Thrasher Bust or Bail Footage

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This is how I spent my saturday. Sorry it's not the Blip Player. I'm having quicktime and flash compression issues. But whatevs, youtube's got this new high quality thing going. Is there a FCP/ Episode Pro compression expert out there? Holla at me.

(09/02/08 Handled the compression problem, exported to Apple Intermediate Codec, then compressed to Flash, thus the Blip Player Above)

In other news Hurricane Gustav is baring down on the homeland. Mandatory evacuations for pretty much everybody I know. Stay safe y'all.

Bay Bridged

Judgement Day was awesome. How can you go wrong with epic heavy metal violin action? But another thing that was cool about the show was the group who put it on. The Bay Bridged is a blog/vlog/calendar dedicated to the Bay Area indie music scene. After the Sunday show at Cafe Du Nord, I checked out the site and was impressed by their depth of coverage. They have a weekly podcast that spotlights Bay Area bands, they feature local visual artists, and appear to be getting into video (which we like). It's a great resource and I'm looking forward to checking in on it, definitely worth linking to. I'm also thinking that it could be fertile ground for future Make It Happen stories. So if you're in the Bay Area looking for a show, head on over to The Bay Bridged to find out what's going on.

...going on eight months back in the Bay and finally getting out of the house a little.

DIY Days

Abby and I just got back from the DIY Days event at Minna. We had to go because, you know DIY was in the name, which has me thinking a lot about the nature of that term, but I'll save that for another post.

The event was put on by the Workbook Project and From Here to Awesome, and was sponsored by Current. It was hosted by Arin Crumley from Four Eyed Monster. The purpose was to bring independent filmmakers together for a one day event and get them talking about how to use the web for funding, marketing, and distribution.

Since we were once employed by one of the sponsors (Current), and now I work in social media (Seesmic), and Abby is involved in web marketing for Harper Collins; it follows that we might have some knowledge about the stated topic of the conference. It also follows that we might be able to apply that knowledge to our own film projects (Make It Happen and Mulch).

...But as anyone who reads this blog knows, or biggest hurdle has been funding. So learning about where the money comes from is what sparked my interest in DIY Days.

An interesting point to note is that we only found about the conference through a random web search about something else... which leads me to wonder why a conference that seems so perfect for us, would miss us. Then again, I guess it didn't miss us because we found it eventually.

So did we get from there to awesome? What did we learn? Where does the money come from? Interestingly enough, we found out that we are way ahead of the game in the marketing department that is.

The main points:

Use social media, like our myspace and twitter accounts.

Blog about your project, your problems, and your victories to build an audience who is personally invested... And while you're doing that, post additional content related to your film, like side videos (our vlogs) and stills... welcome to teamjaded.com

Put your media everywhere: like our Youtube, our Blip, and our Current TV tagged page...

Make your films and let the film industry, your audience, and the monetization catch up to you... Well we're still waiting.

But one thing we haven't done and that we need to do is update regularly. So we are going to try our hardest.

Like many of the filmmakers at the event today, one of our problems is that we can't work on our projects full-time because we need to have day jobs to pay our rent. When we're not at work, we barely have time to log tapes, much less engage in hours of social media outreach... but we're trying so hang in there. The conference did not really address this problem beyond "knowing rich people" who want to invest in film... which is what we already suspected and were afraid of... (Anybody know any rich people?)

In the meantime check out Four Eyed Monster because they succeeded in this crazy web/film marketing experiment and from the videos I've seen on youtube it looks like they made a solid film. So good for them.

Now we're off to Cafe Du Nord to see Judgement Day who the San Francisco Bay Guardian claims is totally diy...

Jeremey

SuperSense

It doesn't come out until April 2009- but Bruce M. Hood's newest book is a fantastic read. Abby got her hands on an early copy (not surprising, as she works for his publisher... and created his blog... and video). But that aside, this book is truly a fantastic read- for all you skeptics out there who don't believe in the supernatural, this will get you thinking about what Bruce (a world famous scientist) calls the "SuperSense" - the supernatural sense we basically all have. Think you're the most rational person on earth? You'd never give in to a supernatural thought? Think again, my friend. Check out Bruce's new blog at BruceMHood.com - pretty awesome. And keep your eyes peeled for his book- SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable due out April 2009.

Here is a super short teaser:

Vial From the Archives

This is my friend Justin's part from a house video we made when we lived together. The video was called Taravillians. I just pulled this out of the Jaded archives and recut it for the hell of it. Enjoy.




08/07/08 I'm really annoyed by the size of these ads... maybe we should get rid of them...