Fruitful Year

2009 has been a fruitful year for Thomas Productions. We've entered two film festivals (with more on the way), we put another project ("At the Core") on IMDb through Withoutabox, we have a project being broadcast on the airwaves of television, we've created the 2nd of 3 demo reels (for cinematography), we continue to post projects on YouTube & pictures on GPicturama (the latter now with Lytebox), and the "Z" section of the site has a new look for both the Film Ratings & Oscar Predictions segments.

Specifically for YouTube, our records continue to fly through the roof! For example, Scenes from Being John Malkovich has nearly 5,000 views (4,833 as of today). The directorG2006 YouTube Channel itself currently has 1,176 views.

Site redirections and the 3rd section of the site ("uuuq") have been working quite well. The 2nd section ("bingodisk"), however, continues to be frustrating to upload to, as it cannot utilize the regular ftp method, and it frequently fails. I'm considering replacing it with something similar to "uuuq" in the coming year...

The time has come to ramp up a notch submitting both Journey of the Mind and The Nightmare to festivals through Withoutabox; these should happen by mid-January. Then, I recently earned permission through Pen TV to film such projects as Everyone and Their Mother with their equipment.

Happy New Year in the coming days! Should know the results of the different from what? festival by then...

On the Air

Verified by my own eyes yesterday, Journey of the Mind officially began airing on Peninsula Television (Cable Channel 26) this week, and will continue to for several weeks, nearly 7 days a week! It's part of their show, In the Mix, and specifically airs at the following times: 4:30 pm M/W/Th/F, 2:30 & 6 pm Sat, 3 pm Sun.

Its 18 minute duration is only part of the half-hour show, so it begins 7 to 10 minutes into the program. While this is not the first project we've had broadcast (this would be Peninsula Quiz Kids Video Segment in 2001), it's the first full-length [short] movie.

Actually, that previous project, part of the local high school game show, Peninsula Quiz Kids, also naturally aired on Pen TV. Our PQK Video Segment represented Carlmont High School in Belmont. In more recent years, the game show additionally started airing on KRON-4, but I doubt the show still utilizes such representative clips of schools nowadays.

Happy Holidays!

Journey of the Dates

First, it is time to mention Peninsula Television, or Pen TV for short. A local channel in the peninsula (cable channel 26), it is where I currently have an internship. Starting the 21st of this month, it will start to show Journey of the Mind (and most likely At the Core as well) 5 or 6 days of the week for a good block of time! More on that once it airs -- it might even get a block on Vimeo. Stay tuned...

Then, by the 23rd, entrants of the festival, different from what?, are supposed to have been notified whether or not their submissions made it or not. So, if Journey of the Mind makes it, we should know in a week!

Lady from San Carlos

Day by day, I become more fascinated by Kathryn Bigelow, Director of The Hurt Locker. She's already well-known since before this film, has earned quite acclaim through THL this year, and apparently even was married to James Cameron at one point in her life.

Now, in this past week, she's won the award of Best Director for the film in question across the board from the various film critics' circles, including those for NY, SF, LA, Boston, Southeastern, Alliance of Women Film Journalists, and more! In most of these, The Hurt Locker also won Best Picture. (Source: AwardsDaily.com)

Though these are not the Oscars, these precursors to them have officially begun, and they affect my predictions immensely. This could finally be the year a very capable woman (from the town I grew up in to boot) wins the Award for Best Directing! Tomorrow's when the Golden Globes' noms will be announced...

Wouldn't that be something if she wins Best Director, and her ex wins Best Picture for Avatar?

Versus

In the past week, I've become aware of the competition between two professional still cameras, since learning they can now also take professional quality video, sometimes even HD quality!

It wasn't until tonight that I even put two and two together, realizing that Ashton Kutcher's commercials for Nikon of late were sometimes specifically for the Nikon camera in question, the D5000. While that may or may not shoot in HD, it does shoot in 24p, and has an awesomely flexible LCD screen. In either camera, the video's depth of field would be spectacular.

More info comparing the Nikon D5000 and the Canon Rebel T1i here.

FutureFest

As the entry dates are coming up quick, I started reviewing some various film festivals to submit Journey of the Mind and The Nightmare to.

First off, it's always best to shoot for the Earlybird Deadline because the cost of that is cheapest. So far, upcoming festivals in the next few months that is possible for include SF Shorts, Humboldt Film Festival, and Big Bear Int'l Film Festival, the last of which I've had my eyes on all along for The Nightmare.

The full list of fests & dates being considered (and it could be expanded further as time progresses) can be found here:
directorG.uuuq.com/festivals