I have another blog!

Introducing... The Stuff Maker Blog! I already have 11 post in it!

The Stuff Maker Blog icame from the fact that I love to make stuff that should be way over my head, Plate armor? I need a forage and thousands in equipment and years of training right? Wrong. Do you really need store bought patterns to make your own cloths? Apparently no. It is amazing what you learn when you just jump in a do it!
The Stuff Maker Blog will be full of Tutorials, How Tos, Stories and more. Check it out!

Stuff Maker Blog

Also, do you have something you might be able to contribute? Well unfortunately I don't have an e-mail set up for it ATM, but just leave a comment on a post and I will be more than happy to work with you!

Celtx 1.0 Released!

The newest version of Celtx (1.0) has just been released today! It has a lot of nice new features. Here are some things mentioned in the e-mail I received:

Adapt To - a single click now converts a fully formatted script of one type into a fully formatted script of another - for example a Stageplay to a Screenplay - displaying instantly the multi-media potential of your work.

Comic Book - a new editor to write properly formatted Comic Books, and a common framework for collaboration between writer and artist.

iPhone - now view your Celtx projects from just about anywhere with a display optimized for your iPhone.

Catalogs - a new organization and searchable dashboard view of all your story's elements and production items.

Sidebar - annotate and break down each scene with notes, media (images, audio, and video clips), and production items through an easy to manage, thoroughly upgraded new sidebar.

Project Scheduling - has been vastly upgraded to fully integrate with the script breakdown and provide a Call Sheet and a host of new shooting reports.

Storyboarding - as requested, you can now choose from a variety of ways to view and manage your images, create a storyboard outline based on your script, and add shot descriptions to each image.

• The first thing I checked was the Story boarding section of the program. If you use Celtx you will know it was in need of some BIG help. Well it finally got some, you can now use the scroll weal on you mouse to scroll up and down, what a novel concept! As well as a lot more flexibility and user friendliness, you can also set What kind of shot it is in a drop down menu, eg. Wide Shot, Medium Shot, Close up, etc.
  
• The interface for adding files to your project is also reorganized and cleaned up a bit.
• The Catologs feature also looks like it could be quite useful.
• What excites me most however is something that at the moment I can't use, iPhone support, when the iPhone came out I thought to my self that it would be the ultimate gadget for the set, if only there was a program for it, well looks like it is here. Now to get my self the cash to buy and iPodTouch!
  

If you don't have Celtx already, now is a good time to start!

Pinata: A Life Of Brokenness

Well I finally got Pinata: A Life Of Brokenness up online! Some of you are saying "wow its about time!" And I can see others saying, "What on earth is a Pinata?!?!" Well, if you asked the last of the two, I will leave you to go ask your mother about your childhood depravity.

Pinata in many ways launched my filming enterprises. Although not the first film I made, it was the first one to have critical acclaim beyond my own little circle of family, friends and a few people in my church. Suddenly my little video was not just playing in front of 30 people at the young adult service once, but in front of the entire congregation, me and my brother where interviewed for both local papers and papers in other bigger cities, the regional TV station did a News bit on us, Pinata was shown in the biggest all Canadian film festival, we were interviewed by a teen magazine, and it is when people by the droves began phoning me up from the church and asking me to put together clever promo-videos for the potluck after next weeks service, 'ya right, not happening'. Pinata was an overnight success, and bigger than life, for me, event.

So what happened? What is the story? Well, first of, it was bigger for me, than for the rest of the world, most of the papers and media attention was not front page or anything, bit it sure felt like it, getting more attention than I had ever before, and over something so... small. It started out like this...

Me and my brother had ben getting in to video stuff helping our you paster with our churches burgeoning video... stuff. We had helped with a few projects, promo and an update or something like that, and then the young adult paster asked us to do a sermon illustration for the monthly young adult service, it was about finding perpuse through brokenness, and he thought a pinata would fit perfectly. We were teemed up with two young adults to come up with an idea and shoot the project in a day. We searched the city for a pinata, for 3 hours, finally we found one, then we shot the thing twice, because the sound was not working the first time, and I took it home to edit. We showed it at the young adult service to much laughter, it was a hit. It sat on our shelf.

Then the local paper did a tiny little article about how the NSI Film Festival was opening there national exposure contest to all of Canada, and we thought, oh, cool we could enter pinata in that! So we did, about the time we had forgotten we had entered, I got an e-mail, we were in the top 12, and we would be screening Winnipeg! Wow cool! We let all our friends know, and NSI sent out there press release, only thing was, although we had free tickets to the event we couldn't afford to fly there, and my dad couldn't take time off to drive us there (a 21 hour drive?), but that was ok, we got top 12 with over 100 entries, and that was just fine with me.

We got an interview with the paper that had published the article about the festival, and then things began to snowball, the other local paper wanted an interview, and then the church waned to show it on a sunday morning (6-700 people) and then the Calgary TV station (Global) wanted an interview for their evening News, and then a national teen magazine called called interviewed, and then a the Winnipeg Newspaper celled to see if they could get an interview at the festival. Which brings us back to the fact that we couldn't go...

With all the attention, almost everyone new we couldn't go, my youth paster offered to drive us down, but them something happened, people gave us money. I was amazed, it was just a little video! Well we got enough money for me and my Dad to fly to Winnipeg (it was winter here, and Winnipeg doesn't have a reputation for nice winters), my brother was busy that weekend so he didn't go.

We didn't win, and I was thoroughly unimpressed by the other films, some had ok production values, but many didn't have that good, and the stories were week, and hopelessness, depression, death and futility seeped out everywhere. I was in shock, I expected not to win, but I expected to be beaten by better films than mine. It was big moment of, we need better film makers, we need better, stories, we need hope, and we need God. And the industry I saw there wasn't going to give it. And I didn't want to work in it.

Pinata was an amazing experience for me, more than just a movie, and a convicting one. Enjoy the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy7G6IsQ-0s

Amazing Math, Jungle Beet.

The other week our music person (for a lack of a better title ATM), Michelle Free, came to our Recording studio (also, living room, computer and editing room, green-screen studio, etc...) , to record the opening song she had written for the Amazing Math videos! We had a few troubles, such as a lack of a sound studio, no drums, and no good recording equipment. Problem? Yes. Un-overcomable? No. We ended up with a nice recording for the beginning of our video that I can't wait for people to hear! Unfortunately I can't post it, but here are some pictures of the recording session!

Note the bad lighting. We turned off all the lights to eliminate much "buzz" from electric as posable.

Amazing Math, The Neighborhood

Just thought I would give all you an update.

To do still:

• A Few More trees
  
• More dead stuff on the currant trees
  
• A tricycle
  
• A basket ball
  
• Fix the water in the pools, it looks bad.

Thoughts?

Trying to get a "look"

Well, I am kinda playing around with a look for this blog, not sure if I have settled on anything permanent, but as you can see it looks a wee bit different.

I have a mini banner for you forum'ers to use if you so wish. Use this code.

[url=http://albertamoviemaker.blogspot.com/][img]http://lh5.ggpht.com/TheSallad/SEXOp9YIRfI/AAAAAAAAAx4/E4DQvYnj838/s800/Sub%20Banner.png[/img][/url]

Amazing Math, 5 Citys

Well a neighborhood has become 5 cities, or towns, or... something small... for the big shots like this, I had to strip down the houses quite a bit, as it was taking eons to set up to render. But it doesn't matter as they are so small anyway. I have to work on the lighting a bit, as you can see on the angled pict above, not all the lights show up they are so small, and even in the pict below they are quite small... I also need to add a but more variation in the ground texture, and some plant life, like some cacti!

I have done a bit of work on the neighborhood as well, you can see a bit of landscaping is going on, I will be adding a bit more as well. I want to add some trees, but I don't know how to make them. all my past attempts have turned out... week.