Movie progress, another video project, and webcam time

I’ve started the second draft of the screenplay.  NOW I’m much more happy with things – the first 1/2 or so was pretty standard romantic comedy stuff.  You know, the characters get to know each other, a little build up, and they start making that connection.  Problem is, it was pretty standard stuff after that too.  No surprises, if someone else wrote it, I would have already guessed the ending 10 minutes into the movie.

Not anymore 🙂

The second draft isn’t done, but the change to my outline make it much more interesting, and much more worth doing the project (not that we were planning on canceling it anyway – the director had looked at the 12 page start, and greenlighted it right there on the spot.  The concept was valid, so we were going to do it.)   

From begining to end, the first draft took 9 days to write.  Not bad really.  The second draft will take considerably less – I know the begining, the end, and the twist in the middle.  The first draft – well, I knew the begining, the middle… and the end was seriously anemic. 

Damn this is gonna be FUN!

I’ve got another video project I’m working on now too.  A friend is running for Wichita Mayor.  So, I’m donating a little time to pull off an interesting twist on things.  Granted, this would be better as a paying gig, but, I’m doing this as a support for someone I think can do a good job.  Whenever it’s done, I’ll publish a link to it.

I finally have access to a working Webcam.  Too bad it actually sucks quite a bit – but my niece Erin and I had fun with it, and I made myself a new profile picture.  Woo.  My longer term plan is to get things “just so” and start an infrequent podcast on tech stuff.  Basically something short and sweet each week that lets me continue to play with my editing and composition skills.  For that matter – here’s a quick sample, Erin trying to sell an old guy:

Then my profile pic for contrast:

Same lighting, same settings, etc.  I just did a little post-production work in Photoshop :-)  Amazing what you can do by adjusting the contrast level, and adding a fake light (which looks pretty good, though you can spot an error in it on the background behind my left shoulder).  Having something to play with lets you learn new techniques regardless of if you have a real project going on.  You can never have you skills too polished, and you can never let yourself get rusty 🙂

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