As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely.
Louis CK
An interesting experiment and I’m glad it’s working. But as Anil Dash noted, for this to work you have to “start by being one of the greatest talents in the history of your craft.”
December 14th, 2011
Over the last few years I’ve neglected personal projects and almost solely focussed on other people’s work. Next year, I make more time for myself.
I’ve decided to set up a challenge for myself. Through the course of 2012, I will produce 52 “works”, one every week. These will mostly be animations, but might be anything from a photograph to woodwork to a smaller piece for a larger project. But these need to be self produced, not any client work.
I will post these here, but will also have a dedicated page on my site once I get this rolling. So keep an eye out. And if you notice me slacking, call me out on it!
December 12th, 2011
“You cannot eat exposure, nor pay your rent with it, nor buy health insurance with it, nor put it in an exposure bank for a rainy day. You need money for all of that. That is the trade – you trade your time and work for the client’s money. You both need something from the other. Exposure can be a byproduct of this transaction, but it should NEVER be the basis for it.”
– Scott Benson
December 9th, 2011
Post Haste is a simple app that started as a script for a post house I was working in. They needed a simple way to set up a project folder structure consistently for all the edit suites. I got to work in Apple Script, though quickly realized it was limiting; I opened up Xcode for the first time and got cracking. The response was great. Some people had some really great ideas for the app that would make it even better. Unfortunately, being a motion designer & video editor first, my coding skills were lacking to add the features I and others wanted to see in Post Haste.
Several months ago, I began a conversation with Jon Chappell, CEO of Digital Rebellion about Post Haste. A few tweets and emails later, and he was fast at work coding alphas of Post Haste 2.0.
From this point forward, all maintenance and future releases of Post Haste will be handled by Digital Rebellion. I am staying with the project as a co-project director with Jon.
So today, right now, you can get Post Haste 2.0 from Digital Rebellion’s site, still for free. Here’s some of the new features:
- 64-bit
- Multiple Template Support
- Edit and Create New Template In-App
- Live Preview of Project Name
- New Template Files Allow Easy Sharing of Templates
- Optional History for Fields to Remember Previous Entries, Such as Clients
- Folder Breaks for a More Robust Folder Structure
- Assign a Hotkey to Launch Post Haste (Requires FCP Maintenance Pack 1.3 or Higher)
This is a huge update and Jon’s done a fantastic job. If you have any questions about this release, or the future of Post Haste, feel free to contact me or Jon at Digital Rebellion.
Thank you so much for your support of Post Haste 1.0-1.1. The enthusiasm & support from the post community is what made it possible to develop the software in the first place. Now, it will go even farther in the hands of a talented developer.
September 21st, 2011
Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking at a breakout session for the MCA-I Madison Spring seminar. The topic was tapeless post-production workflow (specifically for FCP, but we did briefly discuss Avid & Premiere Pro). I promised everyone there I would post links to resources and some of the software we discussed in that session (and some we didn’t get to), so here it is:
Software:
Canon EOS Plugin – The official Canon plugin for Log & Transfer. Convoluted download process: Select Mac OSX, then click find “EOS MOVIE Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro Ver1.2″ in the list, and accept agreement.
Magic Bullet Grinder ($49) – Batch processing of DSLR footage, including proxies with timecode burn in.
5DtoRGB – Process DSLR footage with more control and bypass QuickTime.
5DDtoRGBB – (Unmentioned) Will launch multiple instances of 5DtoRGB for pseudo-batch processing.
Clipfinder 2.2 – Software to reconform FCP XML to RED proxies for passing to Color, among other advanced RED functions.
RED Final Cut Studio 3 Installer – Includes QuickTime codec, Log & Transfer plugin, and Color REDRAW plugin, as well as a useful whitepaper on RED workflow.
REDCine-X – 1st light color correction and transcoding of RED files.
Resources:
RED User Forums – (Unmentioned) Community of RED users, including posts from RED staff.
Inexpensive Archiving for Tapless Media – Post from Little Frog in High Def (Shane Ross) covering some LTO solutions he found at NAB2011.
FCP 7 Digital Workflows (PDF) – (Unmentioned) Straight from Apple, covers working in several formats, including REDCODE, P2, XDCAM, and AVC. Unfortunately, it does not cover DSLR footage. And for obvious reasons, only covers Apple software.
So there’s the things we went over, and some items that didn’t make it into the discussion in the alloted time. Feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions.
May 13th, 2011
It all started with this tweet:
Once I retweeted that, it elicited the following response:
April 4th, 2011
Just ran across this interesting Tumblog that reduces films to a barcode. The image shown here is from Inception. While I don’t know their exact process, it looks like they are essentially taking frames from the films (reduced to a tiny size, a couple pixels at most) and stacking them to fit into a 1280×480 image (top-bottom, left-right). The result is an interesting look at how color can vary over the course of a story—and contribute to the feel of that story.
February 28th, 2011
If you’re a motion designer, you’ll be interested in something new I’m helping with. A few of us are starting something called The Motion League. More details will come in the next couple weeks.
February 25th, 2011
I just updated Post Haste to version 1.1. This update introduces a few new features and some bug fixes. If you are unfamiliar with Post Haste, it is a Mac OS X application to set up and automatically rename a project folder template & project files. It was originally developed for an in-house solution to keeping projects organized. You can customize the template and add any files you would like. Any file with the name Template in it will be renamed based on information you enter in the main window, such as project number, client name, date, etc…
The primary new features are:
- Template names can now include prefixes & suffixes; ie, only the word “Template” is changed when creating the project. For example, you could use
Template_v1.aep, and it would be renamed along the lines 14237_Client_Project_v1.aep, keeping the v1 at the end.
- Folders can be renamed in template. Handy if you’ll be moving separate folders to different locations; ie,
Template_gfx, Template_sound…
- “Check for Updates…” added so you can be notified when new updates are available.
There are more features planned in future updates, mostly from user suggestions. If you have any feature requests, find any bugs, or have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Post Haste is completely free to use. No shareware or nagging dialogues. Though if you do find the application useful, donations are always welcome. Thanks for your support and patience while this update was developed!
January 25th, 2011
BG Renderer has officially hit version 2! I use this script daily, and this update is a must have. This time it comes in a basic and pro version. The basic version is very similar to version 1. However, the pro version has several feature improvements. These are the two that caught my eye right away:
- Render notifications through email, sms, Growl, or Prowl (for iPhone notifications, though Growl + Boxcar could be used as well).
- Render CS3 or CS4 comps in the CS5 render engine (if installed) to take advantage of 64-bit without having to update your project file.
Due to the massive amount of work that went into this update, Lloyd Alvarez made the tough decision to make BG Renderer a paid-license script (currently $4.99 for Basic and $19.99 for Pro, moving up to $14.99 & $29.99 respectively in a couple months). However, if you’ve used version 1, you know this script is worth every penny!
January 11th, 2011
