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Showing posts from June, 2012

Can has publicist? + HSM Q & A podcast

Since I suck at trying to publicize the film... and because perhaps some of you have a knack for it or have access to contacts that I don't have... I've made the probably crappy press release I wrote public... you can download it here So feel free to edit it/distribute it/whatever.... if you think you can get the film some press go for it! And don't forget to become an affiliate and use your link if you do get it some press so you can make some $$$ too ^ ^ When this nice publicist d00d gave me a free consultation he said I need to get famous people to see my work and comment it..which will give it their approval so the people that follow their stuff might check it out...So part of the plan is to try to get these people to see the film via free download or whatever and perhaps comment on it or something... there are the people I have in mind so far.. as they have either greatly influenced me and might be into the film... David Lynch, Trent Reznor, Francis Ford Coppola, C

Post HSM release notes +

Thanks to everyone who has purchased the film! I put together a group of people comments/mini reviews that you can read here - I removed the names but I'm sure some of you will see your wordS there ^_^ You can head over and rate/review the film on imdb here . Having more ratings and reviews should help future viewers/potential buyers... If you bought the film and want it to try and get it accepted at a film festival/event of your choice you can burn the film to DVD or whatever and submit the film yourself... just say you're an associate producer or something ^ ^ If it gets accepted contact me for an exhibition copy... I sent press releases to twelve or so major animation/film/cg/pop culture/sites/blogs and two replied... one to tell me that they have a new program where people submitting "news" items pay to have them published on the site... and another replied to tell me my animation didn't fit in with their "animation" site... I'll keep sen

AGENT M

If you have seen the film and wondered about this title... In 2006 a nice d00d created a message board for We Are The Strange... really cheerful and helpful guy... I met a lot of people there that I'm still friends with today... Agent M had lots of great promotional ideas that he emailed me and I did my best to implement the ones I could... I was really grateful for his help and it created a little community around the film that wouldn't have been there otherwise... The only way I could thank him for his help back then was to offer up an autographed WATS DVD that I would mail him when they were out... So over time those WATS boards died down... When I look back I'm pretty sure I mailed him his autographed DVD... but I can't really remember as things got so crazy with travelling and speaking events and all sorts of stuff... Fast forward to Early 2012... I receive and email from Agent M's email address but its not from him... its his mom... she goes on to tel

BUY my new EVIL wind stealing film HEART STRING MARIONETTE!

Get the film in HD + The Original Soundtrack for only $5 HERE! Click the link above to get the controversial natural phenomena infringing film the internet is abuzz about! They told me it was too GAWD DAMN filled with COPYRIGHT INFRINGING WIND! BUY IT NOW ! SO YOU CAN BE THE JUDGE! If I sell enough copies of this CRIMINAL FILM I will make a sequel where I will infringe upon THE SUN AND THE MOON!

Heart String Marionette (Try before buy version)

Thanks to Cronus for hosting the file, you can now download the try before buy version of my new film... If you think its not crap and want to see it in HD + the get soundtrack you can get them both for only $5 here Thanks again to Cronus and to all the other people offering help + suggestions! UPDATE : Here is the torrent file thanks to Peter!

Attn torrent masters! Here's some files for you!

So since the automated youtube thing was HATIN on the upload for my new film- I prepped the same video file + a couple more things for a torrent release.... I haven't made any torrents for awhile so I'm all uhhh MAGNETS how do they work?! If anyone wants to download the files and make a proper torrent please do... I'll seed and get everyone I know to seed as well... It's the "try before buy" version of the film... its not HD but I think its good enough to know whether the movie sucks or not and if people want it I'm selling the HD version + Soundtrack for only $5 here So if you want to make a torrent here are the files... if you send me the torrent file I'll post it here and everywhere else I can... thanks so much! I tried to create the necessary files to make it like a normal scene release ^ ^ nfo file, screenshots etc...

First 24 hours of my new film on sale- numbers

OMG transparency! So a few people asked me to share how the film is selling ....numbers etc... I'm selling the film from my own site here for $5 w/the soundtrack ^ ^ So in the first 24 hours its sold 265 downloads The film is the main item I'm selling but there's a few other items as well that add to the 24 hour total I don't have any expectations as far as initial sales go... I could have sold the download of the Film+Soundtrack for much more...like $20 - $25 but I went with $5 because I didn't want to price poor people out of the equation. Most of the affiliates haven't gotten started yet as I just sent them the materials but here is the 24 hour total for affiliate sales... So if these continues every day for the next year we're really on to something! haha... I don't know what to expect but I'm just going to do my best and work with the affiliates and hopefully we can make this thing a big success! We have unlimited invent

Youtube claims I don't own my own film!

So I uploaded Heart String Marionette to youtube...the ALL ORIGINAL FILM wherein I made all the visuals from scratch with Endika's ALL ORIGINAL soundtrack and before I made it public I received an email that some company is actually claiming to own my ALL ORGINAL content...see image So before I make it public I have to resolve as this is bullshit... some company is going to place ad's and make money off of my original film?! So there will be a delay in making it public until youtube resolves this issue. Update: Some awesome d00ds from across the internets have offerred to help seed/host a torrent of the film so I'm prepping that now.... The film in HD + The Soundtrack will always be available for $5 here.

Heart String Marionette is now available!

The short pre-order is over! The download is now active! If you pre-ordered it you will be sent a download link ^_^ You can get the film here I'm encoding the youtube version and it should be up in 8-10 hours If you want to discuss the film check out the forum and chat box here It wasn't easy the past week to get it done and online for sale but SIGH its over...FOR NOW ^_^

Always a workaround...

So while grinding trying to get the 3.7gb file that is HSM online for sale I learned some things... What was happening was... I was using Cyberduck to upload the 3.7gb file to DPD via ftp... when exactly 1.8gb of the file was uploaded Cyberduck reported a connection error as asked to resume download... I would click yes.. then it would continue from the 900mb point NOT the 1.8gb...so it would have taken literally forever... and this is what I was doing the past 24 hours 0_o So I downloaded the demo of "Yummy Ftp" which has advanced error correction... so it got to the 1.8gb point and the upload speed dropped from 300k to 150k but it kept uploading unlike Cyberduck... this is comcast throttling the speed which I learned after googling it fer a bit... so that was causing Cyberduck to report an error and drop the connection... so it JUST finished uploading... Now I have to download it and make sure the file is not corrupt and the movie file is ok... if all is ok I will sen

Technical Difficulties 0_o

This week has been a technical nightmare trying to get the FINISHED film exported/encoded/uploaded.... been trying since Monday and still trying now... I had to switch the film to a pre-order as some big press exposure is coming tomorrow and the film itself isn't online yet... so I'll be working all night baby sitting failing ftp uploads to try to make it so it will be available tomorrow... if not it will be a pre-order and when you buy it you'll automatically be sent a download link when the film is up... which should be within a day or two... unless everything continues to go wrong 0_o As for some good news... the trailer will be live tomorrow... its NOT the usual trailer and I hope you find it interesting! K I'm back to cursing at my software/hardware/ and internet connection! GAWD DAMNIT SHIT BASTARD ASS!!!!!!!

My friend the Mocap director ^ ^

When I first started making films with real humans on the streets of San Jose back in 2002 I met this c00 d00d who was a breakdancer and a 3d animator... I talked to him again recently and turns out he's a mocap director at Mixamo ... I found this little documentary on him and the mocap process I thought yall might enjoy... He also just put a film out which you can checkout here

Start your game engines!

I know this is only a demo for the new Unreal Engine but its so tite have to post it... So all of that is rendered in REAL TIME 0_0 I mean its looks SO GOOD... More than good enough to make animated films with... its AWESOME.... So much better than any viewport render I've seen in any 3d program... I don't know the specific technical limitations and I know there's Unreal editor... BUT it would be awesome if the Unreal Engine could be added to any 3d program like Cinema 4d as a 3rd party render engine... I would make movies forever with this THAT RENDER IN REAL TIME 0_0 No rendering??!?! No render farm?! NO crazy power bill because you only need one PC and it looks like that?! (faints)

How to resolve/prevent last minute workflow problems

During a lot of production you're usually editing to temp music... NOW it is the person making the temp music who is responsible for making sure the temp music they provided has either the EXACT SAME timing or just MINOR differences as the final music they will provide... So if you are on a tight deadline and then you are given final music for a 22 minute sequence that is 45 seconds shorter than the temp you are given with timing changes within the music as well this is what you do... NOW let's say its SO late in the project that all the foley, sound fx and voice acting has ALREADY been edited and locked to the temp music EXACTLY... we're talking hundreds of tracks...hundreds of edits....are you totally fucked?! NO you're not! This is what you do if yer using Premiere Pro Cs6... I'm doing the month to month creative cloud subscription thing for now with it... But anyway... go into your audio master mix for the sequence... bounce all the foley/sound fx tracks

Important announcement about my new movie

This comes to no surprise to yall, the readers of my blog but here it is in video form ^ ^

Here is the plan for the HSM release

This Friday the 8th I will officially announce the release date of June 15th on youtube and stuff... I will also announce the affiliate program and encourage peeps to sign up... I will email affiliates and give them access to the HSM press images and the official M dot Strange font made from my handwriting so they can create their own marketing materials in other languages and maintain strange consistency ^ ^ On June 15th the official HSM trailer will be launched and with that the film will be made available for sale via digital download on youwilldieinside.com which will be a very simple HSM store site... heartstringmarionette.com will be the films full site with forum + chat room and all that stuff... Also on the 15th I will put the "how to" site online that I created that describes how to do the same type of digital release I'm doing... complete with encoding info, site setup and all that stuff... The film will be released with an included english subtit

Low tech options for the best quality now

So when HSM goes on sale June 15th it will be a 720p digital download which is a 3.4gb file... NOW even at that file size it is not perfect quality...there is some banding in some scenes which is unavoidable unless it was a 5gb-6gb file which would be ever the 4gb file limit and would just be too big of a download for most.... NOW nothing is PERFECT and trying to achieve perfect quality at a low cost for me and keep it affordable for you is not possible right now with digital downloads in HD.... *If you play the movie in VLC and turn "debanding" all the way up it gets rid of it all ^_^ That being said it still looks and sounds awesome ^_^ I recently got a Blu-ray burner that was on sale... so I'm thinking about a special option for those that want HSM in perfect quality right away... I'm still planning on doing an official high quality DVD and Blu-ray release later in the year... BUT with this burner I could burn the movie to a Blu-ray disc one by one if people wa

Talkin movies with people in 2012

In 1996 I went to the cinema and saw "Lost Highway" with a friend... after the film we went to a cafe and talked about the film for a few hours... and that's when I decided I wanted to make films because I was like whoa you can make a film so interesting you can talk about it for hours?!... so discussing interesting films with other people is one of the main things I love about movies... SO since my new film is coming out soon I REALLY want to find a good way for people out there who will watch HSM to connect with each other to discuss the film etc... There's always forums, which we will use... but I'm thinking the free tech is there now to do something better with audio/video I've been messing with Google+ Hangouts this week... and there is a "public" hangout feature limited to ten people... which would be good for groups of people to discuss the film... but the thing  I'm having a problem figuring out is HOW and WHERE to share these hangout