My Eskimo Friend, the Directing Three project of Sean Heyboer ('07) has been accepted into two more festivals - Swansea Bay Film Fest in the UK and the Pumelo Independent Film Festival in India.
Sean explains, "Basically I am trying to hit every country in the world, or so it seems."
The postage costs probably hurt, but it's good to know he has a strategy.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Who Invented That? Google Offers Patent Search
Maybe you film geeks won't care, but Google has started a patent search engine which is so frickin' cool I can hardly contain myself. Go ahead, type in any invention you can imagine and there it is, the original patent with drawings!To the right, you can see a shark-repellent suit!
Monday, January 29, 2007
A Cool Time Lapse Effect with iMovie
There's a little know effect in iMovie which allows anyone with a laptop and a DV camera to perform a very credible time lapse effect. Check it out here.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Festival & Five Stories Updates
After much grinding, the 2006 FIVE STORIES DVD is finally at the pressing plant. Barring unforeseen weirdness, we should have the discs in house in by early February. Expect a lot more festival updates once those puppies start shipping out.
Some interesting festival news...Aaron Brownlee ('06) was doing a little ego surfing a few days ago (that's where you Google your own name - don't laugh, I know you do it too). he found his film, ALL THAT REMAINS, was listed as playing the upcoming Sacramento Film Festival, which was a surprise since he never entered the event. It turns out another film on the 2005 FIVE STORIES disc was entered at the festival. Although that film was rejected, the jury checked out Aaron's film and loved it. And thus, another festival screening for Mr. Brownlee!
On a similar front, The Lonely Lights. The Color of Lemons, directed by Ben Piety ('06) was recently accepted to the Lake County Film Festival. Again, Ben never officially entered the event. The Lake County programming folks had so enjoyed Drew Blatman's ('06) short, MR MALIAKI VS THE AEROPLANE, which they programmed last year, that they kept checking Drew's Fantacine website, which happens to also be the home for Ben and David Estrada ('06). The Lake County folks saw a clip of LONELY LIGHTS on the site and thought it was Drew's new film. When they contacted him, he pointed them to Ben and BANG! another festival screening.
All this points out the power of being associated with a group of your UCF FILM peers. We've had literally dozens of situations where a festival was submitted one film but found another (or several others) on the disc more to their liking. The second situation (with Ben) points out the benefits of building and maintaining a website and perhaps even continuing your UCF FILM peer relations after graduation. It's all about networking and these guys are doing a good job of it. Learn from them.
BTW - here's an official list of all the festivals playing LONELY LIGHTS (and we haven't even started the FIVE STORIES push yet!)
Some interesting festival news...Aaron Brownlee ('06) was doing a little ego surfing a few days ago (that's where you Google your own name - don't laugh, I know you do it too). he found his film, ALL THAT REMAINS, was listed as playing the upcoming Sacramento Film Festival, which was a surprise since he never entered the event. It turns out another film on the 2005 FIVE STORIES disc was entered at the festival. Although that film was rejected, the jury checked out Aaron's film and loved it. And thus, another festival screening for Mr. Brownlee!
On a similar front, The Lonely Lights. The Color of Lemons, directed by Ben Piety ('06) was recently accepted to the Lake County Film Festival. Again, Ben never officially entered the event. The Lake County programming folks had so enjoyed Drew Blatman's ('06) short, MR MALIAKI VS THE AEROPLANE, which they programmed last year, that they kept checking Drew's Fantacine website, which happens to also be the home for Ben and David Estrada ('06). The Lake County folks saw a clip of LONELY LIGHTS on the site and thought it was Drew's new film. When they contacted him, he pointed them to Ben and BANG! another festival screening.
All this points out the power of being associated with a group of your UCF FILM peers. We've had literally dozens of situations where a festival was submitted one film but found another (or several others) on the disc more to their liking. The second situation (with Ben) points out the benefits of building and maintaining a website and perhaps even continuing your UCF FILM peer relations after graduation. It's all about networking and these guys are doing a good job of it. Learn from them.
BTW - here's an official list of all the festivals playing LONELY LIGHTS (and we haven't even started the FIVE STORIES push yet!)
- Starz! First Look Student Film Festival
- Moondance Film Festival (Semi-Finalist)
- AFI Film Festival
- WT Os International Film Festival (Norway)
- Reeling: Chicago Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
- Short Films of India
- All American Film Festival (NC)
- AFI: Dallas Film Festival
- SXSW Film Festival
- Lake County Film Festival.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Fest: LONELY LIGHTS To Screen @ SXSW!
At last! UCF FILM is proud to announce that one of our Capstone efforts will be screening at the huge and prestigious 2007 South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas! The film is THE LONELY LIGHTS. THE COLOR OF LEMONS, directed by Ben Piety ('06).To make the event even sweeter, Ben's music video of The Heathens "Stickin' Around" has also been accepted for screening at SXSW. A twofer! Whoo hoo! Big praise to Ben for this accomplishment. Pat him on the back when you see him.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
HELLO EDITING 1 STUDENTS!
Well folks, the Spring semester is underway here at UCF FILM and that can only mean one thing - a whole new crop of Editing 1 students who can't understand why their hard drives aren't working with our editing systems! Yes, it's as regular as harvest time back in the old country. Let's go over some common complaints in an effort to keep you from wasting my time with a lot of silly questions.
BTW - all of this information is easily accessible to anyone who does a Google search of 15 minutes or less. I suggest you always start your problem solving by searching Google to find answers yourself. if you can't spend 15 minutes trying to solve your problem yourself, you shouldn't be wasting my time. I am not you personal Google or Help Desk.
Q - My hard drive works with my PC at home when I edit using Premier. Why doesn't it work here on your Macs??? UCF sucks!
Whoa partner. Not so fast. Please save your accusations until everyone is announced. The likely problem here is that your hard drive has been formatted for Windows. The NT File System (the default formatting for most modern Windows systems) can be read by a Mac system, but a Mac system can't write to it. You need to format your hard drive using the Mac OSX file system.
Q - Can I use a Mac formatted drive on my PC?
No, not normally. PCs will neither read nor write to a Mac-formatted drive. The only solution is to install a utility like Macdrive 6 ($34.95 for students) which permits PCs to read Mac formatted drives.
Q - Can I partition half my drive as a Mac and half as a PC?
No. You'll end up erasing the whole drive, so don't do it.
Q - My friend there has a drive formatted for Windows and it works the Mac!
There is a Windows formatting called Fat32 (seen on the Mac as MS-DOS). This older file format will work with a Mac, but it's not the right way to go as the speed is shaky and it might limit the amount of your drive's capacity which can been "seen" by a computer. FAT32 is the standard for Flash drives, which is why it's cross platform.
Q - I formatted my drive with my Mac Powerbook, but when I plug it into your editing systems it doesn't work! UCF sucks!
How are you plugging it in? If you're using USB, that's the problem. Modern Mac system have USB2.0, which is much faster than USB 1.1, which is what we use in our older editing systems. See the chart for details about speed:
USB 1.1 is really for keyboards and mice, not video. Our video standard is firewire, not USB. The drive in question will work on a modern Powerbook because all recent Macs use USB 2.0 (as do Windows systems). But when using it with our Mac systems, it has to connect via Firewire.
Q - What's the difference between a firewire and a USB?
Well, first off, the connections look different. Here's a USB cable:
Here's a firewire connection:
This is also called a six-pin firewire cable. There's also a smaller (4-pin) firewire cable that gets connected to cameras and DV decks. Firewire has several times the capacity of Firewire 1.1. It's what Final Cut Pro wants to see and the trick to easy editing is keeping Final Cut Pro happy.
Keep in mind, Firewire is an Apple invention and if any other company uses it, they have to pay a royalty to Apple. In order to avoid paying a royalty (and make their drives a few dollars cheaper), some companies skip including Firewire on their hard drives. I would demand it, as it's very easy to find a hard drive with both Firewire and USB 2.0 connections.
UCF FILM requires that you use a Mac-formatted, firewire hard drive. I believe your Editing professors gave you a spec sheet to follow. Follow it. If you buy the wrong drive, there's nothing we can do to help. We will only laugh at your misery.
BTW - all of this information is easily accessible to anyone who does a Google search of 15 minutes or less. I suggest you always start your problem solving by searching Google to find answers yourself. if you can't spend 15 minutes trying to solve your problem yourself, you shouldn't be wasting my time. I am not you personal Google or Help Desk.
Q - My hard drive works with my PC at home when I edit using Premier. Why doesn't it work here on your Macs??? UCF sucks!
Whoa partner. Not so fast. Please save your accusations until everyone is announced. The likely problem here is that your hard drive has been formatted for Windows. The NT File System (the default formatting for most modern Windows systems) can be read by a Mac system, but a Mac system can't write to it. You need to format your hard drive using the Mac OSX file system.
Q - Can I use a Mac formatted drive on my PC?
No, not normally. PCs will neither read nor write to a Mac-formatted drive. The only solution is to install a utility like Macdrive 6 ($34.95 for students) which permits PCs to read Mac formatted drives.
Q - Can I partition half my drive as a Mac and half as a PC?
No. You'll end up erasing the whole drive, so don't do it.
Q - My friend there has a drive formatted for Windows and it works the Mac!
There is a Windows formatting called Fat32 (seen on the Mac as MS-DOS). This older file format will work with a Mac, but it's not the right way to go as the speed is shaky and it might limit the amount of your drive's capacity which can been "seen" by a computer. FAT32 is the standard for Flash drives, which is why it's cross platform.
Q - I formatted my drive with my Mac Powerbook, but when I plug it into your editing systems it doesn't work! UCF sucks!
How are you plugging it in? If you're using USB, that's the problem. Modern Mac system have USB2.0, which is much faster than USB 1.1, which is what we use in our older editing systems. See the chart for details about speed:
USB 1.1 is really for keyboards and mice, not video. Our video standard is firewire, not USB. The drive in question will work on a modern Powerbook because all recent Macs use USB 2.0 (as do Windows systems). But when using it with our Mac systems, it has to connect via Firewire.
Q - What's the difference between a firewire and a USB?
Well, first off, the connections look different. Here's a USB cable:
Here's a firewire connection:
This is also called a six-pin firewire cable. There's also a smaller (4-pin) firewire cable that gets connected to cameras and DV decks. Firewire has several times the capacity of Firewire 1.1. It's what Final Cut Pro wants to see and the trick to easy editing is keeping Final Cut Pro happy.
Keep in mind, Firewire is an Apple invention and if any other company uses it, they have to pay a royalty to Apple. In order to avoid paying a royalty (and make their drives a few dollars cheaper), some companies skip including Firewire on their hard drives. I would demand it, as it's very easy to find a hard drive with both Firewire and USB 2.0 connections.
UCF FILM requires that you use a Mac-formatted, firewire hard drive. I believe your Editing professors gave you a spec sheet to follow. Follow it. If you buy the wrong drive, there's nothing we can do to help. We will only laugh at your misery.
Friday, January 12, 2007
iTunes To Sell Sundance Shorts
A recurring theme in the past few years is to make shorts of fully original content - particularly original or properly licensed music. Here's another reason why.
iTunes To Sell Sundance Shorts
NEW YORK - Nearly half of the short films being screened at this month's Sundance Film Festival will be available for purchase at Apple's iTunes store under a deal announced Friday.
The digital downloads will supplement the free streaming at Sundance's Web site, which will offer the shorts for only a three-month period beginning Jan. 18, the start of the festival in Park City, Utah. The iTunes downloads are expected to be available for three years and once purchased will play for at least the life of the owner's computer.
"Streaming on our site is not the same as owning, and there seems to be a world out there for both," said John Cooper, the Sundance Institute's director of programming.
Filmmakers will get the bulk of the $1.99 download price, with Apple, the Sundance Institute and cable television's Sundance Channel sharing the remainder. Filmmakers also will be free to make deals with other distributors, including the Sundance Channel.
As of Thursday, at least 33 of the 71 narrative, documentary and animation shorts were slated to be distributed through the Sundance site and iTunes, Cooper said. He said a few more will be shown on the Web site only.
Like songs, television shows and movies bought through iTunes, the Sundance shorts will play on Macintosh and Windows computers with Apple Inc.'s free iTunes software as well as Apple's video iPods. Sales were to begin Jan. 22.
Cooper acknowledged that Sundance films tend to draw niche audience, but he expects demand to be sizable, given the millions who came online to watch Sundance shorts in past years.
There are no current plans to make full-length festival movies available online.
"What Sundance is really known for is as a platform for people to sell their films, and that's mainly the feature film," he said. "We didn't want to really interfere with that yet."
iTunes To Sell Sundance Shorts
NEW YORK - Nearly half of the short films being screened at this month's Sundance Film Festival will be available for purchase at Apple's iTunes store under a deal announced Friday.
The digital downloads will supplement the free streaming at Sundance's Web site, which will offer the shorts for only a three-month period beginning Jan. 18, the start of the festival in Park City, Utah. The iTunes downloads are expected to be available for three years and once purchased will play for at least the life of the owner's computer.
"Streaming on our site is not the same as owning, and there seems to be a world out there for both," said John Cooper, the Sundance Institute's director of programming.
Filmmakers will get the bulk of the $1.99 download price, with Apple, the Sundance Institute and cable television's Sundance Channel sharing the remainder. Filmmakers also will be free to make deals with other distributors, including the Sundance Channel.
As of Thursday, at least 33 of the 71 narrative, documentary and animation shorts were slated to be distributed through the Sundance site and iTunes, Cooper said. He said a few more will be shown on the Web site only.
Like songs, television shows and movies bought through iTunes, the Sundance shorts will play on Macintosh and Windows computers with Apple Inc.'s free iTunes software as well as Apple's video iPods. Sales were to begin Jan. 22.
Cooper acknowledged that Sundance films tend to draw niche audience, but he expects demand to be sizable, given the millions who came online to watch Sundance shorts in past years.
There are no current plans to make full-length festival movies available online.
"What Sundance is really known for is as a platform for people to sell their films, and that's mainly the feature film," he said. "We didn't want to really interfere with that yet."
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Fest: UCF Alumni's Short Goes BiCoastal In Two Big Fests
Redemption Maddie, directed by UCF FILM alumni Aaron King ('04). has been accepted into two major festival on opposite sides of the country -- the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and our own Florida Film Festival. Now you'll be able to check out this tale of youth, loss and rabbits in March in Maitland at the Enzian Theater.
The short was Aaron's thesis project at AFI, where he's been going to Grad School since graduating from UCF FILM.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Fest: MY ESKIMO FRIEND Goes North
My Eskimo Friend, the Directing 3 project of Sean Heyboer, was accepted into the East Lansing Childrens Film Festival in Michigan, which takes place February 23-March 1. I think Lansing is a place where they should understand all the cold weather references.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Fest: THE LONELY LIGHTS To Play AFI Dallas
Ben Piety ('06) tells us his Capstone short THE LONELY LIGHTS. THE COLOR OF LEMONS has been accepted screening at AFI DALLAS International Film Festival, happening March 22-April 1, 2007, Cool beans!
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Fest Update - LOTS AND LOTS!
Time to catch up on all the recent festival action for UCF films.
Social Experiments of Simon Snow, directed by Maria Gabriella Pennington, will play at the 3rd Annual Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City NV.
In The Details, directed by Drew Lindo, has received a thumbs up to play the Davis Film Festival in Davis, CA. April 5-7, 2007.
My Eskimo Friend, directed by Sean Hyboer, will be screening down under at Blue Dandengongs Film Festival in Austrailia in February.
The Third Annual SOUTHERN FRIED FLICKS FESTIVAL, which takes in Augusta, GA, January 9-14, 2007, has accepted a number of UCF films for screening, including:
Brett Bonowicz also emailed the following missive:
Got back from the Anchorage International Film Festival. Great festival they've got out there. Got to see about 40 shorts while there and a lot of Anchorage. The festival had a guide for us on the first day that took us on a tour of Anchorage and outside of the city to a Wildlife preserve.
My Film played Saturday the 9th which was also my dead uncle's birthday. So I thought that was a good omen. Response to the film was great, everyone in the audience responded well and the house was packed.
Social Experiments of Simon Snow, directed by Maria Gabriella Pennington, will play at the 3rd Annual Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City NV.
In The Details, directed by Drew Lindo, has received a thumbs up to play the Davis Film Festival in Davis, CA. April 5-7, 2007.
My Eskimo Friend, directed by Sean Hyboer, will be screening down under at Blue Dandengongs Film Festival in Austrailia in February.
The Third Annual SOUTHERN FRIED FLICKS FESTIVAL, which takes in Augusta, GA, January 9-14, 2007, has accepted a number of UCF films for screening, including:
- The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (directed by Diego Kontarovsky)
- American Deluxe (directed by Aaron Brownlee)
- Locket (directed by Matthew Chai)
- Baseball & Glory (directed by Brett Bonowicz)
Brett Bonowicz also emailed the following missive:Got back from the Anchorage International Film Festival. Great festival they've got out there. Got to see about 40 shorts while there and a lot of Anchorage. The festival had a guide for us on the first day that took us on a tour of Anchorage and outside of the city to a Wildlife preserve.
My Film played Saturday the 9th which was also my dead uncle's birthday. So I thought that was a good omen. Response to the film was great, everyone in the audience responded well and the house was packed.
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