Colorado Film Grants

Ok, I am taking a bit of a break from working on my website because I realized I suck at it and they just end up looking really shitty. So I started working on the Pre-production for my first big project at Colorado Film School, so I have decided that I am better than everyone else there so I want my film to reflect that so I am doing everything I can to make it as good as I possibly can.

In order for my film to be the best I am pulling out all the stops and I am going to do everything right, so I am in the processes of getting the rights to use some music by the band Everclear, I am spending hours on doing pre-production, drawing story boards, doing script break downs, scheduling, everything. I also wanted to get an honest to god budget for my film. So instead of being an ass and asking friends and family to donate money I decided to apply for grant money.

So in Colorado there are several art specific grants, which would have been great except for the fact that they don't give grants to students. What the hell? Why don't you give grants to students? Do they think that students can't make good art? Do they think that we have extra cash laying around so they don't have to give us money? I honestly don't get, there is really no reason to not give money to students. If I were to drop out of school I would be able to apply, but as it is I can't. So as you can tell I am annoyed, and pissed off. But this is just making my desire to get funding even stronger, so I am now going to go through every other process that I can think of to get money.

I know that I haven't put up a photo post recently, but hopefully now that I have figured out my schedule I will be able to go out and spend more time taking photos.

Metal Robot Media sound FX

So as I mentioned in my previous post, I am working on making a production company for both my film work as well as my still photo work. Recently in all of my massive amounts of free time I have been working on a website, a design, and a little intro video for my films. As much as I want to get it done, and as excited as I am to work on it, I am not much of a computer geek so working on writing out all the code and everything for a website is dreadfully boring for me. So I have been spending a lot of time working on both the intro video as well as the logo and all the graphic design stuff.

Originally I had wanted to use this wonderful royalty free sound clip I found of a man getting run over by a train. But after using it for a couple different rough cuts I decided I wanted something else, something of my own. So in case you don't know, I am not a sound designer, I'm not a musician, I actually pretty much suck at doing anything related to sound. So this introduced an interesting problem for me to fix. So I started reading and doing some research on how to design sounds. Finally I just broke down and did it. I came up with a general sound that I wanted to make. SoI borrowed a microphone from one of my friends and recorded myself going through the different layers of sounds that I would need to create my final sound.

Some of the sounds turned out great, others.... not so great. So I went out and rerecorded the sounds that I screwed up on. I listened to them again and they were a bit better. I did this four or five times depending on the sound and even then I couldn't get some of them right. For a couple of the sounds I ended up going to the internet and got commercially useable royalty free sounds.

Finally I downloaded Audacity, because I cant afford a several thousand dollar program, and I did the best job that I could editing the sounds. But like I said earlier I have never done this before so I am sure that anyone out there who has done it before will listen to it and think its crap. But screw you its my first time.

So after many hours of work, here is the first rough cut of the sound effect!

Metal Robot Media

So as some of you may or may not know, I am in the process of making my own company that will encompass both my still photography and films. Originally this idea started off as kinda a joke, I quickly threw together an intro video for my movies, I slapped together a Facebook page, then promptly forgot about it. Since I am not the greatest artist out there I used a drawing from my girlfriend at the time, it was a really good drawing. At the time we were both happy about me using it, I got a sweet drawing for my intro video and she got her artwork out there and got a little more exposure. So a couple months after we broke up I get a message on Facebook:

"John. You have absolutely no rights to my work. Take it down, or I will take you to court. Take it down now."

Now I don't know about some of you reading this, but I do not particularly want to be take to court by my crazy EX, especially over something as sill and stupid as this. So I pulled the page, and all the videos with the intro. But not all was in vain! Her demand for me to pull it reminded me of this great-untapped potential that I had at one point just begun to set up.

 So I began to get excited, and I decided that I was going to give Metal Robot Productions a face ift. So I renamed it Metal Robot Media, I drew another drawing, I am in the process of making a new and improved intro video, and I am even making a honest to god website. I know some of you guys probably think its kinda stupid for an 18 year old to make a "company" for their photos and films, but I am hoping to actually turn it into a multi media company. One that I will actually use to raise funds for my projects, one that I can use to sell my stuff through. I also know you probably think I am stupid since just about everyone and their cat who goes to film school has a production company. But I am smart enough to know that I am not special, that I am not very different then all of the other ones, but the reason I think I will succeed and they wont is because I immediately have a product to promote, my photography. Because to be honest student films are crap. There is no way around it, they are just crap. But my photos are good enough to be put up in places like coffee houses and the like which will allow me to start building a base around which I can add my films as they get better. So hopefully it will turn out. And I know I haven't put up a photo blog recently, but I have been really busy and haven't been able to go out to any ghost towns recently, but I really really hope that I will start going again since I do it more for my own joy than I do for all of you. But I will be keeping you guys updated about how it is going.