It's been a very busy few weeks in the social media circuit; cell phone signals cut off by BART police in San Francisco and new developments involving Facebook spying and security breaches. I'm finding it harder and harder to stay on top of everything myself. I am in constant hope of having a real assistant who can help with the research. It would also be beneficial to have someone as part of the film crew (which right now consists only of me), as well as a very talented and dedicated video editor who will work with me on post. A good post editor is extremely important, but it's also a bridge that I haven't gotten to yet, making that task last on the pecking order, however, I need to be actively thinking about it now, especially if I want to make my December deadline. Meanwhile, and seemingly unrelated, I have been working on The Break Up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical, assisting director Peter Schneider. It's an amazing show with an extremely original and talented cast. BUN, as we like to call it, is making its east coast premier in Asbury Park, NJ on September 8, 2011.
Aside from that, I met with my friend Dane, who happens to work as cinematographer for Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) and after passing the Dane test with my new and improved trailer, Dane emailed Morgan and Jeremy Chilnick (producer over at Warrior Poet Productions) himself recommending they check out my project. Morgan responded to me personally letting me know that he will be out of the country until September 6, but asked me to send him a link so he could watch the trailer online. Wow! It took me over an hour to even find the words to respond to his email.
That was Thursday night, and today is Monday night and still my video is not yet online, although this time it looks promising with a mere 23 minutes to go on Vimeo. Last night, Vimeo gave me an estimated time of 15 hours, and I left my computer uploading for the day, but something must have happened because when I came home there was the dreaded 'error' label across where my video was supposed to be. I spent the rest of the night trying to compress it down to a reasonable size without losing the integrity of the HD quality and aspect ratio. Situations like these always remind me of the less than realistic expectations we have about technology-sure I'm only working from a Macbook Pro laptop and one firewire port, but still, between tweaking a project (less to do with technology, but it quickly becomes part of the painstaking rendering process), compressing, and uploading, the task of making a video watchable online is frustrating and time consuming.
Now that I've had my minute to rant, I'm really, REALLY excited for Morgan to see this new trailer. I'm assuming that if he and his crew like it and see the possibilities then maybe we'll meet up and have lunch and discuss it when he's back in the states, I'm hoping anyway, but I guess I'll find out when my trailer is actually uploaded and when Morgan has a time to watch it and get back to me. I just hope I haven't kept him waiting too long-since in this world of hyper speed a few days can easily translate into a few weeks (not to mention I live in NYC where they say the New York minute is 7 seconds), but I think I've been given a little good fortune here and I really think that "Tools of the Trade" has a fighting chance.
To see the trailer for yourself visit: http://vimeo.com/kelleybrannon/videos
My name is Kelley Brannon. I will be leaving NYC in roughly four hours to continue production on my documentary feature "Tools of the Trade" which examines identity, consumerism, and culture in social media. I have been working on this project for the last six months or so and have been filming in NYC and Boston, but now I am taking the show on the road: I will be filming interviews and conversations across the US and Europe.
Wow this is great.I already watched the trailer. Thanks
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Thanks so much!
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