Sunday 24 July 2011

Pub Crawl Webisodes


I’ve been looking into making webisodes from Pub Crawl movie to try and market it. By keeping them down to 15 minutes or less I can upload them to YouTube.

So far the film breaks down to 14 Webisodes, varying in time from 7 minutes to 14 minutes.

It would be great to get some sponsors, but I don’t think it will happen.

I used Final Cut Pro to edit the Webisodes from the movie footage. It has a widescreen look to it, as it is in 2.35 aspect ratio.

Pub Crawl Webisode list is as follows:
  1. 1.The Oxford arms
  2. 2.The Hawley arms
  3. 3.The Lock Tavern
  4. 4.The Barfly
  5. 5.The Fiddlers Elbow
  6. 6.The Enterprise
  7. 7.Diner
  8. 8.The Barfly Again
  9. 9.The Bouncer
  10. 10.The Good Mixer
  11. 11.More Good Mixer
  12. 12.THe Dublin Castle
  13. 13.The Band
  14. 14.THe End

Saturday 16 July 2011

Pub Crawl Widescreen and Colour Grading


I’ve been trying to do a widescreen edit of Pub Crawl movie and I have also been using Final cut to do some colour grading.

One thing that I have noticed is when trying to compress the widescreen film so I can put it on DVD or the internet there seem to be some problems.

Final cut has a filter that allows you to have a widescreen look to your movie. You can choose 2.35 as one of the options, this is what most movies like Transformers use. When you go to the cinema and the screen widen’s out this is what is being projected.

If you are making a movie using a 35mm camera, there are various ways of getting widescreen onto film, using special lenses.

Another way is to just crop the top and bottom of a 16 x 9 video or film. This is what Final Cut Widescreen filter does.

The you output the file from FCP as a Quicktime movie, hoping that it is saved in the right aspect ratio of 1 to 2.35. Only it doesn’t, it outputs as 1888 x 1062, which is about 1 to 1.175.

It should be 1888 x 804 or 1920 x 816. If you want to show on DVD then 720 x 306 would be right and a 1440 x 612 file should be fine in theory working with iDVD to get the film onto DVD.

What the video convertors seem to be doing is outputting a file with black bands on the top and bottom of the film rather than cropping the film to the right video size.

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The best program that I have found for doing video conversion is MPEG Streamclip by Squared 5. Just drag the .mov output file from FCP onto the MPEG window then you can output an mp4 file in the right resolution.

It takes  along time to convert, especially if you get Streamclip to do multiple passes.

One thing that I have found with FCP is that if you set the filters for widescreen 2.35 and the 3 colour correction on one video clip then copy the clip. You can paste the filter attributes to multiple video clips, rather than having to edit filters on each clip.

Saturday 9 July 2011

Production for Second Movie

I’m looking at producing a second movie from one of my scripts. So far I have two scripts that I am thinking of producing. The problem is they are much bigger budgets than our last movie.

I want to shoot next movie on Sony FS100 and Canon 5D MkII. I haven’t used it yet but, will probably edit on FCP X.

The first script I am considering is Megachrist.com. Which is set in London. What I wanted to do was try and get hollywood A list to play the parts of the prophets. 

These are short but important parts for the movie, Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammad. I am thinking of re-writing current ending. More information about Megachrist.com is on the website including the current script.

To be honest I’m really not sure what the budget would be my estimate is £500,000. My wish list for A list actors are Chris Rock, Owen Wilson, Jackie Chan and Madonna. From the actors listed the movie ought to be a comedy, but it’s not.

It is chicken and egg, if I can get letters of intent from actors, assuming they like script, then I have a good chance of raising money. It would be nice to have an Exec producer who has raised more than this in the past. So if you know someone, send me an Email.

The second script that I am considering is “Zombie Biker Girls”. this is comedy horror set in Los Angeles. What I am looking at is going to LA to shoot for about 3 months and picking up crew and cast in LA.

The budget for the movie will depend on what actors we use. One option is too shoot on SAG low budget contracts.

The other option I am thinking of is too get an actor who has his own production company to join as a co-producer.

One of the parts in the movie, Jack was written with Jack Nicholson in mind... while I would love to be making a movie with Jack Nicholson any of the following are great actors too Tom Hanks, Nick Nolte, Michael Madsen, Michael Caine, Robert Redford or Harvey Keitel.

If I am honest and not just hopelessly optimistic I probably can’t even get a script to any of these actors let alone have them read it and want to co-produce movie. What it does have going for it it is that is set set in LA.

The Black Arts- eBook

My third book is available on Apple iBooks and Amazon kindle.

This is the book with a book from Megachrist.com so if you have Megachrist.com you already have it.

Here is the story it started as an adult script based on Harry Potter, but set in New York... a college for evil witches.

Suzi Chang is a chinese / Japanese Ninja Assassin who works for the Tokyo Yakuza. She has come to America to go to the Black Arts College.

It's a college in New York that teaches Black Magic, Kung Fu, Sex and crime.

She learns Kung Fu magic, rides a dragon and battles an evil witch called Wanda, who turns out to be her real mother.

Sex Drugs Death - eBook

My second book Sex Drugs Death is out on Apple iBooks and Amazon kindle.

Here is the write up from Amazon:

Three Hookers rob the Chicago Chinese Triads and the Mob... of millions of dollars and drugs and escape on Harley Davidson’s and travel down Route 66 to sell the drugs in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile in LA… Debra Silvers a screen writer is working on a script with her father Jack Golden a producer and her husband director Bob Silvers. The movie is about an affair that she had with her mother.

Her mother Gillian Golden, a famous Hollywood Agent and does not want the movie made. She tries to get them to stop by faking a suicide attempt, but it goes wrong and she dies, but a Voodooo Witchdoctor brings her back as a Zombie God.

She meets some biker filmmaker’s, Sam and Chrissy in a rock club and they decide to make a movie the Zombie Biker Girls.

Sam and Chrissy are also the fences for the hookers drug deal. The Triads and the Mob, want their drugs and money back... and they want the girls dead.

A nympho, a drug addict and a killer. These are Charlie’s Devil’s... SEX DRUGS DEATH.

Megachrist.com















It’s a book, a script and a website. Not sure why I haven’t mention it in this blog before. Probably doesn’t matter as so few people read blog.

You can buy paperback on Amazon.

Selling more eBooks

I’ve bought John Locke’s book “How I Sold 1 Million eBooks” and it has some good advice about how to sell and market your eBook. I’m not going to spoil it, if you want the information buy the book from Amazon I think it’s about £2.