The Dog Days Are Over

First off I want to thank everyone for their prayers and well wishes about my brother. He's doing fine.

Second I want to thank Marcellus Suber for helping me out with some post production problems I've been having. Thank you sir everything is working out nicely.

Also want to thank Brandon White for allowing me to use his Canon HF20. That's the camera I've been testing out, and the video above is comprised entirely of all that test footage. It's completely capable of delivering the kind of quality I need to shoot this next feature, and I'm grateful his allowing me to use it.

The video above was shot on Brandon's Canon Vixia HF20. I occasionally used my Kenko Wide Lens. I shot on 30 progressive and then cut and rendered in Sony Vegas Pro 9 to 24p. Tried out Vegas 9's masking tools at the end where I tried to clone both Deanna Kelly and Sarah Vroom. You'll see alot of shaky shots, quick zooms, etc. Wanted to really push the movement, see how it would all look. No scanlines, maybe a small bit of ghosting, but nothing you can't fix in post. Overall I'd probably use this camera to cover alot of static shots. But we shall see. Great camera though.

Technically the Dog Days haven't even begun. Dog Days usually refers to the hottest days in the summer. But the phrase "Dog Days Are Over" usually refers to getting through the toughest phase of something. It's the name of the song I used in the above video, performed by Florence and The Machines. I used it because I thought it went nicely with the first bits of HD footage I was shooting. I had no idea that it would end up really meaning something.

Slowly, carefully we put the pieces together to get to making this movie. I'm in the middle of re-writes. I'll have the official CREEP web site up soon, and I start rehearsals for one of the scenes this week. So things are going smoothly.

For now, I've set up a quick page on my site until the official site launches. Find out more about the plot and our progress there. http://www.patrickprejusa.com/creep

Here's a quick log line for the movie: "A gun slinging super sleuth, a cute blonde escape artist, and a guy in a giant teddy bear costume have to solve an ancient mystery and fight vampires."

Sounds like a heck of a plot. I know I'd wanna watch it. ;)

Everybody's Gotta Get Paid

I was just Twittering (or rather Tweeting, but really I prefer Twittering, it's fun to say outloud) about how Jott and Sprout are both going from a basic free service to a paid service. And I don't mind at all. Everyone's gotta get paid for their services and I will gladly pay for what I use. Jott I use every so often, for blogging from my phone or leaving notes for myself. Sprout is a service that allows you to create flash content with ease. I actually rely on Sprout quite heavily for much of my marketing, I use it on my blog, and throughout monstercops.com.

I can't imagine a world without Sprout, so I will most likely be paying for their services come February. Jott not so much. And I'm both glad and overwhelmed a little about so many sites I use switching to get paid. I completely understand it, but man it fell hard. I guess everyone got together and decided to start charging after the New Year started. Soundsnap.com is another site I've used for Sound effects and foley support for much of my video work, and it too is now taking away the free service. Now you can download 5 soundeffects a month for free, after that you gotta pay.

Even Brightcove has giveen up there basic and free services. And I was using them to post high quality videos extensively as well. Now I'm sticking to high quality and free video upload sites like Vimeo. And thankfully YouTube has enabled HD quality as well (although you can't embed HD yet, or can you, someone fill me in.)

Like I said, I understand it, and I don't mind it, I was even expecting it, just wasn't expecting to have to pay for it all at the sametime.


I just glanced at the date on the box of sugar free cookies I was eating, and realized the date expired. I bought these today. Neat. (sarcasm)


Anyhoo. Not complaining about the monetary system, just overwhelmed. Sprout I will gladly pay for. Jott I don't really need or use. Soundsnap.com I actually don't need, I just really liked how easy their site was to use. From now on if I need sound fx support I can still use The Free Sound Project. Wait. Lemme check and see if they're still free.

Yup still free.

And I've switched from Brightcove to Vimeo with some help from Vodpod.

Ok, I'm gonna go puke up some cookies, and get back to editing EVERYTHING.



Oh and thank you to all of you who have commented, viewed, and rated my videos. I really appreciate the support. Thanks guys.