How do we do anything in life? How do we walk? How do we digest food? How the hell did we develop language and story telling?

The answer? I don’t have a clue. All I can tell is that we look around us at the objects and landscape and other creatures before us and we take a step into it all. Then another step, and then another step. And pretty soon, we are surviving as a product of our environment and doing so with out even much thought. Each next step is just the impulsive step we want to take.

This has been my experience in the film industry. Everything changes when you least expect it and suddenly there are a new set of objects, landscapes and creatures. All I can do is try to stay in touch with what is before me, and take the step my involuntary impulses tell me that I should take.

This video is my presentation at power to the pixel back in Oct of 2008 and gives you a pretty good snapshot of the steps I’ve recently been taking.

I met up with Michael Morlan out at SXSW 2008 to talk about the RED camera.

Thanks to Mike Hedge for filming.

I shot this video on the Cannon PowerShot TX1 ($350) in 720p 30fps on a 16 gig SD card ($50). To get really close up on the screen I went into the Manual mode and used the little joy stick to press it in once and then from the pop up menu went into super macro. Then while still on the plane I popped out the SD card and put it into my USB SD card reader ($20). Then I hooked it up to Clay’s computer which is a mac book pro with OSX.5 ($2000) and opened up Final Cut Pro 6.0.4 ($1200). Then I chose a custom pre-set for apple pro res 720p 29.97 in the final cut pro sequence settings. Then I dragged clips onto the timeline and they all needed to render. Which sucks, there is no way to play back the TX1 clips with out needing to render. This may change in future versions of Final Cut Pro which would be great. So then I used the typewriter tool in FCP from the viewers little mini-menu and choose “impact” as the font and did all my titles that way. I also used a scrolling text title from the same mini-drop down menu. Then I layered in the Dan Deacon song and back timed the dramatic ending of the song with the change to the white text on black backround. Then I chose “export with quicktime conversion” and “iPod” as the setting. Then I showed it to Isis who was standing right here and noticed that this video isn’t really funny. She did laugh at the part where I was looking for a cab which was good. She then recommended I take out the Hurricane condolences line at the end. I told her I thought it was a good move and instead decided to cut it’s length in half so that title wasn’t staying up too late. Then I exported again and uploaded to TubeMogul.com. Then as usually, I logged into blip and found the video tubemogul had uploaded there and then chose the “redistribute” options to get it to myspace, blip and this wordpress blog.

Also we are doing this cool thing where people get to decide what gets screened in the theater using their cell phones.

I was one of the 20 people asked by the 20×2 organizers to answer the question “What’s the difference” in 2 minutes. They said I could do a film, speak, play music, what ever I felt like and since I had recently had fun making music, I decided to write this song. It was a cool event and but it happened at the same time as the From Here to Awesome party so I could only stay to see one other performance which I really liked. Special thanks to Mike Hedge for filming.

Formats available: MPEG-4 Video (.m4v), Flash Video (.flv)

Tech Notes:
Mike Hedge filmed on his VX-2100 on mini-DV tapes. He rolled on about 10 tapes or so at SXSW 2008 and then gave me the tapes at the end of the event. I took them home and brought each tape in it’s entirety into Final Cut Pro onto a new blank hard Lacie Hard Drive. I did this by hitting “Apple 8″ to open the log and capture window. Then I rewound the tape to the beginning, pressed play and hit the “now” button. This is the easiest way to bring in tapes. Some say it’s better to sit around and label each 1 minute of footage but that would be 60 cilps if I did that and thats way too much work. But one key capturing footage this way is that you have to set a couple preferences first. In final cut pro hit “option Q” to pull up the system preferences window. Then make sure the “abort ETT/PTV on dropped frames” is unchecked. Then also uncheck “Abort capture on dropped frames” and in the “on time code break” drop down menu choose “make new clip.” With these settings you’ll be able to hit “now” and walk away from your camera and computer if you want while all your footage gets brought in to Final Cut Pro. If all this sounds like a pain, iMovie is another good way to bring footage in. Then you can take your iMovie files to Final Cut Pro and edit them there.


After the footage was all brought in I did nothing for 3 months. Then suddenly I found this material and edited it together and quickly posted it. But after posting the performance I watched more of the pre-performance anxiety and realized that if I don’t add that material in then there isn’t enough context around the performance. So I edited a second version. As described in previous Tech Notes, I use TubeMogul to post videos to over a dozen video sharing sites. On draw back to this is when I change an edit as I just did. So to deal with that I just double post and leave the early one up too. No sense in logging into myspace, youtube, blip and all the others and deleting the last version. Some day I hope that I’ll be hosting my master file of a video and if I enhance my edit then all the other sites will be “ping” each other and will then re-cache their copy of my video. Until then, this system seems to work.

Also there is some basic color correction going on and during the black and white parts I just dragged the saturation all the way down. With color correction my general rule is always to lower the blacks, raise the mids and adjust the whites so nothing is too bright.

I went to this event last year to shoot video with my friend Isis Masoud who produced the ‘Art for Life’ portion of the conference. Sara Mayti shot photos of the whole event as well. We had a complete blast hanging out and it was my introduction to Macrobiotics. Eating food prepared this way made me feel completely different after the week so I’ve kept it up.

Roger Ingraham just finished taking the footage I shot last year to make a promo for this years 2008 Summer Conference. Also the footage will be utilized in an up coming short documentary about food. As I’m posting I’m currently on a farm that Roger’s Sister Sarah Ingraham runs getting more footage for that short doc. If anyone needs any of the raw footage for their own projects, feel free to get in touch since it’s so far all under creative commons 3.0 meaning anyone is free to utilize for their own documentaries.

Tech Notes:
Shot on HVX mostly in DV mode. Edited in final cut pro. Graphics all done in final cut pro. When I shot I’d shoot the entire presentation with good audio piped out of the PA. Then isis watched all of the footage and pulled out some clips and transcribed some portions. Then Roger sat down and just started pulling all the clips he liked into this promo. Then Isis, me and myself sat down and came up with good lines for the voice over recording into the audio recorder. Then roger edited those into the piece. Then he added reverb. Then we encoded in the iPod codec using compresser and uploaded to a youtube account we made for the Kushi Institute.

If you have a film you are self distributing you should strongly consider coming to the workshop that susan and i have been asked to put on at Boston University in the last week of May and first week of June.

Details and registration here.

submit films | watch films | learn to make films | fest news | fest streamGet the special Embed code or quicktime download links here. This is a video about how film festivals are suppose to function as a filter to decide which films are seen by distributors and therefor end up getting in front of audiences. It details some examples of how filmmakers have become empowered to side step that system and find audiences directly.

We want to share with other filmmakers the opportunities we’ve had with our own films so we’ve banded together a growing team of filmmakers, web developers and distribution partners to create From Here to Awesome.

If you have a film you want the world to see or if you want to see films outside of the standard hollywood status quo then Subscribe to From here to Awesome’s Video Channel.

Download this Song: Mp3 | AAC | .FLV | iPod Video | Apple TV

Bookmark this Video: DIGG

This is a mash up of real hate comments and hate mail I got in reaction to my last video. The 4 places I collected the hate comments were Williamsboard, Gawker, YouTube comments and my own blog post.

In addition to a parody video, a confession video has also appeared in which the creator anonymously claims to have met me at the party introducing himself with his real name and shaking my hand. According to a commenter on this guys profile posted back in August, the individual behind this account might be named, “Adam Pearse”.

Going through these comments looking for leads on the stolen bike and coat was sometimes hilarious but left me feeling kind of depressed. Until I had the idea for this song which has made me feel way better. To create this song I pasted any good lines into a document that I then tweaked to add rhythm and rhyme. Here are the lyrics and chords.

Tech Notes: I filmed on the HVX-200 with a soft light above the camera and a back light you can see hidden just behind the de-popper. I always try to use a fast shutter speed for web video because you don’t want motion blur, compression doesn’t like it. So I went with 250 or 120, I forget. I used a Shure KSM27 Microphone hooked up to mic input 1 and a 1/4 to XLR cable to go out of my guitar straight into the cameras mic input 2 of the video camera. I recorded in 720pn making sure I had the entire song down in one single take, which took a few tries, most of which I deleted after trying it. Also I re-wrote the lyrics slightly after each take to fix what was tripping me up. Then I used, “log and transfer” function in FCP to get the footage in. Then a color correction filter to crush blacks, boost mids and drag the color temperature towards a cooler less red tone. Then I used sound affects provided in Sound Track Pro for the gun shots and bullet landing on the ground. But I didn’t use soundtrack Pro, I just found those files on my drive and pulled them into FCP. Then I added a slight delay using an audio plug-in to my singing voice and compression using an FCP default plug-in on my voice and guitar. That just generally smooths out the volume change as I’d move closer and further from the mic. Then I chose export to compressor and selected iPod 640 by 480. Because the video was 16:9 compressor knew to actually make a 640 by 360 video and I double clicked on the settings to insure that was the case. Then I hit “submit” and waited for it to encode and then I posted to YouTube. Then I used senduit.com to get a copy over to susan and she suggested i take out one extra line I had at the intro and I agreed so I re-exported the same way and posted to YouTube. Then I used compressor to make an Apple TV version which I posted to TubeMogul.com which cross posts to all my other video accounts including blip.tv which means this video is freely downloadable in iTunes and Miro in HD.

This evening I was asked by Thomas over at Williamsboard.com what I think about the WGA strike.

I shared a video I posted a month before the strike began about the opportunity creators have right now to make their own content. Then I gave him this answer as well:

We are in a time where writers can completely leave their positions if they want to. Then write their own content using small digital video crews to produce low cost shows to self-release online. Blip.tv, Brightcove, Revver and youtube’s content partner program all provide ad revenue and are looking for well written content. So thats the real strike in my mind. At that point a creator of a show can write what truly inspires them rather then being confined by the parameters of a mainstream TV Show. Plus instead of 4 percent they’ll be getting 100 percent.

Also it would be cool if then audiences jumped on board and could actually “boycott” mainstream media by simply not watching it and instead subscribing to independent shows they like and getting them free on what ever device they want to watch them on. Now and then there would be a thanks to a sponsor or some kind of ad model that gets the creators paid but it wouldn’t need to be nearly as obtrusive as annoying 30 second spots.

Even right now there is enough independent media out there to not have a TV and to do screenings of independent films at friends houses rather going to movie theaters. So I imagine this will only get more and more practical as things like the writers strike pull us into a new era.

This panel was moderated by Ingrid Kopp of Shooting people as part of the Evil City Film festival back in October. Panelists include Leah Meyerhoff, JERRY RAPP, Arin Crumley and Susan Buice.

Three very short clips were taken from the above video and posted to the new From Here to Awesome Video Feed. Look for the video feed and subscribe on iTunes, Miro, YouTube, MySpace and Blip.TV and several other video sites. Thanks to TubeMogul and Mike Hedge for cross posting that video to so many sites.

Thank to taxiplasm.net for shooting this panel on the DVX-100.

Please feel free to sample and re-post any part of or all of this video. Please link to ArinCrumley.com as the original place the video posted.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

From: Arin
Date: 07/07/2008

Hearing you talk about lawyers really makes my stomach feel weird. Lawyers are like a disease. They have never helped my art, their need has only gotten in the way. The thing that has always pumped up my work has been fans. Fans I got showing my ugly side and beautiful side in tandem. Our true selves are not polished, reality is not polished, people know this and expect a live video to be completely different then an album and even expect each live show to be an evolution.

But you can be what ever kind of artist you’d like. You don’t have to accept offers from award winning filmmakers to help you make a video on a weekend to try to better capture your bands energy and have content to replace the top 10 google search results. Instead you can send emails threatening legal action about a video you don’t feel is polished enough. Thats fine. I still like the video, was just listening again as I typed this. I’m actually a fan. Thats why I bothered posting. This is what you want.

But in the interest in fighting the battles that are most important to me and not worrying about the ones that are someone elses problem, I’ve set the video to “private” for the time being. I removed your name from the tittle and tags of the main places causing the video to appear in search results for your name. Google is not an immediate thing so I don’t know how long it will take for these videos to simply not appear in the search results but for the time being, trying to watch them will likely fail but I can’t say with certainty since blip takes time to update too.

But I can’t stress enough, getting more out there that people like and link to is the best way to have your google search results reflect well. Trying to take down things you don’t feel reflect well is a waiste of energy as your music grows it will become impossible to manage. I used to worry about the same thing and then I learned it was out of my hands. I also learned that the reviews and clips people were posting that I thought reflected bad actually weren’t perceived that way by anyone who was going to be a fan in the end anyway.

Music, video, art, web, it’s all media and communication and connecting. Lets all try to learn and harness these languages and not be afraid of them. This will empower our connection to audiences. Not industry showcases, not lawyers, not record deals, all of that is dead.

Arin

—————– Original Message —————–
From:************
Date: 07/01/2008

please take them down as soon as you possibly can. every day they are up, it is worse… sxsw is going to be evaluating an application of mine any day… and those videos are damaging to me. i really would hate to sue a fellow artist, man… and this manager i’m working with and lawyer in new york are really serious about going after you. please, just take them down tomorrow if you have some time.
thanks arin,

—————– Original Message —————–
From: Arin Crumley
Date: Jan 3, 2008 1:46 AM

Okay

—————– Original Message —————–
From: ************
Date: 02/01/2008

The video that still pops up all over the google search results under my name has to be taken down. I have still been getting emails from fans saying that it either looks “weird” or “bad”. The footage, shooting the audience, etc. makes us look really bad… it is a defamation of character. It is not what our group is about.

THE VIDEOS HAVE TO BE REMOVED IN THE NEXT 7-10 DAYS.

I really hate to do this, but unless we are cut out of ALL those videos popping up all over the web within the next 7-10 days… I am going to have to take legal action.

I’m really happy you liked the show and everything, but the footage makes us look bad, and I never gave you any kind of permission to post it on the web.

Thanks for cooperating,
**********

I got the following message on MySpace:

—————– Original Message —————–
From: Ryan
Date: 18/12/2007

i am an aspiring filmmaker.

the only one in my school.

so its hard to shoot the movies i wanna shoot.

because no one will help me.

im a senior

and im thinking about attending new england institute of art.

im in the process of making a short right now, but alas, its difficult. and im on a deadline. plus i dont have any actors, just my friends who wanna jack around when im trying to get things done.

any ideas or advice?
sincerely yours
ryan

Ryan,

Here are my thoughts:

Only work seriously with people who can take things seriously and if that means all you have is yourself, then put yourself in front of the camera and use a tripod.

For the rest, use reality where all you need is for people to take themselves seriously which most people do and then document them being their true selves.

Your message that you just sent me was a short story. You have characters, you and your goofy friends who we could see poorly act in your attempts at movie making as a voice over explains nobody takes what you want to do seriously. We have a setting, Milford MA, and a high school where you are the only filmmaker, meanwhile all these other more popular activities are constantly keeping everyone else entertained. Sports, cheerleading and other popular activities could flash by.

Kids at your school probably all eat together and laugh at lunch, this could easily be shown. You probably sit in the corner drawing story board ideas for films (or something like that) and this could easily be shown to provide contrast.

You want to make films and have an eye. This can be shown via textures or up close things or something random but amazing that you have caught on video, maybe a few things flickr by.

And then end on explaining you think you should attend the art institute of England. Film the website or brochure or whatever it is that made you start thinking about their school.

But also consider the notion that you might not need the Art Institute and you just want to make your films after high school and find some other way to collect a team of serious people. My friend Roger started making a film called Moonshine when he was 19 and it was in sundance when he was 21. He didn’t go to film school. He just used the internet to find people serious about acting and got a cinematographer who knew what he was doing.

That would be my advice.
Arin

* Does anyone have any more advice for Ryan? Please post a comment below.

So Mike, I watched the two parts. Nice work guys. Some good shots. Getting hit by the car and him running through that garage and jumping all looked really cool. The story is not bad either. One thing to be careful about is having your story be too preachy. You know how in a fable, there is always a moral to the story. Well I think you should resist the temptation to have super clear morals. It’s not bad to have them when your writing but really, if you make the characters real enough in terms of writing a very complex and dynamic character then the morals of the story will all be implied and you wont have to articulate them so much. But this becomes even more of a challenge to keep feeling real when you introduce non-realistic elements which seems to be at the core of the style. So your going to have to create a balancing act between the invented reality and realistic characters that feel like people we know as the audience.

There are a lot of acting and directing tricks to make what ever your script is come across as extremely natural and believable. Try these two things with your actor. Play an acting game called “I see, I feel”. You can do this at your rehearsals with the actors.

Two people sit down across form each other and stare into each others eyes. It’s okay to blink but you can not look away. Do this in silence until it becomes comfortable. Then one person says “I see somebody who is…” Then the other person says, “I see somebody who…” and you basically just fill in the blanks. You can start with very physical observations like, “who is wearing a baseball cap.” But then you evolve into, “…someone who is a friend.” But basically just say whatever comes into your mind with out thinking or censoring. Then you move to “I feel…”. The two people trade off saying things they feel.Now these should all be things the real people really feel, not the fictional characters. Maybe someone feels glad to be in a movie maybe somebody feels stressed about school, whatever they really feel. Then finally, as an option, if there is a certain mood they need to capture for a scene, they can start throwing back and forth, “I feel…” and describe how they know the character is supposed to feel. At this point they need to insert their own true selves into what the character is supposed to be. At this moment they’ll be both. They’ll be themselves operating as real people, but also the character in the head space the character is in. And thats where you want your actors to be in this kind of fictional work. Essentially just themselves but in state that the character is supposed to be in.

You can even do this on set just before a take if your actors have previously done this.

Now here is another thing you can do with actors. You can hypnotize them. Learn online about how to hypnotize people because thats basically what directing is. You should be able to find some audio and video tutorials on that. Once you know basically how to do that. You can get creative with what you have people do. The thing about hypnosis is that you don’t really make people do things, you just make suggestions that they willing go along with and they fill in all the blanks. So it can be very minimal. And you can do very creative things with it.

For example, what if you had convinced your actor momentarily that he was an orangutan physically but that verbally he was a drill sergeant. The angle that tells him to jump. This would produce a stronger presence we’d be able to connect with as the audience. His arms might swing in a bit more of an intimidating way and his weight might be exaggerated as he jumped in front of your lead to stop him from continuing. And the orders coming out of his mouth would have an authentic authority because for a moment your actor really would believe that he was a drill sergeant. And then if you didn’t like that take, you could hypnotize him to be a whole different combo for the next take. All of this can be worked in in rehearsals with your actors.

And a final directing tip. Be sure to not give too much direction. People generally aren’t as aware of their mouth, eyes and limbs as we are watching them. So it kind of freaks people out to say, “do this with your mouth.” Instead, get used to throwing abstract ideas at your actor that have nothing at all to do with the scene. You can even do this in the middle of a take. Just be sure to always speak loud and slow because during a take hearing what a director is saying can be difficult.

An example of that would be when your actor wakes up on the roof. Artistically you might decide that when asleep he’s in a gentle state but when he wakes up he’s sort of jolted by this weird reality he’s stepped into. So when the actor is laying on the ground, you can say, “your on vacation.” And say it as a directing instruction. He might say, “what do you mean.” But if you work this way with your actors a bit, they’ll eventually learn that you give them things that can evoke a feeling for them. If the actor knows how to take that kind of direction and you’ve sort of hypnotized them, then in their minds, they will suddenly be totally relaxed and on vacation and that will change look on their face pretty noticiabily and you’ll know if you have what you want. This is referred to as an “inner secret”. It’s something the audience will never know they were thinking but at the same time, the audience will be affected by the fact they were thinking it.

Another thing that struck me was the lack of peoples eyes. Something weird happens with the eyes of human beings where when we look at them we just understand where they are coming from. So cinematically this should be taken advantage of. Get a little closer when you can. And maybe even have a reflector on hand with a PA to bounce some light into peoples faces. Your using available light pretty well and exposing well and color correcting pretty well, but if you get a little bit more light into the eyes, then the audience will be able to see where the characters are coming from. And while your directing, you’ll also be able to watch their nuances yourself to see if it’s all convincing and if you need to stop and enhance the performance with some more direction.

Thats about it, good luck with all your filmmaking and with this feature.

From time to time I might use my blog as sort of an online film course so part of the vision there is that other people chime in and also give feedback to the work. So again, here is the link, go watch for yourself and then come back and post some thoughts below.

There is also the workbookproject, self relient films, The DV Show and the Four Eyed Monsters Tutorials that can help.