This has resulted in my being way behind on my self imposed deadlines for personal projects. At this point to meet the first deadline I'm going to have to neglect a work project with a looser time table.I'm not sure, but I think I'm going with the personal project on this one. Work is good, but since it's about three steps away from what I really want to be doing, I think I'm going to need to keep pushing the personal projects. At least until what I've got has succeeded or failed.

That gives me 1 short film, 1 documentary that could be feature length and 2 scripts.

If I can meet my deadline on "Playing the Fool" then I'll try and get a trailer cut together too, so that I have something to post.

Lots of video work this weekend and lots of SCA next week, so it may be about another week before I post again.

On another note:

Superbowl = Incredible

Also, we're going to push the Cars theme through my son's birthday party, but Superheroes and Transformers are now his dominate intrests. Superheroes for books and pretend play and Transformers for toys (thank his uncle for this one). Not that he's not still excited about Cars or abandoned the toys, but what he talks about "needing" is more Transformers. And at the toy store, he'd rather pick through the Transformers than visit the Cars aisle. Well, on the bright side, I should be able to pick up a large crate of my old Transformer toys from my parents' house (the same uncle has donated his old ones to the cause as well). And if I ration them out, I should be able to give my son a "new" Transformer every week for about a year and a half.