Doculiciousness.
Since the economy is in the pooper, and going to the movies takes a big chunk out of the ol’ pocket book, Jeremey and I have decided to update our Netflix queue. We’ve loaded it with documentaries like it was our job (hmmm, maybe someday). Some are classics, like Hoop Dreams (which apparently anyone who’s anyone that shoots non-fiction has seen). Others are filled with fundamentalist zealotry, life-changing events, pop culture phenomenons, and the obligatory political conspiracy. I’m pretty psyched to jump into this endless tunnel of reality (would TruTV call it Actuality?). Our re-queuing occurred last week, and we’ve already zipped through the following:
… with Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson waiting patiently to be plopped into our DVD player.
We’ve got a line up that could potentially last all year, but alas, there’s more to do than just watch the docs. We’re getting a move on our own. And as always, more on that to come…
For some continued awesome doc-itude, here’s the trailer from an old Current TV co-worker, Brooke Sebold’s film Red Without Blue.
Bay Bridged
Judgement Day was awesome. How can you go wrong with epic heavy metal violin action? But another thing that was cool about the show was the group who put it on. The Bay Bridged is a blog/vlog/calendar dedicated to the Bay Area indie music scene. After the Sunday show at Cafe Du Nord, I checked out the site and was impressed by their depth of coverage. They have a weekly podcast that spotlights Bay Area bands, they feature local visual artists, and appear to be getting into video (which we like). It’s a great resource and I’m looking forward to checking in on it, definitely worth linking to. I’m also thinking that it could be fertile ground for future Make It Happen stories. So if you’re in the Bay Area looking for a show, head on over to The Bay Bridged to find out what’s going on.
…going on eight months back in the Bay and finally getting out of the house a little.
DIY Days
Abby and I just got back from the DIY Days event at Minna. We had to go because, you know DIY was in the name, which has me thinking a lot about the nature of that term, but I’ll save that for another post.
The event was put on by the Workbook Project and From Here to Awesome, and was sponsored by Current. It was hosted by Arin Crumley from Four Eyed Monster. The purpose was to bring independent filmmakers together for a one day event and get them talking about how to use the web for funding, marketing, and distribution.
Since we were once employed by one of the sponsors (Current), and now I work in social media (Seesmic), and Abby is involved in web marketing for Harper Collins; it follows that we might have some knowledge about the stated topic of the conference. It also follows that we might be able to apply that knowledge to our own film projects (Make It Happen and Mulch).
…But as anyone who reads this blog knows, or biggest hurdle has been funding. So learning about where the money comes from is what sparked my interest in DIY Days.
An interesting point to note is that we only found about the conference through a random web search about something else… which leads me to wonder why a conference that seems so perfect for us, would miss us. Then again, I guess it didn’t miss us because we found it eventually.
So did we get from there to awesome? What did we learn? Where does the money come from? Interestingly enough, we found out that we are way ahead of the game in the marketing department that is.
The main points:
Use social media, like our myspace and twitter accounts.
Blog about your project, your problems, and your victories to build an audience who is personally invested… And while you’re doing that, post additional content related to your film, like side videos (our vlogs) and stills… welcome to teamjaded.com
Put your media everywhere: like our Youtube, our Blip, and our Current TV tagged page…
Make your films and let the film industry, your audience, and the monetization catch up to you… Well we’re still waiting.
But one thing we haven’t done and that we need to do is update regularly. So we are going to try our hardest.
Like many of the filmmakers at the event today, one of our problems is that we can’t work on our projects full-time because we need to have day jobs to pay our rent. When we’re not at work, we barely have time to log tapes, much less engage in hours of social media outreach… but we’re trying so hang in there. The conference did not really address this problem beyond “knowing rich people” who want to invest in film… which is what we already suspected and were afraid of… (Anybody know any rich people?)
In the meantime check out Four Eyed Monster because they succeeded in this crazy web/film marketing experiment and from the videos I’ve seen on youtube it looks like they made a solid film. So good for them.
Now we’re off to Cafe Du Nord to see Judgement Day who the San Francisco Bay Guardian claims is totally diy…
Jeremey
Voice of Nola (MIH 32)
Told y’all it was coming.
Writing the Ship
If your still here and you want to know the status of Make It Happen, read on.
We had our production meeting a couple of weekends ago. We talked about the trip, the project as it began, and the future of Make It Happen. Next we wrote a Post Production priority list and created a calendar full of intimidating deadlines. Then we captured all the tapes that weren’t yet in our system… which was a lot. Now everything is digitized. We’re cutting footage, and we’re almost done with the New Orleans vlog featuring Chuck Perkins. Expect it soon. Yeah, yeah, we’ve been saying that forever, but it’s true, it is coming.
As for Abby and I, we’re finally settling in to San Francisco. Abby got a job, so we’re both working. Now we can pay rent with no worries and we are devoting all our spare time to editing the hours of footage we compiled on the road.
Make It Happen started as a basic idea and a desire to travel. So what is it now? For the moment it will be a web video series, with accompanying behind-the-scenes vlogs profiling people participating in independent projects that TeamJaded finds interesting.
The ultimate goal is now, and has always been a feature length documentary. Once all the material we shot on the road is out for mass consumption, we will move forward with turning Make It Happen in to the doc that it was always meant to be.
The catch is… That doc may not be about what we shot on the road.
Did I just blow your mind?
Stay tuned.
Post-Its
At Seesmic, we made a video describing how to use the interface. It was kind of silly because one of the owners, the french guys appeared all over the screen in miniature, directing the viewer to buttons that needed pressing. Apparently it was a big hit in web business world, and people wanted to know how we did it. That was pretty simple… green screen and Final Cut, no big mystery. But viewers requested a making of video, so this is what we gave them…
I give you that because TeamJaded has been neglecting you on the video front. I’ll be back in a little while with a bigger update.
Here’s the link to that intro vid if you wanted to watch it.
World's Ends Meet
This is the view from down the street from our new digs in the Mishstro. The pic is totally borrowed from here. Thanks!
We’ve been back in San Fran for a couple of months now, and you’re all probably wondering what happened with the updates, vlogs, trailer, and well everything…
Have you heard of Maslo and his hierarchy of needs?
We’re stuck on survival at the moment. S.F. is one of the most expensive cities to live in, and if you’ll look to your right you might notice that we’ve been in the business of accepting donations since the get go… but this is not us asking for more money. The point is we just don’t have much cash flow; so making it in “the city” hasn’t been the easiest thing in the world.
We are making it though, for the moment. Jeremey is “freelancing” himself full-time to a dot com start-up called Seesmic and making just enough money to get by with no time to spare for anything else except eating and sleeping, and sometimes not that. Abby is actively on the hunt for work in the worst economy in our lifetime. Meanwhile, she’s also busy laying the groundwork for TeamJaded to ramp up production and more importantly post-production.
So expect new video content, it’s coming. We’re working on prioritizing our Post List and hopefully getting some time to dig in soon. Thanks for being patient with us.
In the meantime we gotta send shout-outs to some of our friends making it happen:
Roughneck, Decade of Aggression finally premiered last week, so expect it in a skate-shop near you at some point in the future.
Lowcard #22 is out and it’s bound.
Sisterz of the Underground just celebrated their 7-year anniversary. Happy anniversary ladies, we’re sure the party at Club 6 was a blow out.
And here is some random Seesmicness, Free Ingrid:
LA is not L.A. (MIH 12)
Despite our efforts to eat Ramen and PB&J, we’ve experienced an influx of amazing food. Our gracious Austin host, Shannon, took us to Sam’s BBQ.
Our plates (and subsequently, bellies) were filled with delicious chicken, sausage and brisket, beans, potato salad, and pickles. We amazed ourselves as we realized we had eaten almost every bit of food.
Abby learned she liked potato salad, and everyone agreed the Sweat Tea was awesome.
On our way out of Austin, we stumbled upon this sign next to an Exxon Station.
We’re pretty psyched to see that Presbyterian Austinites aren’t feeling the Bush War.
After Austin we drove to Louisiana, making a pit stop in Hruska’s in Ellinger, TX. We ate yummy turkey sandwiches at a place that served Kolaches.
In case you don’t know what Kolaches are, they’re basically fried dough with stuff (cheese, meat, etc) in them. We voted ‘no’ on the fried and decided to stick with the healthier food.
We arrived in Louisiana late in the afternoon.
We made ourselves pretty and headed out to Lake Charles’ own Brick House. It was here Jeremey was reunited after ten years of separation with his high school graduating class. Buffet style food, a couple drink tickets, sentimental 90’s pop music, and awkward conversations filled the evening. Abby enjoyed herself while Jeremey pretended it wasn’t actually happening. After the expensive get-together, we headed to Jeremey’s friends house, while the class of ’97 went to a local bar.
Since then we’ve been working to get y’all another vlog. Be on the lookout for a video about our adventures across the Southwest.
Who Dat (MIH 11)
We are in Austin, TX. We got here late Sunday night and then had a little adventure looking for Star Seed’s Café, which was “close” to where we’re staying.
But apparently close in Austin means several miles, not like close in S.F. which means you can walk to it. Soooo we ended up at Denny’s- but it was a totally rocking Denny’s all decked out fifties style with a big outdoor patio… it was cool, we swear. We’ve been slacking on the blog the last couple of days. We’re staying with Jeremey’s friend Shannon of Banana Farm fame…
and Shannon’s girlfriend Amy (Buckshot) of the Texas Roller Girls. They’ve got a big tournament this weekend so if you’re in the Austin area go out there and show them some love.
Shannon and Amy just moved into a new spot and don’t have the Internet. So right now we’re lurking at Clementine’s Coffee on Manor using their free wifi.
Austin’s been pretty rad; we shot our first story on the road, Austin Craft Mafia. Now, there’s a ton of ladies who are part of the Craft Mafia… we shot three of them. The first was Hope Perkins who does amazing portraits of dead rappers.
She did not do one of Mac Dre for Jeremey…
(but she said she’d do it for $250.)
…Oh yeah and we saw the most bizarre bug outside of Hope’s place…
If anybody can name it, we’ll let you donate fifty bucks to us.
Tina Sparkles was next. She showed us how she makes the coolest guitar straps in the world. Last but not least was Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching who was gracious enough to let us interrupt her incredibly busy day to interview her and shoot her operation. She has so much stuff going on, we’re truly grateful that she let us bug her for a couple of hours. She dropped some very thoughtful and intelligent commentary about D.I.Y. culture on us and she even hooked Abby up with an embroidery kit. 
Thanks ladies. And look out for some tidbits from those shoots coming soon.
We spent part of Monday night at a New Orleans Saints Bar with Shannon and some other Austin folks watching the Saints get stomped.
So then we headed to Long Branch to numb the pain. Everybody keeps telling us to go swimming in one of the creeks here, but we didn’t bring swimsuits and Wally World was a huge disappointment. Next stop Savers…
Oh yeah, and the Queso is rocking.
The heat goes on… (MIH4)
We’ve been reaching out to quite a few stories these past few weeks- from Austin to NOLA to NYC. We’re really psyched about some of the responses we’re getting, and looking forward to meeting the people behind the emails. One of the stories we just recently contacted is the Lost Film Fest. Jeremey and I have yet to see the spectacle ourselves, however, we know this is going to be an awesome shoot. Scott, the mastermind behind Lost Film Fest said they’re in the process of booking a pretty solid show (with some amazing attendees, but I’m not sure if we can disclose that yet!). We’re hoping to line up our schedule to sync with the performance (which will be in Philly). That means we wont be shooting this one until mid-November, but time will fly.
On a side note, a few weeks ago we made a quick trip to LA. It was here we discovered our air conditioner didn’t work in our two-week-old (used) car. You NEVER need AC in SF, so for those two weeks we were oblivious to the impending heat-monster-Honda. But let me tell you, while driving south on the 5 with the windows down, we were not happy campers (I actually hate the term “Happy Campers”. I apologize for using it). So our car is in the shop right now… think good thoughts that they will fix it (cheap) and we wont have to sweat our way across the country.
Only 11 days ’til we hit the road.