Saturday, January 21, 2006

Projects in development

Next week, Ant and I are going to meet with Harry the glassworker and discuss the documentary. We'll talk about how to approach the subject; how best to tape it; and if it's going to be feasible to produce an instructional video for potential sale.

Last week I showed my "Rail Trail" doc to some friends. They all seemed to enjoy it, especially the pacing and the music. After that, we watched a commercially produced video that was given to a friend as a gift.

We viewed it, and only a minute into it everybody started making comments about how boring it was. The subject (a boat tour of some local islands) should have been interesting, but there wasn't any audio whatsoever other than sparse narration. Apparently they used the exact script they recite on the boat while touring the islands, but when devoid of the simplist natural sounds or music it sounded completely dry and clinical.

I don't think "clinical" is a word that should pop into your head when viewing a movie about scenic islands and boating. Everyone commented upon the major difference between the two videos. Even though it's kind of sad to see someone pawning off such poorly executed work, it does encourage me to think that if they can sell something like that, all I need to do is work hard enough and I'll be able to successfully market my own work.

Anyway, besides the glass working doc, I'm going to shoot another "greenway" type doc when the weather warms up a bit. There's some interesting trails located nearby, only 20 minutes away. That'll make it easier to shoot additional footage as needed, as opposed to the "Rail Trail" shoot, which was a three-hour round trip from our home.

Yeah, although I'm reasonably committed to my art, I'm not going to waste a half-day driving and $30 of gas to shoot some filler video for my 13-minute documentary short.

After all, there's plenty of good subjects a lot closer to home.

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