6K, TD & QL

Get this: the movie I created for my college course in directing (Scenes from Being John Malkovich) continues to kick butt with increasing YouTube views! This week, it passed 6,000 views, with 6,046 at current. Boo yea!

Now, time to deal with the technical difficulties packaged with the new anti-FTP blog requirements. So far, I've replaced the bottom of the home page with a static translucent layer. The News Blog cannot currently maintain a dynamic size, so doing this at least permits that info to show up prior to a bunch of blank space.

While doing that, I added something to the Quick Links: the YouTube archives, which includes all uploaded Thomas Productions clips and more. The Names Database is soon to be updated.

Twovie Newvies

Two new movies are being categorized in Thomas Productions: One Shot One Kill Trading Web Videos (2010) and Dougboy Theater Footage (2008).

The OSOK Trading Web Videos were created earlier this year for the company listed. I filmed the Company President, John Netto, as he spoke about the various concepts his company deals with. I then edited the pieces together into short spans, and they are now live Vimeo clips for usage on their website.

The Doughboy Theater montage was edited together 2 years ago, and filmed 2 years prior to that (during a week of technical difficulties during ...Malkovich). It's of a significant segment of Fort Ord that was demolished within 6 months of filming it. I originally wasn't going to include it here on Thomas Productions, but it's been getting so many views on YouTube -- it passed 1,000 this week -- that its prominence inspired me to. Enjoy them both!

RIP At The Movies

What a sad day... Less than a year after it was improved immensely by appointing Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott as the new hosts, the show At the Movies has been canceled.

I understand that the now voiceless Ebert can never return, and the trademarked thumb ratings can never be used by other hosts. But, I thought the current ones were doing a damn fine job. And, Ebert is not gone, either -- his written reviews are as fresh and enticing to read as ever.

So sad.

2nd Blogiversary [Belated]

On the day Kathryn Bigelow made history (the 7th), I was so caught up that I didn't realize it was also the 2nd year anniversary since this News Blog began! Now, because of the new anti-FTP restrictions through Blogger, it's somewhat bittersweet. Still, we must celebrate! I choose Brubeck -- a classic -- boo yea.

Oh yea, who could forget to slip in a show from your own company? Ever heard of Water Dog Lake? Well, I got us to film there last week for Pen TV!

First Images

Despite the hell that Blogger is putting me through at the moment, there is still good news to talk about! First, this past weekend, I successfully interviewed three people for my next doc, Everyone and Their Mother. There were mishaps here and there, such as tripping in a parking garage with a wonderfully scraped knee the result, but equipment and bones were each okay.

The basic plan is to have it edited into a 7-minute-or-less project and uploaded to Current TV in time for Mother's Day. Thanks to everyone who helped out, and to Pen TV for allowing me to borrow equip!

Second, it's been too long since the last GPicturama entry. There's now one (the first one??) for March in 2010, representing something from last summer. Good ol' Kramer had a birthday hiking bash at the Pinnacles! Here are just a FEW of the pics we took, posted on the 8th.

Seriously Frustrated

I've had problems in the past with Blogger, but this takes the cake. Blogger is removing the ability to use their site features with FTP. What is now possible, if one wants to continue using the same domain, is create a subdomain (i.e. blog.directorg.com). However, after figuring out how to do that, I learned that on my current server, I could only point that subdomain to another place on the same site, whereas for Blogger, one has to point it to somewhere at Google.

I then tried to utilize uuuq, since that whole portion of the site is technically already a subdomain, but as I don't control the uuuq site, I was at a loss. With the current set up of the site, I need to show the News Blog as a dynamic iFrame so that it is always the right height. This cannot be if the blog link is not on the same server!

Don't even get me started on the issues of file migration!

So, the site may look a little frazzled for a little while as I figure things out. Frustrated only hints at the surface of my emotions.

First Female, Pt. 2

It was bound to happen! I've been praising Kathryn Bigelow since last July, and tonight, her smaller film won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture, among 4 others!

The Hurt Locker pulled it off!! A filmmaker from San Carlos, and the first woman in history, won this year's Directing Academy Award! Soooo excited!

Live Score

Itself being predictable, one could predict that I host an online Oscar predictions contest for friends and aquaintances. I normally do it through Oscar.com, but due to some technical difficulties with the site, I decided to host it on facebook this year instead. Any entries would be made as event comments, and I would convert those into a Google Docs spreadsheet.

For the first time ever tomorrow, a live score is going to be kept during the Oscars using the spreadsheet, which converts the data into a chart, which itself becomes the image shown above. That image remains as updated as the spreadsheet is, and is viewable anywhere in the world online. Awesome!

Pocahontas in Space?

This recent video amazed me, not so much to the point of being overwhelmed, but simply in its accuracy of continuing to support comparisons between Avatar and Pocahontas [in Space]. I don't normally post things like this on here, but it's less than a week 'till the Oscars, and this certainly provides my opinion. As the maker of Garett's Oscar Predictions, it's probably good to have such a thing.