Traveling at the Speed of Thought

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We shuffled around a bunch of the furniture yesterday. Organized our computer cords too as they are like a potential health hazard that could possibly strangle an unsuspecting passerbyer if they were to trip over it. I'm sportin' a terrific bruise too as a result of a desk pinching my hand against the wall. But the office is coming together (slowly but surely). Pictures will come soon too! A special thank you shout out to Rick Casillas of Santa Barbara for giving us some of his office furniture! (You know, 'cause furniture is really expensive...)

Moving on to....

Critters (1986)
Directed by Stephen Herek

I so wish that I could blow this up into an enormous poster. At first glace, their smiles creeps the bejeezus out of me. But it turned out to be a fairly comical 80's horror flick.

So these furry little Gremlin Furby-like things from outer space (I kept calling them Gremlins by mistake while I was watching--Sorry! Whole different movie!) have escaped to Earth. They've got a voracious appetite. Apparently, they can eat anything, and the more they eat, the more they grow in size. The Critters land in some rural small town and start terrorizing and eating the townspeople. Of course, in every small town, there lives that one person--that one person who everyone thinks is bat-shit CRAZY... that one person who knew all along that the aliens were indeed coming. And as expected, NOBODY listens to him.

Fortunately for Earth, bounty hunters are sent to capture the Critters. These bounty hunters are like shapeshifters or something. They know nothing about Earthlings or Earth culture. So what do they do? Read up on American culture. American 80's culture. So it comes to no surprise that one of the bounty hunters disguises itself as Johnny Steele. "Power of the night! Power of the night!" Oh the 80's. What did you expect? And of course, we hear that song over and over throughout the whole movie.

Oh yes, and I have to note my favorite part in the whole movie. The Critters talk in their own alien lanugage, so when they're talking subtitles appear on the bottom. So Critter #1 says to Critter #2, "They have weapons." Critter #2 says "So what?" and right after, it gets blown off the porch by a shotgun, and Critter #1 turns and yells "RAAAAR!" And the bottom on the screen is "F%^&#!!!" in all caps. What foul mouths these Critters have!

Got a cool movie? I'm still open for requests --> stephanie[AT]pixleyflix.com

Adios muchachos!

Labels: critters, friday review, new office, stephanie

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I've had several clients ask me to edit something off of a DVD of theirs. It is difficult to explain, after all the hype about how great dvds are and what an awesome format it is, why it is a terribly bad idea to try to edit footage from a dvd. I will attempt to explain now, so that you might be saved some trouble later.

Before I get into the technical side of things, I will start by saying, and please pay attention: If you have something you think you might want to edit later, ask for your raw footage. By this I mean the original tapes or uncompressed digital files. The uncompressed digital files can be saved onto a DVD, but it's different and you will probably end up with three or four times as many discs to fit all of that information onto.

You can just take my word for it, or if you are curious, here's why:

Raw video takes up a lot of room in digital format. It varies depending on the format, but it is roughly 1 Gigabyte of storage space required for every 5 minutes of raw video. Now consider the fact that the average dvd has about 4.5 Gigs of storage space. In it's raw form, you could only fit about 20 minutes of video onto a DVD.

So how do we manage to squeeze an hour and a half of video onto a DVD?

The answer is compression. Compression is the process of throwing out information in order to create a smaller file size. This works beautifully once, but the more times you have to go through the process of compression, the less information you have and the worse things look.

To get so much video information onto a DVD, the video information is compressed and encoded. To get the information off of the DVD, the video must be converted into a different format and then eventually compressed again. Compression+ Conversion + More Compression = Ugly Video.

So take my word for it, if there is even a glimmer of a possibility that you might want to edit your video later, ask for your raw footage.

~ Taymar

Labels: Compression, Conversion, DVD, format, video

Apologies for the belated Friday Review! I am actually updating from home. We recently moved into a new office and didn't have internet set up yet while I was in last Friday. We're still trying to get things moved in and organized. Thankfully, the new office is not a dark claustrophobic hole in the wall. I think can do cartwheels in it if I wanted to--but perhaps only one cartwheel. It is still pretty small. Hopefully Taymar will find a better office for us in the near future...and one with a window too. It would be nice to see sunlight once in awhile...

This week's review:

The Illusionist (2006)
Directed by Neil Burger

"Nothing is what it seems" is the tagline of this movie. And it sure is! My brain feels like it’s been fondled by The Illusionist!! How does he do it?!!!! It's all so David Blaine.

But it’s not all about illusions and tricks. It’s about love too. I know that sounds kind of corny in a chick flick-romantic comedy way, but it isn’t! I think the writers did a good job with the storyline. The setting is in 20th century Vienna. Eisenheim is a young boy who becomes facinated with magic after meeting a traveling magician. He shows him a few magic tricks, and finally, the magician himself disappears all together. And here comes the typical "Boy meets Girl, Boy falls in love with Girl" scene. Eisenheim falls in love with the Duchess Sophie von Teschen. Yea and it always has to be a peasant and an aristocrat falling in love together. I guess it's just more tragic that way. What a cruel fate: lovers barred from being together, forever separated in different worlds. Yep, it sure does sound a lot more dramatic.

But don't worry, they're not separated forever. Years later, Eisenheim has traveled the world and returned an accomplished magician. He and Sophie meet again at a performance, although here's the catch now: Sophie is in an arranged marriage to the Crowned Prince Leopold, who is not a particularly nice fellow. So now they have to figure out how to runway and be together forever without the Crowned Prince embarking on a jealous rampage after Sophie.

Anyway, I have to skip the whole rest of that because I don't want to ruin the the ending...which might I add is so M. Night Shyamalan! Surprising yet predictable. I feel like I contradicted myself in the previous sentence, but I don’t want to give it away! What I am saying is: don't believe everything you see.

Any requests for next week? Huh huh? My email is stephanie[AT]pixleyflix.com (and do remember to replace [AT] with the actual @ symbol!!) If I don't get any requests, I am projecting next week's review to be Critters. And if you happen to really hate that movie, then you should send another movie my way to review!

Later alligators!

Labels: friday review, stephanie, the illusionist

A few weeks ago I met with another documentary producer for coffee, and we decided to start a cooperative for independent producers in Santa Barbara. We wanted to set something up for networking, collaborating and supporting one another in continuing to create independent work.

I remembered having a similar conversation awhile back with an indie producer I met at the newspaper 2.0 workshop, so I contacted him and a few other indie friends and we met for lunch. We established fairly similar needs for all of us. We would like to be able to barter for equipment use and crew time, to have other talented, creative people to collaborate with, and to set up a good referal and reference point for financial endevours.

I set up a social networking site, and we arranged for another lunch meeting. If you are interested in joining, please sign up at http://indiecoop.ning.com or come to the next lunch meeting at 12:30, Tuesday June 5th at the China Pavillion on Chapala and Anapamu.

Labels: collaborative, cooperative, documentary, inedependent producers, producer, production room santa barbara