Chris Jones Blog

November 05, 2009

Make your life easy and avoid the Christmas rush!

It’s getting to that time of year isn’t it – the terror of Xmas shopping for friends and relatives when you have no clue what they could want! For me it’s even worse in reverse, when my close family and friends keep asking ‘what do you want for Xmas…?’ and I just don’t know - I don’t even start thinking about Xmas until sometime around 9.45 on December 24th!

So, I just wanted to flag up, if you want a lovely gift for someone special (and make the choosing bit that much easier for yourself), do consider ‘Gone Fishing’ on DVD – it’s wonderful family film (that you can watch instead of the Queens speech on Xmas day), and there are tons or really great extras too. And if you buy three copies, I will throw a fourth in for free – all signed too for that extra special ‘conversation piece at the Xmas dinner table…’ I sent out a pile of copies last Xmas, and here is some feedback I got….

The DVD turned up on Christmas Eve so I wrapped it and put it under the tree. We watched it on Christmas Day and were absolutely blown away by the film. I just wanted to say what a great story you have here. The film is (as we say Down Under) a bottler, the production is first class and the acting hits the mark; I sincerely hope you get that Oscar. I hope you are having a great Christmas and your New Year is successful.
Mike and Fiona Hardy, Brisbane, Australia

I just sat on the closed M11, at the junction with the M25 for the second night in a row. This time however, I had the DVD to watch as it arrived today.Anyone who saw me would have thought I was taking the delay rather too seriously, because I was in floods! The DTS sound is staggering in a car, and the film even more moving on a small screen. You have produced a work of art. I truly believe that if it doesn't win it's Oscar, then it's a fix! Absolutely magnificent, and I look forward now to watching it on my 6 speaker Harman Kardon system at home. I think I'll be destroying the walls!
David Talbot, in a traffic Jam, M11, London.

I've just seen the full film for the first time and I'm sitting here choking back tears. It IS a great film, everything just seemed so right about it, the story, the light, the sound, everything. My fingers are even more firmly crossed for the Oscar. Thank you for making this lovely little film.
Mike Facherty, Film Maker

I watched the movie by myself and was in bits at the end. Amazing. I then sat my partner down and the same happened to her. Going kite flying shortly after we were still all teary. So, so beautiful. Well done.
Gareth Jones

I've watched Gone Fishing four times now and never tire of it. It's such a lovely, heartfelt little film. Absolutely charming...
Carol Ann Walters, Journalist / Publicist

Whenever I get that spine-tingling feeling at the back of my neck I know I've been in for a treat. Gone Fishing moves beyond beautiful imagery to give us a warm, touching story with a challenging perspective on bereavement.
Mike Mindel, www.wordtracker.com

You can buy Gone Fishing on DVD or BluRay here. All sales help fund the ongoing festival push and development of the next (under wraps) short film we have brewing…

How exciting!

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

July 23, 2009

DVD sales still going strong...

I wanted to share an email I got from a film maker friend, Dave Fussell, who bought several copies of 'Gone Fishing' on DVD as presents. We have had extraordinary feedback from people who received ‘Gone Fishing’ as a gift, especially those of the older generation, who are not interested too much in the internet or other new developments – folks who want a simple disk with lot’s of extras… Anyway, here is what they said…

‘The DVD film that you sent us arrived safely yesterday. We watched it last night and were blown away. The way the film unfolded such a delightful story, in such an elegant way shows the hand of a true master. I know that writing a short story of fiction is well known to be more difficult than writing a full length novel. I presume that this holds true of films too. Gone fishing was not only spellbinding to watch, but remained in one's thoughts afterwards too. The images were just superb; not too long, but long enough to have terrific impact. Hazel had actually seen Gone Fishing mentioned in Le Point, our weekly French magazine and also heard about it on The BBC World Service. So, we were thrilled to receive said film in the post; and getting the cover signed by Chris is really above the call of duty. Thank you very much for this. We really appreciate you thinking of us and going to the trouble of obtaining a copy of the film for us. We will not only watch it again, but also have a number of relatives, who we can show it to, in due course…’ Hazel and John

So if you have a relative who, when thinking of presents, you struggle with ideas – give them a copy of ‘Gone Fishing’. I guarantee they will get feature film value out of it as it gets shown over and over to other relatives, neighbours, nephews, grandkids and the like. By being a short film, it also has more novelty too, and is easy to view with a cup of tea and a slice of cake – it does not dominate an afternoon like a feature film would, making it a kind of ‘social’ film, to be shared.

You can still buy copies here… http://www.livingspirit.com/MOVIE-GONEFISHING/DVD/

There are hours of exciting extras too and viewers get to go on the journey with us when we made the film and went to festivals. The sale of every DVD get’s rolled into the festival drive and new projects (which we will keep you updated with on the blog).

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

January 08, 2009

Gone Fishing DVD comments

I have been getting feedback from people who have bought the DVD, on the movie and the whole package, and I thought I would share some of them with you… Remember, if you want your own copy in PAL or NTSC, you can still buy it here... And if you are new to the blog, check out our trailer here, it’s only 60 seconds long and will give you a real taste of the movie.

Here are a few comments...

I've just seen the full film for the first time and I'm sitting here choking back tears. It IS a great film, everything just seemed so right about it, the story, the light, the sound, everything. My fingers are even more firmly crossed for the Oscar. Thank you for making this lovely little film.
Mike Facherty, Film Maker

I watched the movie by myself and was in bits at the end. Amazing. I then sat my partner down and the same happened to her. Going kite flying shortly after we were still all teary. So, so beautiful. Well done.
Gareth Jones

I've watched Gone Fishing four times now and never tire of it. It's such a lovely, heartfelt little film. Absolutely charming...
Carol Ann Walters, Journalist / Publicist

Thanks again for signing and sending me Gone Fishing on DVD - you have no idea how much I was looking forward to seeing this film! Having heard and read so much about how it was made it was driving me insane having not seen it and I was under strict instructions from my girlfriend to NOT play it until she got home from work on it's arrival. Have to say, when it did arrive I was incredibly impressed by the DVD artwork - looks like a proper movie DVD, great first impression and set things up nice for the premier that evening!!

That evening I set the living room up for the premier. Curtains closed, lights off, surround sound on full and plasma repositioned to enhance the viewing angle (and let's not forget the popcorn)! I pressed play and sat back. Within seconds of the film starting I was already hooked (sorry, couldn't resist). The cinematography and mood of the opening was incredibly captivating. I was witnessing the standards of movie making that I'm aspiring to. This is going to be a very big mountain for me to climb!

The film was amazing and did not disappoint. Everything about it was bleeding with excellence. Emotionally, the film grabs you and gently takes you on a journey that we will all follow one day - coping with the death of a loved one and imagining what might be 'out-there' for them.

I'm sure you will never tire of hearing praise for this film. Congratulations Chris, this HAS to win the Oscar. There are far too many 'arty-farty' films out there that do nothing for the film experience and not so many good traditional style movies with the proven formula of a good, relatable story well told.

Very much looking forward to seeing your future projects - this stuff is in a different league!!
Danny Lacey
Film Maker, Leeds

Outstanding! Kyle and I watched Gone Fishing last night. From the moment I put the DVD in, waiting for Kyle to finish brushing his teeth, I sat back and closed my eyes while listening to the music for Gone Fishing. Straight away I was peaceful. Thank you.

I felt the tears roll down my cheeks a minute into the movie. We were captivated the moment it started. It is the perfect gift for all those visual people out there. The visuals were incredible and the lighting captured every moment so well. You could not have put a better cast together. The bond between adult and child was beautiful. I don't think there is a soul out there who wouldn't be touched by this movie.

If I was a true critic, I would say Gone Fishing is a Masterpiece. After the movie Kyle and I sat there and smiled. We are extremely proud of what you have created. We continue to support and wish you well. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to support Gone Fishing. In the meantime, we will be ordering a couple copies through the link you have sent previously.
Wendy Pauw,
IT Trainer and Associate Producer on Gone Fishing, Some Far Flung Land!

Gone Fishing is...awesome. Clearly, I wasn’t expecting to be disappointed, given all the raves and the festival wins and the Oscar short-list, but it truly blew me away. It’s a remarkable achievement and I wish I could have been a part of it. But then, when I look back on the time it was coming together and realised how far we’ve both come, I realise that I’ve gone a long way vicariously through you, the film and the blog. Huge congratulations on a fantastic achievement.

And if you wanted any further endorsement, my other half hates short films and she absolutely loves Gone Fishing. So, I guess it’s onwards and, indeed, upwards.
Oli Lewington, Film Maker

Thanks so much to everyone who felt they had to write to us to let us know how the film impacted on you. It's such a reward to us all.

Onward and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

December 02, 2008

Christmas Push for Gone Fishing

I am attempting to get the Gone Fishing DVD out there for Christmas and have set the INCREDIBLE target of selling 1,000 DVDs! This will fund the final Oscar push in January. I just emailed out to my user group, but if you read this, please consider sending it out to everyone you know too. You can load the page here and forward the link…

After Xmas, I will let everyone know how many we actually sold, so if you are planning it with your movie next, you will have some real world statistics…

So here is the email I sent.

GONE FISHING on DVD, the perfect Christmas gift for just £10… Read on

Last year, film maker Chris Jones led a dedicated group of film makers as they set out to win the Best Short Film Oscar in 2009… It was a lofty goal, but incredibly, with a little help from you, they may just pull it off!

The film is a true David and Goliath story called Gone Fishing, only this time it’s not David, but Old Bill, and Goliath is the biggest pike ever caught, set in the nostalgic world of yesteryear summertime, a Kodachrome place we all fondly remember… Already this family friendly flick has won plaudits from critics, celebrities, juries and most importantly, the public… And the response is always the same, WE LOVE IT! Check out the trailer here!

Unable to secure funding from the film industry, the film makers decided to ask every person they knew to get involved and donate a little money – astonishingly, £22,000 was raised to make the dream a reality, and enough to attract stars like Devon Murray from Harry Potter and seasoned Brit actor Bill Paterson. The incredible cast is matched by a world class crew too, with seasoned pro’s happy to lend a hand.

The film was premiered earlier this year at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in London, after which it won the Kodak Awards and the all important Oscars qualifier film festival, Rhode Island in America. The Oscar nominations are announced on Jan 22nd, and right now, Gone Fishing is in the running.

Now is your chance to buy an extraordinary Christmas gift for someone special.

Gone Fishing will be a wonderful family film to watch on Christmas day, and with all the extras, it will keep you entertained for hours. The DVD’s are signed too, and if you buy a copy, your money will be used to help with the Oscars campaign push… Just think, if we do win the little gold chap on Feb 22nd, YOU WILL HAVE HELPED US GE THERE!

You can buy Gone Fishing on DVD, region free, here…

What people are saying about Gone Fishing....

‘I bought the DVD for a friend and they have watched it over and over - the kids really love it too! Now we are all waiting to cheer when it wins an Oscar!’’’
Sara Morrison, London

'Must see' film for the year, 10/10 for a Christmas Present!
David Bowen, Hove, East Sussex.

‘Buy it, see it, believe in the dream!
R.K.Demetriou, Cairo

‘It's a unique stocking filler, refreshingly entertaining and more touching than Tiny Tim!
Leilani Holmes, Hertfordshire

‘Chris Jones' wonderful little movie encapsulates love, nostalgia and a side of home I just hope they get to see at the Oscars...’
Oliver Williams, London

‘A rare gem- something grand children and grand parents can enjoy together.’
Martin Gooch, London

‘The wizard of Oz, Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and now Gone Fishing! A magical feel-good masterpiece, perfect for Christmas Day’
Steve Payne, London.

‘A great present for anybody who enjoys a heart-warming story well told’
Jurgen Wolff - London

‘A beautiful film and an amazing Christmas gift that has touched hearts all over the world’
Kerry Finlayson, Los Angeles

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

November 27, 2008

Chat track recording for the DVD release... all done!

Over the last couple of days I have been recording the commentary tracks for the Gone Fishing DVD (which you can now buy with the link to the left here). When I started to plan this, the first thing that I realised is that because Gone Fishing is only 13 minutes long, it would be a very short chat track unless we did something! So I slowed the film down to 50%, giving us enough time to actually get into the groove – so on the DVD, there is a second version of the film that plays in slow motion, just for the chat tracks (each running 26 minutes now).

I recorded editor Eddie Hamilton first, in his cutting room at Elstree Studios where he is working on yet another multi million dollar movie. It was a lot of fun to go through the film, revisiting all our choices. On reflection, I was amazed at just how much care and attention we paid in post production – I am always a fan of going the extra distance in post, but we really did and then some! And for my money, it shows.

And this evening I recorded DP Vernon Layton in my office. Since the shoot I have become very close friends with Vern and his lovely wife Linda, and I am sure that we will be making another movie again at some point in the not too distant future – we agree on so many things and see our jobs as a real gift. I am grateful that Gone Fishing brought us together in such a serendipitous way.

For the techies among us, I recorded the audio on a little Edirol Field Recorder which records to flash memory, and I have to say, the quality is excellent. It’s also so immediate, getting it into an editing system just takes seconds. I have just completed the edit on Vernon and now the DVD is ready to go, so those of you who are wondering where your DVD’s are, they should start being shipped early next week.

I also just took delivery of a FedEx from LA so I hope to have the video from the My Hero Film Festival up very soon.

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

February 20, 2008

Subtitles for Festivals

Subs I have been working on festival plans today, and specifically on the world premiere. Cannes is looming and it would be great to get into competition there and give them the world premiere. I have been reliably informed that if we have already done French subtitles, that will work in our favour – and so today, I have been figuring out how to get subtitles onto a DVD. It’s actually not too hard.

I downloaded a super little freeware program called Subtitle Workshop, imported a video file and then just typed in the titles where needed. You can download it here if you want to do sub titles yourself.

Subtitle Workshop then generates a simple text file, much like an editors EDL, which has ‘in’ and ‘out’ timecodes and also the text to display between those two points. This file then imports simply into Adobe Encore.

It’s a little cryptic at times, but once I got it figured out, it was pretty simple.

Now the problem is that I need the script translating – I have a German translator, but I also need to find French, Italian and Spanish translators too. I am going to ask the Associate producers tonight if they know anyone – it’s less than an hours work for anyone who speaks that language as their first language.

There’s always something else to do!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Final DVD – death and resurrection!

I had just about mastered the final DVD’s for Gone Fishing, in both PAL and NTSC, with both Dolby Digital and DTS sound, with perfect picture (even the NTSC thanks to a great system trascoder called Canopus Procoder 3)…

And then I got the dreaded email. We had missed a person off the credits. And it was one of the actors! How could this possibly happen? Well it does on low budget films. The problem is that it’s no-ones particular job to deal with making a credit list. During the shoot, a credit list is very low on the crisis management list. So this happens.

The good news is that as I am writing this, After Effects is rendering a new end roller which I will drop into the various edits later today, and then I will rebuild the DVD’s and BluRay disks. As for the HDCamSR master, I am doing some clones at the weekend and hope that I can drop them onto those tapes then. It should all be fine.

There is a hidden gem here too. After doing all the DVD’s yesterday, I was struck by an obvious idea which would have meant remaking all the DVD’s anyway. I was wrestling with ‘All that work to remake the DVD’s for this damn idea I should have had weeks ago…’ when I got the email about the missing credit and I am now obliged to rebuild the DVD’s. My good friend Johnny Newman made a film a few years ago which I edited for him, called ‘Foster’. It’s a touching tale about fostering young kids, and it won a few festivals. Last week, Johnny got a call from Walden Media (the guys who made among other things, ‘Bridge to Terabithia’) as they had a DVD of ‘Foster’ and liked it. It occurred to me that if this was gong to happen with ‘Gone Fishing’, I ought to have something on the DVD about Rocketboy. I already have a short promo made up of the concept art, so now I am going to include that as a button on the menu saying something like… The Next Project – ROCKETBOY…

So like everything in life, where you lose, you gain! Sure I have to remake all the DVD masters and stuff, but I also get a better crack at getting the message of Rocketboy out there.

You can view the short Rocketboy promo here… (it's 5mb H264 encoded MOV, so give it a moment to load).

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

February 15, 2008

PAL DVD of Gone Fishing Complete

Sound Yesterday I completed the PAL DVD for ‘Gone Fishing’.

This DVD is for showing to festival co-ordinators and people who may be interested in the new features I am writing. For now, it won’t be available to anyone else, not even my family! (as I explained on the blog before, we need to keep tight reigns on the DVD so it does not appear on YouTube and destroy our festival aspirations).

I have been working with Adobe Encore which I have found very good most of the time, but cryptic and flaky at other times.

I rendered the picture and sound separately – the picture part of the DVD was made from an HD uncompressed Avid project, so it took a few hours (the 10 min project was 150gb in total), but it looks stunning. On DVD, it will never look better.

After remixing the sound, I was able to do a new soundtrack for the DVD too. We shot at 24fps and DVD runs at 25fps, so I needed to do a speed up – which I did in Adobe Audition (by changing the length to 96% using the Stretch tool). Incidentally, I was also able to make a Polyphonic WAV in Audition too – that is, all six channels of sound in single WAV file, uncompressed – it’s pretty easy in Audition, which also has a surround sound mixer built in.

I have spoken to many sound engineers and everyone is saying basically what I already knew, which is ‘don’t bother with pitch correction when speeding up or slowing down, as it introduces new and unnecessary audio artefacts.’ There is such an enormous amount of misinformation floating around about 24fps and 25fps and as anyone who has done my Guerilla Film Makers Masterclass knows, I have plenty to say about it! Well now I have even more having just gone through the grinder of 24fps with no budget. Categorically stated now, if you live in PAL world and have little money, shooting 25fps is easier and cheaper and has no technical or presentational disadvantages at all. None.

So now I have a version of the sound at 25fps (converted in Audition), and I used an old Dolby Digital Software encoder to create an AC3 5.1 surround file (which is compressed heavily). Dolby Digital can handle up to 640k /second, but Encore would crash out with using anything above 448 k/ sec, which is annoying, but they way that it is. It still sounds very good though.

I also managed to encode a DTS track which is 1.5mb / sec, so three times as much data, and it sounds so much better. As we speak, the 24bit files are being encoded by Richard Osborne at Abbey Road Interactive into a DTS HD audio stream, which will deliver uncompressed 24 bit sound via BluRay – that is if Encore will play ball (the manual says it will but I am not so sure – and so the BluRay saga continues).

Also, in the next few days I will be encoding an NTSC disk for the USA.

I promise once we get through this technical stuff, I will disengage my propeller head and get on with fun stuff like film film festivals.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

January 11, 2008

One day to go…

Bafta One day to go…

And the film is still not complete! And BAFTA keep changing their minds about what we can and cannot do in terms of screening… And I am about to have a heart attack!

The seminar is all coming together nicely though, and it looks like it will be an amazing day.

But everything else is distressingly incomplete. Mainly the movie. On reflection, this is one reason why exhibitors have held on to 35mm for projection. The format just works, and it is very robust. You can pretty much screen it in any cinema on the planet with only a moments setup for sound format and picture aspect ratio.

HD has a long way to go before it standardises on a global level in that way.

Last night I mastered a DVD from a TIFF stream Midnight Transfer gave me. And it looks AWESOME. I also got the sound converted from the 24bit / 24fps cinema mix to a 16bit / 25fps DVD mix. I had to go in and clamp down the levels on the sub woofer track at two points as when I made my first DVD, it overloaded my amplifier and it shut down! It was a minor change and served to highlight how theatric presentation and domestic presentation are two different formats with different technical specs. One doesn’t necessarily work in the other without some modifications. Anyway, the sound is FANTASTIC too, and that DVD is now serving as my bullet proof, it will ‘play one the day’ backup should the HD playback develop unforeseen problems. Without this kind of built in redundancy, I always feel very exposed. And I have learned two things from experience. There are always problems. And the show must go on.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

January 06, 2008

Six in, one out... 'Muxing' the soundtrack

Dolby_2 Now the final mix is complete, I wanted very much to listen to it in Dolby Digital at home, on my own 5.1 system, as well as start the process for making a DVD of the completed film once everything else is done. The only problem is that I left the final mix on Friday with a copy that is saved as 24bit, 48khz WAV files, six of them (one for each channel), all recorded at 24pfs. I needed to convert them to a single AC3 Dolby Digital file, which I believe is at 16bit and 48khz, and as the final picture transfer onto DVD will be at 25fps, the sound is also currently running 4% slow for that DVD.

The short answer to this problem was that I used, for now, a 24fps version of the film which inserts an extra frame every second, so that it’s running time is that of a 25fps version (though ever second the picture ‘bumps’ as a frame is repeated). I then used a program to ‘mux’ the sound from 6 discrete (separate channels) into a single encoded file. I used Soft Encode by Sonic Foundry, and it took all of five minutes to encode it. On balance, it was pretty easy.

I then took that AC3 it into Adobe Encore and used the ‘plop’on 2 (that’s the beep on the leader at the head of the film) to sync it up with the picture. Again, it worked fine and when played back, my DVD player recognised the Dolby Digital stream and my amplifier separated the tracks and sent them of to the correct speakers – left, centre, right, left surround, right surround and sub woofer.

I chose to shoot ‘Gone Fishing’ at 24fps, mainly to have the experience. I have always been an advocate of shooting at 25fps if your budget is low, and frankly, I am still an advocate of it. It seems to me that there are several technological hurdles when shooting at 24fps, with no real benefit to the end product. Certainly shooting at 25fps has no impact whatsoever on the final consumer or any potential distributor or broadcaster (if this were a feature film for instance). For me, choosing 24fps (when you have a low budget) is a matter of misinformation or zealous puritanism.

Of course we will have to see how HD pans out, and if 24p does start to dominate in the home and on broadcast, then that will change things… but I am not holding my breath. I believe that sadly, PAL and NTSC, are her to stay for the foreseeable future. HD had it’s chance at one world format, and it blew it.

Anyway, at least right now, I can watch ‘Gone Fishing’ with an offline cut at 24fps and hear the amazing soundtrack we produced last week at Videosonics, and experience it in all it’s acoustic glory.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

January 01, 2008

The HD Rabbit Hole Goes Deeper…

Img_screen One of the reasons I went for HD DVD over BluRay was that I knew that it was much closer to DVD than BluRay is, on a purely technical and mastering level. After doing some poking around, I discovered something rather cool – it’s possible to master an HD DVD onto a normal DVD. This means, using my old DVD technology (basically a £20 burner on my PC) with cheap and cheerful DVD-R disks (at less than 10p a pop), I can now make HD DVD’s at home.

But… there are limits. Having a much smaller disk size means that I can store less on a DVD than on an HD DVD (which comes in 15gb and 30gb varieties). I haven’t tried DVD 9 disks yet, but it appears that DVD 5 disks will happily carry a short film. Reports on the web suggest anywhere between 20 mins and 50 mins. Of course that is dependent on data bandwidth and most of us are going to want high quality, so that means shorter video times.

Of course, this should all be easy! I wish!

It astonishes me at how muddy the water becomes when you start saying that dreaded phrase - HD – is that 720p 03 1080i? And what is the other axis, full HD or compressed pixels? PAL or NTSC? Hang on, wasn’t HD supposed to be a universal format? Grrrrr!

It seems to me that there are a squillion different HD formats, and all claim to be compatible! For now, I have been running tests by using a really excellent slideshow program called ProShow Gold, to render a short HD MPEG, (1920 x 1080) at 25P, and at also at 60i, then importing into ULead Video Studio, making a simple HD DVD, rendering out and burning a disk. The first few attempts have been haphazard – the very first was a 60i MPEG that played back but was jerky (I think it re-encoded to 25P), followed by a series of dead disks, and as I write, I am attempting a 25P 1080P conversion to 1080i 50i. Blimey, you’d think that all of this would have been streamlined by now. It really should not be this difficult.

Once I get a workflow that is solid, I will have to deal with the further problem of how on earth do I get HDCamSR onto my computer? I have a suspicion I will end up getting a facility to encode the file which I will then master and burn from home.

For those of us who want real techy details, here is a link to some HD DVD and BluyRay tech stuff (and see now that HD DVD does not support 1080 25p, whcih is why my disks were bumming out!)

Stop Press - I finally got it to wrk in 1080 x 1920 60i, and at first glance it was underwhelming. Then I realised that it was a limitation of the source material (not the HD delivery), and when I got to the end of the slideshow, I had a few very high definition professional photos, and the quality was simply smashing. Really eye popping. Crisp, sharp, detailed, no compression artefacts, smooth (I worried that DVD would not be able to sustain the data bandwidth but it held up fine...) I will keep you abreast of further developments. But for now, it seems as long as I make the project 1920 x 1080 24p, then all should be awesome. 'Gone Fishing' at home on HD DVD burnt onto a 15p disk! Crikey.

Onward and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

October 26, 2007

Gone Fishing Locks Picture Edit at 1.45am!

Eddie So we locked the picture edit at 1.45am last night. Editor Eddie Hamilton and I made a huge number of tweaks that at first glance, are fairly minimal in impact, but we both know that they made a big difference holistically. At one point Eddie stopped and looked at me grinning and commenting that ‘it’s so good, and so rare, to get the chance to come back to an edit after a short break, to make these small but important changes…’ I knew exactly what he meant.

It’s not that the previous edits were wrong or bad, it’s just that some of them could be better. Editing is often like musical composition, you are looking for rhythm, using timbre of voice, contrast of image and sound, timing of performance, all to its maximum effect within the confines of the story and the style of story telling. Editing begins as a technical construction, moves into the world of craft and ends up in the realm or artists, using feeling and emotion to guide your choices.

During this final edit, we played with a few new ideas too, some of which worked, some of which didn’t. We also ditched a lot of the shots of Goliath, the killer pike, replacing him with swelling water. This was simply because water is hard to scale in the mind of the viewer (something we discovered and found surprising in test screenings), and Goliath simply looked smaller than he actually was. I learned something there - about water, scaling it, using slow motion and scaled props in shot etc… As Eddie put it though, we had to shoot it to know that it wouldn’t work fully (though there are still shots used). Film makers ‘due diligence’ as it were.

Last night also included making all the deliverables for the sound guys – exporting all the audio, making a QT files with time code, and adding an academy leader. It was when Eddie added the Academy leader (the countdown clock at the start of a film) that I got goose bumps, mainly because I heard the ‘plop on two...’ This is a one frame beep that sound guys use to sync the film up (of course time codes and such usually take care of all of this but it’s nice to have this old school rock solid backup). And it’s the plop that for me is synonymous with sitting in the final mix, in a dubbing theatre, and watching the magic of sound mixing bring your film fully to life. I was giddy as a schoolboy!

There is still a long way to go, completing VFX, track laying sound, mixing the sound, clearing music, grading picture, checking and making titles, making a DVD, making a Blu Ray (that’s a new one for me!). Not to mention, festivals… and the attempt at the Oscars!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

October 07, 2007

First stab at the DVD cover...

Dvdcover001 I have spent the day designing the first DVD cover for ‘Gone Fishing’. This is very different to a feature cover in one major way – it will never act as a POINT OF SALE for a buyer. The only people who will get the DVD will either be given it, or come across it some other way, certainly not by pickup it up and thinking ‘This looks good, I must buy or rent it…’ Having received many short films on DVD in my office, I noticed how most attempt to look like a feature film in some way. I am going a different way with ‘Gone Fishing’ in the hope of standing out a little.

Now I don’t have to aggressively SELL SELL SELL via the cover, it gives me the chance to start the ‘story experience’ before viewers even gets to the DVD. I am hoping that we will win some festivals and awards, and that, coupled with the great cast, will pique the interest to the point where viewers will put the DVD into their player.

I have opted for a nostalgic, fishing book feel. This was directly influenced by a book prop that I had found on eBay, it’s a book from the thirties on angling with a wonderful painted cover. The DVD cover will now set up the viewer expectation of the gentle, lyrical feel of the film, and of course, the angling aspect already implied by the title.

I like the artwork very much, though I am aware that it’s not a throat grabber. I think that’s the point.

In due course, we will be adding more to it, as I said, hopefully awards from festivals. Of course, the whole thing may be re-invented too. Ah the creative journey to excellence is a rocky one.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com