Sure, I’d read many articles and books about shooting too much of “nothing” or not having a coherent story as being common mistakes made by documentary filmmakers. The problem is I simply didn’t see it. I planned my story prior to shooting. I thought it was a good solid story. However I did shoot more content than what would support my story and the reason why I did that was because I really didn’t know what my story was in the first place. What I thought was a good story was too immense. It was like trying to take an entire season or two or three of a reality show and making it into one feature length documentary. A lot of what I shot wouldn’t even support the story of a multi-volume academic release.

This past week I decided I was going to finish this documentary once and for all. I want to get it done and I want to do it well. So I went back over the footage again. As if a light came on in my head, I wrote out an outline that had a much narrower focus and picked out the footage I’d already shot which supported this story. I’m still in the process of doing this. Whatever is missing, I will arrange another shooting event with the twins.

I found what made this story so difficult was that I started to think I had two stories and my brain was unable to see the interconnectedness of two very connected concepts. My mind kept thinking, “well this movie is about twins.” and yet I had all of this footage about their family. Then it occurred to me that no, this film isn’t about twins. It is about two women with an awesome relationship and the film’s goal is to discover what makes their type of relationship possible. It turns out that their twin-ship, i.e. having shared a life and entered all the normal stages of growing up together has helped but the biggest contributor to their happiness and awesome relationship is their family, how they were raised, their family values and the continued efforts of their family to remain a cohesive unit. It became clear that the footage I have about their family supports the story of what makes these two women happy and why they have such a fantastic relationship with each other. It was equally important to point out their effect on their family as they represent a pivotal and vital component of their family’s lives.

Now let’s see if I can carry this all the way through to the final cut. My next hurdle is editing. I have concerns about my ability to edit this in a creative fashion as to resemble that of a professional documentary. I will certainly try. It’s very important that I produce the best film that I can.

The biggest issue I’m having right now is how long it’s taking me to edit projects. Editing all of them simply takes too long. I definitely need to obtain an editor for all of my wedding films. I find myself editing them as if they were a feature film! I have to keep telling myself that its “good enough” for what it’s for. I’m not saying I plan to slack on wedding projects, just that they don’t need composting, camera movement, and special effects like a creative film project would. It took me 6 months to edit my first wedding!

I’m finding that I want to enter into the short film festivals over at dvxuser.com. They are a great way to get used to making films, editing quickly, and having your work viewed. I’d neglected the short film route for some time because I wasn’t very interested in doing fictional films. However, they have been a great way for me to build my editing skills.

The biggest issue I was recently faced with was how slowly I’ve been working on one of my big projects “Our Side of Joy”. I decided this past weekend I’m going to present the film in the format for which it was intended instead of trying to create a shorter version for film festivals. I’d mentioned in previous posts that this film was several films but I filmed it for academic audiences (volumes for higher education courses). If it were intended for general audiences I wouldn’t have picked such a broad topic. I was just about to play myself on this one.

I’ve had this film down to an hour and fifteen minutes for months now and I just couldn’t go back to it. I’m very unhappy with this length. It feels like a long “preview” for what I intended to shoot. I felt as if I should make this film for general audiences and do the whole film festival thing. In doing a little soul searching… I’m just not a 90 minutes or less kinda filmmaker.

I have no problem taking a lot of info and making it into shorter volumes that represent an entire body of knowledge. But I can not just cut and cut and cut until my message is a mess at my feet and I’m putting out into the world some other animal.

Pre-Production:
Movie Outline Software http://www.movieoutline.com – It is essential to make a detailed outline of your film before you do anything. It will help you understand your story better which will help you move to the next step of writing the script. This software will help you to quickly and easily create an outline for your film projects. I’ve even written an entire script in this program (not what the software is for). The price has gone up significantly since I first purchased it so I can only recommend it if you really really need it.

Celtx Software http://celtx.com – This is thee software to have if you are an independent filmmaker. It is the one stop shop for all your filmmaking needs (wow that’s corny… but true). I use this program exclusively for writing outlines, scripts, creating lists of cast, crew, props, and sets, putting together my shooting schedules and much more! And best of all… It’s FREE!

Production:
I don’t have anything to add as a resource during the production phase because all I’m concerned about during this time is shooting. I’m not logging any tapes, filling out any forms or any other paper work. I’m shooting my scenes according to my shooting schedule, making changes to my script on the fly and watching the tapes after each shoot to catch any issues that need to be addressed by re-shooting.

Post-Production:
I’ll also keep this section simple because I don’t want you to get hung up on what tools to use for editing your film if you decide to edit the films yourself (I don’t plan to edit my films anymore.) You do need professional tools for editing; not necessarily for trimming and ordering but definitely for color correction, effects, transitions, and audio processing. I use Adobe Premier because it’s very easy to use. I use it to trim my footage, put the film together in the sequence it’s going to be in, and arrange the audio for the film. I use Adobe After Effects for everything else (for the video only. I never import the audio.), such as color correction (the first thing I worry about), and any other necessary effects like camera movements and transitions. Lastly, I use Adobe Audition to process any problematic audio (I try my best to shoot perfect audio so it is not something I have to “fix” when editing). Once I’ve corrected problematic audio in Adobe Audition, I import it back into Adobe Premier. Adobe Premier automatically links to Adobe Soundbooth for editing audio but Adobe is crazy. Soundbooth is a substandard audio program and I don’t know why they think film audio doesn’t need as much care as a musician’s audio. Adobe Audition has been around for longer than Adobe has owned it (used to be Cool Edit) and has outstanding, easy to use audio processing tools.

Release:
Kunaki.com – $1.75. Yes, that’s right. For $1.75 each you get retail ready DVDs plus full color covers and inserts using Kunaki.com. These DVDs and the printing are of the same quality you see in retail stores. To make this even sweeter, these DVDs are made on demand! So you don’t need to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for stock you may never get rid of.

Filmbaby.com – If you want great personal customer service from a respected industry company with a great history with indie artists, this is the company for you! Filmbaby.com is owned by the same people who own CDbaby.com and they offer affordable easy to use services for selling your films. And best of all, they accurately report sales and pay you when they are supposed to pay you…consistently. Switching all of my films over to them is the best thing I could have done for myself.

Promotional:
I can’t stress to filmmakers enough how important it is to have a website for your film company and/or your individual films. Let’s face it, many of of the earth’s inhabitants are slaves to the web. *Smile* It is the easiest and cheapest way to get the word out about your films. Making a website can be free or near free so there is really no reason not to have one.

4 Steps to getting your website ready:
1. Get good hosting (linux/unix hosting with Cpanel is highly recommend) – Hostgator.com is my favorite.
2. In Cpanel (fantastico), or on your own, install a content management script (Joomla.org, Drupal, WordPress.org, etc.).
3. Fill it up with content about your film company and film projects.
4. Invest in an outstanding design template if you have no graphics design skills. I can not stress this enough. An uninteresting site is a worthless site, just like an uninteresting advertisement is an invisible advertisement (i.e. you website should not look like it was made in the early 90s). If you need great templates for many of the popular, free content management scripts visit: Templatemonster.com, joomlart.com, and many others.

If you need outstanding quality print media, I’d recommend GotPrint.com. I haven’t had too much of a need to use them for my films (but have used them for my publishing company) but you will need print media if you plan to work the film festival circuit.

Tutorials:
Videocopilot.net – If you are interested in producing professional quality films with great effects, or just to learn how to use Adobe After Effects, this is the site for you. Not only do they have incredibly useful tools for purchase, they have fantastic free tutorials and an entire website dedicated to help you learn the basics of Adobe After Effects; a boot camp if you will.

Enjoy your art, Cheers!

The last time I posted something to this blog, I was heading back to Tampa to shoot more of “Our Side of Joy”. I’m very glad I did because it wasn’t until I went to shoot some more of the twins that I was able to really capture what I wanted to capture about their relationship. I will write a separate post about this second shoot because it made such a huge difference for my film.

Although I’d returned to my hometown of Tampa, Florida almost every year since I moved away, I never truly enjoyed being there. But these past 3-4 times I’ve been back have really been quite amazing. I still have a somewhat love/hate relationship with Tampa but what I do know is that I have a wonderful nephew there who I wish I could see more of and all of my real friends are there. Don’t get my wrong I’ve made good friends everywhere I’ve moved, however they have not been lasting friends. At first I thought it was because it appeared we tend to keep friends we knew while we were children longer than ones made as adults. But I think what is more accurate is you will keep friends who strive for and enjoy friendships that are more than superficial and/or surface level friendships and unfortunately there are many people who only offer surface level friendships and this behavior can also be a part of the entire culture of a place (as I am witnessing here in upstate, NY). So I have decided to move back to Tampa as soon as possible for a maximum of 2 years.

Besides being closer to my nephew and wonderful friends, I have also changed a great deal since I’ve lived in Tampa and even since many of my visits thereafter. So what I’ve been finding is my own desire to “live” in Tampa because I hadn’t “Lived” when I was there. Especially compared to where I am, at this point in my life Tampa has a lot to offer me. From awesome food (OMG I never thought about this until I moved here. The food here is awful.) to many many creative outlets I can enjoy. Tampa does have an active film community which is a huge reason why I’d like to move back. I also feel like I can make many new friends in addition to the ones I already have. I can also accomplish some of my ideas for things like fundraising puzzle hunt races, murder mystery dinners, and my plans to start my own video series.

Over the years since I’ve moved away, I’ve also gotten used to traveling and driving long distances and just exploring areas further away from where I lived. I never did this in Tampa. So when I move back I plan to drive anywhere I want to go all over Florida and beyond as well. I plan to “LIVE”. I’m also planning to start traveling outside of the country more as well. For a while there, I was traveling to other countries every year and then the recession put an end to all of that. Now i’m back to a point where I want and can travel more and I’m really hoping to do that when I move back and after two years I will feel comfortable enough to make the big move out of the country. But also let me say this, being where I am now has been a serious learning experience. One, I’ll never waste my time in a place that doesn’t support who I am ever again. This has been almost 9 years of my life I can never get back. Two, I’m going to do all that I can to live life to the fullest anywhere I move and if in doing so, I am unable to create the social and personal connections that every human being needs, then I need to move. Being here has certainly taught me that having a good job is just not enough to make a person happy (at least not me).

I have so much to talk about, I’m going to have to break right here and create new posts for the other things I have going on. Just to share a little bit, I’ve started doing wedding videos to help fund some of my film projects and I’ve been thinking of new, fun ways to help fund my films. Also I’m really pushing towards finding a few editors to work with because editing is truly ruining my desire to make films and to enjoy the films I’m making. My publishing and writing has been suffering a little bit as well because of where I am right now but I have plans to get that back on track as well. So I’ll blog a little more about these things later.

Cheers!

Since Our Side of Joy turned out to offer much more story than I anticipated, I’m having to go through the 6 hours of interviews and not only do some cutting but also write down every concept covered so I can see where my story needs to go, what needs to be left out, and what relationship the concepts have to each other to tell a coherent story. There is a lot of work to be done here.

I also spoke with a professional documentary story consultant about this film and while it was very interesting, not entirely what I was looking for. I’m always amazed at what people can get paid for. Anyway, I’m back to being on my own with this but would like to huddle up with a few people who can give honest feedback on the way this project is going.  On one hand it’s cool working alone because you can do whatever you want without having to wait on anyone but your subjects, but on the other hand, not cool because you do need the feedback of other people and help as well so you don’t feel so burnt out before the film is even done.

Well.. back to work. :)

Once you know what subjects you are interested in publishing, you should set up guidelines for submissions. This will not deter motivated writers from sending you inquiries and manuscripts that have nothing to do with your guidelines but it does allow you to respectfully reject their submissions with ease as well as help you stay focused with your publishing goals. Not only will you have to reject submissions that are not within your guidelines, but you will also have to reject submissions that are within the guidelines for various reasons.

So what are some of the reasons you may have to reject submissions within your guidelines?

1. Poor quality – This is the #1 reason for my own publishing company. For me, it isn’t so much an issue with writing/grammar, etc. (because after all, we do have editors), but more so an issue with subject quality. You may have several submissions where the subject just isn’t interesting or it isn’t presented in a way that would interest readers.

2. Same Story/Different Author – This simply means you may find submissions from writers featuring a storyline that has simply been overdone (i.e. many authors writing about the same thing over and over again). I find this more prevalent in fiction and particularly romantic fiction. I mean, you can only publish a story about a cheating husband and broken-hearted wife so many times.

3. Author/Publisher incompatibility – Do not overlook this! Even if an author has a fantastic manuscript, do not compromise yourself and your business by working with an author you can not manage. If you find yourself bumping heads with an author (especially from the get go), move on. Get to know the author before any contracts are signed. The problem with working with authors you can’t get along with is that the contract is usually for a number of years. Think about that. I have had such an experience and it simply isn’t worth it. *Note: This goes for writers with unrealistic expectations for their books, those who don’t understand they have to do their own marketing or at least help, and those who simply can not get past their own ego to make the publisher/author relationship work.

So what are some reasons you should publish a title?

1. You should publish a title if when you read it, you can’t put it down. Period. Regardless of your marketing/business plans, if you have a manuscript that is compelling, publish it. You are a publisher, you can have as many titles in your catalog as you want. Your main goal is to make sure they are of the best quality.

2. The title is well written, draws the reader in and covers a subject you are passionate about.

It is really this simple. Do not let someone hustle you into publishing a title you are not passionate about. *Note: There are some titles you can publish that you know will sell on their own (i.e. self-help & how-to books). These can create a bit of a constant cash-flow for you. But there should be more titles in your catalog that you are passionate about than not.