Posts Tagged ace wonder
A Busy Week For Everyone
It’s no secret these are busy times. I haven’t done any of my shopping yet except for one person (typical guy), invitations for the wedding came in later than expected so Denise and I are rushing to get those out, the rest of the world is going bonkers with it’s affairs, I have about 30 days to finish two DVD covers that I haven’t started yet, tax information to gather from 2010 (gonna be a fun year), and various other side things I’m doing.
One random project I’m doing right now is building the Road to Perdition trailer in 1080p from scratch. It’s no secret it’s one of my favorite movies, and probably one of the most beautiful ever shot. The trailer on the Blu-ray has a pretty old transfer, so the colors are off, the image shakes, the image itself is cropped a bit, etc. I recently ingested the entire film off of my Blu-ray onto my computer in Prorez422 as well as the trailer. I just wanted to see the film in 1080p in file form to see what it really looks like. It’s tough on a TV to see something for what it really is. On the computer I can blow it up and frame through it easily to see the grain and all sorts of things. Call it stupid and pointless but for me it helps me learn. I’m really interested in making my footage look like film not just with how it’s shot, lit, etc. but the organic feel film has. Call me a purist, but it seriously is for my own artistic satisfaction. That, and I’m also a geek when it comes to making digital look like film or taking something shot on a low-budget camera and making it impossible to tell. Take this shot for instance (it’s black and white I know, but just for the sake of argument) I added the most realistic grain I could to this shot of my mom. When viewed in SD (which is the resulting format most of my films will likely be seen in the future, not in a theater), you’d be hard pressed to tell which one of these is film and which one was shot on a Canon 5D. Even sharpness compares at this resolution because of the down-convert from HD to SD. If you saw it even in color and with the grain animated you’d see what I was trying to do. Even in 1080p I would argue they compare. This is fun for me so if you’re bored sorry!
The rebuilding of the Road to Perdition trailer is coming along nicely. It’s keeping me on my toes since I haven’t had much to edit. I’m matching all the shots frame for frame, rebuilding the titles, etc. while keeping the original audio track for the trailer.
Not a lot of other stuff going on. I’ve begun reading Screenplay by Syd Field, and I’m behind on my Piper book. It’s hard to keep up with so many things going right now. I need to get back on the ball. It’s easy to get behind even for a day without reading your Bible, and you feel it the following day. Lots going on upstairs and in life, this week is super busy as well. Denise has her last day at Gieco on Thursday. She’s coming to work for me. We’re going to give that a shot with her doing some secretarial duties and a few other sales related things to see if it works out. There’s some things I just can’t do anymore. It was different when I had just Praise Pictures and Standing Firm stuff, but now I have that plus a job with Rich Christiano for ChristianMovies.com, Heumoore Productions with Ace Wonder and doing any web/marketing stuff, a few other marketing ventures possibly coming with some people, DVD Covers (as I had said before) and also whatever tax stuff, keeping my finances together and trying to plan for a little over 30 days from now when Denise will officially be living here and at the same time working here. I want a one income house, and we’re going to get started off on the right foot. We likely won’t be waiting forever to start having kids (not that it’s completely up to us anyways!) and she’ll be 27 in just a few weeks. If we want a handful of kids (which we do) then we can’t wait forever to get started. Me and Dense met one year ago this past monday, and on Jan 22nd we’re getting married. CRAZY STUFF. Looking forward to the future!!
Lots of Progress, But Still Lacking
There have been some great developments lately for work and for STANDING FIRM. It’s exciting to see the film listed on FamilyChristianMovies.com and on ChristianCinema.com. They’re the first places to list it so far, and I look forward to seeing more show up, especially the christian chain stores like Family Christian, Lifeway, etc. Also the AFA (American Family Association) has been incredibly supportive and continues to be so. I got my free copies of the AFA Journal in the mail for August 2010. The full-page article/review for our film is extremely generous and knowing it’s going to show up in 165,000+ homes in just a week or so is humbling to say the least. It’s looking like there could be some AFR (American Family Radio) interviews in the future for around the release date of the film so that’s excellent. I’m so grateful to be getting this kind of support!
Also we’ve locked down the date for showing the film at my home church Niagara Frontier Bible Church in Lewiston, NY. We will be showing the film on the 29th of August at 6pm. They’ll be a little planning but not much to make sure that works out well. I’ve already tested the film on the projector. It looks OK but not as fantastic as I would hope. That happens and I should expect the same from a lot of churches that sign up to show the film. They’re using the projectors for powerpoint, not films. It’s just not the same as a 50in Plasma like in my room, LOL. I’m not the biggest fan of how the film looks on a TV like that anyways. It’s nice but once you get too close the image falls apart. That happens when you shoot on a camera that costs less than the stuff attached to it.
Other work looks like it could be in the future in regards to web/marketing for other filmmakers. I’ve spoken to one and I have an appointment to talk on thursday. I look forward to seeing where that leads. I’ve also spoken with a pretty big producer about being available for future films in that regard so that’s exciting. This guy produces what seems like a ton of films every few years so it would be nice to get in there as “the guy” to go to for him specifically. It only takes one person like that in your career to bring in a steady stream of work long term, two is even better! 
The fan page for STANDING FIRM is approaching the 15,000 mark which is awesome. The social-media marketing with that other company has yet to kick in so I look forward to getting that going very soon. We don’t have much time to get it started. I wish we had more money to work with on this film but it’s just not there. I’m in the position of deciding how much of the proceeds that will come in soon should be gambled on what marketing efforts to hopefully duplicate the investment. It’s always a risk, but that’s the game. I’ve realized as well that since I’ll be continuing to push the film the rest of the year and beyond, there’s always the ability to continue marketing. Since this film is small, it can potentially be marketed in new areas that have never heard of it for a long time…little by little. The film won’t die out really if that’s the case. Films like this don’t sell millions of copies, they sell in the thousands…more specifically in the sub 100k range (copies not dollars), and that’s if you’re super successful. Seems crazy I’m sure, and for some even a couple thousand copies sounds like a lot to me, but I’ve talked and studied enough other products to know the game is a hard one.
Denise came with me today when I went to look at an apartment complex. It’s awesome! I’m very excited about this place and filled out the application already. It’s the perfect place to move in, with all the bells and whistles at a price that’s completely reasonable. I’ve been looking for the perfect time to move for a while and it looks like the beginning of October will be it. That feels very weird but I think it’s time. I need to get my own place, it’s driving me batty at times still being at home, but it’ll take some getting used to when it comes time to leave FOR GOOD. The main office folks were extremely nice and had already after me emailing a few times checked out my sites on the internet and were asking me about filmmaking. That was odd, lol. Also we rode around the complex on little electric golf-carts and got a tour of the same kind of apartment type I had picked. I saw one open for Oct. that faces the pond in the back, with the patio facing it as well. I’m looking forward to this, more than you know…
I have a ton to do this week, with the end of the month catching up to me. I should have copies of the film at the very end of the month if not the first few days into August. They will be going directly to stores with a certain number coming here. I have a lot to figure out in the next 10 days or so. The shipping of products specifically, and how to get all the banking setup. I’ve started a mockup for the Praise Picture store which I have less than 2 weeks to get dialed in and working. Fun times! The Ace Wonder website is also requiring a revamp for a more legitimate design that’ll stick. August brings a wealth of different challenges and deadlines to meet, but I’ll get there with God’s help! I look forward to seeing everything come to a peak and watching God do something special with this little film of his. Who knows what could happen? God has a tendency to surprise me. Lots to do on the films website as well to make it setup better for the DVD release. I need a portion of the site where people can post how the film has impacted them. That’s important to have…so the world can see the impact, and so I can as well. Still need to figure out the best way to do that without having some serious SPAM problems, or having trolls come in and try and post bad things. Definitely an issue, but I’ll figure out something.
Lots to do! Blessings! Also, pray for finances as they’re pretty strained getting all this stuff paid for, materials purchased, bills to pay still, etc. etc. It never ends…no surprise there. It’s frustrating at times, but it’s all a small price to pay for the possibility of an impacted soul. God trumps the $ every single time.
Facebook Explosion?
So last night I setup a note explaining a DVD giveaway for STANDING FIRM. The terms? Everyone invite their friends to the fan page in return for a shot at a free DVD. The result? A couple thousand invited in about 2 hours, with a total of about 16,000 by now which is about 24 hours later. That’s God folks…plain and simple. It’s been really hard to get people to invite rapidly in the past, I guess they just needed a kick in the pants? I hope the conversion rate (meaning the amount who join out of those invited) is good, because the fan base could almost double in the next week. That’s just considering who has invited people thus far! That would be awesome to see. New church screening signups come in every day too from different states, pretty crazy.
I look forward to what God can do with this little film in the coming months, it’ll be interesting for sure. I can’t wait to see what happens! I’m looking forward to the doors that could open as well for the film beyond what God has already done. Does he want me in this industry? I hope so, because I do love it. It’s tough a lot of the time but it’s a lot of fun. I enjoy the other aspects of it outside of the filmmaking part like doing graphics and web design. All of that is enjoyable too, and I’ve been blessed with some work on that side on/off this year. I look forward to sharing with you what I’ve been doing on Ace Wonder in the next few days. It’s an exciting project to me, and has let me branch out a bit more with new source materials to make a cool looking site and nice graphics for the various internet needs.
Lots of stuff to do tomorrow, I’m hoping for a big jump in fans for Standing Firm over the next few days…we’ll see how we do
