Archive for August, 2007
The Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films has come and gone. My wife and I traveled to the middle of the desert for five days of films, parties, and presentations. Upon arriving, the first thing that we and everyone else notices is the heat. It was north of 100 degrees every day and hit more than 110 on some of those. It was an intense burning feeling that I haven’t been exposed to in a very long while. Personally, I have no idea how people live in this climate. Everyone told me it is something you get used to, and while I’m sure it is true, I just can’t imagine such a life.
Till Death Do Us Part played three times during the festival. Friday evening, Tuesday morning, and Wednesday afternoon (Wednesday was added to the “Best of the Fest” package). It was great to see it on the big screen despite a few technical problems.
Posted in 
…all of the technical issues were over… For those keeping score, I sent out my short to get the DigiBeta and HDCAM versions made, however, I figured I could easily do the miniDV tapes myself. In theory, it is a straight forward process. And it actually ended up being easy to get it on tape, but to get it to actually look right. That was another issue.
The short was rendered at 24fps, and of course miniDV is a 29.97fps format. The solution is to run the short through a 3:2 pulldown to change the frame rate. Much easier said then done. Initially I was downrezing each frame to 720×480 (with an anamorphic squeeze) and loading it up into Quicktime Pro and then outputting to an AVI DV format. It worked. Or at least it seemed to until I looked closer. Quicktime wasn’t really doing a 3:2, but just doubling up the fourth frame. This looked bad on any shots that had slow camera pans. You could see the stuttering.
I couldn’t successfully get QT to do a 3:2 the right way. So, after many hours of tests of potential solutions, I settled on using Shake to create a 3:2 pulldown and save to an AVI DV straight from Shake, bypassing QT altogether. Since this software does a proper pulldown, it eliminated the stuttering.
I was initially told that my film would debut on August 28th. This is no longer the case. It will actually debut on Friday August 24th at 4:30pm. This new information comes straight from the Palm Springs website. That means I’ll be included in the August 28th Animation Slam grouping, and the August 24th “Odds and Ends” grouping. Looks like I’ll be the only animated film in this package. Exciting!
August 24th, 4:30pm, Camelot Theater, Palm Springs
August 28th, 11:00am, Camelot Theater, Palm Springs
From the Palm Springs Website:
“This endearing animated film introduces us to a man who is ready to end it all after the death of his beloved wife, but is interrupted in his quest by an unanticipated commotion at his front door. “
Officially, Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films will host my film’s World Premiere. If you are attending, head over to the Camelot Theater at 4:30pm on August 24th. It will play again on August 28th, 11:00am in the same location. I’m not exactly sure what to expect, but I’ll be there to find out. Look for me on Tuesday and say “HI”! I’ll be handing out postcards to anyone and everyone that will take one!
