Reminder: Freelancer Spring Party Tonight!

To The Freelance Masses,

Leftfield Pictures & Nick Budabin Present:

Spring Fling 2009!!!

After a looooong winter, Spring is finally in the air and we’re all ready to celebrate.

So come out tomorrow night, have a few drinks, hook up with some old pals, meet some new ones, and help us kick off spring right.

What: TV Happy Hour

When: Tomorrow Night, Wednesday, April 29th at 6:30pm - ????

Where: Taj Lounge
48 W. 21st Street, Between 5th and 6th Avenues
http://www.tajlounge.com/

Who: You and your TV peeps

Drink Specials: $4 beers and $6 Well Drinks from 6:30-9!!!

Why: Because at the bar we're all equals and Leftfield Pictures prides itself on pairing freelancers with great jobs. So not only will you get to make new TV friends, you may get a gig because of it!

NY: Double-Taxing The Self-Employeed

A bill discussed at the NYCity Council yesterday involved the creation of an "Unincorporated Business Tax", which is a DOUBLE TAX ON SELF EMPLOYMENT. We must fight the U.B.T. in order to maintain any standard of living outtside the (seemingly failing) corporate/wall street machine in NYC. Cry as some might, the economic down turn has made things even worse for those of us whom the economy is always uncertain: the creative freelancers.

Find out how you can help: www.freelancersunion.org

Introducing Keif Roberts, DP / Editor

Equally talented at story writing and with a lens, Keif has agreeded to work on my dotUS directorial debut: A Transparent Mind.

In his own words:
"From Queens, New Yawk. I am a filmmaker living in New York City. For over a year I have been working as a Shooter/Editor for an internet food network called Devour.tv and have worked with some great chefs and restaurant people, but the company is teetering on the edge of extinction, so I'm looking for work. I enjoy good films, non-fiction books, and dislike pretentious people."

Keif's demo reel can be seen on Vimeo.

Copyright Basics - The Video!

The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) has put together an animated educational video that "teaches the basics of copyright." I see this as a great resource for documentary filmmakers who are dealing with questions when it comes to archival, fair-use etc: check it out!

WOYP April Updates

What's On Your Plate? premiere:
Seattle International Film Festival!

Seattle friends, please join Director Catherine Gund and be among the first to see the film. And if you know folks in the area, please spread the word.

Seattle International Film Festival
June 12, 2009
(for more info click here)

For those in the New York area, please join us for your choice of outdoor or indoor premiere!

BAM Cinemafest/
Opening Night - Afro Punk Festival
June 27, 2009
Join the filmmakers and folks featured in the film
for an outdoor festival in Fort Greene Park
Food, music and family activities all afternoon
Screening of the film at dusk
(check out the line-up here)

BAM Afro-Punk Festival, July 7th, 2009
(check online closer to the date)

Also, Sadie, Safiyah and Catherine will show clips and answer questions along with Nhumi and Caleb at the
Brooklyn Food Conference
May 2, 2009
(for more info click here)

NAB 2009

Too many new exciting things happening to be able to talk about just one! Among the top highlights (at least for me) is the incredible number of products and announcements of cross-platform compatibility between AVID and FINAL CUT PRO. EditShare and Automatic Duck are offering software to "simplify and streamline" FCP and Avid.
It is certainly an interesting year for AVID, as they launched their new public identity yesterday (which looks fantastic by the way) and have certified FCP for their ISIS storage solutions. Hey guys, take a lesson from Media100 and offer some native timeline integration already!

More to come as I sort out my thoughts!

New Media 100 Systems

Although I've only used one of these systems a long, long time ago, Media 100 is (almost surprisingly) still around and updating.

Paging through the new features, I found that Media 100 now supports the Final Cut XML Interchange. Meaning your M100 projects can now not only interact with FCP but also any of the Studio Applications (read: DVD Studio, Motion, Shake, etc.).

For what it's worth: Bravo Media 100. I see this as a great move on the part of Media 100, if only to keep their already fringe product. The greater implication here is a movement towards a platform free editing world. Imagine a workplace in which editors can use what ever _interface_ they want whilst not having tied the hands of the entire project / series work flow? Possibly a world in which your assistant (who's young and eagerly obsessed with Final Cut Pro) can log, capture and string out on their trendy new MacBook and hand over a drive and project full compatible with your beloved Avid Media Composer? It would bring back a world in which media was media. No matter where I started I can always toss my "reels" on your edit system and make last minute changes before the online.

Would this not solve so many issues having native compatibility (no more over priced Automatic Duck / 3rd party solutions that limit this feature to the privilaged) but opens the possiblity of workflows we've yet to imagine.

ATM Updates

For those who haven't heard yet, I will be directing the short dark-comedy-romance short film "A Transparent Mind." for the dotUS project. Things have really geared up right before the holiday weekend!

The piece is a duet, and Ron Moreno has dedicated his talents for the roll of "Tom". We held a casting session about a week and half ago for the roll of "Sally," in which I had the pleasure of meeting a number of talented and lovely actors. Look for announcements next week!

Paul Docherty and I have begun working on a camera test for the optical effects. So the holiday weekend will be filled with lots of doodling on my part to prepare!

dotUS prevails.

_pH

Fun Pre-Lunch Updates

Found this promotional tool for the new terminator movie: www.skynetresearch.com
I was pointed to it through a "blog" that was complaining about 'strange things' happening to their hardware after using Skynet products.

How fun!

So I made a big boo-boo. Thought the Bob Ross was tonight, when in fact it was last night. Sorry Misha!