Well I am about to leave for the airport to return to the East Coast. I have enjoyed my stay on the West Coast and will sadly miss it.
I went to the Revision 3 launch party last Tuesday and was amazed by the new shows, the networking and the meeting of the Rev3 stars and crew. Kevin Rose was nice to talk to but the best was being able to party with the Tiki Bar Crew. We swapped drinking stories and I got to meet their producer. She has even open an invitation to being on the show for a future episode. I will take her up on that soon, I hope!
I also meet some good connections that will answer some of the questions Jon and I have about I-Tunes, DiVX and even Dolby. SO it was not all a wash. The major let down was I didn't get a chance to do an interview with any of the guys.
What I did witness was the release of the new Tiki Bar episode, a trailer for the new The Broken, and a look at the new web site for Revision 3. I was very impressed, in fact they went to an all black site (hmmmmm). Maybe we shouldn't change our page to white after all...???
Ok The next day or so I spent at my cousin's in Newark Ca. (Which is across the Bay.) I enjoyed it immensely. I was feed like a king and got a chance to hang out with my cousin's little boy. He is labeled with autism and is doing really well with in school and every day interactions. I am so happy to see him grow up.
I gotta jet (literally), I will update with some pictures and maybe a video or something about my trip... Till them watch the shows, check out more IPTV and have fun.
This weekend will be what they call in the South a "Barn Burner". That usualy means that there is no rest for me and that by Monday I will be ragged, BUT Monday I fly out to San Fransico to hang out with the Rev3 crowd for their special party. My hopes are to get our stuff seen or at least talk about what we are doing in Math Club Production.
So here's the schedule from hell...
Thursday -
Friday -4:30pm - 2am The Canal Club - Richmond Symphony (Kicked Back Classics), Later show Co-Pilot, No BS Brass Band.
Saturday12:30 -3:30 PBS Shoot, Big Marc and his land of garden gnomes.
4:30 - 7:00 Editing
7:30 - 2:30 am The Canal Club - Rehab
Sunday12:00 - 6:30 - Filming ( 1337 Scenes, Help Files, possibly a Capt E and Mr M.) All with the help of Ali from Hak.5.
7:30 - 2:30 The Canal Club - Unknown Hinson.
Monday12:00 - Editing and burning DVD's for trip, Packing and getting ready....
10PM-3:30am The Canal Club - Reggea Night...
Thats what you call a tough weekend.... Well when I live through it I should ahve some great stories and news about things. BTW I am now gainfully employed at Circuit City, Yeah!6am drive to DC to get a flight at 10am.
One reason why we choose to do a dramatic show was that very few were out in regular distribution. You had a few film makers, podcaster making intermittent episodes. We wanted to get our stuff out there for a reason. We wanted to set a pace and show others what could be done with networking and hard work.
I think we have completed those task. Yet I feel that the pace we set has drained us. We originally said we would release an episode ever month. Once we looked into the logistics of that, and our schedules, we trashed that and came up with a release every 6-7 weeks. Here is how it breaks down...
Preproduction ( 1 week to write script, 1 week for review and editing)
Weeks 1-3 - readings (1-2 a week for 2 hours)
Week 2 - Deadline for secondary actors and locations for 1st shoot.
End of week 3 - shooting primary scenes. (4-8 hours of shooting)
Week 4 - Dealine for extras, and locations for second shootings, a reading (2 hours) Second shooting and re-shoots (4-8 hours)
Week 5 - Rough Edit, Dailies due (2 days after final shoot), Reshoot schedule (if needed). (About 6-10 hours)
Week 6 - Scoring - Rough edit sent to Monestary Record (5-8 hours scoring)
Week 7 - Final Draft (must pass 3 out of five editors) (2-6 hours), Color Correction, Special effects (2-4 hours), Sound tweaking (1-3 hours), Compression of video (WMV, MOV, M4V, DIVX, Streaming Video) (2-6 hours)
RELEASE!
During this we take photos during the shoots, up load them to Flickr (1-2 hours), We take camera phone pics for MoBlog (1 hour), I do web updates on certain blogs, and in the end we do a podcast on the behind the scenes look at the episode (1-2 hours).
Whew!
It sounds gruling and with a job it is but I simply love doing this. When I sit and start editing I get a bizz going that last me for hours. Of all the things I do in this production, I would have to say editing and writing are my favorite, close second would be on camera personality.
I guess I also need to add in that at this time we do not make ANY money on this show. It is a labor of love. ALL of our actors/crew/company people have been so awesome. I hope in the furture to be able to offer a stable job to all of them. Well thats a dream we will work towards. I hope you dont mind me letting you into my mind?
Now here's why it's called Editing Woes.... As we film we go on a very tight schedule. Sometimes we have plenty of time to fool around and get multiple shots and angles. Others we have one camera, no time and are stuck with, well not the best shot in to world. This is where the artistic side and the drive to be the best sometimes has to take second seat to the time frame. It's been a point of contention with in our group. Do we sacrifice quality for speed?
I am currently editing boht episodes 7 and 8. This is because of several reasons. One we lost a primary actor and we have to re-shoot around him. Two the scenes we had where not good and needed work (I wont even go into this situation). So today we re-shoot the last two scenes of 7 and I promise to have them ready for release next week. Check this out as a sampling of the episode (rough edit, please understand) Fight Scene .
Episode 8 is looking like the best we have done so far. We have Danny Eckler coming on as DP and he has done some amazing things with the camera (well amazing to us). I would show you some clips but its still being worked on.
Ok that's all for today. Next week is San Fransico and the meet up with Digg and others. I wish you all well, and if you going to be in San Fransico for the meet up (or live there) drop me a line.
We have yet to do something like this. Math Club Productions is offering a interesting chance. Come join us on the set as we finish filming one of the episodes for "1337". This is a chance to be a walk on for the show and learn what it has taken to produce a show of this magnitude.
Well be shooting at the World Cup Coffee Shop in Richmond, VA on Wednesday the 20th of September. The shoot starts at 6pm and will end around 8pm.
I know I have talked about the show I direct/write. Sometimes I forget that we have other shows. Actually I never forget, being the editor of all shows now I know them inside and out.
I do want to mention them so they get as much push as "1337".
Chez Geek is a collaboration between Steve Daljev, JR Foster, myself and Jon Smith. We wanted to make a cooking show from the begining. The problem was leet took a lot of our time and resources. Now we have more of these "resources", we have the ability to do more projects. Chez Geek is the geeks answer to cooking shows. It is part improv comedy, part cooking show and a little dash of behind the scenes humor. Plus it takes common pantry items and makes nice meals with them. BTW if any graphic artist would be willing to help us out and do graphics for this show it would be awesome!
Starbuskj is a project by Steve and JR. This is about two brothers from the Old World, bringing their trade to the New World. They open a coffee and rope shop to take the world by surprise. This is some funny and memorable stuff, very akin to old SNL skits.
Help Files was orginally called "Meet Joe Geek". With some modifications we have re-invented the show and are starting to release it weekly. The show covers the technology of our trade in an introductory fashion. We will cover basic RSS feeds, files extensions, How to subscribe, How to make an RSS, etc. Add a show case that is based of my IPTV Review Blog and some humor and that's our show.
Upcoming shows...
High Maintenance - will be a comedy set in a apartment complex. The basic concept is a group of guys working hard for a living and the funny, crazy things they do to amuse themselves. Add in some comedic romance tension and infantile humor of farts and drinking and, "poof" you have the show. Created by Trae Favaro (Alvin Foster in "1337").
Short Films - We are producing a short film called, "Between Floors" written by Ali from Hak.5. When I first read this script I was amazed at the combination of insight and strength of the vision with in the story. We hope this will be the beginning of several shorts to be done.
That's pretty much it... OH BTW I am jetting off to San Fran next week to be on Diggnation. My hopes are to bend ears and get our stuff seen by people... We will be attempting to make T-Shirts for Starbuskj to give out at the show... Wish me luck on getting that done...
Math Club is faced with a interesting possibility. Revision 3 is having a selected party for 200 fans... We have obtained a RSVP. Our hopes are to meet with the creators of the other shows and the IPTV networks that are starting up and get some face time.
Granted meeting LaLa has its lure also, but Jay Adelson, Patrick Norton, Robert Heron, David Prager or John Dvorak are the people that have made some of the biggest impacts in this industry. Our hopes are that someone there will be willing to look at our stuff and maybe we can get some critiques, ideas or information on how to get to the next level.
What's the next level? Jumping from 3-4000 viewers a month to 50,000 to 100,000 viewers. We really haven't pushed ourselves in the vein of promotions. We have so far been more word of mouth, maybe a few pushes and shoves here and there. (Thanks to Hak.5 for a the biggest push so far!)
It's been a year and our road has really been bumpy and fun. I look back and see that we have done a lot and grown so much since the inception of this business. I look forward to whatever comes our way, and hope to be in Ol' San Fran by next week!
My small production company love to make content. The problem we are still new to this and are putting a lot of our own money into this. I don't have a job, as of yet. So the money has pretty much stopped coming in. We do make some money off of videos for local musicians but its small change.
This is were you as the reader and potential watcher come in. If you go to the web site below and watch our videos. We have both Starbuskj's and all of the "1337" trailers on the site. As the watchers grow on the site we can get the chance to garner some income. Enough to pay for servers and upkeep on the web page.
LuLu TV - Math Club Productions
Thanks and keep an eye out for new shows and updates to our web page. We plan to revamp the web site and make it a little more user friendly.
Well, what to say.
I am one of the founders of Math Club Productions. I step back and will tell you of the beginnings. I was a school teacher, I thought I was happy doing that. As I worked I found I still wannated to do more. More entailed starting some podcast. As we (Jon and I) looked into podcasting we found that the market was going to be overun quickly so we marshalled our recources and attempted vlogging, vidcasting, or webcasting.
As I looked into this further I found that this was a viable way of distrubiting entertainment without out being attached to some mega-production company. It wasn't simple, but could be done with a team or group of interested peoples.
We started with a dramatic show. why? At the time we hadn;t seen any dramatic shows on the web. Some attempts to cross over from broadcast media were out their but very few. We wondered about doing some of the other shows we had in plans. The tech show seemed pointless with all the vidcast being of that variety, cooking shows will only do well if you have a hook, and comedy does well but is a hard sell to everyone. That left horror, sci-fi and drama. We chose drama.
"1337" was born. It was born out of a dream I had one night after the bombings in London. I dreamed a group of hackers stopped the bombings and saved all the people. This group started hacking to help people. I talked to Jon about this and we fleshed out a full season of 1337 in four hours. The next three days I wrote the first episode and the next week we casted it. Now the original pilot will NEVER be seen (if I can help it), but we did remake it in September of 05. Since then we have released 6 episodes and have four more before we put the season to rest.
As for the other shows we have started to produce not only those shows but other shows from the group of people that have helped us.
If you have an idea, follow it. If you have an idea about a short film, episodic show or a short sketch drop me a line and lets talk...
What's in the future... a short film wirtten and directed by Hak.5's Ali. We look forward to working with her and are excited about the project.
In the last week I have seen some really good movies that i would like to pass along to everyone that reads my ramblings.
The
Protector - Tony Jaa is the next Jackie Chan, Jet Li or even Bruce Lee.
I have seen one of his other movies called, "Ong Bak Warrior". Not to
go into the story line or the background, but what I should focus is
the fight chorography. By far this movie has some of the best fight
scenes in an Americanized foreign film. At times I would swear that the
impacts were real. Fights were fast and realistic, which means quick
and dirty. The story add another dimension, a young Maui Thai guardian
has his family kidnapped. His family is elephants! The story follows
the Thai origins of the elephant being a mystical creature of kings. If
you're a fan of martial arts film I would suggest this in highest
regards. If you're a Quentin Tarrentino fan then take a look, he was
the Executive Producer (which means he was the one who funded the
movies American debut).
Unleashed
- Jet Li movie. So don't kill me because I watch a lot of martial arts
flicks. I have been interested in this movie for awhile. The problem, I
have been too busy to either buy or rent it. So I was pleased that I
was able to TiVo it. The movie is not you typical martial art flick.
Bob Hoskins plays a Shylock that uses Jet Li as a dog. Collar on means
the "dog" is tame and innocent, collar off and the "dog" becomes a
killer. Jet Li's character has been regressed due to his "brainwashing"
and upbringing by his "keeper". Morgan Freeman plays a blind piano
tunner, which helps Jet Li open up and break away. The only problem I
have with this movie is that too many times I have seen a Jet Li
matched with some "teen-aged" woman. Jet Li is over 50, why do they
think his boyish look will pair him with 20 something?? Besides this
fact, the movie is a good watch and I would recommend it to anyone.
Brick
- By far I have to say this is the best movie I have seen in awhile.
Rian Johnson is brilliant. The acting is by far some of the richest and
most developed I have seen in ages. What's the story about? High School
and drugs. Now you're asking what makes this so special? Well the
entire movie dialogue is done in 30-40's noir film style. I don't want
to go into the story too much because it's so crucial to the plot line.
So GET THIS MOVIE and enjoy!
