12 movies in 12 months...ideally.

I had another blog about halfway done with catty comments and all that fun blogger stuff that people come to expect when I decided to write this one instead. I was talking with my mother about blogs (welcome to my world) and during this talk I mentioned that certain bloggers give themselves goals to achieve. Specifically I mentioned the "so many cakes" blog which aimed to make a cake a week for a year. This got me thinking about my 12 in 12 project and that it was at it's halfway mark.

Friends of mine that read this blog have probably heard me ramble on about this project plenty of times and in their cases just scroll down a bit I will get into new information.

For the unfamiliar people who get ahold of this I will break down what the 12 in 12 project is and is not. It is not in anyway inspired by Glenn Beck though I realize it sounds that way. The full title is

12 in 12 Under 12 in 2012

The idea of the project is to make one short video every month for 12 months. The "under 12" part of the name was a self imposed idea to make any videos under 12 minutes in length since I felt any longer and they would just drag on. I also set a rule that videos couldn't be shorter than about 3 minutes since I felt that would be cheating.

I went over further rules in the following video:

As seen in the video I encouraged others to get involved as well. That was the first train to just go right off the tracks. An infant sized handful of others seemed interested in also taking up the gauntlet but none followed through.

I am not surprised at the lack of interest. People I know in person who I asked to get involved have other things on their plate or are not interested in the idea. People I know online were probably otherwise weary of a relative unknown asking them to take on a project for no reward. So I knew in the back of my head that I may be the only one doing this.

As such I outlined rules mostly for myself. I did this to have a more strict structure to what I made. If I didn't this I would have gone to the pet shelter and made 12 cat videos with an adopted shorthair with one leg. I know I would do this, my laziness is legendary and we will touch on that soon.

Although the folks who I asked to make videos couldn't do it several offered to help however possible. Some were more helpful than others. I had several offer video ideas and were willing to be in one thing or another. Unfortunately a month only being  month schedules tend to conflict, it happens and I don't blame anyone for it. Actually I do blame them, angrily under my breath each time I see them and curse their very soul with voodoo, and they know what's coming. Those who did and do help me, and as such are safe from voodoo, still are much appreciated and I would probably be lost without you. I will thank you individually later in the blog.

Another rule I gave myself that I didn't state is that I wanted all of the videos to be 100% original material. Which is to say not having copyrighted material in any part of the video. This served two purposes. A) it helped to explore creative solutions to scoring videos. It's easy to just put a Jay-z song in a video, its difficult to come up with a viable alternative. B.) Anything owned by someone else puts my videos at risk of being flagged and possibly removed.

If I knew what that said I would be pretty annoyed at seeing it on my video.

Some ideas friends had, like a creative lip sync to a popular song, were shut down as a result of this. For the most part, however, this hasn't been an issue.

Now since I am half way through a progress report is in order. I figure month by month is best, I take each months film a say a bit about them and where I intend to go.

January : Saving Christmas: A Man, A Card and Their Journey

This movie came to be in late January. Something that has happened far too often for my liking is I get lazy or uninspired and can't come up with a movie idea, or at least one I can film easily. This one happened pretty much as is seen in the video. I was walking to work one day and found this card with a check and realized A) i should find the house and give it to the people and B) this would make a good movie. Priorities people! The minute I got to work I filmed the intro and Jordan's interview. After I got to the house and it was abandoned I still made the calls. Schedules got in the way of most of them but still got a good response and all the people involved helped it look more pro.

I should say here that the idea has and will continue to be quantity over quality. I knew and know that what I put out will not always (or ever I suppose to some...jerks). I was happy with this movie, there are parts that I cringe at, mostly editing errors. A big part of this was to get better at filming things and editing, and a subject like this helped.

Sidenote: I actually had to dispute a copyright clame on this video despite all the music being made with loops and garage band. Madness!

Febuary: Sock it to Em'

This video represented an issue I brought up early and will come up in the next video, scheduling. This video came about because I bought a set of rock em sock em robots on sale and thought that it would be a funny idea to make a rags to riches boxing movie. Most of the month passed and I realized I wasn't going to be able to make other ideas. I intended to get other people to do the voices but again...schedules. People are busy...people. I was happy with how this silly little movie came out. I got some nice comments from people for it. So as much of a throwaway as it was it was fun to do. Not much to say about it though...so

March: Play Death

This was the type of movie I intended to make when I first thought of the project. Stop motion is big love of mine and I wanted to experiment with it as soon as I could. Playdoh is not the most resilient of substances and it caused some issues. Also stop motion is hard man. Some shots lingered too long so not enough and other issues made from an amateur film maker with limited time. Also I should say this here I film these movies with my phone. An iphone4 specifically is used in all the movies except for the first which uses a hand held camera whose computer hook ups are lost. I will end up with wildly different aspect ratios with certain shots which looks crappy. Another problem is filming in hd (or faux hd) the videos have huge file sizes. So unloading all the scenes for the first movie was giving me 20-30gig file sizes for the finished products. I had to reduce the file sizes in final cut and I get odd glitches. Something I started with this movie was to edit everything separately. That way i could reduce the individual movies and glitches occurred less often..somehow. It's magic i guess.

April* - SWHF - Cocaine Cowboys

Note the asterisk by April, this video was late. The video was uploaded on may 19th. About midway through April I was working on a documentary about shaving a mustache I had not shaved off for 18 months at that point. Its the kind of silly film idea I love to work on. The intent was to have people talk about mustaches and have that interspersed with my last day of mustache hood. Through no fault but my own those interviews weren't done. But I was still working on it to try and make it work. However about this time I tried to upgrade my computer memory and in doing this my computer wouldn't turn back on. So with other things lingering around in the ether I wasn't able to get my computer fixed until late April. This coupled with me gearing up for a week long excursion to Orlando led to the mustache movie being scrapped. Though the trip and a badly put together documentary would soon join each other in the next months entry.

As for the actual movie that I did make for april, this is a music video for my friend's rap group sea world high fashion (formerly sea world bitches). Making a music video for them is appropriate since such a video was the first thing I uploaded on youtube channel I made for the intention of seriously making movies. A big part of why I did this project and wanted to get into film in general was me wanting to get as many people as I could involved in making something. For this movie it was very successful. We had an idea planned, I filmed it and Dillon (the reason what for travel) actually edited. It's a silly video sure and I will cover it and it's companion music videos in another entry...probably
May - The Magic of Travel

The reason we went to Orlando was to meet my old friend and Austin's (my travel buddy) brother Dillon. Ever the opportunist I figured it would be appropriate to try and throw together some sort of travel vlog in blatant disregard of my rules. I tried to somewhat justify it to myself by thinking of it as a travel documentary, but it was a vlog.

I'm honestly not happy with the final product. A combination of lack of footage along with wanting to get this out before the end of the month left me with than a less than stellar product. In short: the trip was fun but the movie resulting from said trip was not.

June - Fast Car Dark Road ...you know

This is an unofficial music video making two so far for the project. In my personal goals for this thing I made a mental note to not just make a bunch of music videos. My goal is to make at least a few narrative films as part of the project and since I am no Spike Jonze by a long shot the videos I make will not tell a very cohesive narrative story.

Though as I said before working together was a goal and this helped me do this. This also helped me use another technique: recycling unused footage. The actual footage we shot for this video actually runs out right after the first chorus. I was forced to scramble the jets and assemble the rest of the footage from what i had lying around on my hard drive. The backwards car shot is leftover from my christmas movie and the walking shot was from a trashed idea I had for another film which I won't disclose incase I reshoot and reuse it. Those and a few other shots help put together a slightly more cohesive product. The final video is not exactly what we had in mind, hence the unofficial title but it is close enough to be an official unofficial product.

July - ????


Yes here we are at the ass end of July and I have to show...nothing. It is likely the movie I make for July will be either A.) released at the end and rushed or B) Released at the beginning of August and still probably a little rushed.

This project has taught me a lesson about time management and as bad as it seems now, had I not imposed goals all I would have is 12 unfinished movies sitting on a hard drive. Would they be better than what I did release? Maybe. In the end though that's not the point of this. If I make a good movie that is awesome but if at the end I at least proved that I could finish something it bodes well for when I want to make a movie and have a more loose schedule that it might actually get done. This my friends is process I promise you.