[IMC] Filmapalooza Hollywood, New Amsterdam "People's Pick" Awards, Backup Tips, and more

[48 Hour Film Project]

48 Hour Film Project Newsletter
January 2015
Editor: Brian Bowers

January 48HFP Newsletter

Take Our Survey For A Chance To Attend Filmapalooza For FREE

Hollywood, Here We Come!

New Amsterdam Vodka Lets The People Pick

Quick Tip: Room Tone

48HFP Video Gallery

Filmmaker Workflow And Backup Tips To Protect Your Films For Years To Come

Take our Survey TODAY for a Chance to Attend Filmapalooza for Free!

[1][jpeg]
We are conducting a survey, and your response is really important to us. In
fact, so much so, that if you take the survey, we will enter your name in a
very special drawing.  If you take the survey in the next 48 hours - your
name will be entered into a drawing for a FREE REGISTRATION TO FILMAPALOOZA
- good for this year OR next! This drawing will be done this Friday
(January 30th) at 3pm EST.  If you miss the deadline, never fear - there
are still other prizes to win. If you complete the survey before Monday,
Feb. 9, you will be in a drawing for FREE ENTRY TO THE 48 FOR YOUR TEAM.
We will draw 3 lucky winners.

Take the survey now at [2]https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/323VWCB for your
chance to win!

Hollywood, Here We Come!

By Flickr user: [3]raindog808 [4]CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Just one month from today, hundreds of filmmakers from  around the world
will converge upon Hollywood for this year's 48HFP [5]Filmapalooza! This
action-packed weekend is filled with movie screenings, workshops, parties,
networking, and more. Filmapalooza is open to ALL filmmakers, whether your
competed in last year's 48HFP or not. We already have over 350 filmmakers,
producers, and actors coming not just from the U.S., but also from places
like Buenos Aires, Geneva, Israel, Beijing, and even Melbourne.
Registration is still open, and we'd like to invite you to attend this
unparalleled filmmaker event.

February 26 – March 2, 2015

Save $85 by Registering by Monday, February 2nd


 If you haven't registered for Filmapalooza yet there's still time, but
you have to act fast. The regular registration deadline is coming up on
February 2nd--register before then to secure your spot and avoid paying the
late registration fee.

Registration fees, hotel information, and more can be found at
[6]http://www.48hourfilm.com/filmapalooza/

Schedule & Workshops
Highlights of the weekend include an opening reception on Thursday
afternoon, a comedy night on Friday evening, and our annual karaoke party
on Saturday. Screenings at the historic Chinese Theatres (formerly
Grauman's Chinese Theatre) - the one with the handprints - will be
happening throughout the day beginning on Thursday evening. We'll wrap up
the festival Sunday with our Keynote Speaker, Awards Screening and
Ceremony, and our final Awards party. Remember, the final events on Sunday
will go late into the evening, so you should plan on staying at least
through Monday morning.

A variety of workshops will also be available throughout the day on
Saturday. Topics will include a film finance workshop and a pitching to
Hollywood producers panel. Chris Huntley, Academy Award-winning software
developer and Vice President of Write Brothers Inc., will lead two writing
workshops: "Heroes, Villains, and Other Character Archetypes" and "Writing
Action-Packed and Character Driven Stories".

This Filmapalooza features plenty of great events that you're not going to
want to miss out on. Make sure you register today at
[7]http://www.48hourfilm.com/filmapalooza/.

What's Cool in Your Town?  Vote on the "It's Your Town" Films

[8]In the New Amsterdam Vodka and 48HFP's [9]"It's Your Town" invitational,
48HFP filmmakers in 26 different U.S. cities made films to celebrate those
things that make their cities cool - films that provide an insider's view
to the people and places that make a city different.

The city winners have been selected and the audience award judging is now
in your hands. Today is the launch of  the New Amsterdam & 48 Hour Film
Project "The People's Picks" Awards. Each city winning film from the "It's
Your Town" invitational is online at
[10]https://www.facebook.com/newamsterdamspirits/app_1382579798718410. Any
registered Facebook user can vote for their favorite "It's Your Town" film
(limit one vote per person per entry per day) between now and February 26th
at 11:59pm PST. The film with the most votes at the end of the contest will
win $2000.

Support your town and local filmmakers by going to
[11]https://www.facebook.com/newamsterdamspirits/app_1382579798718410 and
voting now. Feel free to share the links to your favorite films and
encourage other people to vote. Remember, the choice is in your hands!

We welcome New Amsterdam Vodka back for 2015, and look forward to
announcing the 2014 winners at Filmapalooza.

Quick Tip: Room Tone
When you're still on set, make sure you record several minutes of audio of
ambient noise, or room tone, from each location. Even with well-recorded
dialogue,  there is a noticable drop in the audio levels during times that
actors are not speaking. Loop the room tone as a separate audio track under
the dialogue to produce a more natural sound.

Photo by Tommy Ballard-Cincinnati, 2010

48HFP Video Gallery
In each newsletter we feature some of our top 48HFP films from all over the
world.  The films below were shot thousands of miles apart but will play
side by side on the silver screen of the historic Chinese Theatres in
Hollywood. These are just a small taste of the many great 48HFP films we'll
be screening at next month's Filmapalooza!

[12][jpeg]
"Thread" by Silver Bullet
Cape Town 48HFP, 2014

[13][jpeg]
"I, Charon" by Challenge Accepted
Seattle 48HFP, 2014

[14][jpeg]

"Destek Hatti" by Ucan Pizza Canavari
Istanbul 48HFP, 2014

Filmmaker workflow and backup tips to save your films for years to come

In the northern hemisphere we’re at a time of year that many filmmakers
dread--ice, snow, and cold weather leave many of us hibernating for the
winter. Poor weather and the post-holiday duldrums often mean less projects
are happening, leaving most people with a lot more freetime than they
normally have. Rather than hide out in your bedroom with Netflix, this
month is the perfect opportunity to make sure your backup systems are set
up to keep your data organized and protected during the busy months ahead.

Digital media management is like going to the dentist--nobody wants to even
talk about it, let alone do it, but it’s just as essential to the health of
your film business. Hopefully you’ve not yet had the experience of telling
an important client that the video from their once-in-a-lifetime event was
lost forever when your hard drive crashed, but the older your hardware gets
and the more data gets squeezed onto a drive there will inevitably come a
time when a drive finally bites the dust. It’s important that you have
other copies of that data so that work remains intact.

Backup plans for your data can be as complex and expensive as you like
(photographer Chase Jarvis outlines his incredibly thorough workflow
[15]here), but they don’t need to be. The most important thing is to have
some sort of workflow and backup system in place to protect files and data
for you and your clients. Below is a simple outline for a backup workflow
suitable for most amateurs and small production companies.

At the shoot

A strong workflow begins right at the shoot itself. Make sure you have
plenty of extra SD/CF cards for your equipment. Even though the cost has
come down considerably on cards that are 64G and higher, resist the urge to
squeeze your whole shoot onto one card. Something as simple as a bent pin
or moisture can render a card unusable, which at the very least means a
trip to the electronics store if you don’t have extra cards on hand. It’s a
better practice to use more smaller cards and swap them out on a regular
basis. Number each card and keep a log of what shots are on each of
them--if data on the card is corrupted after the fact then you’ll at least
know what was on the card. From there you can decide if it’s better to
shoot those scenes again, try to recover data from the card, or just nix
those scenes and move on.

Immediately after the shoot (or even on set if you have the personnel and
resources to devote to it) you should download the cards onto two separate
portable hard drives or a RAID dual drive. The most important thing is that
the data is redundant--meaning that you have more than one copy of the same
data. RAID drives will do this for you automatically--they are actually two
separate drives in one housing unit. Data you save is automatically written
to both drives at once, and the drives can usually be taken out so they can
be transported and stored separately. RAID drives are typically more
expensive than a standard hard drive, though you can get the same redundant
storage effect by downloading your cards onto two separate external
standard hard drives.From this point on you should make sure that your
redundant drives are transported and stored separately. This is one of the
most important pieces in a solid backup workflow, and the reason for using
redundant drives--if you’re in a car accident, your office burns down, or
some other catastrophe occurs, you still have another copy of the original
files on your redundant drive.

When purchasing your hard drives another thing to consider is SSD (solid
state drives) versus HDD (hard disk drives). HDD drives are more common and
what you typically see in most consumer external hard drives, desktops, and
laptops. These drives store your data using spinning platters and
magnetism. These drives have gotten to the point where you can purchase a
500G or larger drive very inexpensively. However because of the moving
parts there is a higher chance of drive failure--jostling the drive can
break the glass plates, or heat can warp the inner workings of them and
make them corrupt. SSD drives are a newer technology--they have no moving
parts inside, so there is less chance of a drive failing through normal
wear and tear. They also typically transfer data faster than a HDD, which
could be a factor if you regularly store and transfer huge amounts of data.
SSD drives are quite a bit pricier than HDD drives, and usually have less
storage space. There’s not a “right answer” as to which drive you should
get--do some research and decide which type will work best for the work
that you do.

At the office

At this point you should have just one of your drives that goes back to the
office with you. The other drive should be safely stored in a different
location and only retrieved when you actually need the backup. At this
point you’ll probably want to store a copy of the files on your computer or
local server. It’s good practice to copy the files that you’re going to
edit--that way if you need to start work over you still have the original
file locally and don’t need to go to your off-site backup.

However you store the files that you’re working on is up to you, but using
a media management software like Lightroom, Bridge, or Aperture can be a
huge help when it comes to culling through clips and stills. These programs
allow you to batch rename groups of files to make them easier to find
later, rate the different files (useful if you’ve done multiple takes of
shots), and also attach different keywords to clips to make them easier to
find later.

Make it automatic

One of the key components of a successful backup workflow is that it be
automatic. There are many tools available to automatically create off-site
backups of data “in the cloud.” Services such as [16]Carbonite,
[17]Rackspace, and [18]Amazon’s Web Services are all fairly inexpensive
ways to back up large amounts of data. They can be set up to backup
specific folders or your whole computer on a regular basis. If you ever do
have a drive or machine fail, it’s very easy to retrieve the backed up data
on to another machine. However services like this may not be practical if
you deal with a large supply of data that changes regularly--backing up
large files eats up a lot of your internet bandwith and can be
unrealistically slow to back up if you have a slower internet connection.
Mac users can easily set up the built in Time Machine feature to back up to
an external drive, and there are similar services for PC users. These will
back up your files to external hard drives, but again this is only truly
effective if you’re making redundant copies of those files as well and
storing them in a separate location. For filmmakers that don’t deal with
large amounts of data regularly, [19]Dropbox is a dead simple solution--you
can get up to 2G of storage for free, and easily drag files in to your
Dropbox folder to be uploaded to cloud storage to save or even share with
clients and co-workers.

Yearly Maintenance

If you’ve already got your backup system in place there are still some
“spring cleaning” tasks you should do on a yearly basis. Go through all of
your drives to make sure you have original files along with any edited
files, but extra copies of files beyond those can be deleted to free up
space on the drive. Older files on your computer that you’re not likely to
need in the foreseeable future can be moved to redundant external drives.
All of your hard drives should be given a “yearly checkup” using a utility
to  monitor  their Self-Monitoring Analysis Reporting Technology (SMART)
status . This will alert you of potential hard drive failures. Any drives
in question should be replaced and the data transferred to new drives.

Perfecting your backup workflow isn’t the most exciting part of being a
filmmaker, but it’s essential to protect your films for years to come. Do
you have a workflow or backup tip? Share it on our [20]Facebook page.

Get Social!
[21] [png]          [22] [png]           [23] [png]

View web version

References

1. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/323VWCB
2. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/323VWCB
3. http://%20http://flickr.com/people/raindog808/
4. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0
5. http://filmapalooza.org/
6. http://www.48hourfilm.com/filmapalooza/
7. http://www.48hourfilm.com/filmapalooza/
8. https://www.facebook.com/newamsterdamspirits/app_1382579798718410
9. http://48hourfilm.com/itsyourtown/
10. https://www.facebook.com/newamsterdamspirits/app_1382579798718410
11. https://www.facebook.com/newamsterdamspirits/app_1382579798718410
12. http://vimeo.com/110874605
13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qiciP2ysUs
14. http://vimeo.com/112570430
15. http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2010/06/workflow-and-backup-for-photo-video/
16. http://www.carbonite.com/
17. http://www.rackspace.com/
18. http://aws.amazon.com/backup-recovery/
19. https://www.dropbox.com/
20. https://www.facebook.com/48hourfilmproject
21. http://www.facebook.com/48hourfilmproject
22. http://twitter.com/48hourfilmproj
23. http://www.youtube.com/user/48hourfilm

This message was sent to imc at ucimc.org from:
48 Hour Film Project | markandliz at 48hourfilm.com | 48 Hour Film Project | PO Box 40008
 | Washington, DC 20016

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