Archive for May, 2007
I never considered myself the type of person that would setup a Myspace account. However, in the world of shameless self promotion, I figured it was worth a try. So far, I’ve got a whopping 5 friends! But, one of those friends is William Shatner. So, that is pretty cool. I think!
I’ve setup the space as if Harold was a real person. I’m sure no one will be fooled, however that really isn’t the point. I’ve already filled it with some pictures and eventually I’ll list festival dates and such.
If any of you have a myspace page and are man or woman enough to admit it, add me as a friend!
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Projecting a DVD up on a theater sized screen is not going to look very good. Fortunately, most of the festivals allow for better formats. The problem is, some allow this and some allow that; but unless you have a fat wallet, you cannot possibly be prepared for all festivals. I’ve already ruled the Ottawa International Film Festival out for this very reason.
I’ve slowly begun submitting the film to festivals. So far, it has more or less started out as a trickle. At this point I’m still being careful where it goes. After all, I still haven’t had my premiere and I don’t want to be sending it out willy-nilly only to find out that Joe’s Film Festival is where my world premiere would take place. After I get past this “all important” WP (and the few festivals that require city premieres), I’ll be less picky with submissions.
I started off making a list of upcoming festivals that I had an interest in. They were organized by the next deadline and their festival date. At first, it was a little overwhelming to try and sort out my planned first round submission order. However, now I’ve got it figured out – I’m set for the next few months. After I’ve got the premieres out of the way (and that depends on where I’m accepted), I can be much more free to submit anywhere and everywhere.
I’m excited to announce that I am officially finished with my short film! This morning, I ironed out the last problems with audio and burned my first few DVDs that will be sent off to festivals.
The last two and a half years have been exhausting. But, at the same time it has been the most exciting time of my professional life. It has been so enjoyable to do my own thing, not constrained by anyone other than me and father time. The finished project looks pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. Sure, there are a lot of things I would like to change if I had the energy. A shot or two could be cut, some others tightened up, I wish I had more time to animate, spent more time on rigging/deformation, I wish I had more time to do lighting and compositing. There are so many what-if’s. However, no matter what the project is and even if you are the boss, you’ve got to be realistic and just get things done.
I’m writing this to hopefully eliminate any problems that others may have, and possibly enlighten some of you that aren’t aware of something you can do to improve DVD quality. The first thing to cover are aspect ratios. This short was rendered at 1920×820. That equates to an aspect ratio of roughly 2.35:1 (1920/820=2.341). Typical widescreen televisions have an aspect ratio of 1.78 (1920/1080=1.777). In order to get my short to properly fit on widescreen without any stretching, I added 130 lines of black on the top and 130 on the bottom of my frame (130*2=260 + 820 = 1080). This new letterboxed image now has an aspect ratio of 1.78.
