The trip
I’ve spent the last week in America following a group of fossil hunters round and making a documentary about their visit to the world’s biggest fossil show and their attempts to dig up a rare species of trilobite…
How did it go? Well….
Vegas
I left London in the biggest snowstorm in 18 years. The snow made the whole of the South East grind to a halt, but for me, the worst problem was the post. Two deliveries I was expecting before I left didn’t arrive – one (a wireless microphone) I could do without, but the other, spare batteries for my new camcorder were essential.
I ended up with a practical, but annoying solution. I had to buy a new camera at the airport just to use as a charger and spare battery. Hopefully I should be able to re-sell it on ebay once I get the new batteries, and not loose to much money.
We arrived in Vegas late, and the place really is larger than life. Everything’s bigger – even the queue for the check in desk at Caesar’s Palace for which we had to stand and wait for an hour and a half before being told they’d “lost” two floors of accommodation.
This seemed a bit careless to me, but still, if there’s one thing that really works in America I’ve found, it’s the ability to make up for it when things go wrong. They instantly offered Lisa and Sam accommodation in another hotel, an upgrade, and free beauty treatments…. I, of course, am working, so stayed only for one night before jetting off on my desert adventure.
There was really just time for dinner and bed as I had to fly out at 6 the following morning.
Pheonix
Met up with Enrico and Luc, two of my fossil hunting companions and documentary stars at Vegas airport for the hour long trip to Pheonix where we immediately got in a car and headed for the fossil show in nearby Tucson (I say nearby – nearby in American terms, so a 3 hour drive. Nearby like Birmingham is Nearby to London).
Tucson
The Tucson Fossil show is a strange event. All the rooms in several of the town’s hotels have been taken over by fossil sellers – each with their own stall or shop marketing everything from pieces of meteorite to shark’s teeth to dinosaur fossils smuggled illegally out of China or Brazil.
There’s an ambiguity about fossil collecting – in that lots of academics and museums don’t like private collectors and accuse them of removing and damaging important finds. Also, most countries have strange and complex rules about what can and can’t be collected.
However, at the same time, academics and museums don’t have the time or resources to collect much, and a fossil left in the ground once exposed by the weather will quickly erode and be destroyed. In addition, if you took away all the finds made by private collectors from museums, there would be very little left at all…
For this reason, filming is a little dicey. Some stallholders (in fact most) are delighted to be interviewed and to show off their wares. Some are secretive and suspicious. Looking pretty amateur with a small camcorder and mic, and promising not to use anything I didn’t get a release form signed for seemed to placate most of them, but some of the most beautiful collections were pretty much off limits for me and my camera.
The group, Carlo (the collector) Jason and Jake (the diggers), Dave (the fossil preparer) and Enrico and Luc (the scientists) make a good team, and everyone there is enthusiastic. But there’s often confusion about what’s going to happen next, so it’s very difficult for me to plan my shooting. We change our minds two or three times about which day we’re leaving the show.
I’ve taken the decision that this is a rollercoaster. And you ride a rollercoaster, you don’t try to steer it. Instead of coming up with a set of things I plan to shoot to make the story I want to make, I decide to film everything I can, and hope it fits together into something that makes sense.
It’s a documentary and I’m documenting. It means I have to think on my feet and make sure I get the covering shots that will make any potential story I end up wanting to tell work. It’s quite scary in one way, but freeing in another. I have to work for the moment – thinking of ways to combine shots into sequences over which narration can be played before I know what the narration is going to be. I have to constantly ask myself what is happening right now and how can I make it into a sequence of shots without pre-judging what’s going to happen next.
Carlo is rushing from stall to stall, and constantly calling for me to catch up – but I have to get outside shots, and wide shots, and have people sign release forms….
I discover the microphone is making a strange ticking sound, but it’s too late to do anything about it. I’ll have to rely on being able to remove the noise in editing. I also find I’ve lost the screw which attaches my tiny hand held camera to the flycam – a weighted device for steadying my shots. I have to gaffer tape it in place and tear it off each time I need to change the battery or memory card.
Vegas (again)
Eventually we leave Tucson (coincidentally just when we’d originally planned to) and head back to Vegas. I’ve got a plane ticket, but I go by car instead – taking the opportunity to film as we travel.
After 5 hours on the road, we arrive at Stacy and Jake’s home in Vegas, and Lisa and Sam come over for dinner. This trip is filled with late nights and early mornings, and Carlo asks me to meet them at Caeser’s Palace (where Lisa, Sam and I are staying for tonight) at 6 am. They turn up at 7:30, giving me a chance to take a look around the Strip.
Time here doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference - whether it’s 6am or 6pm on the Las Vegas Strip, the lights still flash, the music still plays everywhere, and the streets and casinos are still full. It’s as though the whole city is dedicated to stopping you from thinking or acting for yourself. “do this now!” screams everything.
I can’t escape the feeling that Vegas is taking up valuable space which could more productively used as desert.
California – the marble mountains
We’ve received information that our original dig site – a town famous for polygamy just outside Vegas is under snow, and so we can’t dig there, so we set off early for California where a more sparsely populated fossil bed allows us the opportunity to search for one of the world’s rarest trilobites.
We reach there around lunch time, and it’s not snowing. But it is raining… something it continues to do on and off for the next two days.
During that time, we find very little, but eat a lot of cold beefburgers and get very wet.
We stay in a couple of really expensive hotels (expensive mainly because we turn up late to book in and have to take whatever’s going) and eventually get rained off the mountain.
That said, I think we’ve done well. We do find one of the rarest trilobites in the world, and there’s a lot of material shot for the documentary. I think I’m beginning to see a story forming in all this….
Vegas (again)
Back to Vegas again, in time for dinner at New York New York – which Carlo is paying for because he didn’t find the “big find” of the day. Several of the team accidentally order the wrong meal in the chaos and end up with a huge steak and a massive lobster each….
It’s Sam and Lisa’s last night so they’re off doing touristy things and don’t join us. Plans change about four times during the evening and I end up leaving to go and stay with Lisa at about 10:30 leaving Jake on the roulette tables. I hear later that he left about 5 minutes after us anyway….
Somewhere outside Vegas
Our last day is spent two hours outside vegas – in the place we’d originally planned to dig. The snow’s gone. It’s a sunny day and the digging is easy – plus, we’re eating slightly better since the remaining steak and lobster form last night are packed away for lunch. There are lots of fossils in this mountain and soon most of the team (including me) have made finds.
It’s a great day to be out in the mountains, but from a filming point of view, it’s not so good. The fossils here are common ones and there’s not the tension of the previous digs. Jake and Jason, the professional diggers see this as an amateur dig site – lots of fun things to find, but nothing really special like the $10,000 trilobite they found yesterday.
It’s clear to me that the climax of the documentary was yesterday, and I’ve got to find a way to put today’s dig before it in the film – without explicitly saying that it happened in that order. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want to make the ending a damp squib.
Hmm….
Home
At the end of the day, it’s agreed we’ve had a good trip. I think I’ve got everything I need – at least I better had!
Over dinner, Carlo starts talking about wanting to dig up a Triceratops. A triceratops is a whole different ball game from a trilobite – for a start, it’s the size of a truck – and for another thing, virtually everywhere you’re likely to find one is filled with men with guns.
Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was serious.
New website
Before I left for Vegas, I managed to find time to re-edit my showreel adding in all my new footage. It looks great, and I’ve chosen the Blue Danube as the music. Take a look at http://www.anachronistic.co.uk/content/animation-and-visual-effects-showreel.htm
I think it’s working really well….
I returned to find 20 contact emails from my newly re-done 3d animation website http://www.anachronistic.co.uk/. Great – the new site is generating lots more enquiries than the old one.
However, emailing them back, I start to discover the news isn’t so good… about a quarter of the contacts return as unavailable addresses – why someone should take the trouble to fill in an email form with an incorrect address, I’m not sure.
Worse still, of those that don’t get returned, none of the recipients have got back to me. Ok, I’ve only given them 4 days, and it’s over a weekend, but I’m surprised to have received nothing at all…
It’s a little worrying – are my emails getting through at all? Are they being labeled as spam? Are people just ignoring them?
My solution is to email back with a “read recipt request” so I know if the emails have been read. The results of that, I’ll post next time….
Mass emails
While I was away the company working for me on researching an email list of museum curators got back to me.
This list is part of my publicity plan for my new site: I’ve written an article giving museum curators tips on commissioning 3d animation for their exhibits and hopefully when they come to do it, they’ll commission me! I’m using the list to contact about 2000 curators by email just to let them know the article’s there.
Is that spam? I don’t think so – I’ve been careful to target people who ought to be interested in the article and I’m offering them something for free that’s useful whether or not they decide they’re interested in my work.
Nevertheless, this kind of promotion makes me nervous. I made a big mistake a few years ago when I first did a bulk mail. A rogue server somewhere in the world picked up my email and duplicated it, delivering hundreds of copies to each recipient. It couldn’t have gone more wrong!
I hope I’ve insured that this can’t happen this time, but if you do anything on a big scale, there’s always the potential for disaster….
Shark story
As for my shark documentary, it’s definitely being sold illegally, and definitely by a company that’s gone out of business. The receivers have said they’ll give us the profits, but it’s a shame not to have been able to nail those responsible and at least get an explanation out of them!
What happens next, we’ll see…
Monday, February 16, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Ok – it turns out my documentary is available in WHSmiths, un-edited and packaged with a book in a very neat looking bundle and as part of a series of videos on all kinds of subjects –whether these are done without copyright, I’ve no idea.
It’s still looking very much as though whoever released them has done so without the permission of Electric Sky, my distributors, and I’ve posted off a copy to them so they can take action….
What they can do about it, since the company publishing the DVD has now gone into receivership, I don’t know…
New year, new website
I’ve now got my new website set up – due to a very helpful company http://www.agdesignpro.com/ who I found on Elance – as part of my new year resolution to do more outsourcing.
The new site (at www.anachronistic.co.uk) is written in html, and optimised as heavily as I can for search engines.
I’ve learned a lot in the past few weeks about how to create a search engine friendly website. Including the whole CMS thing…
A CMS for those who don’t know, is a website within a website which only I can access, which allows me to add and remove content and new pages. The new pages will appear in the same style as the old ones with all the text and images pasted in correctly.
In other words, I can update my website at any time from any computer without knowing how to code or layout HTML. Brilliant, and surprisingly cheap to do.
So all the text (and there’s rather more than I would have liked) is in, and today I finished creating a new showreel which I’ve now uploaded….
I’ve chosen the Blue Danube as my music which I think works well….
Anyway, results:
Ok – it’s early days, the new site’s been up for a week (with the new showreel having gone in today), so none of the search engines have indexed it, and that means my visitors have stayed roughly level – OK, they’ve increased slightly from about 275 per day to 300 or so.
But my old site, in the first 3 weeks of the year ( remember, I’ve only just started advertising at the beginning of the year) generated 6 enquiries.
My new site has generated 8 in the 7 days it’s been up. That’s not bad, and apart from the new sales-centric layout, it’s a result of the little form I’ve created at the bottom making it very easy for people to contact me.
Whether that will help me actually get work remains to be seen….
Still. Onwards and upwards.
The next step is to wait for the search engines to recognise the site and see if that helps, but I’ve also discovered that your ranking on google depends heavily on the number of sites that link to yours.
I’ve written some features that hopefully will attract people linking, but I’m also planning to hire in a company to “build links” basically, they go out and actively find sites with similar subjects to your own and suggest that they link to the fantastic content on your site.
You have to watch out, because some of these companies link you to things called “link farms” which are sites set up just to provide links and Google takes a dim view of this. So the game is to get as many sites with content your visitors would find interesting to link to you as possible. It’s sensible and useful, so I’m going to give it a go.
The tips section of my site (http://www.anachronistic.co.uk/tips.php) contains articles for people interested in CGI and animation for their own projects, so it’s a worthwhile link to have.
And of course, I’ve just linked to it from my blog, so that give me another incoming link!
It’s still looking very much as though whoever released them has done so without the permission of Electric Sky, my distributors, and I’ve posted off a copy to them so they can take action….
What they can do about it, since the company publishing the DVD has now gone into receivership, I don’t know…
New year, new website
I’ve now got my new website set up – due to a very helpful company http://www.agdesignpro.com/ who I found on Elance – as part of my new year resolution to do more outsourcing.
The new site (at www.anachronistic.co.uk) is written in html, and optimised as heavily as I can for search engines.
I’ve learned a lot in the past few weeks about how to create a search engine friendly website. Including the whole CMS thing…
A CMS for those who don’t know, is a website within a website which only I can access, which allows me to add and remove content and new pages. The new pages will appear in the same style as the old ones with all the text and images pasted in correctly.
In other words, I can update my website at any time from any computer without knowing how to code or layout HTML. Brilliant, and surprisingly cheap to do.
So all the text (and there’s rather more than I would have liked) is in, and today I finished creating a new showreel which I’ve now uploaded….
I’ve chosen the Blue Danube as my music which I think works well….
Anyway, results:
Ok – it’s early days, the new site’s been up for a week (with the new showreel having gone in today), so none of the search engines have indexed it, and that means my visitors have stayed roughly level – OK, they’ve increased slightly from about 275 per day to 300 or so.
But my old site, in the first 3 weeks of the year ( remember, I’ve only just started advertising at the beginning of the year) generated 6 enquiries.
My new site has generated 8 in the 7 days it’s been up. That’s not bad, and apart from the new sales-centric layout, it’s a result of the little form I’ve created at the bottom making it very easy for people to contact me.
Whether that will help me actually get work remains to be seen….
Still. Onwards and upwards.
The next step is to wait for the search engines to recognise the site and see if that helps, but I’ve also discovered that your ranking on google depends heavily on the number of sites that link to yours.
I’ve written some features that hopefully will attract people linking, but I’m also planning to hire in a company to “build links” basically, they go out and actively find sites with similar subjects to your own and suggest that they link to the fantastic content on your site.
You have to watch out, because some of these companies link you to things called “link farms” which are sites set up just to provide links and Google takes a dim view of this. So the game is to get as many sites with content your visitors would find interesting to link to you as possible. It’s sensible and useful, so I’m going to give it a go.
The tips section of my site (http://www.anachronistic.co.uk/tips.php) contains articles for people interested in CGI and animation for their own projects, so it’s a worthwhile link to have.
And of course, I’ve just linked to it from my blog, so that give me another incoming link!
Friday, January 16, 2009
a new website and a stolen documentary
Back to work, and charged with new ideas. This year is going to be a year for growing and outsourcins. I’m going to try to take on more work (ressession permitting) and have other people working on my projects too so I’m not doing everything myself.
First step towards that has got to be bringing in customers, so I’ve re-instated my web advertising. I’ve also got someone in from elance to re-write my website.
Why?
Because, apparently, sites written only in Flash (as mine currently is) show up on google as just a single graphic. Which seems to be why I don’t get listed on search engines (except when I pay for sponsored links).
To put that right, I have to re-write my site as html and though I could probably learn the skills and do that myself, I’ve decided to start my new year’s resolution of outsourcing by outsourcing my web design.
In my quest for more visitors, I’ve done a little research and had a bit of a think about it, and the results are:
Apparently in search engine optimisation (SEO for short), content is king. In other words the more words you have on your site, the more important and useful google thinks it is.
Also, if you’re looking to appear in searches for targeted things (like “documentary filmmaking” or “3d animation”) you’ve got to keep mentioning those phrases throughout your text – crowbaring in keywords to your text every five minutes (actually more than that – I’ve seen recommendations which say to have at least 250 words with 3 keyphrases repeated 3-4 times each!).
Well, Ok – it’s put a bit of a strain on my writing ability, but luckily, writing to tight briefs in terms of style, content and wordcount comes pretty easily to me since I’ve written for dozens of magazines, newspapers, etc.
Anyway, it turns out I have to write a lot more words in my site than I thought – 250 being a good chunk for each page, so I’ve done an intro, packed with keywords, and an “about us” section – again with keywords woven into it.
I’ve also done a whole section of past projects – detailing about 15 projects where my animation work has been featured, and mentioning key-words for different sections of the motion graphics industry (I’ve also used google adwords keword tool to find out the most popular kewords and tied them in to my own advertising clickthrough rates – oh, yes, this is all very scientific!)
In addition, I’ve written a series of articles – about 1000 words each – aimed at different types of customer who are likely to use my work. These (packed with the requisite keywords, of course), offer what I hope will be helpful advice to people trying to get motion graphics, visual effects and 3d animation into their work.
I’m doing one for documentary filmmakers, one for music video makers, one for web designers, one for museum curators, etc….I’m hoping other sites will want to link to this content – because apart from anything else, links are part of the way search engines judge the quality of your site….
Anyway, more on the new site when it’s up and running in a couple of weeks.
Vegas
In the meantime I’ve also started planning for the documentary shoot in Vegas at the end of the month. This project, funded by Carlo, the hotel owner and trilobite collector, is going to be a fossil hunting road movie – and I’ve no idea what to expect when we start filming!
All very exciting, but I’m going to need some new equipment: primarily a new camera (a small solid state HD camera I can chuck about in the desert without worrying too much), some kind of apparatus to allow me to get steady shots with it, and a microphones system.
After reading a lot online, I’ve opted for the Rode Ntg2 shotgun mic (more on that when it arrives) - £250 including a boom, a shock absorber and what’s known in the trade as a dead cat (a fury microphone cover designed to stop wind noise – unavoidable in the desert).
I’ve also ordered a flycam – basically a frame with weights on the bottom – from India. It’s designed to keep light cameras steady and give shots a graceful floating motion even when you’re running over rough terrain. I’ll believe it when I see it, but it’s costing about £130 so it won’t break the bank.
Finally, the camcorder I’m leaning towards is the HF11…. But not decided yet. If I get it, I’ll get a wide angle lens too….
UPDATE: ok – I’ve gone with the HF100 – why? Because it’s £250 cheaper and is basically the same model but without the super high quality mode. As it turns out, the super high quality mode as far as all the reviewers are concerned has made no descernable difference to the quality of images. Saving £250 means I can now add a wireless mic (if I can find one) to my setup.
Can you believe it?
My previous documentary – the one about extinct sharks – has been out for about a year now and happily being distributed by Electric Sky. They’ve sold it to 5 TV channels, and not made me much money, but it’s certainly getting a fair showing.
I got an email from one of my interviewees today. It appears the programme is now on sale on DVD in WHSmiths – probably the UKs biggest DVD selling store.
Great.
I dropped a line to Electric Sky to say thanks.
It turns out they know nothing about it.
This is absolutely shocking! - Somebody, it would seem, has taken my documentary and decided to distribute it without telling me or getting permission. The company (Pinnacle Vision) is now in receivership, so what’s going to happen next isn’t clear. Someone is in deep trouble.
I’ll have to find a copy and take it from there. Luckily, Electric Sky are showing every intention of taking the case on for me (after all, it’s in their interest).
More on that story as it unfolds!
First step towards that has got to be bringing in customers, so I’ve re-instated my web advertising. I’ve also got someone in from elance to re-write my website.
Why?
Because, apparently, sites written only in Flash (as mine currently is) show up on google as just a single graphic. Which seems to be why I don’t get listed on search engines (except when I pay for sponsored links).
To put that right, I have to re-write my site as html and though I could probably learn the skills and do that myself, I’ve decided to start my new year’s resolution of outsourcing by outsourcing my web design.
In my quest for more visitors, I’ve done a little research and had a bit of a think about it, and the results are:
Apparently in search engine optimisation (SEO for short), content is king. In other words the more words you have on your site, the more important and useful google thinks it is.
Also, if you’re looking to appear in searches for targeted things (like “documentary filmmaking” or “3d animation”) you’ve got to keep mentioning those phrases throughout your text – crowbaring in keywords to your text every five minutes (actually more than that – I’ve seen recommendations which say to have at least 250 words with 3 keyphrases repeated 3-4 times each!).
Well, Ok – it’s put a bit of a strain on my writing ability, but luckily, writing to tight briefs in terms of style, content and wordcount comes pretty easily to me since I’ve written for dozens of magazines, newspapers, etc.
Anyway, it turns out I have to write a lot more words in my site than I thought – 250 being a good chunk for each page, so I’ve done an intro, packed with keywords, and an “about us” section – again with keywords woven into it.
I’ve also done a whole section of past projects – detailing about 15 projects where my animation work has been featured, and mentioning key-words for different sections of the motion graphics industry (I’ve also used google adwords keword tool to find out the most popular kewords and tied them in to my own advertising clickthrough rates – oh, yes, this is all very scientific!)
In addition, I’ve written a series of articles – about 1000 words each – aimed at different types of customer who are likely to use my work. These (packed with the requisite keywords, of course), offer what I hope will be helpful advice to people trying to get motion graphics, visual effects and 3d animation into their work.
I’m doing one for documentary filmmakers, one for music video makers, one for web designers, one for museum curators, etc….I’m hoping other sites will want to link to this content – because apart from anything else, links are part of the way search engines judge the quality of your site….
Anyway, more on the new site when it’s up and running in a couple of weeks.
Vegas
In the meantime I’ve also started planning for the documentary shoot in Vegas at the end of the month. This project, funded by Carlo, the hotel owner and trilobite collector, is going to be a fossil hunting road movie – and I’ve no idea what to expect when we start filming!
All very exciting, but I’m going to need some new equipment: primarily a new camera (a small solid state HD camera I can chuck about in the desert without worrying too much), some kind of apparatus to allow me to get steady shots with it, and a microphones system.
After reading a lot online, I’ve opted for the Rode Ntg2 shotgun mic (more on that when it arrives) - £250 including a boom, a shock absorber and what’s known in the trade as a dead cat (a fury microphone cover designed to stop wind noise – unavoidable in the desert).
I’ve also ordered a flycam – basically a frame with weights on the bottom – from India. It’s designed to keep light cameras steady and give shots a graceful floating motion even when you’re running over rough terrain. I’ll believe it when I see it, but it’s costing about £130 so it won’t break the bank.
Finally, the camcorder I’m leaning towards is the HF11…. But not decided yet. If I get it, I’ll get a wide angle lens too….
UPDATE: ok – I’ve gone with the HF100 – why? Because it’s £250 cheaper and is basically the same model but without the super high quality mode. As it turns out, the super high quality mode as far as all the reviewers are concerned has made no descernable difference to the quality of images. Saving £250 means I can now add a wireless mic (if I can find one) to my setup.
Can you believe it?
My previous documentary – the one about extinct sharks – has been out for about a year now and happily being distributed by Electric Sky. They’ve sold it to 5 TV channels, and not made me much money, but it’s certainly getting a fair showing.
I got an email from one of my interviewees today. It appears the programme is now on sale on DVD in WHSmiths – probably the UKs biggest DVD selling store.
Great.
I dropped a line to Electric Sky to say thanks.
It turns out they know nothing about it.
This is absolutely shocking! - Somebody, it would seem, has taken my documentary and decided to distribute it without telling me or getting permission. The company (Pinnacle Vision) is now in receivership, so what’s going to happen next isn’t clear. Someone is in deep trouble.
I’ll have to find a copy and take it from there. Luckily, Electric Sky are showing every intention of taking the case on for me (after all, it’s in their interest).
More on that story as it unfolds!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
museums
Today’s my last working day before Christmas, and instead of doing all the admin I really ought to have finished off, I did a little admin and spent the rest of the time putting together a short how-to article for my website giving museum and exhibit creators a few pointers on how to commission animation. Obviously it’s partially a way to get people to come to my website, but it should be helpful to people hopefully. I also set up a new domain name – something that only takes a few minutes but which I’ve for some reason not done.
I’m now officially www.anachronistic.co.uk – and the article is at www.anachronistic.co.uk/exhibit
I’m now officially www.anachronistic.co.uk – and the article is at www.anachronistic.co.uk/exhibit
Friday, December 19, 2008
Ok – I think I’ve finished my “how to colonise the stars” documentary. I think because I haven’t actually watched the final render through to check it, but I’ve made all the changes I think it needs and tried to get all the shots fine-tuned, so I think it’s finished.
Does that mean the project is over? No. I’ve now got to send it to the distributors and hope they like it. Then I’ll have to do all the paperwork – music cue sheets, script, that kind of thing, and finally I’ll have to shell out for the full HD copy to be made along with all the audio versions so buyers can edit out my carefully written narration and replace it with their own…
In the meantime, I’ve been doing a little work on designing characters for my children’s animation series… I’m pleased with the way they look, and with the first script basically there, I should soon be able to start seeing how it all works in practice.
It may seem to you that this project is plummeting forward with undue haste, but it has to. I’ve only got a little time before I start taking on more paid work in the new year and if this project can’t be fitted in relatively easily around it, it won’t get done. This has to be a bit of a production-line job because I know it won’t make me much if any money. There’s no point wondering how good it would have been if it never gets made, so the aim has to be to do something that will look spectacular, and have the ideas in it I want to get across, but is easy enough to get done and get done fast.
So far, it’s looking great.
Expansion plans
I’m also thinking of ways to expand my work – and planning to go on an aggressive marketing drive at the beginning of next year (not that I haven’t got plenty to do already). Basically this mainly involves my Google advertising, but I’m increasingly thinking there may be other ways to get people interested – without shelling out money for advertising. And that will probably involve using my skills as a writer to create some content that’s useful to the clients I’m trying to attract, and publicises my site at the same time. That way, I can try to get it linked to by other sites my clients tend to visit…
More on that story as it comes in…
Does that mean the project is over? No. I’ve now got to send it to the distributors and hope they like it. Then I’ll have to do all the paperwork – music cue sheets, script, that kind of thing, and finally I’ll have to shell out for the full HD copy to be made along with all the audio versions so buyers can edit out my carefully written narration and replace it with their own…
In the meantime, I’ve been doing a little work on designing characters for my children’s animation series… I’m pleased with the way they look, and with the first script basically there, I should soon be able to start seeing how it all works in practice.
It may seem to you that this project is plummeting forward with undue haste, but it has to. I’ve only got a little time before I start taking on more paid work in the new year and if this project can’t be fitted in relatively easily around it, it won’t get done. This has to be a bit of a production-line job because I know it won’t make me much if any money. There’s no point wondering how good it would have been if it never gets made, so the aim has to be to do something that will look spectacular, and have the ideas in it I want to get across, but is easy enough to get done and get done fast.
So far, it’s looking great.
Expansion plans
I’m also thinking of ways to expand my work – and planning to go on an aggressive marketing drive at the beginning of next year (not that I haven’t got plenty to do already). Basically this mainly involves my Google advertising, but I’m increasingly thinking there may be other ways to get people interested – without shelling out money for advertising. And that will probably involve using my skills as a writer to create some content that’s useful to the clients I’m trying to attract, and publicises my site at the same time. That way, I can try to get it linked to by other sites my clients tend to visit…
More on that story as it comes in…
Friday, December 12, 2008
Back to documentary work – or at least a little of it.
I’ve edited the footage shot in Mexico into a taster for the Nevada desert fossil hunt project I should be filming at the end of January. It’s looking like fun, but I really need some feedback about just how it’s going to work.
The idea is to take a team of fossil hunters into the desert to search for the remains of the world’s first super-predator – anomalocaris, and to film the adventure. I’m going to focus on the characters of the team – who I introduce in the trailer clip.
I’m not sure how much of this clip will appear in the finished program, but it’s aiming to give an idea of the style and rhythm of the project…
So the questions I need to answer – any comments you’ve got would be gratefully received:
Am I making the characters clear enough and engaging enough for a 50 minute documentary?
If this documentary works out, is there potential here for a series in which the team go to fossil sites around the world on quests to solve ancient mysteries?
Should I be in it? In other words, do I need to be a part of the programme too – would it work best from the point of view of MY journey with them, or should the camera be in independent observer with an impartial narration? Should I be helping them dig for fossils, or watching them?
Planning to expand in a recession
Ok – it looks like I’ve got a decision to make. Do I keep my business the same size – i.e. with a workforce of one – where I do everything – and only take on the work I can do. Or, do I expand and bring in other people at the risk of
A) Loosing creative control
B) Ending up managing rather than doing the work I enjoy
And
C) having to pay people for work they’ve done, but which the client hasn’t ended up using
hmm…
Obviously I don’t want to be a manager or a salesman any more than I am now, and obviously there are some jobs I’ll want to keep for myself. However, I’ll have to learn to be a manager – and a decent one if I don’t want to get sucked into making management my main job.
Equally, If I’m to do this, I’ll need a flexible system where I only have people working for me when I have the work to give them. This isn’t too much of a problem as much of the animation industry is freelance and wants to stay that way.
On top of that, I’ll need to have a policy of keeping on advertising even when I’ve got lots of work on – and know instantly what to do when things come in that I can’t do on my own…
Ok – I’m not sure what I want to do here – but I do know I need to find out more before I can make a decision.
Perhaps the first step is to find the artists I’d bring in if I have work for them – get a whole load of CVs and showreels together so I have the access I need to freelancers.
Next stop – Elance…. And maybe Amazon for books on management.
Should I even be thinking about this in a recession? Why not? It doesn’t seem to be a recession for me. I’m busier than I ever have been.
Colonising space
Anyway, as well as the new documentary outline, I managed to finally do the last few bits of work I need on my previous documentary – the one about colonising space. There’s a little more to do – I still have to make sure all my paperwork on music and stock footage is up to date, but the creative stuff is done now and at least now I can submit it to my distributors. The next step after that will be the costly process of getting HD and PAL masters created. This is actually the most expensive bit of my production.
More work
Having cleared the decks of work for the rest of the year, it now looks like I’ve got more magazine work and more newsletter work on the horizon – and with this kind of stuff, the horizon tends to come up on you pretty fast. I was, and still am hoping for a little slack between now and Christmas – but we’ll see!
Children’s TV
And the reason I want the slack is so that I can begin work on my idea for a children’s animation. I think a lot of kids TV talks down, and I’d like to make something that treats children as capable of understanding a lot more – because to be honest, even if they can’t and just see a lot of colours and funny faces – what does it matter? – at least I’ve tried not to patronise!
The idea, I hope, will be do-able both in terms of scripting and in terms of animation, and having checked out the competition, it seems that 11 minute shows in series of 13 are the way to go.
That means I’ve got to be able to produce 130 minutes of animation – and I’ve got enough “real work” to keep me busy, so I’m going to have to be able to do it fast – i.e. not taking more than a couple of days to animate each episode. Realistically if it takes more than that, it won’t get done.
This sounds pretty unrealistic – but in my defence, Oliver Postgate (the maker of the fantastic and surprisingly grown up kids TV shows I grew up with) -who died this week was forced to use very fast “production line” type methods and reduce his animation style to the barest essentials, and still created some of the best most thoughtful TV ever made.
I’m setting him as my benchmark – and some would call that reckless considering his style of TV doesn’t seem to be that popular anymore… We’ll see.
Still, the ideas are coming thick and fast and I spent today writing the first script – I decided to start with episode 3 for no very good reason.
It’s gone pretty well, but isn’t finished. I’ve also got an idea it’s too long. Anyway, more of this later – when there’s some animation to show… In the meantime, here are the clangers…
The idea is to take a team of fossil hunters into the desert to search for the remains of the world’s first super-predator – anomalocaris, and to film the adventure. I’m going to focus on the characters of the team – who I introduce in the trailer clip.
I’m not sure how much of this clip will appear in the finished program, but it’s aiming to give an idea of the style and rhythm of the project…
So the questions I need to answer – any comments you’ve got would be gratefully received:
Am I making the characters clear enough and engaging enough for a 50 minute documentary?
If this documentary works out, is there potential here for a series in which the team go to fossil sites around the world on quests to solve ancient mysteries?
Should I be in it? In other words, do I need to be a part of the programme too – would it work best from the point of view of MY journey with them, or should the camera be in independent observer with an impartial narration? Should I be helping them dig for fossils, or watching them?
Planning to expand in a recession
Ok – it looks like I’ve got a decision to make. Do I keep my business the same size – i.e. with a workforce of one – where I do everything – and only take on the work I can do. Or, do I expand and bring in other people at the risk of
A) Loosing creative control
B) Ending up managing rather than doing the work I enjoy
And
C) having to pay people for work they’ve done, but which the client hasn’t ended up using
hmm…
Obviously I don’t want to be a manager or a salesman any more than I am now, and obviously there are some jobs I’ll want to keep for myself. However, I’ll have to learn to be a manager – and a decent one if I don’t want to get sucked into making management my main job.
Equally, If I’m to do this, I’ll need a flexible system where I only have people working for me when I have the work to give them. This isn’t too much of a problem as much of the animation industry is freelance and wants to stay that way.
On top of that, I’ll need to have a policy of keeping on advertising even when I’ve got lots of work on – and know instantly what to do when things come in that I can’t do on my own…
Ok – I’m not sure what I want to do here – but I do know I need to find out more before I can make a decision.
Perhaps the first step is to find the artists I’d bring in if I have work for them – get a whole load of CVs and showreels together so I have the access I need to freelancers.
Next stop – Elance…. And maybe Amazon for books on management.
Should I even be thinking about this in a recession? Why not? It doesn’t seem to be a recession for me. I’m busier than I ever have been.
Colonising space
Anyway, as well as the new documentary outline, I managed to finally do the last few bits of work I need on my previous documentary – the one about colonising space. There’s a little more to do – I still have to make sure all my paperwork on music and stock footage is up to date, but the creative stuff is done now and at least now I can submit it to my distributors. The next step after that will be the costly process of getting HD and PAL masters created. This is actually the most expensive bit of my production.
More work
Having cleared the decks of work for the rest of the year, it now looks like I’ve got more magazine work and more newsletter work on the horizon – and with this kind of stuff, the horizon tends to come up on you pretty fast. I was, and still am hoping for a little slack between now and Christmas – but we’ll see!
Children’s TV
And the reason I want the slack is so that I can begin work on my idea for a children’s animation. I think a lot of kids TV talks down, and I’d like to make something that treats children as capable of understanding a lot more – because to be honest, even if they can’t and just see a lot of colours and funny faces – what does it matter? – at least I’ve tried not to patronise!
The idea, I hope, will be do-able both in terms of scripting and in terms of animation, and having checked out the competition, it seems that 11 minute shows in series of 13 are the way to go.
That means I’ve got to be able to produce 130 minutes of animation – and I’ve got enough “real work” to keep me busy, so I’m going to have to be able to do it fast – i.e. not taking more than a couple of days to animate each episode. Realistically if it takes more than that, it won’t get done.
This sounds pretty unrealistic – but in my defence, Oliver Postgate (the maker of the fantastic and surprisingly grown up kids TV shows I grew up with) -who died this week was forced to use very fast “production line” type methods and reduce his animation style to the barest essentials, and still created some of the best most thoughtful TV ever made.
I’m setting him as my benchmark – and some would call that reckless considering his style of TV doesn’t seem to be that popular anymore… We’ll see.
Still, the ideas are coming thick and fast and I spent today writing the first script – I decided to start with episode 3 for no very good reason.
It’s gone pretty well, but isn’t finished. I’ve also got an idea it’s too long. Anyway, more of this later – when there’s some animation to show… In the meantime, here are the clangers…
Monday, December 8, 2008
Finished the boat safety video this week, or at least I think I did. There were a few last-minute changes, and this weekend. The whole thing gets shown to the brokers (who I assume, will want to make some alterations of their own).
The animation for Stafford Castle is also pretty much complete and we’re waiting for the council to take a look at to see if they want any changes. In addition, the cover for Nature is essentially finished, but we’re tweaking it as it is passed between different people within the magazine
One of the keys of any project like this, is that you really need to know exactly who it is that is making the final decisions about everything. Quite often the person commissioning you knows what they want, however, there are either people overseeing them or people holding the purse strings, or simply other partners in the business, who once everything is done will want to take a look and put their own ideas.
It also now looking as though the boat project might end up expanding. The same company want to produce some training videos for their staff -- and they want to do it in the same kind of style. It looks as though these projects might be substantially bigger. So that rather than creating a four-minute animation, it may add up to an hour or more. I think I might have to expand my operation.
3December
Every year, the 3-D industry (which is rapidly becoming just another word for Autodesk) runs a series of seminars all round the world. And I was invited to the London one this year.
Press events like this are always worth going to. You always end up getting something out of them. Even if it is not always what you expect.
This time, I met the editor of a popular science magazine aimed at convincing school students that science is a good thing. Leafing through the magazine, it’s something I’d really like to write for.
I email the editor the next day with a link to the shark documentary and my images on science photo library, and he immediately sends me back a cover of his magazine. It turns out they’d already used my pictures from science photo library as part of a feature on shark evolution which turns out to be based on the documentary.
Small world.
I’ll hopefully be writing something for them soon… having lots of ideas…
The animation for Stafford Castle is also pretty much complete and we’re waiting for the council to take a look at to see if they want any changes. In addition, the cover for Nature is essentially finished, but we’re tweaking it as it is passed between different people within the magazine
One of the keys of any project like this, is that you really need to know exactly who it is that is making the final decisions about everything. Quite often the person commissioning you knows what they want, however, there are either people overseeing them or people holding the purse strings, or simply other partners in the business, who once everything is done will want to take a look and put their own ideas.
It also now looking as though the boat project might end up expanding. The same company want to produce some training videos for their staff -- and they want to do it in the same kind of style. It looks as though these projects might be substantially bigger. So that rather than creating a four-minute animation, it may add up to an hour or more. I think I might have to expand my operation.
3December
Every year, the 3-D industry (which is rapidly becoming just another word for Autodesk) runs a series of seminars all round the world. And I was invited to the London one this year.
Press events like this are always worth going to. You always end up getting something out of them. Even if it is not always what you expect.
This time, I met the editor of a popular science magazine aimed at convincing school students that science is a good thing. Leafing through the magazine, it’s something I’d really like to write for.
I email the editor the next day with a link to the shark documentary and my images on science photo library, and he immediately sends me back a cover of his magazine. It turns out they’d already used my pictures from science photo library as part of a feature on shark evolution which turns out to be based on the documentary.
Small world.
I’ll hopefully be writing something for them soon… having lots of ideas…
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