Re: [videoblogging] Low...low...low budget filmmaking
http://www.purchasebrothers.com/Purchase-Brothers-v2-hl1.html The Escape From City 17 short film series is an adaptation based on the Half Life computer game saga by Valve Corporation. Originally envisioned as a project to test out numerous post production techniques, as well as a spec commercial, it ballooned into a multi part series. Filmed guerrilla style with no money, no time, no crew, no script, the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of $500. This really interests me as I personally am wanting more and more to branch out beyond my self-imposed 5 minute rule and explore longer form films online. This is cool. We all have the technical abilities and equipment to make anything we want. The rub is time. If you (and everyone else involved) can afford to take the time to make a movie/documentary, everything else is stuff we already have. No paying for film stock or processing or printing. And now that we have free, worldwide distribution, that's another barrier taken down. The biggest hurdle is still just the time it takes to create...which is why the quick short videos were so exciting when I first started. I could post videos for people to watch AND work a job. No more either/or dilemma. Ryanne and I have been also putting more time into making longer videos. Again, the only cost to us is spending the time with people we're interviewing, getting to know them, and following a process that might take weeks or months. Then of course, editing longer videos exponentially takes more time. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://jaydedman.com 917 371 6790
Re: [videoblogging] Low...low...low budget filmmaking
the time issue is also why loose collaboration to edit/stitch videos is always worth exploring. On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Jay dedman jay.ded...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.purchasebrothers.com/Purchase-Brothers-v2-hl1.html The Escape From City 17 short film series is an adaptation based on the Half Life computer game saga by Valve Corporation. Originally envisioned as a project to test out numerous post production techniques, as well as a spec commercial, it ballooned into a multi part series. Filmed guerrilla style with no money, no time, no crew, no script, the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of $500. This really interests me as I personally am wanting more and more to branch out beyond my self-imposed 5 minute rule and explore longer form films online. This is cool. We all have the technical abilities and equipment to make anything we want. The rub is time. If you (and everyone else involved) can afford to take the time to make a movie/documentary, everything else is stuff we already have. No paying for film stock or processing or printing. And now that we have free, worldwide distribution, that's another barrier taken down. The biggest hurdle is still just the time it takes to create...which is why the quick short videos were so exciting when I first started. I could post videos for people to watch AND work a job. No more either/or dilemma. Ryanne and I have been also putting more time into making longer videos. Again, the only cost to us is spending the time with people we're interviewing, getting to know them, and following a process that might take weeks or months. Then of course, editing longer videos exponentially takes more time. Jay -- http://ryanishungry.com http://jaydedman.com 917 371 6790 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Re: [videoblogging] Low...low...low budget filmmaking
The time necessary to create significant/valuable/meaningful long form work, and in many cases even short form work, is why, for better or worse, money is often necessarily part of the sustainability equation for media artists and documentarians even in this age of ultra low cost tools and diy distribution via the web. I don't think Chris Marker made Sans Soleil in his spare time, and I don't think he could now even with an HV30, Final Cut Pro, ultra high speed broadband, and a waiting audience on Vimeo. (Which makes it all the more inspiring to see people like Jay and Ryanne embarking on such journeys anyway.) Brook ___ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Re: [videoblogging] Low...low...low budget filmmaking
It depends on how you define spare time. Whether you look at in terms of a few hours in the evenings and at weekends, or all those hours aggregated over many months or years, dedicated to one project. I have no idea how Chris Marker got funding back then - although I suspect that the French had good grants back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It he must have taken a long time to work on it. Years, I'd have thought. Perhaps alongside an unrelated paying job. In the five years leading up to Sans Soleil's release in 1983, he made two short films, one in 1978 and one in 1981. One of the drawbacks of social media is the pressure to keep presenting work regularly - that publishing regularly is maybe more important than time spent writing/producing/whatever. And it fragments your spare time - means you produce a lot of little pieces, spending a couple of hours on each, and stops you dedicating all that time to a single piece of work that might not be able to be published for months or years. It inspires a curious lack of confidence, that your work might not be good enough to be seen, read or heard amid all the noise and roaring torrent of online media, so it's more important to shout louder and more often. If you haven't published anything on your blog for six months, everybody thinks you've given up or died. People actually delete their whole blogs and back catalogue because they're frustrated that they haven't published anything for a few months, and they think they're out of the game. It's insane. As a result, a lot of the films made and published online don't feel like they've had lots of time put into them. That doesn't necessarily make them weaker - there's a lot of great stuff that comes from people working quickly or observing things in the moment. But I notice this tendency to ephemerality everywhere. Compared to work published in other media or shown in exhibitions, there's less work online that's obviously had a lot of time and thought and dedication poured into it, that has the self-confidence to say I deserve all the time spent on me - and when you see something that has, it often stands out. I'm spending a year working on one project, now - because I'd rather aggregate my limited spare time in pursuit of doing one project that excites me than I would spend one evening a week hurriedly trying to publish several personal videoblog posts that I don't care so much about but which I'm doing because I feel I should. I don't know if it'll end up being any good - that's the risk - but it's the way I want to use my 'spare time' this year, and at the end of it I hope I'll feel like it's been worth it. That said, until now I haven't had a larger project I wanted to work on, and it's been great to be able to use my blog to keep practicing and working regularly and experimenting with lots of different things - and had I not done that, I wouldn't now be doing this other thing. Rupert http://twittervlog.tv On 16-Feb-09, at 7:52 AM, Brook Hinton wrote: The time necessary to create significant/valuable/meaningful long form work, and in many cases even short form work, is why, for better or worse, money is often necessarily part of the sustainability equation for media artists and documentarians even in this age of ultra low cost tools and diy distribution via the web. I don't think Chris Marker made Sans Soleil in his spare time, and I don't think he could now even with an HV30, Final Cut Pro, ultra high speed broadband, and a waiting audience on Vimeo. (Which makes it all the more inspiring to see people like Jay and Ryanne embarking on such journeys anyway.) Brook ___ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Rupert http://twittervlog.tv/ Creative Mobile Filmmaking Shot, edited and sent with my Nokia N93 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Low...low...low budget filmmaking
From what I understand, this was made to test out some post production techniques and became something more. http://www.purchasebrothers.com/Purchase-Brothers-v2-hl1.html The Escape From City 17 short film series is an adaptation based on the Half Life computer game saga by Valve Corporation. Originally envisioned as a project to test out numerous post production techniques, as well as a spec commercial, it ballooned into a multi part series. Filmed guerrilla style with no money, no time, no crew, no script, the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of $500. This really interests me as I personally am wanting more and more to branch out beyond my self-imposed 5 minute rule and explore longer form films online.
