Lucky Linda's Body Art Commercial is Live

So we've wrapped up everything with Lucky Linda's Body Art. It was a great project to be a part of especially since it contained mostly my vision, since I wrote, directed, and edited the piece.

It also happened to be the first project for the local start up Local Biz Productions, which is currently based out of the Eden Prairie, Minnesota and is currently taking on new clients to create low budget commercials.

Below you can find many of the links that are associated with the project. As well as the finished commercial. Let me know what you think and check out some of the other posts as well. Also if you are in the Minneapolis area, head on down to Lucky Linda's in Shakopee and give them some love.

The Importance of a Storyboard: A side by side comparison of the storyboard and the finished piece
And we Shot in Shakopee. Thanks Lucky Linda.: Picture copies of the storyboard used
The Head is Done: Image of what the muppet head looked like finished
Head Update
The Head is Built
A Small Setback
Tattoo Commercial

The Importance of a storyboard

Now, I know that I've talked about how a storyboard is important, and how it can make life easier, but I want to show you how side by side with the storyboard that planning actually does help regardless of if it is with stick figures, better looking hand drawings, Celtx's storyboard add ons, or any other storyboarding program. Making a storyboard helps out so much when it comes to production.

I know this because I've worked on productions that didn't have a storyboard of what the director was looking for. It was all in their head, so everyone was sitting around waiting for the director to give his vision for the shot instead of being able to jump to the next shot or scene, while the director was working with the actors.

To give you some perspective, we shot the commercial below in about an hour and a half and that includes set up and tear down times. Because we went into Lucky Linda's with not only a plan of what we wanted to shoot, but also an actual shot list of what we needed to get proper coverage we were able to get in and get out in a good amount of time.

If you've never done a storyboard before I am encouraging you to do one now and if you have done them before I continue to encourage you to do them in the projects you are working on. I hope you enjoy the video below comparing the storyboard we made to how the commercial ended up.

The Importance of the Script Part 2 AKA Download Celtx Now

So now that you've written your script and you're ready to move on to the next steps of preproduction, figuring out how long your movie is going to be and breaking down the script.

So first, figuring out how long your movie is going to be; this part is easy. You simply take your script and see how many pages the script is and that is how many minutes your script should be. This is important, because if you have a ten page script you should be looking to make sure you have enough footage to cover those ten pages. This means that when you get into shooting and editing you should be looking to make your film ten minutes.

I've been on shoots where the scripts are around 10-12 pages and when you get done with shooting and editing the film ends up being about 20-30 minutes. Just think about that. When the person wrote the script there were envisioning the film to be about 10-12 minutes, the actors were envisioning the film to be about 10-12 minutes, the DP was envisioning 10-12 minutes, everyone was expecting the film to be 10-12 minutes until it got into editing, when either the editor or the director couldn't let their vision of the film die and just had all of the shots in the film.

So, If you write a ten page script make it a ten minute movie.

Next, what you are going to need to do is breakdown your script. If you used Celtx to write your script then breaking down your script is really easy, because there is a breakdown tab on the right hand side that allows you to easily add actors, characters, props, locations, etc. into their different respected groups, which then can be generated into a report to easily know who is required for each scene.

After breaking down your script, I'd recommend using the storyboard feature and calendar feature in Celtx to help schedule your film for shooting.

If you can't tell, I'm a huge fan of Celtx as a program, it's amazing considering it is free to download to your computer and a small fee to download it to your iphone, ipod touch, and ipad. You can download the program at www.celtx.com.

Also, below I have included a couple books that can help you understand all of the complexity of what celtx has to offer.

Mastering Celtx by Terry Borst
Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting by Ralph Roberts

Some exciting news

So as I wrote about in an earlier post about networking, last year I started working for an established webseries called Transylvania Television as one of their editors. Well that webseries has been given a green light for five half hour episodes that are expected to air in Houston. Now I'm really excited, because most of the work I've been apart of hasn't really hit the television market, and could be really good for not only myself, but also for the rest of the cast and crew that are trying to branch out and try to make this show a legitimate series that could show up some day on some basic cable network.

Now the reason that I am so excited is because the company that was doing the editing of all of the web episodes into these 22 minutes episodes is almost done with the five episode first season and Transylvania Television has actually released an early edit of one of these episodes through their live ustream broadcast that they make once a month. So I encourage you to check out the episode which is below and enjoy.

(Note, if you just want to watch the episode and skip past all of the banter, jump ahead to the 16 minute mark)

Video streaming by Ustream

Building a Brand

Yes, you read that right, a brand. It's one of the most important thing to sell whatever product you have is to be branded. It's also one of the most difficult. How do you seperate yourself from everyone else, what makes you unique, what's your niche. This is one of the main jobs as a video professional, to weed through all of what makes your client the same as everyone else until you find the thing that makes him unique, unlike anyone else.

The reality is that this could be anything from location, to equipment used, to formal training, to product, but it comes down to finding out what makes your client special, and usually involves answering the why question. Why should I use you verses your competitor, or why do I need you more than the other guy down the street.

I'm writing this at the moment, because I am building a brand at the moment for several people as well as myself. I'm trying to get myself to stand apart from my other competition, I'm trying to show why you should pick me over Jimmy or Sally down the street, I'm trying to find my niche in this big city, and if I were blatantly honest this is one way that I am doing that, by writing about my experiences when it comes to film and video.

The image I'm trying to give off is that I know a lot about the internet and network marketing. That I know how how to get hits to your website or blog, because look I've gotten hits to my website/blog. I know how to optimize your website and ad campaign to hit the most amount of people effectively, but that I also know how to create the content for your website to progress you to the next step in your company's direction.

As I talk about branding more, I'll give a concrete example of a client I'm working with, Lucky, now Lucky works for a network marketing company that sells travel to people, and what he gets money for is when people sign up for the travel company through him. So how do we brand him? Well currently we are starting to take down stories of his partners/clients who have gone on trips around the country and have begun releasing them on youtube and his website.

They are simple stories, but they drive home a point that people want to enjoy life, and have fun. This ultimately links back to that if you want to have fun and enjoy life, you will want to contact Lucky, because he is the fun maker, and without him you will not have fun. I've embedded a video so that you can watch the first of these videos that have been released to youtube.

A shot from Mankato

Here is some video I shot yesterday with Lucky and Rich in it explaining how they were going to try to take over the Mankato area with World Ventures and some of the hardships that they and current college students feel about finances. I'm probably going to be shooting a lot more videos with these two goons and other people as well.

I hope to keep you updated on not only this project but others as well, but for now I have to get back to putting the finishing touches on the Lucky Linda commercial. Hoping to have the storyboard done soon. Pictures will come out tomorrow of the storyboard after we shoot.