Life of Kyle Prohaska

Life isn’t easy, it never is.  Jesus never said it was going to be, he just assured us that whatever was going on in life, he had overcome it already.  Comforting words, but far too often I forget and because of that I fail.  I’ve been in a bit of a depression the past few days.  Just bummed out, tired emotionally, spiritually, etc.  Sorta closed off, I’ve been pretty quiet.  Even at Vintage tonight during the message and my e-groups after I just felt really dead, like somebody had performed a lobotomy on me in my sleep…ugh.  I’m feeling a bit better now, nothing a good dose of JC can’t fix He fights for me when I or the enemy gets in the way…thank goodness or we’d all be toast.

Work and such is moving along fine.  There are some quibbles about some things, but I’ll keep my mouth shut.  Things are fine, and working at home is a Blessing so I have no right to complain.  I’m looking at my bank account and I’m pretty amazed at what God has done to help me financially since Dec.  It’s amazing, and it’s going to help me finish Standing Firm which is even more amazing.  I’ll be taking a chunk out of the investment money soon here as I get a new G-Raid for my computer.  I own a 1TB version of it already that holds the Standing Firm files, but I need a new 4TB version…yes you heard me, FOUR TB.  I’ll need it for when I go to Texas in a month or two so I can continue to work on any stuff if I have to or get to any critical files.  That 4TB will allow me to backup all my files on my computer, then take it with me, then when I get back, replace what’s on my computer here via the backup and switch to using the files on my home computer.  Sound confusing?  O well, lol.  Either way it’ll make me feel better to know I can backup EVERYTHING and stick this thing in a drawer every week or so.  It’ll also free up HD space on my computer itself so I don’t have to use my other TB drive in here as a backup anymore.  Yay!

Standing Firm’s color-correction is going very well.  It took me a while to get my monitors all setup properly today to keep on going but that’s ok.  I’ve gone back through the first reel and fine tuned things.  Basically I have 4 places to view the film at one time.  I have my computer LCD, a CRT Production Monitor, a normal SD TV, and my 50in Plasma for HD viewing when I feel like it.  I plugged in the normal SD TV because I need to see it as an in-between for the Production Monitor and Plasma.  Color-correction isn’t so much a “get it right” process…it’s more of a “get it close/satisfying” process.  There is no way to know that what your looking at will work for every persons TV, so you have to strike a good balance of levels, rely on your scopes, and be conservative.  My Production Monitor even when properly calibrated as well looks a little off so I’m glad I have these other sources to judge between as a point of reference.  Some of the CC is pretty difficult, particularly the church interiors.  The walls are a creme color that has all sorts of different light on it like tungsten, fluorescent, and daylight…all of which have different color-temps so getting the walls to match has been a challenge.  The church scenes above all are a nightmare because the pieces to them were shot in different days/months/years/seasons.  It’s all over the place.  But with the magic of editing, everything looks like one place/time Awesome…

Please be in prayer for the film and it’s completion.  Pray for promotion of the film, that all the stuff I got cooking (and that God has cooking that I don’t know about) would go along smoothly and be helpful to the films success and sales.  Also pray we strike a deal sometime in the next few months with a vendor that can take the film to the CBA, CBD, etc. markets (nationwide bookstores).  This would be our ticket to securing a release date and likely doing well financially.  We’ll see what God does!  I gotta get a disc in the mail to the one guy I have in mind.  Also there is a guy named Benji who is going to try and write a song for the middle montage of the film.  There was a Third Day song in there but the cost is just too great to use.  I need something powerful and of quality.  I also need music for the end credits possibly and another portion of the film so please pray that I find music that is good and cheap to use.  Money isn’t exactly growing on trees for this film, never was, lol.  One last thing, my sound-mixer and composer have a lot going on in their lives and need as much prayer as they can get.  Pray their efforts on the film are done with the utmost dedication to the Lord yielding a powerful result.  Thanks everyone!  There is much to pray for!

Lots going on…your support is appreciated.

Also if you read this and haven’t become a fan of Standing Firm on Facebook please do and read this.  I need your help folks.  Also sign up for the email updates.

Today was my first day of work, and by that I mean work at home.  I’ve done work at home in the past, thousands of hours worth on top of whatever job I have.  This was the first time I was doing that, and only that.  I got up at like 1pm to the sound of someone coming up the stairs.  I heard a faint hello and it wasn’t anyone I could recognize.  Then I heard “It’s grandma.”  One eye open (barely) she came into the room and kissed me on the forehead, lol.  They had to come into town for something (something regarding her car needing fixing, I’m not sure why they live a half hour away at least), and saw my car in the drive way.  For those of you wondering “Isn’t your grandmother gone?,” I would say yes but not this one.  This is my Dad’s mom I’m talking about.  My mothers mom Betty passed away last year and her dad passed away years ago before I was born.  My dads parents are the only grandparents I have left, and they’re hysterical.  One thing that is never void in any family get together is laughter.  We keep each other in stitches with our bickering and jabs at each other.  My parents are probably laughing as they read this (I can imagine you two down there in Georgia, haha).  Grandma Lively (that’s Betty and my moms maiden name) was really funny as she forgot things often and knew it…so she’d just be like “ah crap I forgot again, come on,” and we’d just chuckle.  What a pistol that woman was, my goodness.  The kind of lady back in the day that had any misbehaving wippersnapper standing up straight at attention when she walked by because she’d have no problem giving them an earful and a smack upside the head if they were doing something naughty, ha-ha.

After I got up I had a muffin that I purchased at Tops the previous day.  It was so good, you have no idea.  I haven’t had much variety in my breakfast since I moved to LA.  It’s been Slimfast and cereal.  I don’t think I have had chocolate either in a long time so since it was a chocolate chip muffin…I was in heaven.  I got to work on a few things that needed to be done on Facebook, here on LifeofKyle.com, and emails.  I emailed a lot of people today about crew positions for The Grace Card.  We’re keeping all options open when it comes to people, just in case.  Things are going to move quickly in the next month, so we need to make any potential actors/crew aware now just in case we need to call them later.  I added a new Category to this website today, it’s called This & That.  That will be a place I post things of a more miscellaneous nature.  Cool videos from the internet, pictures, odd news articles that don’t relate to this site or to the typical news section, and much more.  I hope to really make this site something fun to visit everyday with what’s posted, not just a personal journal.  To me that would be far too boring to generate any kind of decent traffic.  Plus if people like to read what I write, then I need to start writing a lot more and in different forms to grab people outside my own little sphere of influence.  Hopefully in a years time or so this site becomes something well known…who knows.

Besides this site I finished updating KyleProhaska.com, my personal portfolio site and got it looking a bit nicer.  All of my content will have a similar design/color scheme to it.  I think it really works well that picture of me and the black/white/blue.  I really needed to update the site anyways because I might need the freelance really soon.  Besides web updates I went to the bank today to deposit what cash was left from LA.  I had taken quite a bit with me just in case I needed it.  I had $100 bucks left, and a $20 check from a card (thanks Larsons!).  The $100 bucks was from Jeremy back in LA.  If you remember reading it, he gave it to me as a donation out the goodness of his heart…really astonishing to me.  After I send July’s rent check tomorrow and that’s taken out of my account I’ll have about $800, then adding in my last paycheck from work that’ll bring me to $1800 bucks.  It costs about $750 for me to live each month on basic bills and food, so you can see how close I am to $0 after the next two months are over.  I’m sure that few hundred left after bills will end up going towards something…an oil change comes to mind.  That job in Memphis should take care of me for a little while…even though it’s only a few month job.  That job really excites me, simply because of how much larger in scope it is than my film, and the potential it has based on the resources available.

Randy & Lori

The rest of the day had me just working on whatever other web stuff I had, and editing Standing Firm.  I worked on audio a little bit today as well, finally starting to mix the first scenes with ADR and foley.  The film only has a few problem scenes that I’m going to have to work on intensely in regards to the edit.  They are question marks for me, since I’m not exactly sure how they have to go together.  The content is there but making sense of it will be an interesting process.  That’s why editing is such a difficult skill to learn, because it’s not just cut, paste, move this shot here, etc…it’s making sense of all the footage shot into one congruent story that has a pace and a flow that can satisfy the audience and keep them engaged.

I found out today that one of my best friends Randy Moore is engaged!  He proposed to his girlfriend Lori (also his moms name which I found funny) on the 4th of July at a family party.  I haven’t seen Randy in a few years but he’ll always be my best friend.  I know everyone has one of those somewhere in their life.  You see each other for the first time in years and pick up right where you left off, as if no time has passed.  That’s me and Randy, and we even used to joke as kids that we should’ve been brothers, hah.  Congratulations dude!

So tomorrow it’ll be pretty much the same kind of day.  A little web, a little blogging, a little editing and sound mixing…you know the usual (or what will become the usual).

Thanks to all of you for keeping up with this site!  Try and share it around as much as you can with your friends/family, let’s see if we can’t make it a cool place to be huh?  They’ll be a lot more posted as time goes on so keep an eye out.  More interviews, more reviews, more articles, more other odd fun junk, etc.

G’night folks, I have more editing to do.