Lots of commuting this week kind of threw me into a period of slight sleep deprivation. The alarm sounded yesterday morning at 5:00am as it always does, but for some reason I didn’t hear it. I did notice the OS updated overnight. I supposed there is a chance that it never even sounded. In any case I crawled out of the bed a full 53 minutes too late. Instead of heading out right away and enduring an extra 20 minutes stuck in rush hour traffic, we took Liam to school and stopped at one of our favorite breakfast joints.
I finally arrived at work about 9:45 and didn’t leave out until 7 last evening.
Last night I caught the tail end of the Wed night service and picked up Nancee then we swung by Thai Spice to get Liam and I some dinner.
I settled down and watch Sons of Anarchy and The Ultimate Fight for the week. The meal went down good but I needed time to unwind so I didn’t get into the bed until 11:15. The plan was to sleep in and go in late again today but since Liam won’t ever seem to get up on time to catch the bus if one of us parents don’t get up and basically wake the house, I decided to go ahead and jump in the bath about 5:15 am. Big picture, I was here at 7:00 this morning and only got about 5 hours sleep. I’m not too sleepy at the moment but it doesn’t seem to be cumulative. A couple of nights not getting my sleep 8 I and I really feel it.
In my spare time this week I’ve been working my way through a course I purchased on CreativeLive.com called, “Guerilla Filmmaking with Ryan Connolly.” It’s been priced at $129.00 forever and I’d had my eye on it. This week they dropped the price to $99 and I was sold.
Here’s the class synopsis “In this course, you’ll explore the step-by-step process of making a film from start to finish. You’ll learn how to script, storyboard, location scout, and cast films. Ryan will offer insights on how to best work with your crew to make your sets fun, collaborative, and professional places to be. Ryan will demonstrate the process of getting the light you want for the shots you’ll need, whether you’re working with DIY lighting structures, available light, or gels and diffusion. Since lighting and sound are equally essential to professional-level work, you’ll also explore both production and post-production audio skills, including integrating music and sound effects. You’ll build a post-production workflow for editing, adding visual effects, and more to ensure you’re getting the pro look every time.
Whether you’re a first time filmmaker or a working professional ready to sharpen up your skills, this course will give you the tools you need to create superior quality films that reflect your unique vision as an artist.”
It’s divided into two full days’ worth of lectures with a bunch of useful forms and example footage to follow along in the projects. I’ve been a bit of a fan of Mr Connolly’s Revision Network, Youtube show, “Film Riot” for a number of years now. It’s probably the best indie film making how-to show on the planet. Connolly and graduate of Full Sail’s film school really realized some very impressive results in his weekly or bi-weekly short films that accompany the show. The irony is not lost on me that he and his show actually achieves what I think Mutantville was aiming for with our site and web channel for so long with our various MVP Guerrilla Filmmakers’ Cookbook videos & DVD’s.
Anyway, at this point in my life I’m basically done with the “fake it until you make it” approach. I’ve got the creativity in spades but now I need to have the technical aspects on lock down. Courses like this that go into detail can really help since I cannot dedicate $20,000 and two years to going to film school.
My film making interest definitely skews toward the music videos and short films. Maybe one day a feature but that day is way off. I need to be able to do everything myself because when it comes to no budget cinema you really can only count on yourself.
So, this weekend I hope to check out the new Liam Neeson thriller, “A Walk Among The Tombstones.” I’ve got a practice with the Late Summer Trio scheduled for Saturday and hope to get together for a little jam session with Todd on Sunday. Hopefully, there will be a cool video to share come Monday.
Also, today I met my first Iconoclast. Don’t feel bad. I had to look it up too. There are new perspectives and a universe of things to learn all around us. One has only to look.