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This month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The challenge is to write 50,000 words during the month of Nov. I dove in immediately after the World Fantasy Convention. The great people I met at the convention must have inspired me because I've been on fire since then. I'm writing at a record-breaking speed for me. Yesterday was my most productive day at 3,700 words. That's a long way from the 1,000 word glass ceiling I used to live under.
I'm off to LA tomorrow for a filmmaking seminar so I needed to meet my 25,000 word goal for Sunday by today. Good thing I'm deadline driven. I'm now at 25,349 words. Yay!
Now if I can just keep myself from being distracted by my lust for a new netbook, I'll have a very rough draft of a novel to work with by mid-Dec. I'm keeping my fingers crosssed.
I went to the World Fantasy Convention this week at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. It was my first World Fantasy Convention and I have to say that it ranked as my favorite of the four SF/Fan conventions I've attended (2 WorldCons and Wiscon). Just about everyone there was a writer, editor or publisher. The crowd ranged from famous to aspiring. Everyone was friendly, the feel was low-key, and the parties were great. The best party I went to was a book launch party for Soulless. The author, Gail Carriger, threw the party on Halloween, and it was beautifully catered by people dressed in full Victorian costumes. The food there was impressive! Her marketing efforts are working because a lot of people at the party said they have to buy the book, and I'm blogging about it right now. So there you go, when your book or film launches, throw a memorable party.
Oh, and the convention gift bag can't be beat--a huge tote full of newly-published books and magazines. :-)
I just got word that TOOTH FAIRY will be included in a 3 hour Halloween TV special produced by Dark Carnival Film Festival and HorrorHound Magazine! It will air on October 24 at 8pm (EST) on Time-Warner channel 991, which is a local independent network that plays in Ohio and southern Indiana.
Considering that Tooth Fairy is playing in both family film showings and horror showings, it's perfect for a TV Halloween special!
Yay!
Paranormal Activities (a film made for $10,000 that ran the festival circuit and eventually got picked up by Paramount) reached a million requests for it to open in people's towns. Paramount used Eventful to set up a website in which fans can ask for the movie to open in their towns. Paramount promised that if they get a million requests, they will open it nation-wide.
Eventful will set up a request website for your film too, if you're willing to shell out $30,000 -$250,000. Or, you can donate $100 to Arin Crumley's OpenIndie project so you can do a showing in a town if you get 100 requests.
Sonnyboo's website has free downloads of standard symbols like festival laurels, DVD symbol, FBI warnings, film ratings, etc. That's where I got my festival laurels for my Tooth Fairy website, but I had to process it to make it transparent.
A couple of us from TOOTH FAIRY made it to the Tacoma Film Festival this past weekend. Although Tooth Fairy played in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, this was the first festival I attended. I picked it among the other festivals because they were kind enough to give us a room at the Courtyard Marriott for the weekend. It was a really nice hotel, much nicer than I was expecting. The festival did a great job welcoming us. On Friday night, we missed our flight (DOH!) so we were really late for the Friday night party. In fact, there was only one filmmaker pair there with their family. We hung out with them for about an hour, and had a nice chat with Margo Pelletier and Lisa Thomas who flew out from NY. Later in the festival, their documentary, Freeing Silvia Baraldini, won the best documentary award! We were really excited for them because they had obviously put in a lot of work over the 8 year trek of their film. Congratulations again to Margo and Lisa!
Saturday morning, I attended a filmmakers' workshop by Warren Etheredge of the Warren Report, who also MC'd the awards brunch on Sunday. Wow, what an entertaining speaker. I'll have to do another post just on his workshop presentation because I got a lot out of it. I really wanted to chat with him after the workshop but it ended just as my film was starting so I had to say a quick thank you and run off.
The Tooth Fairy showing was...well...awesome! :-) It was great fun seeing the film on the big screen. The audience laughed in all the right places and clapped enthusiastically at the end. It was fun! There was a Q&A session at the end but it was very short due to the schedule. I quickly mentioned how I learned VFX for the film and that my crowning achievement was digitally changing the sheets on the bed to fix a continuity problem.
Oh, and I really, really enjoyed wearing the "filmmaker" badge. :-)
Sunday brunch was also good. We sat at the table with Mark Hug and May Charters who were from LA. They made a film called Lovers in a Dangerous Time which played on opening night. At the table were also the filmmakers of a film called Spooners, which is supposed to be really great and we regret having missed it, but they were hung-over and weren't socially alert enough to give me their cards, so no link for them on this post.
Overall, it was a fun weekend. Many thanks to all the festival volunteers, and a special thanks to the festival coordinators, Emily and Rachel, who made us feel welcome!
Susan Ee
www.Tooth-Fairy-Movie.com
www.feraldream.com
A few weeks ago, the creator of CSI released a book on paper where every 20 pages or so, the reader can go to a website, put in a password, and see a video that supposedly enhances the story. I just watched the "trailer" for it, expecting it to be horribly cheesy, as most book trailers are...but it appears that book trailers are starting to come into their own. Somebody spent real money on this trailer. Lots of set-ups, recognizable actors, a custom costume, text effects, props, foley, DOF, set design... Of course, it helps that the creator of CSI can probably just use the resources of CSI.
I'm not saying it's not silly, 'cause, the major conflict is Sqweegel vs. Dark. No joke. He must have gotten the character names out of a Saturday morning cartoon, although the content doesn't look made for children and the publisher is Dutton Adult. I wanted to experience this book/film since creating that kind of hybrid would be perfect for me, but the reviews made the book sound like total dreck. It sounds like people may be open to the concept of the hybrid, but that this particular execution didn't work so well. Several reviewers said it felt more like an interruption than an enhancement. A couple mentioned that they didn't like having to give out their email addresses to access the videos. Sounds like the clips on the website are a mixed bag, ranging from "well done" to "terrible." Some people liked the experience of the hybrid, others hated it.
It seems there is a much better executed book/film: Skeleton Creek. For one thing, the premise incorporates video clips into the story rather than just being a gimmick. For another, it's a kid's story. Kid's books have pictures, adult books generally don't. I think kids may be a more receptive and natural audience for this kind of storytelling, at least for now, until the genre matures.
Very intriguing for those of us who enjoy writing prose as well as filmmaking...
Ion Television is looking for scripts in the area of "drama procedural." I've no idea what that means. For details, go here.
Good luck!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
I learned the following things:
JPEG = good for natural shapes like photos.
PNG = good for sharp shapes like text.
GIF = old format, avoid if possible
Photoshop = good for photos, terrible for text
Illustrator = good for text and graphics. Not sure about photos, seems okay.
When you make a poster/postcard of your film, work on the photo in Photoshop, then "place" it in Illustrator to put in the text. Then print it out from Illustrator. For some reason, my Illustrator CS3 defaulted on "save for web and devices" to GIF. The photo looked terrible and it took me awhile to figure out why (see comment above re GIF). Sadly, it's quite easy to make text with effects in Photoshop, but it looks all jagged when you print it out. Illustrator's text looks great when you print it, but it's complicated to give it effects.
It's frustrating to deal with such an overly-complicated system, but one of the things I love about shoestring budget filmmaking is that I learn so much about so many things...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
The Economist reports that Americans are still watching TV for an average of over 8 hours PER DAY. Watching TV is like a full time job for us. This is the number I've heard over the years and it looks like it hasn't gone down despite the popularity of the web. Japan, Australia, Canada and most of Europe watch an average of 3-4 hours per day.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
