Author: Ioannis Batsios

12

This past weekend I got the opportunity to work with Raleigh filmmaker Nic Beery on the set of his latest short film 12. After witnessing the performances and viewing the dailies, I’m pretty excited about the possibilities of this piece.  Made from a two page script and taking only two days to shoot, there’s surprisingly a lot going on in this film. Not only do I believe this will be a festival worthy piece, but I think it will open some doors for future work in the Raleigh area. I’m also excited about the new leads for extremely talented cast and crew members for when I start getting my films off the ground and running.

Cast & Crew:

Nic Beery — Director / Producer / Writer / Editor

Samir Arora — Line Producer

Stephen van Vuren — Director of Photography

Ismail Abdelkhalek — Key Grip / Makeup / Special Effects / Actor

Piper Kessler — Audio

Ted Mott — Audio

Jason Rizzo — Production Assistant / Photographer

Lani Simeona — Craft Services

Jill Deweese-Frank — Craft Services

Melissa Lozoff — Actor

Tony Hughes — Actor

Diana Chiritescu — Actor

William Lilly — Actor

Wanda Lilly — Baby Wrangler

A couple of stills:



Melissa

Tony

Samir

Stephen, Nic, Diana & Super Duper Jib Arm

Closer look at jib arm. Patent pending.

Media streaming

I used to stream all of my media from my computer to my TV using Windows Media Player 11 when I had Windows XP. It was incredibly easy and straight forward. Then I upgraded to Windows 7 and Windows Media Player 12, and after a lot of finagling, I finally got it to work. Then came the upgrade to 64 bit. Now I can’t get it to work at all and I know I’ve done the exact same steps. In fact, it was working but for some reason it just stopped. I tried the forums and despite the different offers of fixes nothing worked. So I gave up and ran across a free media server called TVersity. Incredibly simple to set up and use. I had it done within ten minutes. Now, along with the video files, the music and photo files that never worked with WMP12 work with this. I highly recommend it if you’re as frustrated with WMP12 as I am.

If you’re looking to find a way to stream Hulu, Comedy Central, YouTube, etc., etc., get PlayOn by Media Mall. Another great program that I highly recommend. It’s $20, but worth it. Especially when you go to their plugin page and add other great sites like Vimeo, 66stage, Sci Fi and many others.

“I love your frame”

“I love your frame,” isn’t something you want to hear when turning in a piece of artwork, but that’s the comment I received today when I turned my photos in for this Friday’s Spring for Art fundraiser in downtown Winston-Salem. If anyone is in the area and enjoys art, you might want to come out. It’s $50 for non-members.

I recently finished a major computer upgrade from 32 to 64 bit processing. Of course, it didn’t go without hitches. The first problem I had was figuring out how to make a raid system. My motherboard has specific SATA slots for it and trying to fit six hard drives and two optical drives isn’t easy even with an over-sized computer case. Fortunately, after harassing my friend for technical advice, I was able to overcome the problems and now have a RAID 5 system in place. My next problem was with Windows 7. I wasn’t aware that if you make changes to your computer it won’t let you use the product key to register because it thinks it’s on a different computer. After an hour-long phone conversation with a customer service rep, I was able to get another product key and register Windows 7 64 bit. After that, I thought I was free and clear, but my computer was acting very strange. It was taking over ten to fifteen minutes to reboot and sometimes it wouldn’t reboot at all. I finally diagnosed the problem that it was reading a different version of Windows on my old hard drive and was merging the two together forcing the long reboot. I had forgotten to format the hard drive because I was on the phone with the customer service rep. So I wiped the hard drive, reinstalled Windows 7 and was good to go.

I love gardens!

I have to admit, before I moved to North Carolina, I had no interest in gardening. Well, I still don’t, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good one when I see it. Nice gardens in Michigan are few and far between, but down here in the south with nice weather for most of the year, you can really do a lot to create and maintain a nice garden. That’s why most people I’ve met down here have really nice gardens. Some, like my friends Keith and Wayne, have spectacular gardens. So I decided to capture it in a video.

What’s the most impressive about their garden is that they did it themselves. From the waterfall to the bird house to the zen-station, everything was hand-built by them. I go gaga every time I see their waterfall. If I lived there, I’d have to move my office outside to take full advantage of it.

Anyway, check out the video here:

Steps to installing a new OS in your computer

To take full advantage of the new Adobe CS5 suite, I’m about to install a new 64 bit Windows 7 into my computer to replace the 32 bit in it now and I’d thought I’d share some steps with everyone in case you ever wanted to do it yourself. Remember, I’m an amateur, but I think I have a firm enough handle on how to do it after doing it several times in the past two years. First, I’m going to give you the quick list and then I’m going to elaborate on them.

  • Back up everything!
  • Make a list of all your programs and make sure you have all the info you need to reload them.
  • Deactivate all of your programs.
  • Some programs (such as iTunes) use other files. Make sure you place those files in the same hard drive; i.e. if iTunes uses files from the F drive, make sure you put files back into the F drive. Make the list.
  • If switching from 32 to 64 bit OS, take full advantage by adding more RAM. Most 32 bit systems can only use 3-4 GB of RAM. 64 can take advantage of 16 GB.
  • Check to make sure you’re happy with you memory. Now is the time to add more if you’re not.
  • I repeat: back up everything!

The first step is self-explanatory. You should be backing up everything already, but you really need to do so if you plan on uploading a new OS.

Not only should you make the list of programs you use, but make sure they’ll work in 64 bit. Most, but not all programs, work in 64 bit and there may be some device drivers that you won’t be able to use either; e.g. printers, scanners, etc. may not work with 64 bit systems. Check to make sure first. You don’t want to learn afterwords that you can’t use your favorite printer if you need it.

I always forget to deactivate my programs before I restore my computer. You’d think because you’ve already paid for the program and you have a hard copy of it that you already own it and the program will know it’s you. Think again. Once the serial number is programmed into the computer to activate the program, you can’t enter it again, even if it’s by the same user. Companies work hard to prevent pirating of their programs and this is one of the ways that make it difficult to run duplicate copies from one disc. So you need to open up the program and search for the deactivate button usually found underneath the help tab. Remember to do it for all of your programs. When I forget to do this, I have to contact the company to verify that it’s me and this can be a time-consuming process.

If I’m going to go through the trouble and upgrade my OS, I might as well upgrade my computer at the same time. I recently built my computer so I know I have the top end of most hardware, but I need more RAM and I need more memory. Now’s the time to do it.

You don’t want to run a 64 bit system with 4 GB when you can run it with more. I only have 4 slots for RAM so I can only go up to 8 GB. If you have more room, I recommend filling every slot. Remember, RAM is cheap and hard drives are cheap so fill it up!

And since I have my computer open, I might as well add more memory. This step is probably the most difficult for me. I happen to have four hard drives already and I’m about to add three more. Working with video consumes lots of memory so I’m constantly running out and moving files here and there. I don’t have any tips to make this easier, just remember that if you go play a song or open a word file from a program and it won’t open, it’s because it’s probably in a different hard drive then it used to be in. So you’ll have to go and search. If you have thousands of songs and hundreds of movies like I do, it’s probably best to make sure they stay in the same drive.

Before you begin to swap out OS, don’t forget to back up everything! It pays to check and recheck everything, especially since more and more people use their computers for personal things.

This is just a list I made to help me. You may want to (and I highly recommend that you do) check with a computer expert before you do this. You could lose everything if not done properly. I didn’t learn these things on my own. I contacted my computer expert first as well and I have had a subscription to Maximum PC for the past three years and it’s helped me learn a lot in that time.

If anyone has anymore suggestions or comments or I’m just completely wrong about something, please let me know.

The dotMatrix scene in Greensboro, North Carolina

Last night, I got the pleasure to film another dotMatrix show, the fourth one I’ve done so far. It’s amazing the talent DMP creator Sean Coon has found in such a small area. With all kinds of musical acts ranging from rock (Sorry about Dresden), rockabilly (The Tremors), alternative (Citified), hip hop (Mr. Rozzi), spoken word (Universal Mathematics), bluegrass (Old Stone Revue), folk (Bruce Piephoff), local legends (Jim Avett), and just plain weird, but awesome, (Janik) you never know what kind of great music you’re bound to hear at a dotMatrix concert. It kind of reminds me of the music scene I left in Detroit, renowned for its music with featured acts that would become national ones like Eminem, the White Stripes, Obie Trice, Kid Rock, Taproot, etc., etc., and is twice the size of the Greensboro area. I wouldn’t be surprised to see several dmp acts go national.

Not only is Sean able to get great musicians to play for free, he’s able to get great sound engineers, photographers and filmmakers to document the event. Every show Sean has produced comes with a live album, tons of press photos and a video for the musicians to use however they’d like. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved, especially the fans that don’t even have to pay to see them. Did I forget to mention it’s free? So if you haven’t taken the opportunity to get involved by either performing, capturing or just being there, make sure you do. Otherwise, you’ll be missing the scene going on right beneath your feet.

Here are some photos from last nights “Get the Folk Out!” show:

I’m Robert Rodriquez.

Yes, I’m Robert Rodriquez. Well, not really, but we do share one similarity, and it’s not me making a $7,000 film that leads to a career making movies that routinely generate $200,000,000. The similarity is that we’ve both donated our bodies to science to raise money for our first features.

Recently, I’ve discovered a subculture in which people become “lab rats” to make money. Now, I’d read about it in Rodriquez’s own biography Rebel Without a Crew, but I never seriously thought about it. I thought it was some fringe medical lab, barely legal, setting up shops in ghettos taking advantage of poor people. Boy, was I wrong. These clinics are completely legit with state of the art facilities. More importantly, they pay very well.  Of course, what is well is relative, but this pays better than any job I’ve ever worked and I’ve had many many jobs. Besides, not having a boss or doing the 9-5 thing is rewarding in of itself. I’m currently in a month-long study that is going to pay me $4,600 when I’m finished. That’s a grand a week and I’ve never made a grand a week.

There are some caveats to getting that money and every study is different. The one I’m in, I have to take three pills every morning at the same time and I’m not allowed to smoke, drink alcohol, have caffeine or any kind of medication including aspirin. My study also includes two weeks of overnight stays in which my meals are given to us at specific times and we regularly have to give blood and urine samples. One day I had to give twelve urine samples and had blood drawn twelve times. But they do try to make the stays as pleasant as possible. They have three high-definitions TVs, DVD player, X box, wi-fi, a ping-pong table and a pool table. In addition to all the fun activities they offer, I’ve met some really cool people. A couple of which I’m sure I’ll be good friends with for long after the study is over.

Now, since I’m enjoying it so much, I decided to do some investigating and see where more clinics are and how do I get into them. I found a really cool site featuring a list of clinics offering studies along with a blog about them. Just another lab rat is the website which lists studies going on around the country (including Hawaii!) and Thoughts of a lab rat is the blog founded by the same creator. I’m really looking forward to getting into about seven or eight of them within the next year and a half and being able to save about $25,000-$35,000 to make a feature. That’s over three times the amount Rodriquez needed to make El Mariachi and that turned out pretty well for him.

I know some people may think I’m crazy (including my girlfriend) about not worrying about the long-term effects these drugs may have on my body. Well, I drink a lot of beer, eat a lot of red meat, don’t exercise and I’m overweight; the pills are the least of my worries. The medicine we’re given has passed the animal testing stage and if it’s good enough for animals, then it’s good enough for me. So if you’re looking to make some extra money, check out Just another lab rat and see if there’s something in there for you. Who knows, maybe I’ll see you at a clinic ; ).

Garden fun.

I just spent the last three hours video taping my friend’s amazing backyard. I probably won’t get the video done until next weekend as I have one more week-long visit to the clinic. (More about the clinic coming in the next blog.) I have about a half-dozen friends with amazing gardens and I’d like to capture them all. I love watching HGTV and getting all kinds of inspirational ideas about gardening and homes. I’d like to add a macro lens sometime in the near future so I can get really close to animal and plant life. If anyone has any suggestions of a quality macro lens, please let me know.

I’m off to do some editing, but here’s some samples from the garden.

Website Design

I’ve just spent most of the past two days working on a new website and I don’t feel like I’m any further along then I was. Currently, you can check out my website here, but I’m trying to build a new one with either WordPress or html5. I wish I knew website design was going to be so big while I was going to school. I really enjoy it, but sometimes I’m afraid I’ll never have a great looking site like this.

So I’m done for the day. Getting ready for a party. Au revoir.

Hello world!

Hello. I plan on talking about everything and anything that I want to. Mostly about films, filmmaking, music, and photography.

I’m still trying to work out the kinks in WordPress. I’ve been told by many people it’s great and most of the sites I enjoy are WordPress sites.

On a side note, I just saw Kick-Ass today and it’s a must see. Not for the squeamish though.