Chris Jones Blog

Gone Fishing now on IMDB

I have just spent the last hour or so adding and updating the IMDB Pro page for Gone Fishing. I can see a few people have already added their credits, so if you want, go ahead and add yours now if you were involved. But I ask one favour. Please don’t add anything other than your own credit. I can see already there are some mistakes and it’s really hard to unpick those mistakes, and also very unfair for the people who have been mis-credited. For instance, nine year old James Wilson is listed as a bloke in his forties.

I am making corrections now, but they say it takes four weeks for data to be updated, and I can see that even then all the problems wont be ironed out. So again, just add your name if you were involved and nothing else.

Like all of these data sites, you can add a premium with things like photos and posters (WithoutABox is the same). It’s impossible to really know just how much of a difference this can make, but I am prepared to blow $50 on a few pics and a poster - I figure that anyone who is anyone is going to check IMDB at some point, so it really should look the best that it can ever look. I did the same on WithoutABox too.

As credits are listed alphabetically, I guess our Associate Producers are going to nudge the likes of hardcore producers Ivan and Sabina right down to the bottom of the list!

It would be GREAT if you could go to the IMDB page and vote for the film too, 10/10 would of course be great… You can view the page here…

I have also sent a mail out to my list to see if I can significantly increase the User Rating - if we can, this could be a powerful weapon to wield when we know the Academy are voting... We can also impact on the MOVIEmeter by visiting the site - it's currently sitting at 35,618... Let's see how high we can get it!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Premiere Tickets Off To The Printers!

I have just sent off the premiere invites to the printers, and hope to get them back before Xmas. We have all sorts of stuff planned for the evening, and I just hope we have the time and energy to get it all done! It’s staggering how much is involved.

All the technical completion elements are also falling into place now, with the picture grade scheduled for Thursday and Friday at Midnight Transfer – I am just waiting for final confirmation. Some of the ‘Gone Fishing’ contributors will be sitting in on this grade, as well as crew, including DOP Vernon Layton and VFX whiz Russ Wharton. This means we will see Russ’ work up in the big screen at last. I will be getting the final matte painting for one of the wide establishing shots today, and immediately sending up to Russ via YouSendIt! in the hope that he can composite it into the shot by Thursday and bring it with him to the grade. That would mean all the visual effects will be complete by then and can be dropped in place – perhaps we can actually complete ALL the picture elements before Christmas. Splendid!

I also need to complete the final credits and make a huge Photoshop file for animating in After Effects. It never ends!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Compiling Titles

I have been collating the titles for the end crawler. This presents a number of practical problems.

First off is just how do you format it so that you can easily use it in other programs once all typed out in MS Word? The big thing is to NEVER use tabs. Just write the test down in logical order.

Second and more of a problem is remembering EVERYONE who was involved and helped out. That’s why it’s important to get working on the end roller ASAP, so as to give you plenty of time to update it and check spelling (you will remember people at the strangest of times). There is nothing worse than someone important coming up to you at the premiere and saying, ‘I helped you out for free and you didn’t even remember to credit me…’

Also, getting hold of logos can be a pain as everyone uses different formats. All you really need is a single Hi Res JPEG of their logo, with minimal compression. But I have bumped into TIFF’s, PDF’s, even EPS files which for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone uses nowadays! You will need the ‘know how’ to convert these files to be compatible with the ones for your end roller (colour depth, compression and physical size in pixels are all important).

To make life easier in the final conform, I am going to make a HUGE, long graphics file which they can then import and add a simple camera move to, thus creating a roller. This is the bullet proof way of making sure nothing gets changed in the final mastering process, and it’s easier for them too.

So the long haul of title collation has begun.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]