Comparing Video

3 Sep

I’ve been agonizing over which video host to use for this project.

I may just have settled on Vimeo.  I invested in a pro account which is about $60 a year and will allow unlimited HD uploads and supposedly some customization of the video player.  However, I’ve uploaded one video so far — the teaser — and the video player does not seem to be responding to my customization.  I’ve unchecked the “later” box a dozen times, but it keeps appearing anyway.  I can go in and alter the embed code, but it bugs me that it remains there after I spend my 60 bucks.

We’ll keep a YouTube channel and post all the video there, but I am not inclined to host on YouTube, mostly because the options for setting a the thumbnail image (sometimes called a poster frame) are so limited.  And poster frames are VERY important.  So while we plan to be very active on YouTube, we won’t be hosting there.

One of the options we eliminated is Blip, which offers great video quality and a good player.  But you can’t set up a private video there and it is oriented particularly toward video producers who are monetizing with ads.  I like Blip a lot, even though every single time I access my Hailey Hacks account there I have to– for unfathomable reasons — reset my password.  Weirdest glitch ever!

I also like TubeMogul, but there professional pricing is way way way out of our league.

I’m offering up a side by each taste test — well, one above, one below.  One video, two hosts.  Our teaser on Vimeo at the top and on YouTube below.  Can you see a difference?  Is there a player you prefer.  The lines are open.  Let me know what you think!

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Not the End

3 Sep

Crew and some cast of Ruby Skye P.I.It’s day last. Shoot day 15 of 15. Cameras are rolling. We’ve already done a picture wrap on Kevin and Ali this morning.  And we’re rushing to get one last exterior scene shot before the rain.

The busy-ness of it all keeps our minds off the fact that this is an end.  Not the end. But an end to what has been a wonderful shoot.  This team is a dream team; literally the best crew on the planet.  Everyone works hard, is good at their job and is simply a great person.

Turning your home into a production office and studio isn’t for everyone.  I won’t be sooo bad to recover a little space.  And it would be nice if there were one or two outlets that weren’t being used to recharge something or other. But I will be terribly sad to see everyone leave.

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Mmmm

2 Sep

Friend of the project, Kelly Lynne Ashton, baked up a batch of Ruby’s Roasted Marshmallow Brownies. You can too. Here’s the recipe. Don’t forget to share a picture of your finished brownies with us.

If you have a great brownie recipe, we’d love to know about it and share it with the brownie-loving, comedy, mystery lovers of the world.  We’ll have a special area on our new Ruby Skye P.I. site just for all things brownies.  If you think your brownies deserve a special place in our Brownie Hall of Fame, send your recipes and photos.

And by the way, still nothing from Walton.

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Talking Transmedia with Rob Mills

2 Sep

RobboMills is a web creator and friend.  He was on set for a couple of days while his son Henry was playing a student at The Dragon Academy in Ruby Skye P.I.  While he was there Mark Achterberg shot a little film of us talking about Rob’s latest project, Rufus the Dog, transmedia and more.

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Big Day at the Big Chill

1 Sep

Crew and some cast of Ruby Skye P.I.To quote Sean Van Delft, “we have a big day”. It’s big in so many ways. We’ve been really looking forward to shooting at The Big Chill, the ice cream parlour at the corner of College and Manning. It is a beautiful location. The scenes are very important ones in the story (aren’t they all?) and very funny. We’re going to have lots of extras and many guests… not to mention ice cream from the Big Chill which everyone on the crew is looking forward to.

There are other things that make this day special. It is really our last big day of shooting. We have three days left including today, but by Thursday and Friday we’ll be shooting just smaller scenes. We won’t be working with such a big crew, we won’t have as many cast around.  So in some ways, today is the beginning of the end.

That is really sad.  It’s safe to say that everyone is having a great time.  Several members of the crew have mentioned to me how much they’ve enjoyed being on the project.  We’ve been a great team.  We get along, we work well together and we have been pretty low on the stress scale even on heat wave days like the last two.  All in all it has been a very happy set and when I call this the best crew on the planet, it is not an exaggeration at all.

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Brownie Wars

1 Sep

Brownies by Ruby Skye P.I.Many people have checked out the recipe for Ruby’s Roasted Marshmallow Brownies — the brownies featured in our trailer. I baked those brownies myself using a variation on my sister-in-law Andrea Goldman‘s amazing brownie recipe, the variation being the marshmallows on top.

For the teaser shoot, I baked doubles (two batches, just in case) and so we had a lot of left overs. Everyone on the very small crew that shot the teaser went home that night with a care package. Everyone raved.

Karen Read thruSomehow, my fellow executive producer, Karen Walton, imagines that she can bake a better brownie. She’s been mouthing off about it for weeks, but despite the fact that she’s dating a fabulous chef and former pastry chef and has access to a restaurant kitchen, we have seen nary a brownie crumb. Oh yeah, she brought the much appreciated special delivery package to set, but there was no home baking in it, I assure you.

And when she waxes poetic about the brownie recipe she claims to possess, she keeps mentioning raspberries.

Raspberries? In brownies? Really?

I hate to tell you, Karen, raspberries might be a delicious and wonderful fruit, but no one wants fruit in their brownies. The only thing anyone wants added to the chocolate-y goodness of brownies is more sugar (and possibly nuts).

Am I right?

While we’re waiting for Walton to put her money where her mouth is and show up with some brownies, we invite you to send us your best brownie recipes. Ruby’s always up for trying a new brownie recipe, especially when she needs to persuade Hailey to help her with something. We’ll showcase the recipes on our new Ruby Skye P.I. site when it’s built. We’d also love to see your photos of homemade brownies (especially if you bake Ruby’s Roasted Marshmallow Brownies). We’ll add your pictures to our photostream.

And Karen, if you ever get it together, the crew is standing by ready to act as judges. Your brownies against mine, any day.

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Meet Kelly Harms

1 Sep

Another beautiful little film from Jennifer Liao of Believerville Productions. This one introduces our director Kelly Harms talking about how he got involved in the project and how he approaches directing a web series.

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Writing the Teaser

31 Aug

Ruby Skye P.I. Teaser Draft 1 Title pageWe really wanted to shoot a teaser before production even started for a number of reasons.

One was that we wanted to test the Canon 5D that Alex Dacev planned to shoot on.

Also, Marlee was heading off to camp for part of rehearsal week and a full week of production, but she was here now. It was a good opportunity for Kelly to work with her for the first time.

Ruby Skye P.I. Teaser Draft 1 page 1I wanted Kelly to feel the freedom that comes from getting something onto the web quickly. I’d had an enormous high off shooting something for Crushing It with Jenn Liao, Dharini Woolcombe and Scott Albert and getting it up on the web within five hours. Unfortunately, that was pretty much the only thing we failed at with this teaser, because we shot it way back on July 29th and didn’t get it out till August 27th — a lifetime in web terms.

Ruby Skye P.I. Teaser Draft 1 page 2But back in July, time was running out. Marlee was heading off to camp in a matter of days. I’d successfully convinced Kelly and Kerry we had to shoot this thing. And I was nowhere with story.

We knew it would be a Hailey-eye view of Ruby and that the sisters don’t get along. If you’ve seen the Hailey Hacks videos, you know Hailey likes a good practical joke. Especially one that involves technology.

Ruby Skye P.I. Teaser Draft 1 page 3Kelly came up with the idea of focusing on Ruby’s investigation of one of Hailey’s pranks… from Hailey’s point of view.

I sat in front of his germ of an idea for four hours and had nothing in the way of a story. I crawled up to bed, taking my laptop and a notebook, just in case. And the whole idea came to me in a piece. Brownies. Ruby’s investigation. Hailey accused. The revenge. The reveal.

Ruby Skye P.I. Teaser draft 3 Title PageI loved the web site tie in. Loooved it. Sadly, visits to Read My sisters Report Card are few and far between. It’s getting about a 10th the traffic that the video is getting.  I don’t know if people don’t realize it’s there or don’t care that it is.  But it’s too bad, because it’s funny thanks to the genius of Scott Albert and Julie Cohn.  The brownie recipe, at least, is getting some buzz.

But back to the script.  I pounded out a script that night and it is very close to the final shooting script.Ruby Skye P.I. Teaser Script draft 3 page 1  There was a lick where Hailey referred to Ruby having only one friend on her Facebook page.  I was going to build a screencast of Ruby’s Facebook profile with Griffin as her only friend.  It seemed like a fitting idea considering my past with Facebook and the social media community.  But we wimped out for a bunch of reasons.  I didn’t have photos of either Ruby or Griffin.  We didn’t have time or resources to get Facebook’s permission.  That’s right. Ruby Skye P.I. Teaser Script draft 3 page 2 I’ve gone legit.  We’re clearing everything and getting releases.  Oh well, it would have slowed down the story just for the sake of the sight gag and maybe even ended up on the cutting room floor.

I wrote three drafts in all.  The final shooting draft is a little short than the first draft and whole lot prettier.  Mostly it’s a dialogue polish with some trims and tweaks to the original idea.  If you check it against the finished teaser, I think only one line ended up on the cutting room floor.

But wow, Kelly’s direction, Alex’s shooting, Sean’s sound, David Wall’s sound track, Jennifer Essex-Chew’s cutting and Marlee Maslove’s performance all lifted a very basic idea off of the page.  More about that in another post.

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Diary of a Director: Lights, Camera, Confusion

31 Aug

Kelly Harm's StoryboardsLet me preface this entry by explaining how lucky Ruby Skye P.I. is with an amazing camera, lighting and grip crew!  They are spectacularly talented at their respective jobs and I often watch them in awe – Alex D. (DOP), Alex L. (1st Assistant Camera), Jack (2nd AC), Igor (Gaffer) and TJ (Key Grip) are a literal dream team of technicians and artists.  Alex Dacev and I have worked together on many productions and he’s, truly, an extraordinary talent.

The tools of my trade are very few.  I imagine what the scene looks like, draw storyboards (pictures) of where the characters should be and, finally, do a shot list with a simple diagram of the location and camera positions.  It’s then Alex’s job, with his crew, to make it look very beautiful (or, at least, how I imagined it to be) and to capture those images while I focus on the performance of actors.  Usually, the director hands over the shot list at the beginning of the day so the DOP knows what is to be shot.  With Alex, I often skip that step because I believe he can read my mind – and he’s proved my theory correct many times before.

So imagine my surprise, confusion and disappointment when Alex approached me and said that he couldn’t make a certain shot happen.  He insisted that it wasKelly's Shot List for Scene 17 impossible (I’d never heard the words out of his mouth!), claiming that I’d miscalculated.  Miscalculated?  I scoffed at the mere suggestion.  When I came to set, I consulted my shot list and realized that I’d miscalculated.  Massively.  I ‘imagined’ the camera miraculously moving through a very large, concrete beam.

My producer (and 1st Assistant Director), Kerry Young, reminds me often that just because it’s in my head (and possibly on paper) that it might be intelligent to ‘share’ that vision before hand.

I now hand my shot list over to Alex every morning.  Still, I wonder why he, and his miracle-making crew, couldn’t make the beam disappear.

Kelly

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Talking Writing at the Read-Through

30 Aug

Julie Strassman-Cohn and Jill Golick, co-writers of the first Ruby Skye P.I. mystery The Spam Scam, talk about the role of the read-through in the scripting process.

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