Panasonic HVX-200 for sale...

I'm selling my venerable Panasonic HVX-200 and its 8GB P2 card. No, I'm not giving up filmmaking; I just don't need the camera. I was looking to rent an HVX this summer for a few weeks to do some shooting in Knoxville and Roanoke. For the few weeks I needed it, a rental wasn't really cost-effective, so I just bit the bullet and bought the camera. Now that we've got a few HVX's at Virginia Tech, I don't need to hang on to this one. As many people who read this blog would probably testify, it is an awesome camera. The DVCPro HD codec at 24P is totally impressive. Anyway, if you're interested, email me personally [ pharrill AT you-know-what DOT com ]. You can ask me all about it and I can let you know all the details, accessories, etc. I'd rather sell it to a reader of SRF than put it up on Ebay, so I'll entertain any reasonable, sincere offer.

UPDATE: Looks like it's sold folks. Thanks for your interest!

Review: Primera Bravo SE Disc Publisher

Note: Though it's clumsy phrasing throughout this review I refer to the Primera Bravo SE Disc Publisher by its full name because Primera makes a similarly named unit, the Bravo SE AutoPrinter. The AutoPrinter model prints, but does not burn, DVDs. It's a critical distinction, and one that you want to make sure you're aware of if you decide to purchase either unit!

**

Though the days of online distribution are upon us, DVDs still remain a (if not the) most effective way of sharing work seriously with an audience.

Obviously, one way of producing DVDs of one's work is to burn discs individually on your computer. After burning, you can label them by hand or, if you have a printer that accepts DVDs, use a printer. This method works fine if you've just got a handful to burn. Sometimes these printers can be fussy, though. Don't get me started on my experiences with my Epson R200 printer.

Another way of producing DVDs is to have them produced by a professional duplication house (e.g., DiscMakers). This is the way to go if you need hundreds for festival submissions, online or in-person sales.

But what about if you need somewhere between a dozen and a thousand? What if you find yourself needing to burn and print a moderate number discs, particularly projects that need to be updated intermittently (like, say, a demo reel)?

The Primera Bravo SE Disc Publisher aims for this market. A combination laser jet printer, DVD burner, and robotic arm, it automates the burning and printing up to 20 DVDs at a time. I have been testing one for the past couple of months, and here are my findings:

Pros:

Once set up, it does the job without hassle. Setting up the Primera Bravo SE Disc Publisher with a Windows-based computer was fairly hassle free. And once it was set up the unit performed like a charm. Readers of this site may be doing a double-take -- Did Paul just say Windows machine? Yup. I first tried setting up the Bravo SE Disc Publisher using an older "sunflower" iMac. That unit simply didn't have enough RAM and processor speed to do the job. Worse, though, was the fact that, regardless of the Mac computer I used, the included software was buggy and the features were limited. On a Windows-based machine the Bravo SE Disc Publisher has worked flawlessly and the included burning and label design software is easy to use.

Automation is a beautiful thing. The Bravo SE Disc Publisher will do runs of 20 discs. In my tests, the unit only stopped mid-run because of an error once, and that error was an operator error. (The "finished disc" tray should be extended when printing one disc, but pushed in when printing two or morel I left it out once when I should have pushed it in.) After a number of runs I grew confident that the unit didn't need "nursing." I felt confident leaving it alone and concentrating on other work.

It's pretty speedy. The time it takes to burn and print a run of 20 is dependent on a lot of factors -- the length of the program, the design of the label, your computer's processor speed and RAM. With my set-up the Bravo SE Disc Publisher was able to burn 20 DVDs of a short program (30 minutes or so) with a basic text label in about an hour. I was satisfied with those results.

Results have been reliable. The DVDs I've burned work, and they look consistently good. 'Nuff said.

Cons:

Not so hot on Macintosh. Though, admittedly, I tried using an iMac that didn't have enough oomph to get the job done, the design/burning software included for Mac was not as feature rich.

Ultimately, whether this unit is for you depends on your DVD burning needs. The results are more immediate than sending the DVDs off for replication, and the thing is far speedier than burning and printing with your computer and a printer that requires you loading discs one-by-one. However, for the cost of a Bravo SE Disc Publisher (about $1500 online) you could do two 300 disc runs (including cases and full-color sleeves) at DiscMakers. And remember, you'll need to purchase blank DVDs, blank cases, print inserts, etc. if using a Primera.

You'll have to do your own cost-benefit analysis to determine what's most cost effective for the work you do, but for what it sets out to do, the Bravo SE Disc Publisher is a success.

Review: The Filmmaker's Handbook, 3rd Edition

My earlier post on the 3rd edition of The Filmmaker's Handbook was written in anticipation of receiving it. Now I've got it in hand, and had a chance to look it over. A lot of people simply want to learn from a review whether or not they should own a book or not. If that's why you're reading, the answer is that, generally speaking, if you are a novice-to-intermediate filmmaker, this is an essential book.

Now that we've got that out of the way, here are some quickly-jotted observations:

There are lots of changes, but few surprises. And that's probably a good thing. There's only one new chapter, at the beginning, which lays out basic questions that filmmakers should consider before beginning their work. Aside from that, the changes are all revisions. The biggest change, because it's something of a philosophical shift, is that the chapters on Video now take precedence over the chapters on Film. And, of course, the video chapters have been (predictably) overhauled and expanded. The film chapters have largely gone (predictably) untouched.

It's still essential. I don't know of any single technical manual related to filmmaking that collects so much information in one place. None of its chapters can compete with my favorite books on sound, lighting, etc. but this is a great place for novices to begin and it's a great single reference book for the rest of us, particularly on the things that won't change as quickly as video (sound, lighting, film).

It's already starting to become obsolete. Steven Ascher notes this in the preface: "Right now, the pace of change in video and computer technology is so rapid, some things in this book could be dated before you get to the end of this sentence." There is a small, one sentence mention of the Red Camera (bottom of p. 34). I expect there will be more on 4K and RAW imaging in later editions.

There will be new editions, and probably sooner than later. The cover of this edition conspicuously notes that this not the "3rd Edition", but instead the "2008 Edition." Aside from noting that, well, it's still 2007, I have to imagine that this is a hint that we'll see this tome updated more regularly. And it is a tome.

Readability is reduced. The Handbook has been such a staple of film education because of its (relative) readability. Ascher and Pincus do a fine job of making complex technical concepts understandable for novices. But as the book has grown (see below) it has sacrificed some of its readability. There is simply so much stuff in this new edition that it can be a little difficult to navigate through it to find what you need. Luckily the index is above-average for this type of book.

It's big. Really big. I remember a film professor of mine once waxing nostalgic about how the precursor to the first edition of The Filmmaker's Handbook was a small pocket-sized book by Ed Pincus called Guide to Filmmaking. That book, my professor argued, was superior in some ways to editions of The Filmmaker's Handbook because you could stash it in your back pocket while you filmed. He had a point. This is a "handbook" in name only -- it has 830 pages and weighs nearly 3 pounds! (Here's a similarly sized work of fiction, as a point of comparison.) I wouldn't recommend eliminating anything, but I do wonder if perhaps the next edition shouldn't be called The Filmmaker's Desk Reference.

In sum, while this isn't my favorite film book, if you are new to filmmaking, or if you are beyond the basics but need a single desk (or on-set) reference for tons of technical stuff, this is probably about the best $16.50 you could spend.

21 Mac Shareware Applications for Filmmakers

Back in July, I linked to a post that recommended 15 "must have" Freeware programs for filmmakers. Though it favored Windows users, it was still an interesting list of applications. At the end of that post in July I mentioned that I'd try to add to that list, so here it is. Listed below are 21 freeware and shareware applications that I use regularly or which have, at the very least, really saved my butt a couple of times. There are only two duplicates betwen the FreekGeekery list and the one below.

Granted, some of these applications are, at best, only tangentially related to filmmaking. While it may not be as sexy as editing your latest masterpiece simple stuff like email, writing treatments, doing budgets, taking notes, and - yes - simply maintaining your computer probably constitute at least some of your time as a filmmaker. At least, I know it does mine. And you know what? That's okay. It's all part of the same process.

So on with the list. If you see a favorite application of yours missing from this list, by all means say so in the comments.

21 Mac Shareware Applications for Filmmakers

AppleJack AppleJack is a system maintenance utility more than an application, and it's certainly not filmmaking related. So why list it? Because I find it indispensable when my Mac is acting up. When I was having problems with my Multibridge and OS 10.4.10, it was AppleJack to the rescue. Install it now and be thankful on that rainy day when your computer starts acting up. Cost: Free

Audacity Sound recorder and editor. Compare with Audio Hijack Pro (below). Cost: Free

Audio Hijack Pro Multifeatured sound recording application that lets you record internet radio, audio from Skype and iChat. Can be used to import analog (e.g., vinyl and cassettes) into iTunes. Etc. While there's some crossover between this and Audacity, the latter stands out as a sound editor, while Audio Hijack Pro lets you "hijack" streaming audio from various online sources. Both have their place in my Applications folder. Cost: $32

Capture Me Utility that allows you to capture screenshots even while playing a DVD on your computer. (OS X's built-in screencapture prohibits this.) Great for grabbing inspiring images to save for yourself or to share with collaborators. Cost: Donationware

Celtx A screenwriting and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink pre-production organizer. Celtx has been, for me, the buggiest application on this list. Then again, when you consider the sorry state of screenwriting applications on the Mac it starts to look okay. If you don't already have a screenwriting app that works for you, this is probably your best bet for now, mainly because it's free. Someday I hope to be able to give a forehanded compliment to a screenwriting app -- for now "It's free!" is the best I can muster. (If you think this sounds cranky, ask me what I think of some of the screenwriting software in the $200 range.) Cost: Free

Cyberduck Open source FTP and SHTP browser. For a long time I used RBrowser to connect to the SRF server. Now this does the job. Cost: Donationware

DVD Spanner AKA Span DVD Automates burning of folders of large files over several DVDs. I used this to backup onto DVD several P2 cards worth of footage shot this summer and it worked like a charm. Cost: Free

DVDxDV Converts DVD files to QuickTime, which allows you to edit them in Final Cut Pro. I use this in tandem with MacTheRipper (below) to make subject-based dvds of clips for class lectures. The "Pro" version has added features, including batch capture and better performance with widescreen anamorphic footage. Cost: $25 (Standard version) or $80 (Pro version)

Journler This is a virtual notebook for all those idea scraps -- text, web clippings, audio/video files -- that are floating around on your hard drive, on your desk, or in your head. Previously I had used SOHO Notes, and this compares favorably. Cost: Donationware (personal use) or $25 (non-personal use)

MacTheRipper Rips DVDs to your hard drive while removing the region coding and copy protection in the process. Controversial? Yup. Useful? You bet. The website notes that "MacTheRipper is intended to backup DVDs you have legally purchased for personal use. Any copyright-infringing activity you choose to perpetrate using this application is illegal, immoral, and beyond our control.â" Cost: Free

NeoOffice An open-source replacement for Microsoft's Office suite. Word processor, spreadsheet, etc. Not quite as elegant as MS Office, but you can't beat the price, and there's something to be said for supporting open-source programmers over global monopolies. Cost: Free

Pacifist Allows you to extract individual files and folders out of Mac OS X .pkg package files, .dmg disk images, and .tar, .tgz, and .tar.gz file archives. Definitely not something I use every day, but it helped me out in a big way once, so it gets a mention. Shareware: $20

PDF Lab If you're trying to generate a PDF by using OS X's "Print to PDF" you run into problems when using lame applications (that means you, Final Draft 6), which require you to print your title page separately from your main document. PDF Lab is my workaround. Cost: Donationware

QuickTime Movie NoteTaker Allows the taking of notes while watching dailies, transcribing video interviews, etc. Cost: Free

SpamSieve Precision spam killer. Worth every penny. Cost: $30

SuperDuper! Backs up and clones hard drives. If that sounds boring, well, it is. But I'll take "boring" over "drama" (read: drive failure without a backup) when it comes to hard drives. Cost: Free

Taco HTML Edit Full featured HTML and PHP editor. I use this to modify aspects of the SRF site. Cost: Free

Transcriva Great application for doing transcriptions of interviews. If you need video functionality, compare this with QuickTime Movie NoteTaker (above). Cost: $19.99

Timecode Calculator As its name suggests, this does one thing and it does it well. Cost: Free or $7 (depends on which version you want)

Video Disk Space Calculator Helps you compute hard drive space for different codecs. I use this thing more and more now that I'm not strictly working with DV-based footage. Cost: Free

VLC Player Multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, etc.) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. Cost: Free

Finally, though I cannot vouch for them, Blender, Jahshaka, and CinePaint are all worth a look if you do animation or effects-heavy work.

If I've left something off this list, post a comment!

The Bible, Revised

In some fields, there's that one book which, without it, your collection would be hopelessly incomplete. In my opinion, every kitchen needs a copy of The Joy of Cooking, a library's not a library if it doesn't have the Oxford English Dictionary, and filmmakers... well, I would argue that all of us need a copy of The Filmmaker's Handbook by Steven Ascher and Edward Pincus. At least that was true a few years ago. First released in 1984, The Filmmaker's Handbook was one of the first, and best, books to cover almost all technical aspects of the filmmaking process. Its presentation of technical concepts was accessible to beginners; its depth of detail meant experienced filmmakers could return to it again and again, always sure to learn new things.

For years, the Handbook didn't need an update. Film technology had gone largely unchanged for decades. An f-stop's an f-stop, right? Then, in 1999, the Handbook was updated to include developments in digital video. A necessary nod to the present, no doubt, but also an invitation to obsolescence.

The 2nd edition was first published in March 1999 -- one month before the unveiling of Final Cut Pro 1.0. Things have changed. Radically. Needless to say, the Handbook's been long overdue for another update.

So when I say that the new edition of The Filmmaker's Handbook was released yesterday, well, if you're sentimental about books like I am, maybe you'll agree that this is a cause for celebration.

In many ways, though, it's a bittersweet celebration. At this point, I don't expect The Filmmaker's Handbook to present any especially new information, exactly. The internet keeps me up-to-date on this stuff far better than any book can now. And, like so much of the technology it will no doubt discuss, I suspect that much of the information found in this 3rd Edition will be out of date within a year or two. If not sooner.

Yet, even when discussing evolving technologies, books have their place. Books demand (or at least request) more attention than digitally-presented information does. That's a good thing, especially when you're trying to learn something. You can also carry a book to a remote location where you might never have the internet access that would allow you to google for a solution that might crop up on set. But most importantly, a book lets you dog ear its corners, mark up key passages, and write in the margins. At least, that's what I plan to do with my new edition as soon as it arrives on my doorstep.

And besides, a lot of what this new 3rd edition of The Filmmaker's Handbook will have to say has never gone out of style and won't for a long, long time. After all, an f-stop's still an f-stop.

Apple Mail: 8 Tips

Like a lot of folks, I receive and send a lot of email. Lately, I've been digging myself out from the avalanche of email that fell upon my Inbox while I was in Knoxville for a month of prep and production. Surprisingly, the "dig-out" hasn't been that bad, and I think I can attribute it to some email productivity tips and plug-ins I've picked up over the last year. These tips mainly work with Apple Mail. For years I used Eudora, and then Thunderbird. But after Apple's 2.0 version of Mail was released (2005?) I switched to it and haven't regretted it. If you use something other than Mail, some of these may work and some are Mail-specific. Sorry.

Secondly, as a word of background, aside from spam, I keep virtually every email I receive. Email takes up very little memory and it serves as an effective history of work done, contacts, and so on. And everytime I think I don't need to save it all, I end up going back and searching for an email from 1999. Seriously.

Tip 1: Eliminate Spam Well, sure. No one actually wants spam. The trick is figuring out how to eliminate it.

One reason I switched to Apple Mail a few years ago was because its junk mail filter seemed to work pretty well. I don't know if just I started getting more spam, the Junk filter reached it's limitation for how much it could "learn", or if the spam started getting smarter (and by smarter I mean "dumber")... but regardless, my Inbox over the last year started seeing more and more of the stuff.

The solution is SpamSieve. For $30 (and a few minutes of set-up time) you get a clean Inbox. I get maybe one or two spam messages in my Inbox a week these days. I didn't believe the testimonials, but I downloaded the trial and used it for a few days. Now I'm a convert.

Tip 2: Process faster. Now that I'm not having to spend my time sorting out the spam, I can spend my energy processing the real emails sent to me. Though in some ways I'm a skeptic of David Allen's Getting Things Done, I appreciate his theory about tasks like email: If you can reply in 2 minutes or less, do it. If not, figure out what needs to happen next so you can act on it. Approaching my Inbox this way really does increase my efficiency.

Tip 3: Stop manually sorting emails. After replying to an email, I used to file it away. To do this I maintained between a dozen and twenty folders based on various contexts or friends -- my latest project, for example, or "Virginia Tech", or "parents", etc.

No longer. Yes, I still keep almost all my emails, but here's how I do it, inspired by Merlin Mann's sage email advice:

Beyond my "Inbox" (email to which I need to reply) and "Sent", I only maintain three or four folders now:

- The current mission critical project gets its own folder.

- If something catches my attention but there's NO urgency to it (say, an email with a link to an article that I might write about for SRF), I put it in a folder called "Someday?"

- I also maintain a "Waiting On" folder, primarily for email receipts of items I've purchased online. It's my reminder box to make sure something I've purchased actually gets sent to me. I don't check the Waiting folder often enough to put anything of great (ie., work-related) importance in it.

- Everything else goes in a folder I've created called "Archive".

Other folders: If I still want to maintain folders related to people (say, my accountant), all I have to do is set up a smart folder in Mail using my accountant's email address as the filter. All mail stil gets filed to my "Archive", but relevant emails will show up in the smart folder. Voila -- no more time spent manually sorting!

Tip 4: Use MailActOn Probably the thing that I miss the most about Eurdora and Thunderbird is the ease with which you can color-code emails. It's a great way to visually sort the emails in your Inbox -- either by priority or context or whatever.

Mail, unfortunately, still lags in this area: To color-code emails one has to open the color palette (Shift-Apple-C) then use the mouse to click on a color, all the while keeping Apple's rather large color-wheel window open. Clumsy, to say the least.

MailActOn, a donation-ware plug-in for Apple Mail, solves this problem -- and more. Aside from allowing you to assign keystrokes for color-coding, MailActOn also lets you to use keystrokes to sort your mail. Now, when I want to send an email to a specific folder (say, "Archive") all hit is is the keystroke I've defined (in my case, Ctrl-A).

And, of course, Merlin at 43Folders has figured out the way to squeeze every bit of functionality out of the thing by remapping the Caps Lock key. Brilliant!

Tip 5: Speed up Mail Saving a lot of email (as I do) can impact Apple Mail's performance. Mail gets bloated, as it were, and slows down. If you're not careful, the database that stores information about your emails can even get corrupted.

Luckily, there's a simple solution. The Hawk Wings website has links to two different scripts (one, AppleScript, and the other an Automator script) that will "vacuum" the bloat out of Mail.app.

The Applescript version worked like a charm for me without incident, but you should ALWAYS backup your Mail.app files before trying something like this. (See below.)

Tip 6: Back-up Mail Files This is the most basic tip of all, and I know I say it again and again on this site, but ask yourself these two questions:

How much of my life is somehow stored in the emails I have sent and received?

When was the last time I backed up my email files?

So, though you should probably be using something like ChronoSync or whatever to backup ALL your files, if you need to backup just your Mail files they can be found in your system here:

users/[home directory]/Library/Mail users/[home directory]/Library/Mail Downloads

Tip 7: If you use multiple computers, consider using Portable Mail

I have two computers -- a tower and a laptop. All other things being equal, I prefer working on the tower, but the laptop obviously has its advantages. Mail is one application I want to access no matter which computer I'm on, and I've found syncing the application to be a bit of a pain at times. As a solution, I sometimes use a portable version of Mail, which I can run off of a flash drive.

The premise of Portable Mail is this: Instead of trying to sync your Mail from one computer to the next, you instead keep Mail -- your preferences, mailboxes, and downloads -- on a flash drive. Launching Portable Mail launches the Mail.app application of the host computer, but uses all of your preferences, which are on the flash drive.

If your email accounts have better than adequate webmail interfaces that you can access you might not need this, but I have a few accounts that have lousy webmail, so I've found it to be quite handy during days when I know I'm going back and forth between computers a lot.

You'll probably want a 1GB flash drive or larger if you have a lot of email.

Tip 8: Use Plug-ins (if you need 'em)

I'm obviously a fan of MailActOn and SpamSieve. They're two plug-ins that help me customize Apple's Mail to be the application I need. But I draw the line there -- adding on too many plug-ins increases clutter, decreases productivity, and invites conflicts that cause applications to crash.

But maybe you need something more, or something different. If so, the Hawk Wings website has made an excellent catalog of Plug-ins for Apple Mail.

Use 'em if you need 'em. And if you don't, don't.

DIY Underwater Camcorder Housing

Last summer I linked to a DIY underwater camcorder housing that could be built for $70. Since Summer is now officially upon us it's only appropriate that I share another design for an underwater camcorder housing. If you have a Dremel, this one's even cheaper to build than the one from last year. The downside? You'll only be able to use smaller handheld camcorders. Still, I'm sure some enterprising souls will be able to come up with something that will fit larger prosumer video cameras.

A Long Weekend of Short Filmmaking at William & Mary: Pt. 2

Saturday morning at William & Mary began with Troy Davis giving Ashley and me a tour around the William & Mary's Swem Library Media Center. The Director of the Media Center, Troy was my host for the weekend and one of the primary organizers of the Media Center's Long Weekend of Short Filmmaking. The Media Center is several things in one -- an equipment training center, an equipment check-out center, a recording studio for music and podcasts. It's anything and everything that students want and Troy makes himself, and his assistants, available to students to teach them anything from iMovie to Logic Pro.

Troy has been the Director of the Media Center for a year and a half, and it's impressive what he's accomplished. On a technical level, he's helped secure some superb editing facilities (several Mac tower stations with Final Cut, Logic Pro, and the rest of the works, each in its own sound controlled environment). For a guy who describes himself as a "dabbler" when it comes to film, I was impressed with all the smart technology purchases he has been making, not to mention his ability to talk in depth about the subtle differences between various pieces of equipment they own.

Since there are, no doubt, places like this at universities across the country, the biggest accomplishment isn't the equipment and stations he's amassed -- it's the sense of community generates out from this media hub. A lot of that, no doubt, is due to Troy's vision for the Media Center as a place that is accessible and inviting (as opposed to exclusive and intimidating). The Media Center, in fact, is littered with Troy's self-desribed "propaganda" -- humorous, well-designed posters -- that invite students into the space and use the equipment.

After the tour, Troy and I recorded a podcast that covered making and teaching film. He had thought a lot about my work and had some great questions, which is really flattering. (The podcast will be posted at some point on Media Center site. I'll link to it when it's available.)

The podcast led into a "self-reliant filmmaking" workshop that I conducted with some of William & Mary's film students and faculty.

I began by discussing the work I do on this blog, including my reasons for starting it, and how it's transformed my own film practice. I then opened things up for discussion, which led to a wide-ranging conversation that covered everything from what video camera to purchase to some simple strategies for first-time documentarians. Ashley threw in some good advice during the conversation, to boot; I was happy she had joined me.

Our workshop group talked for nearly two hours, so Ashley and I had a quick break for lunch before I ran off to a screening of some of my own short films at the historic Kimball Theatre. The films looked good in this classy venue, I was happy with the turnout, and the questions the audience asked were, again, really good. (I even received some email from audience members after the screening thanking me for sharing my work.) There was a little reception in the theater lobby afterwards, and I enjoyed talking with some of the William & Mary faculty members that had come to the screening. That conversation led to a coffeehouse where Sharon Zuber, who teaches W&M's production courses, and I compared notes about how to teach film production.

We closed out the day by stopping by the premiere of the Cans Film Festival (pun intended), a student-organized screening of films produced at a variety of Virginia universities. (There weren't any entries from Virginia Tech -- maybe next year?) Ashley and I weren't able to stay for long -- I was beat and we had a long drive back in the morning. We did manage to catch one zombie flick before we left.

Before we left on Sunday morning, Troy treated us to breakfast at one of Williamsburg's many pancake houses. Ashley and I had seen a number of pancake houses on our drive in, and I suppose they reflect the fact that Williamsburg is a haven for retirees and a magnet for tourists (motto: "Where History Lives"). The three of us had one last movie-saturated conversation, and Troy told us about his next dream for the Media Center -- restoring an unused auditorium in the William & Mary library and making into a screening facility/microcinema.

As we drove out of town, past a few more pancake houses, I thought about a place like Wiliamsburg. Even with the occasional major production (like Malick's The New World) coming to town, it would still be surprising to see Williamsburg develop into the next Austin. Williamsburg's a town of 12,000 people, and a lot of the people are transient (whether they're tourists, college students, or retirees). That's a tough place to build a film culture. Of course these things don't only apply to Williamsburg. If this sounds like your town, too, well, so be it. It sounds like mine.

The thing is, something is happening in Williamsburg. Things like the Kimball Theatre, and the William & Mary Media Center are part of the puzzle. The "corner pieces" of that puzzle, though, are a dedicated group of people with vision, passion, and resourcefulness. That's the real lifeblood of regional filmmaking and film culture. Some places don't have this, or have enough of it. Luckily, for Williamsburg, it has Troy Davis, Sharon Zuber, Arthur Knight (coordinator of Film Studies at W&M), and a host of student filmmakers. Something tells me that their numbers will only continue to grow.

A Long Weekend of Short Filmmaking at William & Mary: Pt. 1

The College of William & Mary brought me to Williamsburg, Virginia this weekend to participate in a "long weekend of short filmmaking." It's been a busy, and rewarding, weekend. Friday, after arriving to town, I was a judge at 24Speed, William & Mary's variation on those twenty-four hour filmmaking contests that have grown in popularity throughout the country.

In this case, eight teams of six filmmakers each were provided the same line of dialogue (a line from one of last year's videos: "I'm not taking you out, I'm taking you down") and a 1920s yearbook from the college's archives, which they had to use as a prop. After a drawing in which they received two film genres at random each team had to choose one genre in which to work. They then had 24 hours to produce a three-to-five minute video.

By the time of the screening the place was packed. Each of the eight videos had their charms and their share of cleverness. Of course, all of them had their rough spots, too -- what video produced in 24 hours wouldn't? It's funny, though, how those "rough spots" (some out of sync dialogue, say, or let's-roll-with-the-first-and-only-take-performances) become charming in and of themselves when you consider the context of how quickly these things were produced.

After watching all the videos, the two other judges and I had a healthy debate about the merits of the eight videos. Every video, to its credit, managed to produce at least a handful of laughs, jolts, or cringes.

Speaking only for myself, as a judge I was looking for videos that had adequate craft, for starters. Beyond that, though, I wasn't necessarily looking for the best shot or best edited video. I was looking for videos that gave me a fresh take on the genre instead of merely rehashing it. That might sound like a tall order, but there were more than a couple that did this.

Ultimately, after forty-five minutes, the other two judges and I had settled on the prize winners. The winner was a mockumentary that used consistently smart deep-focus cinematography to execute its jokes with a lot of subtlety; an honorable mention was awarded to some ambitious students that came this close to nailing their chosen genre, the musical. That's right, in 24 hours they wrote, scored, shot and edited a musical. It was rough around the edges, sure, but it definitely had me eager to see what these guys could accomplish in 48 hours, and that's worth something.

***

That night, after the screening was over, I realized that I had experienced a change of heart about competitions like 24Speed. In the past, to be perfectly frank, I've had some reservations about the benefits of such competitions. I guess I feared that the 24 hour time constraint reinforced bad habits (mainly, thinking that making a film is something you can rush through) and emphasized competition over collaboration. I see, now, that I've been wrong.

First, the competitive nature (at least at this one) was entirely overshadowed by the fun everyone was having. That was great to see. Competition can push people to do better work, even (especially?) with art. You just can't take it too seriously.

Secondly, and even more importantly, I see now that what these competitions can do is remind us that there are times when it's better to make something as quickly as possible just to do it.

More than anything else, watching these videos (and meeting the students that produced them so quickly) I was reminded of the collaborations I have undertaken in the past with friends on videos for Termite TV. To an outsider, such projects might seem "insignificant," but I always learned something by making them, even if the final product sometimes ended up being kinda rough.

This afternoon, browsing Termite TV's website, I ran across a quote from Manny Farber's "White Elephant Art vs Termite Art" essay, which reads as a kind of found poem for what I saw at 24Speed: a peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it moves always forward, eating its own boundaries, and likely as not, leaves nothing in its path but evidence of eager, industrious, unkempt activities

***

Part 2 of W&M's Long Weekend of Short Filmmaking coming soon...

ADDENDUM:All of the entries for the contest are now online for viewing by the general public.

Cool Tool: Gage-It

While at Home Depot the other day I ran across a nifty little all-in-one measurement tool called Gage-It. It allows you to measure screws and bolts; nuts; steel, brass & PVC pipe; wire size; and nails. It also has a couple of rulers (metric and standard) and a conversions table for weights and measurements. I feel like I'm always going to the hardware store trying to find a screw that's the right size for this or that thing around my house, plus it seemed like a useful thing to have with you on a film set, so I picked one up. The thing cost something like $1.99.

I can't even seem to find the manufacturer ("Armour Technologies, Inc.") online, much less the item itself. The only other mention I could find was at Toolmonger, from whom I grabbed the pic above. But if you're looking for one, try Home Depot. I ran across mine in the screws/nails aisle.

Finally, as an aside, writing this post made me realize that I've become so conditioned to finding products on the internet (and the internet has become so synonymous with shopping) that, when I run across something that can't be found for sale anywhere online, it seems... well, it seems weird. And by "weird" I mean conspiratorially weird, even creepy. It's like the thing doesn't exist, even though I have one right in my hands. Am I alone on this one?

Self-Reliant Film Store

I get a fair number of emails asking me to recommend this or that book, or asking what films constitute a "Self-Reliant Film canon" and so on. So I thought that I'd add a modest Amazon store so that I can simply point people towards books I recommend, movies I like (or want to see), and so on. You can access the store by clicking the link below and, after this post loses prominence, you can always access the store by clicking on the SRF Store in the menu bar at the top of the site, just under the banner.

Purchasing through the store will help offset the costs of server space, etc. so if you do purchase something, thanks a bunch!

Finally, if this feels crassly commercial, please note that the header of the SRF store says "Stuff to Buy or Borrow." Knowing what you need and don't need to buy are good principles of self-reliance. If you got some of these things from your local library or a friend I'm sure Thoreau and Emerson would be proud.

Click here to enter the SRF Store.

I'll be doing holiday stuff over the next week. When I return I'll be doing some posts related to a new film project of mine. Happy Thanksgiving!

Screenwriting Software

Lately I've been working on some rewrites of a short script, and I find myself dividing my time between two different screenwriting applications. I'm not sure if I'm transitioning from the old (Final Draft) to the new (Celtx), or if I'm just trying to choose between the lesser of two frustrating applications. This post is intended as a kind of sketch of what I've been encountering over the last few days in hopes that some readers might contribute some comments on how what they're choosing to use (and why). Final Draft I've been using Final Draft 6 since it was released years ago -- like '99 or 2000. For the most part, after several updates and bug fixes (version 6.0.6.0 anyone?) over the years, it's pretty stable. In the end, it does what it's supposed to -- it makes writing and rewriting scripts in "proper screenplay form" as simple as it is to type a regular text document in something like Microsoft Word. What more could you ask for? Well, a few things:

First, Final Draft has a copy protection scheme that is frustrating for the way I work. I support the rights of developers to profit off of their work, so I'm not opposed to copy protection. When I've paid for the program, though, it shouldn't interfere with my ability to do my work. Basically, Final Draft's copy protection allows for two "authorized" hard drives. The first problem with this is that it doesn't acknowledge the way many of us use computers. I, for one, have three different computers (one at the office, one at home, and one laptop). But I can only install FD on two of these. Even worse, when a drive crashes (an inevitability, really) I have to actually call Final Draft and explain that I'd like to reinstall their application on my computer. At times, with some of their tech support, I've had to lobby to them that I'm not pirating their software but there really has been a hardware malfunction.

Even worse is their technical support: You get 20 minutes free in the first 90 days of owning the program. After that it's $2.50/minute. This ranks Final Draft somewhere between my current cell phone company and the Philadelphia Parking Authority in the category of Customer Service.

Reports from other quarters that Final Draft 7 is a bugfest have kept me away from upgrading. My guess is that the reason for the bugs is that, having reached the limitations of what it can and should do in version 6, all the new, bloated features are interfering with the real reason many of us adopted the software in the beginning.

In sum, I've been grudgingly using FD6 with the suspicion that, sooner or later (because of computer or operating system upgrades), I'm either going to have to swallow hard and buy FD 7 or find a replacement.

Celtx Last weekend, then, while doing a polish of a rewrite, I made an earnest effort to make the switch to Celtx, the open source screenwriting/production application. I've written about Celtx twice before (here and here), and I've definitely been rooting for it because of the reasons listed above. In fact, after my last survey of the application, Celtx seemed ready for use.

Now, after a few days of working with it fairly rigorously, I feel like I've reversed my opinion of it again. Alas.

Among the bugs:

- I've had repeated problems with different document elements being mistakenly tagged. For example, some dialogue I've typed appears in all caps as if it's a character name. So I'll select that text and select "Dialog" [sic] to correct the problem. This fixes the selected text, but the text surrounding it -- e.g., the character speaking the dialogue is now also classified as dialog. Needless to say, this is distracting and slows down the creative process. Very frustrating.

- I've encountered odd cursor behavior. Sometimes, as I move the cursor around, it leaves a non-blinking cursor in a previous spot. Not only is this annoying, it makes you question the overall stability of the application.

- The "underline" feature still doesn't work. Not a deal breaker, I grant you, but it's a glaring bug when clicking on a menu icon does nothing.

These are elemental problems that make me inclined to continue using FD6 for the short term, at least. Beyond these basics, though, there are elements of Celtx that still make it less than ideal:

- I still dislike the obligatory introductory menu that appears each time you load the program. Especially annoying is the fact that I can't seem to erase the Celtx tutorial project from the menu even though I've deleted it from my hard drive. I'm sure there are people out there that like the menu screen, so perhaps the developers can make toggling it an option in the (under-developed) Preferences menu.

- File saving is confusing. Inside my Celtx project folders are numerous files, which is a little confusing. I want to be able to save a "Celtx" document (as I do with MS Word, or Photoshop, or any other normal application), drag it to my jump drive, and open it on another computer. Is that so wrong?

- For all of Celtx's features, you can't highlight script text in yellow (or any other color). This is an immensely useful feature in Final Draft. It allows me to draw attention to something in a draft (so I can return to it, to spotlight it for a collaborator, etc.)

- I'd like to see keystrokes in the text elements' drop down menu (e.g., "Dialogue Cmd-4").

- I want to have the option of breaking out of screenplay format. For example, if I want to type "The End" I should be able to simply center the text. (This feature would be useful, too, for the way I prefer to type out montage sequences.)

- Online sharing. As I've written in previous evaluations of Celtx, I'm not interested in sharing my work via their online servers. And I don't think PDF creation should be connected to registering with their online community. As a workaround I've simply used OS X's "Print to PDF" feature, and then used the ever-useful PDF Lab to marry my title page and script. It gets the job done, but they're needless extra steps.)

So, as of right now, Celtx feels like a case of software under-/over-development. I'd like to see the developers work out the bugs in the essential (that is, screenwriting) areas as it approaches Version 1.0, before pushing too far on the pre-production aspects of the program. The open source philosophy of the application, the general responsiveness of its developers and, admittedly, my frustrations with Final Draft have me rooting for it. Until then, I'll probably return to Final Draft 6 in hopes that Celtx will fulfill its promise soon. If it doesn't, I guess I'll be checking out Movie Magic Screenwriter, which I suspect is overpriced ($250), but works.

Until then, I've got some question for the writers out there: What are you using? Are you having the same problems? And what would you like to see?

Twyla Tharp: Getting Things Done (with Boxes)

As I said in my last post, I'm generally suspicious of motivational speakers, self-help books, and so on. In fact, going near that section of the bookstore alone just gives me the willies. Still, a year down the road, I'm glad I took a look at David Allen's productivity phenomenon Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity even if I have reservations about the some of its jargon and, at times, (needless?) complexities.

Enter Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit (co-written with Mark Reiter).

I ran across Tharp's book in the arts, not productivity, section of the bookstore. A good sign. (Certainly if you find yourself reading productivity book after productivity book you're missing the point.) Browsed a few pages. Plunked down the cash for it and, upon taking it home, found that The Creative Habit is, yep, one of those books. Happily, it's a little different, too.

For one thing, the book caters to artists, not paper-pushers. Sure, in some ways, work is work. But getting things done can be a lot harder when the "things" are ideas you've dreamt up entirely on your own. (I imagine this applies to programmers, too. Merlin, are you reading?)

Even more importantly, the writing is credible. Twyla Tharp is a bona fide giant in choreography. She's had a long, successful career in a competitive field. For that reason alone, her ideas on being creative and productive in the arts carry some weight with me.

As Tharp states in the first few pages, her book's basic premise is that "[i]n order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative." The rest of the book talks about how to make a ritual of your creativity, how to work through creative blocks, and how to get out of (and altogether avoid) ruts. I'm not going to summarize the book -- it's a good read, why should I? -- but the whole thing is a substantial investigation into the process of creativity. Sure, it has some of that self-help anyone-can-do-it syrup, but I found that it was a digestible amount.

One thing that's particularly interesting, and a little amusing, is that Tharp's system for organizing her work is not so very different from that found in Getting Things Done.

David Allen's notion of "Collect. Process. Organize. Review. Do." is echoed in Tharp's quoting of Stephen Kosslyn's notion of how you can act on ideas: "Generate. Retain. Inspect. Transform."

If that sounds familiar, check this out:

Everyone has his or her own organizational system. Mine is a box, the kind you can buy at Office Depot for transferring files.

I start every dance with a box. I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance. This means notebooks, news clippins, CDs, videotapes of me working alone in my studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me.

The box documents active research on every project....

There are separate boxes for everything I've ever done. If you want a glimpse into how I think and work, you could do worse than to start with my boxes.

The box makes me feel organized, that I have my act together even when I don't know where I'm going yet.

It also represents a commitment. The simple act of writing a project name on the box means I've started work.

The box makes me feel connected to a project. It is my soil. I feel this even when I've back-burnered a project: I may have put the box away on a shelf, but I know it's there. The project name on the box in bold black lettering is a constant reminder that I had an idea once and may come back to it very soon.

Most important, though, the box means I never have to worry about forgetting. One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn't write it down and put it in a safe place. I don't worry about that because I know where to find it. It's all in the box....

They're easy to buy, and they're cheap....They're one hundred percent functional; they do exactly what I want them to do: hold stuff. I can write on them to identify their contents... I can move them around... When one box fills up, I can easily unfold and construct another. And when I'm done with the box, I can ship it away out of sight, out of mind, so I can move on to the next project, the next box.

Easily acquited. Inexpensive. Perfectly functional. Portable. Identifiable. Disposable. Eternal enough.

Those are my criteria for the perfect storage system. And I've found the answer in a simple file box.

No "tickler files." No "weekly review." It's even more simple. Boxes. Just boxes.

On top of all of this, The Creative Habit is worth reading because Twyla Tharp is a pretty good storyteller. She invites us into the process behind the creation of some of her biggest successes and failures, and she does so in hopes of helping us with our own creativity. As with Getting Things Done, I'm sure your mileage will vary, but you might give it a look.

Some notes on Getting Things Done

This is part 1 of a two-part series discussing productivty books -- for artists and not.

Last year, after reading about it via Merlin Mann's 43 Folders website and his Life Hacking column in Make Magazine, I decided to explore David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

Even with my aversion to self-help literature and motivational speakers, Getting Things Done -- or GTD, as it's called by its disciples -- was alluring. The attraction for me could be found in the book's subtitle. Productivity? Sounds great -- I'd like to be more productive. Stress free productivity? Wow - sign me up.

It's been about a year since I read the book, so I thought I'd do some reflecting on what worked, what didn't, and why. Maybe it will be useful for you. If not, move along.

GTD in theory.

For me, the premise of GTD basically boils down to keeping your mind clear of distractions so that you can concentrate on accomplishing the meaningful tasks. On a philosophical level, that's great for creative types since distractions are probably our number one enemy. At least, I know they are for me. I also know that the moments of truly inspired creativity, especially writing and editing, are devoid of multitasking -- they're moments of deep, loss-of-all-sense-of-time concentration.

Beyond this, most of GTD deals with how to sort physical stuff. Paul, do you mean, like, it's all about sorting things? Yeah. Some of the GTD ideas are pretty straightforward and common sense. And sometimes the ideas sound like they were inspired by a George Carlin routine. But that doesn't make them any less useful.

Anyway, everything boils down to stuff. You've got stuff on your desk. Stuff you've not done. Stuff in your inbox (email, literal, or proverbial). And so on. To "get things done" you act on the stuff -- you can't just push it around, but really act on it. David Allen says anything that comes across your desk will need to be: collected, processed, organized, reviewed, and acted upon.

On a practical level, here's how it works. Something comes across your desk. What now?

First, you process it:

If you can't act on it, you trash it, file it away for later, or you save it for reference. Examples: junk mail, an newspaper article you might want to adapt into a short film someday, or a new phone book, respectively.

If you can act on it then:

1) You can act on it immediately if you can accomplish the task in 2 minutes or less. (Great for email.) 2) You can delegate someone to do something about it. 3) You defer it to be acted upon later, preferably by putting it on your calendar or by assigning a "next action" to it.

#1 is the most immediately satisfying, in the sense that you're dealing with stuff very quickly. #2 is useful if you have someone to whom you can reliably delegate. #3 is for the important (or at least time consuming) stuff.

I won't go into details about the actions (this is most of the book), but Allen stresses that you must define what the next actionable step is. Failure to do this means you've just pushed it aside and you're going to end up spinning wheels. But (theoretically, at least) if you follow the system, you're going to figure out a meaningful action that you can take and then you'll do it.

GTD: My experiences.

After taking a few days to get set up (basically, sorting through all my junk, classifying it, and so on) I found that some of the concepts it describes were, in fact, useful for me. For example, GTD's system of relying on file folders for organization did help me gain a sense of control over my stuff. And, when I was vigilant about following its system, it also helped me keep my email inbox down to zero.

I also found that its orientation towards specific, actionable tasks was immensely helpful. It's not enough to say "I swear I'm going to finish editing my documentary." And it's even worse to say, "I'm going to figure that problem scene out." Figuring something out isn't an action. You have to say, "I'm going to try to cut it from character X's perspective and see if that solves the problem I'm having with the pacing." That's action, which, um, gets things done. Again, as I said, some of this is straightforward, common sense stuff, but even applying the slightest bit of theory to your productivity can help you become aware of what is and isn't working for you.

That's the good stuff.

How's it hold up after a year? I can only speak for myself: Beyond some of the most basic concepts (like the ones outlined above) I've largely abandoned the GTD system. In fact, some of the more advanced concepts in the book -- like the fabled 43 folders -- I tried for only a few days before dropping. At times I felt like I was pushing paper and not getting much done. At other times I stressed more about the system than the actual tasks I was using the system to accomplish. Wasn't this supposed to be stress-free productivity?

I could also find fault with some of the productivity-speak mantras (e.g., "mind like water") that are repeated throughout the book. I don't care if it is a Buddhist concept -- saying things like "mind like water" over and over in service of file folders seems downright corny if not outright hilarious.

I'm sure there are GTD acolytes out there that will tell me that I'm lazy and if I were to keep up with the system, that I would find it's actually useful. It's possible that's true (and it's definitely true that I can be lazy on occasion), but there's a fundamental part of me that rebels against systems like this. It could be my contrarian side, or it could be sheer pragmatism: Am I living to geek, or am I geeking to live? If forced to choose, I'd much prefer the latter.

Finally, I wonder if some of my reluctance to stick with the GTD plan had to do with the fact that with the work I do (or am trying to do) doesn't always parallel the work of what I take to be GTD's intended audience (i.e., suits).

Creative work, for many of us, is often done without any oversight (especially during the most formative stages of an idea), the work rarely follows a routine 9-to-5 schedule and, even for those with a studio, one's workspace doesn't have such clearly defined boundaries as, say, the Office.

Either way, in sum, Getting Things Done was a worthwhile read and it's been somewhat useful for me. Is it my new religion? Hardly. Should you try it out? Dunno. All I can be sure of is that your mileage may very.

My next post will discuss a second "productivity" book, which is written by and for artists.

ADDENDUM: Forgot to link to Merlin's outstanding Getting Started With Getting Things Done. If your interest has been piqued, reading this is a good (to use the parlance) next action.