Inventory emerges

I’ve been poring over the drive “momma”, 2 terabytes (5 years) of accumulated DOG development. I had this idea that the content was relatively organized, but it turns out – not so much. Sifting through the hoary once upon a time, catapulted over the ramparts of a disheveled memory palace. Not only was my impression of organization false, but I was chagrined to discover that the archive was incomplete.

Back in the day, I refrained from reorganizing because I was concerned about breaking links to my media, but FCP v7 seems to be smarter about finding files moved to new locations on the same volume. This is good, because I was itching to organize even if it meant slogging through the arduous relinking process. There are now dedicated directories for all the significant modalities of the project such as SCRIPTS, SOURCE, VERSIONS, NOTES, LEGAL, etc.

Now that “momma” is mostly tamed, I want to gather the rest of the DOG content from the 40 terabyte meta archive. Fortunately I updated and indexed this archive a couple of weeks back, so it’s now searchable. New discoveries will be sorted into the appropriate directories.

Using Fujiwara’s DiskCatalogMaker, I search the meta archive for “daughter of god”…

… and find two files that are not on “momma”. Other search terms related to the project – dog, steve, carmen, canada, fudip, uncle joe, christina, gerry – might unearth additional nuggets.

The next phase is to write a general description of each directory’s contents, how many files are there and if they are media, report the total file size / duration. For example, I’ve got movies of NYC’s Empire State Building at dawn. There are 30 shots and together they take 45 gb or approximately 7 minutes in 720P HD. With these thumbnail descriptions, I open neural wormholes for supra-luminal access to my content cosmos. 2 terrabytes (2000 gigabytes) is about 5 hours of 720p video. That’s not all that much, unless you need to remember where to find a specific 2 minutes or 20 seconds of it. What were you doing 3 hours, 34 minutes and 15 seconds ago? Huh?

Here’s the roster of high level stuff…

  • review and describe supplemental material or b roll (as above)
  • find every DOG analysis and publish on the blog for review
  • print a reference bible of compelling visual content for bb deployment,  supplement to standard index cards

… but I’ll also be getting low level with the sequences in the main FCP files, as described a couple of posts back…

  • identify and describe the main sequences.
  • brief analysis of unique component combinations with benefits and drawbacks, connections they suggest, etc.
  • identify the strongest alternate takes of Acts 1 and 2 and riff on what they might be good for

and preparing for the VFX uber marathon in the fall, once the final cut is complete.

  • (ongoing) revise the motion graphics and VFX roster
  • make placeholders for future media (text or graphics)
  • identify what VFX can be intelligently contracted to other artists

Credits and content (DVD) extras are also facilitated by a robust inventory. Lots of folks helped create the content and for the most part I have releases from everyone, but there are many peripheral people who deserve recognition. I’ll tag each element of content with the names now, and then harvest everyone later. It would be handy to do that with metadata, but not all my media files (aiff, jpg)  have that capability.

  • names of creators / contributors
  • content extra

DVD extras, for a 12 minute movie?! Heck yes. My first (modest budget) movie has been packed with lessons. Obviously, I am interested in the process as well as the product, hence all this blogging. The catchy theme song “Fucked Up Day in Paradise” or FUDIP was my first multi-track recording for public consumption. I produced several versions before I passed it to my mixer Ndong Essinga, who then made several more versions. It’s interesting to hear the evolution of the song, our choices along the way. I could cut an album with the 9 or 10 variants, along with incidental music that didn’t make the final version.

I think that’s the trick of this movie thing, to excel we’ve got to be paying careful attention. I want to squeeze the most intelligence out of the time and money I’ve invested. DOG may or may not be an Oscar winner or even a nominee, but it will be THE hyper jump for me, an artist who makes movies – if I learn.

There’s yet another argument against abdicating creative control. The decisions and audacious mistakes that inevitably follow are whole point. If I assign my project to an alien aesthetic, even if the mandango or mamasita is some kind of hot shot bad ass super success, I loose the lessons. I wouldn’t be developing my own voice which is certainly the reason for doing any of this crazy shit. I am here to make the movies that are unique to this dude, and when I do I’ll find a huge audience waiting, just for me… guarantee!

This entry was posted in Daughter of God, hardware, people, plan, production and post, real life, software, time, workflow and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply