IÁ¢€â„¢ve spent the last week trying to get a trailer ready for my film, Red Gold. That doesnÁ¢€â„¢t even include the time I spent editing the footage or recording the music. The week has mostly been spent finalizing the sound, converting the trailer into a decent Quicktime movie, and attempting to get it online.
It hasnÁ¢€â„¢t been easy. This experience serves as a reminder that, as much as IÁ¢€â„¢d like to, I simply canÁ¢€â„¢t do everything myself. I mentioned my friend Chris Bills in a previous column. Chris does post-production sound, and hears all the little things I canÁ¢€â„¢t. I gave him a demo for some music I recorded at home, and he heard all the noise and fuzz like a canine hears a dog whistle.
This resulted in multiple trips to ChrisÁ¢€â„¢ house to work on layering and dialogue mixing. In the end, he did an amazing job a worth far more than the cup of coffee I bought for him. I canÁ¢€â„¢t pay him, but hopefully this project will pay dividends for his resume.
Once the sound was finalized, I faced another hurdle: dealing with my awful web hosting company. I purchased two domain names to redirect to my existing website. Can you guess that it didnÁ¢€â„¢t behave?
In order to solve my web problems, I had to turn to another friend named Ryan. He helped me transition to a new web host, dealing with things that make me feel like IÁ¢€â„¢m taking high school algebra again. Ryan got a bottle of wine from me the other day, which is also far less payment than he earned.
Were I to have more financial backing, all of this would be more streamlined. I would send my footage to a trailer company, who would plug it into one of their preset formulas and overdub the sound of doors slamming shut and the latest hit single from MGMT. It would then be sent to another company that would take care of all the marketing and the web promotion.
That all sounds remarkably sterile, doesnÁ¢€â„¢t it? For under $20 (not including what IÁ¢€â„¢ve paid to my new web host) and some serious karma points, IÁ¢€â„¢ve managed to accomplish most of what others would spend thousands on. Obviously, I owe these friends much more than what IÁ¢€â„¢ve given them, but since they are longtime friends they know how much of my life IÁ¢€â„¢ve poured into this project.
After all this work, I still have a long way to go. The trailer is only a minute and 14 seconds long. The full short will probably be over twenty minutes. ThatÁ¢€â„¢s almost 20 times the work (and at least 20 more coffees and bottles of wine).
The trailer is an important milestone in the process, and IÁ¢€â„¢m proud despite having watched it too many times to be able to properly judge it anymore. We still have another key scene to shoot, and no idea where the money will come from to film it. But the fact is that weÁ¢€â„¢re putting the right energy out, and when you do that only positives can come from it.
With all that said, IÁ¢€â„¢m happy to finally show all the Popdose readers a peek at what IÁ¢€â„¢ve been working on for the last year and a half.
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