Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 17:26 Interesting article in the NYT about a class action lawsuit about intern's from the fantastic film "Black Swan" against Fox Searchlight Productions. I really think the article speaks for itself along with this quote.
“ ‘Black Swan’ had more than $300 million in revenues. If they paid us, it wouldn’t make a big difference to them, but it would make a huge difference to us.”
Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 9:13 I come across various shorts all the time. Things that I feel need to be spread around a bit if for nothing else that they are great examples of short films. There will be no rhyme or reason to these shorts just that I liked them for what ever reason.
So the First one I have for you all is this fine little one. "The Stampede" Music video for the band Biting Elbows. Directed by Ilya Naishuller which I believe is in the band. One of the things I like is how it's all POV with what I'm going to assume is go pro camera. A little Post work makes this film sci-fi which is almost always a plus in my book.
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 14:36 Several programs that I use all the time. One that I can honestly say has saved my bacon far more then others and if you been reading any film making blogs for any length of time you've heard of it before in the past.
It's a extremely powerful video and audio converter. Much like Compressor. The one big difference is that it is far faster then compressor. I can't tell you exactly why that may be the case all I can speak from is my personal experience. I am also only speaking about Compressor 3.5 I have not upgraded to compressor 4 so this could be far different for those who have.
Biggest thing for me with Compressor is that is speedy to set up and get compressing or doing transcoding on files. I currently edit mainly in Final Cut Pro (FCP) and I've always found that with FCP you get a better file if I export the sequence at the same codec it was edited in then transcoding to a deliverable format, more often then not H.264
Back when I did a video podcast every week MPEG was what I used to convert everything into the proper MPEG-4 format that the files needed to be so that they would playback on iPods & iPhones. There have even been a few times that I've been able to use it in weird ways.
People often say that VLC is the swiss army knife of playback for me MPEG is my go to format if I can't play something back. There are certain proprietary formats that VLC just for what ever reason can't handle. There have been many times a friend or colleuge can;t deal with a video file and I tell them just to try it in MPEG** and almost always fixes the problem if not I have to put on my DIT harness and go to town.
What programs do you use as your swiss army knife? Let me know.
_**Perian needs to be installed for MPEG to be most effective._
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 17:51 Frist off. I'm not dead.
I've been working. Which is awesome.
Working has been quite the experience for me. I've been doing gig's mainly as a production assistant. For those of you that are a little unfamiliar with film terms the production assistants job is basically do what ever someone asks you to do. Often you get utter dirt for pay but it is enough to pay the bills provided that you get enough work. I've had the odd Camera Utility or DIT gig here and there. when they say you learn more your frist year out of school then your entire time in there is some truth to that for sure. I never knew a dam thing about RED camera's and now I've worked with both RED ONE and the RED EPIC. I learned how to properly DIT and LUTs.
Probably the most surprising (or least) thing of all is that I discovered that I really enjoy working in the camera department. It feels pretty natural for me and once I figured out the in's and outs thanks to a great 1st and 2nd AC from the feature I finished last month. I can do the job pretty darn well. Hoping for more gigs as that of the camera nature. Until then more and more of surpising people with my motorcycle.
Yeah I ride a motorcycle. Living in Center City Philly I don't have a place to park a car unless I wanted to pay 300 a month. So I have a motorcycle I ride that to the gigs. It can be sometimes a problem since often as a PA I have to make a runs to get little things, coffee, lunch, or the directors favorite smoothie. It's not bad and it gets you around the filmmaking experience or in the case of this week national broadcast news.
I do have some new projects that I am working on. Have had some producers bite on my feature which is very exciting. But honestly I Don't like to talk about upcoming projects before they happen just do to the amount of projects that could or could not happen. It's staggering.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 17:37 I have great news to announce Corbin very successfully played at the Balticon Sci-Fi and Fantasy Short film Festival. 3 screener copies of the film were given out as door prizes during the film festival. Their were Several panels in which I (Brent Weichsel) was on some of which have been made available online which I will post as they appear. So far only the Pitch Panel has made it’s way online (Link here).
Main reason I am typing up this post is the image you see below you
Corbin is a proud recipient of the PIFVA finishing fund grant. Corbin has been awarded 1,000 dollars to help with post production costs. Specifically this money was awarded to help with Color Correction and Sound issues. I speak on behalf of the crew in saying that were are greatly honored by this award. The only downside with this award is that we will be holding off of the festivals submissions of the film until this post work has been done. So stayed tuned.
Again I would like to thank everyone for all of their support during this time. I look forward to bringing the film to you all hopefully by summers end.
corbin, fundrasing, grant in Blog, film 
