This is it

Sunday night we watched Michael Jackson on Blu-ray - now on my 2 TB server. What a surprise! All the publicity said it was just rehearsal and backstage stuff. The info on IMDB just lists two camerapersons: cinematography by Sandrine Orabona & Tim Patterson.

Click photo - Tim on the left - Sandrine on the right - but who shot this HD movie?

I know what a two camera shoot looks like, we do them all the time. In fact the basic Tim & Sandrine setup is the same as we use - one (Sandrine) on a wide shot - the other closer (in this case Tim was sitting down so his camera was low).

Then the surprise, there are lots of shots of the singers, drummer, keyboard. Come on - they were done later I'll bet.

So only one male person shooting. Oh yeah ...

That's not Tim - who is fair with no mustache (see first photo - large)

Next surprise is that to feed the projected video there was a third camera - shooting standard def. not HD. Finally, a lot of sequences have a wide shot HD camera. That's four cameras - for MJ's private collection. Four? Huh? When you think that it was just a rehearsal and they had no clue that the star was going to die, it's all pretty amazing. Someone's not telling all.

Anyhow the final result, which I think has a lot of "post death" re-enactments by singers, musicians - maybe the dancers too, looks terrific. It's a great piece of work - and Michael looks in good health and ready to perform in London. He's amazing for a 50 year old.

Here's my theory: the organizers were really worried that MJ wouldn't be up to the demands of the live events in London - after all he'd been away for almost 10 years. They never thought he'd die - just have a breakdown. So they covered the rehearsals with many more than the two lone cameras (as advertised) - I mean the cost of extra cameras is nothing. Even then, they did this low key - small EX-3 handheld cameras on stage. Other cameras out of sight or used discreetly.

When the worst happened, the video was called "a record for MJ's personal use." It's hard to believe that Michael needed "hundreds of hours" of rehearsals - even if he did - a three/four/five camera shoot is pretty useless unless it's edited. Was it all planned to be edited just for Michael?

Let's face it - the standard def. camera shooting for the rear screen projection would have been enough.

Maker Faire

Yesterday a neighbor, Carolyn Robbins, suddenly appeared at the front door. "I'm taking you to Maker Faire." "Huh?" She had to say it at least three times. "Maker Faire?" "It's in San Mateo, lots of cool things." Neither of us wanted to go. However the alternative was just staying at home and Carolyn was driving. Oh well...

But it was really fun. Thousands of DIYers who were there basically to show off what they had made themselves. Most stands had nothing for sale. That's odd these days. Did they pay for the stand? Come all the way from (say) San Diego just to show some strangers their pride and joy? I kept thinking what's in it for them? I mean the man dressed in cardboard. What's in it for him? I guess I'm too commercial.



The highlight was the ArcAttack in the main darken hall.

Jamie's Third Vintage

I've had May 14 in my diary for months. It's the closing date for entries to the Mill Valley Film Festival. They have a special section for movies that are 31 to 49 minutes (under 50 mins.)
My friend Rod had made a cut down version of our Pinot epic - from 95 minutes to 52. Then I lopped off another two minutes. Now it's 49 minutes 59 seconds (a second under 50 mins.). I even added a few shots that I really liked that Rod had deleted.

We both watched the HD version from start to finish. It's good - very different - much tighter, more focussed on Jamie. Rod had re-named it "Pinot Adventure." I thought "Jamie's Third Vintage" was better. More focussed on Jamie - says he's an inexperienced winemaker too.

The font is ORIGINS by Laura Worthington. She based it on hand-lettering with a Crow Quill pen on parchment paper. New this month - from myfonts.com.



Today I made 10 more DVDs and posted three to distributors. I expect to hear nothing. But that's the crazy thing about this business. You never know. Simply giving up goes nowhere. I'll send more out next week. It costs a jiffy bag, a 50c DVD blank and $1.73 postage (oh and my time, which is priceless). Even if I hear nothing, I can feel self righteous having made the effort.

Finally I made a web site. Next week (or maybe tomorrow) I will make a better trailer.

House photos

I have a list of dreary things to do - including editing a 2-59 piece - Freda.

Tricia is excited as an important blog wants before and after photos of our living room.

Before:



After

Mother's Day

I spent Friday & Saturday editing Ashraf's video. It was a drag as Ashraf had employed two cameramen with Sony EX-1s. My camera is a three or four year old Sony V1. When the EX-1 came out there was a feeding frenzy to get rid of Z1s and V1s and go tapeless. Why? I could never figure it out. The picture quality is still HDV. The Sony SXS cards are way over priced. My camera uses tapes (not memory cards) which I label and keep in well named filing trays. Not only that my shot's are called "Ashraf's speech1" "Ashraf's speech2" while the EX-1 files are called something like "926.38794" "926.38795". Huh?

Transferring the Sony files to Final Cut Pro was another drag as each cameraman had shot about three hours. Yawn. Their shots were good - a little dark but the sound as awful. I hate editing other people's work!

Anyhow - it's done and sent to Ashraf. He is bound to want changes. No reply as yet.

Sunday was Mother's Day. We all met up and went to see the premiere of Peter Pan at the Ferry Terminal park. Hard to believe that Bill Dudley did all the costumes, the complicated set design and the 3-D graphics. The flying with the moving 3-D graphic of London is just amazing.

If It's Wednesday, It Must Be William's Naturalization

Now both of my son's are US citizens. Terrific. I am so pleased - my daughter next - I guess T & I should do it too.

Felix's ceremony was in San Fran. at the Masonic Hall. I think this one was better - mainly as the Paramount Theatre in Oakland is so bizarre. Art Deco gone made. It took a long time to start and everyone was taking photos of the ceiling and the empty stage.


The MC was the same guy who hosted Felix's two year's ago. I suspect he's an actor and not really a govt. official. He is so good.

Afterwards we had a celebratory lunch in Hayes Valley.


Back at 1:30. I did a little editing on the Pinot #3 version. Must do Ashraf tomorrow,

If It's Tuesday, It Must Be John Catchings

The day started with breakfast at Kerner Optical. Only around the corner from us. I was keen to go. It used to be George Lucas' model shop and practical effects place.

I expected 20 or 30 others but there must have been 150-200. So sorry I didn't take a camera.

The pancakes were good. The coffee was awful. Gee if I had all those toys, I would have put on a better show for my guests (and better coffee too).

Their Web site is very disappointing with little photos in a naf Flash container. Here's one I managed to steal. To be honest, there didn't look as though much was happening. Nothing at all being built in their three or four large workshops. Nothing. I got bad vibes; having run a facility company in London, I know empty when I see it.

The sites I made for T's cushions and duvet covers look better than Kerner's.

Drove back here to meet John at 10:00, but he was 30 minutes late. Sigh. An edit for the National Kidney Foundation.

He'd found a cameraman in Las Vegas to do the shoot. I don't know why as there are some good people out there - but we got back a typical poorly lit, badly framed job.

Here's before (left) and after (right) I had repositioned the subject, added sharpness, fixed the shadow/highlight ratio and finally color corrected it. Click to enlarge.

More sighs. Next time, I will insist on shooting the interview myself. It's not hard to light a face. And a good makeup artist would have helped.

If It's Monday, It Must Be Santa Cruz

Where'a another 2-59? Patience. I've been busy - either helping my Tricia or actually WORKING!

Tuesday we both drove down to Santa Cruz.

Our "big" car, the Ford pickup is still faulty, so we took the little Jeep. It runs like a dream but is oh-so-noisey. T. had made so duvet covers and cushions for this shop.

While the shop owner, Colleen, and T were talking, I took some photos.

Colleen suggested a "good" restaurant for lunch but I had my heart set on the restaurants on the wharf (pier to us). We found a good one and explored the end of the pier with resident sea lions.

T. took these photos.

I love this sea lion. She was so close. Click the photo to see how close!

Moon Over The Bay Tonight

I took some photos from our deck after we gave up watching The Fifth Element. Tricia said she could do better (taking photos, not making sci-fi features) - she popped out and took this shot.

We are so lucky to live here. Click the picture to see it full size.

Peter Pan Shoot

Just back from "Peter Pan" press preview at the Ferry Terminal Park. Naturally I went there and back by ferry.

After an hour or so of waiting, we went inside and watched a mega-boring-uninspired understudy rehearsal. Finally the cast left the theater-in-the-round stage and the house lights were killed.

They ran the opening graphics and music sequence...

Gosh! Amazing! Worth the wait. The 360 degree animations are terrific - all done by one designer, Bill Dudley from Greenwich - close to where we lived in London. I've asked him to visit us here in San Rafael. He's stuck in a hotel, so he might come. It's so easy by ferry.

I shot it with my 360 degree fisheye lens. They were surprised to see the whole 360 degree animation in one shot. It's really Mark Spencer's job. I just came to help. Nice day. I fell asleep on the ferry back.

If he visits, Bill might be another 2-59 er. Little does he know.

Gold Kahuna Winner

E-mail is strange. Today in the "Junk" bin I found this, I thought it was spam:

Dear Gold Kahuna Winners of the 2010 Honolulu Film Festival,

It was great meeting so many of you at the festival and celebrating over a wonderful weekend of excellent films and fun on the islands! Congratulations again on your outstanding work and thank you for taking part.

Attached in this email please find the Official Gold Kahuna Laurel Icon. Please feel free to display this laurel on any web or print materials to help promote your award-winning film.

I went to their site and yes, surprise, surprise, Pinot:Sonoma Dreams is a WINNER.

Back again!

Cough! Cough! Ever been not really sick enough to spend the day in bed? I'm coughing my heart out. Day after day I say, I'm getting better. But no - it drags on.

Where was I?

Oh, last time I left you was Plan B. My friend Rod was here from London and we had dinner Chez Nicola.

Was that this month? Even this year? Wow...

Next day Rod showed me his cut of our 90 minute Pinot film. His is 52 minutes! He was quite right, I couldn't do it myself. Out went the proposal, out the night harvest, out the wine bar in New York. Crikey!

I can see his plan - keep it to Jamie. Forget the stockbroker to winemaker story. Gosh.

Well I wanna sell it. Rod is ultra smart and he might be right. So why did we fly to New York?

Excuse me. Another coughing fit!

Where was I?

The next day, Rod and I flew to Vegas for the NAB Conference. I have my way of doing things - Rod has his. We'll take a taxi - No the shuttle is better (my way). Rod wins. The taxi line goes up and down and up. Three quarters of an hour of shuffling my three bags. I get to Circus Circus $34 a night - Rod is off to the Sahara.

I promised DV Mag I'd shoot a video blog. Stupid!

I've shot leaving home - now to shoot the hotel room and the journey to the LV Conference Center. Yikes. What a mistake. It's not as though I'm climbing Mt. Everest. And it's a HUGE effort. I'm in the hotel room after midnight editing and trying to upload to YouTube,

Still you've got to do these things once to realize how really stupid a clever person (me) can be.

The next day, Monday - I'm still shooting anything that moves. Crazy. Tuesday, I filmed Adam Wilt, and might put that here on 2-59. Tuesday night, I shoot the SuperMeet.

Wednesday - only shot the Panasonic 3-D $21,000 camera and the amazing new Aäton. Just two. Way to go. Those stories out real soon on DV.com. Maybe. Still I had fun.

Thursday - I can't take anymore. First plane outa here.

Rod flies off to LA. Me I'm back to Home Sweet Home, Oakland.



Next day, I collect Tricia from Larkspur (I was on the way to SFO when her plane from Australia came in ONE HOUR early). That afternoon I go to a Sonoma Film Fest party. Come back home. Collect T and go to yet another Sonoma Film Fest party. Ouch! Good - I wasn't coughing then.

Saturday and Sunday were all Sonoma Film Fest. parties and the big premiere of Pinot: Sonoma Dreams.


The screening went well. I had seen my film here on a bright HD screen with saturated colors. So it was a shock to see it not so bright, not so sharp and with regular color. No one else seemed to mind and compared to the home screening in LA last year, yuk, it was terrific.

Lots of laughter and enthusiastic applause.

All our Audience Votes went to another film! Eating Alaska! Foul!!! Foul!!!

OK Now someone buy it! Once I clean up Rod's 52 min. version I'll start marketing again. This is a buyers market and there doesn't seem to be a real demand, You never know. I keep selling "von Bülow" year after year. Jeffery Dahmer sells well on DVD at Amazon. It's good to own intellectual property. It won't date. I think I'll make it an even 50 minutes - like Planet Earth,


Kristen snaps director (me) and star (Jamie) relaxing after the screening.

DV Mag has been running my SuperMeet blogas their main feature article for well over a week. It was only meant for their ephemeral "Almost Live from NAB Blog." I wrote it all at the Las Vegas airport's Burger King place right next to the boarding gate. Stopped writing when I had to board. I left a speaker out. He was only talking about film apps. on iPhones. Yawn.

I think (for me) if you write very fast the truth comes out better. So I thought he shot with a RED One - wrong -I should have written Sony F800 (a $42,000 camera) it didn't really spoil my story which was my impressions of the night. My impression was a RED camera. Same concept - I thought mixing a $42,000 with a $2,000 camera for a multi-cam shoot was just nuts. Whether it was a RED or a Sony makes no difference.

The Monday after the screening T & I were wiped out. Then we both went down with it. Cough. Cough.

I finish two more pieces for DV mag. make DVDs for various clients - post & deliver.I'll send Jamie, Chris & Karen, John Palmer some copies of the Sonoma version.

Yesterday and today, the mammoth task of moving 12 web sites from one server to a bigger, faster one. A truly scary moment to remote switch the old server off. Just a mouse click and that's it - gone! Hey I got $42 back and have four times more memory.

T has been flat out completing Rough Linen orders. Last ones today. I will post them now.

Puff, puff - just back from the PO & bank. Just one clerk at the PO office - an unhappy place in contrast to Chase Bank with four tellers all smiling. Two hours of my life just wasted, I need a drink.

Tomorrow Peter Pan - stay tuned!

Plan B

TGI Friday: With NAB starting on Sunday, my 2-59 plans are thwarted. So today a big clean up of the usual boring things - dish washing, taking out garbage, clothes washing (Tricia is in Australia looking after her mother). In the middle of this life style threatening routine, an email pops up from WildCare. They need urgent help.

Any excuse and I'm outa here. Minutes later I'm at WildCare loading up Alison's Windows laptop with a video I shot last year. Yes, she will be a 2-59er but not today. A great 2-59 subject - if only I had more time. Good to get out into a different world - WildCare is certainly that.

Later in the day, I collect Rod Allen from Larkspur ferry terminal. Rod is a great friend. He laughs at my jokes. He comes from broadcasting in London but was never tainted with "elitism" - a trait common with BBC & ITV producers. He was owner and editor of Broadcast magazine and later my sales agent for my indie documentaries. Sold "von Bulow" to the Discovery Channel for $65,000. I made it for $5,000. He is a sort of hero of mine - Rod - not von Bulow.

Last year post Burning Man, he agreed to cut my Pinot film from 93 minutes to 52, a task I could never do myself. What - throw out 40 minutes of pure brilliance! He says I'll hate it. Frankly, I don't care, I just want to sell it - and I've always admired his ability as an editor - so his choices will be good ones. So easy to get wrapped up in one's on pet favorites.

As we were having dinner with Nicola that night (she worked with Rod at Broadcast magazine) I thought it was better to wait until Saturday to see Rod's changes to my masterpiece -

which 40 minutes has he deleted?

As we were leaving for Nicola in Mill Valley, I received an email from a DV mag. reader commenting on my Flip camera article. Huh? Flip camera article? I wrote that four months ago - it hadn't made publication and I assumed that David Williams, the editor, had scrapped it. I mean, you really can't write and say "was it that bad?"

Surprise! There it is on the web but as part one of a series. Looks as though there will be another five episodes. I have no idea if it will appear in print as well. Read it here.

Great dinner with Nicola, who was the cook for The Rolling Stones. She now runs a market research and brand strategy company here in SF.

I was saying that one of the reasons I threw caution to the wind while I was in London was I had PLAN B - if it all got too awful, I would simply return to my home town Sydney, Australia.

Nicola is leaving the USA returning for "two years" to London with her two very American teenager children. She feels they need a European experience. I can understand that. Says that in a way this change is her own PLAN B.

Champions of Hope

The last two days have been editing 3 x 5 minute videos for the COH awards tomorrow night.

Cutting 15 minutes in a day is a slog - almost every shot was green screen - which slows things down. I try to keep it simple but this job needed 8 layers of video. Each five minutes took an hour to render. And then I had to tweak each and every green screen shot and render again.

click to enlarge photo

Today I made the DVD and delivered it to John in San Francisco. When I got back I was completely wiped out.

I had a visit to see the "wound nurse" at Kaiser. I arrived 15 mins early - she was 45 mins late (no "sorry to keep you waiting") - with a little shopping on the way home. Bang! My afternoon was gone.

I made 10 copies of Pinot to hand out at the festival and then the Mac went funny with error 5501 messages. Huh?

Thank god for pitta, hummus and red wine.

Here are the videos I uploaded just before midnight on Wednesday -

Mapes

Young

Amend

Delivered

This morning we drove to Sonoma with Blu-ray, BetaSP & DVD copies and handed them personally to the organizers. I hope they show the Blu-ray in HD.

Afterwards, we lunched in the square with chicken, french bread and beer.

Tonight, Tricia flies to visit her 88 year old mother who is in hospital in Australia. She's back April 16.

Sonoma Film Festival

Just received the official "grid" for the festival. Here's Sunday April 18. The day our Pinot film is screened. There's a Q & A afterwards.

Trailers and info here

http://www.sonomadreams.com/

Sunday - NAB a week away

I started this 2-59 project to fill in "empty" days (I'd just had a week's shoot and edit cancelled at a day's notice.)

Now I'm too busy to touch it. Pity. But I'll be back.

Friday and this weekend has been tied up with getting a decent viewing copy of our Pinot epic for the Sonoma Film Festival. They wanted BetaSP. Should be easy as George has one... read on

Thursday/ Friday I make a standard definition copy from my High Def. Yuk! I LOVE HD.

Friday I went to George & Cissy's office with a FireWire drive and a 90 minutes Beta tape to make a BetaSP copy. It always amazes me how differently people do things. I could not work out the setup at George's. The good news was that his BetaSP deck is wired in as component video not composite. Makes a HUGE difference.

The bad news was that the Final Cut Pro countdown clock had a circle that looked like a squashed football - yet the movie itself looked OK - though a bit soft. But a worry. Hmm... Too many bad screening in my past lives.

I guess it is only the monitoring as it looked great on the FCP monitor. I sat there worrying for 75 minutes - then checked - yep it was definitely 16:9 but the countdown was wrong. I can imagine the projections getting the clock right and the main movie wrong. I hope there's a rehearsal. The last screening I had at DV Expo in Pasadena, there was NO ONE working the HD projector. I just had a DVD stop start remote control. I think it went OK - "think" as I was on stage and couldn't see the screen. Back to george's place:

So I fiddled and discovered the the FCP setting - Anamorphic TICK was missing.

That fixed it. Now to re transfer the whole stupid thing. I started it said goodbye to my daughter and left it running - will collect on Monday. Can't sit through another 75 minutes. I used to make 30 sec commercials. There were benefits.

Friday night and Saturday morning (was it only yesterday?) I thought I'd make a Blu-ray copy. It's only 6 months since I made my last Blu-ray but I was totally lost. Adobe's Encore is not DVD Studio Pro and very twitchy.

I made three dud Blu-rays!!! Each one took two hours to burn, so I was pretty upset at 1:00 pm. Six hours down the drain. Not only that, they were my last BD discs!

I looked everywhere. Nope - no more Blu-ray blanks. So we went to Office Depot where they had RE-WRITABLE blanks @ only $14. 00 ( a bargain as their write once were $11.00 - I buy them on line at under $3.00 ).

We lunched at BaJa Fresh in Corte Madera shopping mall and later Tricia had an eye exam and bought new glasses as her own were lost. She looks great!

Back home, I started from scratch with Encore - used a different start button and burned another Blu-ray. Wow! It works. The drag is - it takes 2 hours to find out. I though I'd better check it right through. Put it on our 8 ft screen. Looked great!

After a while it got dark - the film still running - our sons arrived for dinner. "It's out of sync," shouted Felix.

And he was right. Shit! Back to the drawing board.

Today - I looked at it. Nipped a frame out here and add two there. But last night it was a good four frames out. Huh??? Maybe our system... It's a worry.

Now making yet another Blu-ray. Sigh.

Just projected it. Yep - it still looks a wee bit out of sync - but then "An Education" which we saw earlier wasn't exactly in sync. Maybe our projection system delays the component video. Weird. Anyhow I suspect they'll run the BetaSP.

Dee is up at last!

Very frustrating day. Started with an appointment at the hospital to change the compression dressing on my leg. Necessary, painful with stinging iodine dressing and generally a waste of time.

Then a drive to recommended printers to do some Sonoma Dreams DVD covers - nope, their lowest print run is 500. Half hour gone. So I drive to Kinkos and print 25.. Another hour gone. The rest of the day was like that. Now I realize that to put the 40 mins. of DVD extras on the disc will need dual layer DVD blanks - which I don't have. I can either scrap the new Kinko DVD covers, blot out the DVD extras on the printed covers or buy 25 dual layer disks. Groan...

Ho hum. Neither QuickTime 10, QT7, Compressor or even Adobe Media Encoder can make an H.264 version of Pinot. All I get is blackness and clicks. I made a two minute test section - that compressed easily but fell over with the long 75 min. version. Well at least, I managed to make a regular NTSC DVD of the latest Pinot.

In the middle of all this - phone calls to Sonoma Festival - dozens of emails - requests for minor free changes to ancient job, a two hour struggle to get comments onto Mary's Web site. Then her Web menu vanished...

And editing lovely Dee.

Champions of Hope

Up at 6 today ready to shoot COH for the National Kidney Foundation (NKF). Back  at 7:00 (13 hours later) - stopped for more two buck chuck on the way home. Quick I need a drink, PDQ!

Strange how much gets reduced to three letters. WMD for example - even 9-11. Next month I'm going to the NAB conference. Editing this NKF COH job on FCP. Stop. I'm going NUTS (4 letters)

No 2-59 news (3 letters) but I keep lining up interesting people. There must be 25 I could call onIF I HAD A FREE DAY. 2-59 is such a good idea, such a shame to do paying work instead. Now if I were rich!

One of the doctors we filmed today was retiring - full pension - etc. He's 10 years younger than me!

Today we shot about 10 interviews, maybe 12 - I lost track. People were coming and going at an amazing rate. All but  two were green screen. So much easier.

More pain

Now 11:46 at night. The Pinot epic crashed the Mac or the Mac crashed it. It consolidated but forgot the timeline. Oh dear, I feel a complete amateur.

I read Oliver Peters on the Web, he writes for DV Mag. as I do but his stuff is much more serious and I fear he knows much more than I do. But nowhere in his writings or elsewhere do I discover why I have copied the media files but not the timeline they are meant to link to. Trying again now.

Sometimes I envy "directors" who are surrounded by clever people. It's hard to do everything yourself.

Fixing Pinot

Busy today but sadly not on 2-59.

Our Pinot epic is being shown next month. It seems not only a "good idea" but very necessary to check it out. When I opened up the edit done Oct 13 last year, I really wasn't surprised to find missing holes (shots). The data scattered over the 10 disc drives in the system and I never bothered to consolidate the files using FCP's Media Manager.

Some re-links were easy - others impossible. I swapped out a few drives and most missing shots suddenly re appeared. But there were some that were impossible. Oh well, I thought I will find them in the old Oct. mixdown. Nope, the only Oct 13 mixdown is in standard def. and useless. So last night I gave up put the lot on "render" and went out for dinner with our daughter. When we came back at 10:00, the stupid thing was STILL rendering. I left it on overnight.

Today, with a lot of "why did I do that?" I finally got it all together. Took all morning. Now I am consolidating - that copies the whole thing to a single disk drive and keeps ALL the data in ONE place. Then I need to do a High Def. mixdown. Next a SD copy for DVDs - then to burn 25 DVDs. The consolidating is taking for ever. With nothing to do - I decided to create a DVD cover in Photoshop.

I made a print on my Epson - it had two black lines - I cleaned the heads and suddenly it says it needs more YELLOW ink - the one cartridge I don't have.

OK I'll print on the HP. Yikes - the ink is still wet and its all over me. Not only that it looks soft and fuzzy.

It wasn't meant to be easy, was it?

Dust Dust and more ...

I'm trying to fix Pinot. Tricia is taking off two layers of wall to reveal shiplap.

The computer is rendering Pinot. Which means that whe I tpe all he lettrs are elayed - so do I stop rendering and type on regardless?

Diversions

So there I was happily making 2-59s which I love doing - and suddenly REAL PAYING work gets in the way and now that I have a festival screening, I'm resurrecting my Pinot epic.

Yesterday I made a huge mistake of using an ancient Firewire drive to transfer the Wednesday's UCSF shoot. I thought it would be something John could collect and use. Nope. His car is broken down (again!) - then I think the drive is too heavy and maybe fragile to post - I don't want to drive to SF, I'll copy the data to a 32 GB Flash card and post that. Good idea - no.

The file simply wouldn't copy. I suspected the Flash card would not take a 12 GB file in one go and broke it up into 3 GB segments. Something that should have taken a few minutes was now an hour drama. Even worse, no matter what I did, the first section wouldn't transfer. I found it. there's huge glitch in the data. Go back to the original tape. It's good. Re transfer. Recopy to 32 GB drive. Get the picture. Two hours or more gone.

And in between, phone calls, emails, Tricia's mum in hospital, out of hospital, in again.

Then Dee arrived with her Flip camera to give me the shots of Angel Island I need for her 2-59. Of course she had wiped the camera memory clean - the files are on her laptop which is at home. Another disaster.

I thought the PO closed at 5:30. Got there by 5:15. CLOSED. Bummer. Use the machine. I think I missed the post.

Back to resurrection for the festival...

Pinot was edited in 2008 and early 2009 - then in Sept. '09 I decided to recut it with extra shots and a new sound track. Consequently the the data is scattered over at least 5 drives. First collect the drives. Some shots are missing when I try to re-link I am pointed to NKF 2oth Anniversary. Huh? How come some Pinot shots are on a National Kidney Foundation drive. Worse. I had put all the NFK stuff on an old drive and archived it. Where's my stuff? Help!

Finally at about 7:30 the whole computer crashed. Good. I can eat dinner and drink.

So too busy to shoot 2-59s - I have 20 lined up! Almost too busy to edit those already shot.

Pinot Premiere

Good News!

The phone and emails didn't stop this morning.

Most exciting was a call from The Sonoma Film Festival telling me that our film would be shown on Sunday April 18. Oh there's a party meet 'n greet Friday 16th, Oh there's a Premiere Party in honor of you and your wife Saturday, 17th - and oh - there's an End of Festival Party Sunday night.

I spoke to Jamie - the winemaker - who is coming with Kristen AND a case of wine - the same vintage as seen being harvested and crushed.

All too exciting!

Working Today

A real paying job!

As usual I check out my equipment the night before. I always do a trial run with lights and sound before a paying job. It all works . I pack it up.

1: Chromakey green screen.

2: Lighting case which includes the rifle mike and a fold up stool and a reflector.

3 & 4: Two cameras (protection if one dies on me - yes, it has happened more than once - spilled water stops a camera dead) - in fact today I took my Flip Ultra HD camera - so that makes three.

5: Tripod.

That's five items.

I knew something was missing. The mike XLR lead? Power extensions? Make-up? Spare lamps?

In the middle of the night it comes to me. No tape. I have no tape!

First thing today I drive to Costco in Novato and buy 20 Sony miniDV tapes. Get home. Pack the car and drive to San Francisco. We collect John and I drive to UCSF hospital not far a way. John & Tricia take the equipment in while I park (which I could write a blog about). Anyhow, once parked, I get to the third floor just as Tricia is setting up the back light.

The area the hospital has given us is an end of corridor lit with masses of daylight. "Don't bother with lights, we'll use the natural daylight."

Tricia suggests using a reflector and finds an IV stand to hang it from. Magic! I take a movie and stills with my Flip camera.

There are fluorescents on the ceiling left and they add some light gold backlight. We set up in five minutes flat. Not a single light used - except the hospitals fluoros.

After the formal sit down interview - I wire the doctor up 2-59 style and walk around the hospital shooting until we are over whelmed by hospital security guards. "You can't film here!"

It doesn't matter as that was the last shot.