Making Movies blog, the fate of NewlyWed and Operation Tailwind gets new life
If you haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, you should check out my "newest" blog at the Chronicle web site - Making Movies. Although it's officially about "video editing," I eventually ran out of tips and tricks to write about so now I've expanded it to all things movie and television related. It seems to be working.
I've taken a lot of advice from Dwight Silverman regarding the blog, but I refuse to turn it into an aggregate of movie news items from across the web. So I'm officially stating here that I will always put a bit of my OWN spin on all the content, and I'll most likely be writing a little something original at the end of each entry. And I'm willing to pay people to read it. Ok, that's a lie. But honestly, if you read it you will win the lottery, get ripped abs and attract members of the opposite sex just by watching Battlestar Galactica and reading comic books.
Plus you'll be considered "cool" by those people who take smoke breaks at work, even though you never join them.
And, of course, I'm still writing NewlyWed. At this point, I'm not really sure what the fate of that blog will be. I'm actually ok with continuing to write it from now on. I mean, honestly, it's really more about married life than being a newlywed anyway, right? But I don't know what the Chronicle's plans for it are, so there's no real telling where it will be in a month or so.
To tell the truth, I really like writing it. It's kind of a "slice of life" piece that gets written every day. A chance to explore life from a different perspective than the one I had originally been accustomed to. Plus, people actually READ that one, and make comments. Unlike the myriad of other blogs I write every day.
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News on the Tailwind front. You may or may not know that around this time last year my major project, a documentary about a special forces mission in Vietnam, had fallen to pieces. The fate of the entire project was in doubt. Well, I've managed to partially revive the project by getting an infusion of funds to do a promotional video. This will be used for further fund raising, and will hopefully mean the project will be returned to it's glory path.
Making this documentary has been an epic tale in and of itself. If we manage to get it to DVD and distributed (or get it on air), I think it should include a "behind the scenes" documentary about how it was finally made. There's been more drama and strife in telling this story than there was on the mission itself. Well, ok, that's not true. But it's been quite a trip.
But I have faith that we're going to get this done. Brad Eu, of Eu Entertainment, has come on board with me as a co-producer. I've mapped out the story and cut it down for a 5-8 minute promo. It's in edit now, and by the 15th of January we expect it to be finished. Then it's just a matter of getting it in front of the right people who will feel obliged to write us checks for completion funds.
Sounds easy when you put it in a paragraph like that, huh?
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In addition to Tailwind, I have at least three other projects that will need funding this year. One is Otaku: Anime in America. This is my documentary about anime fans and the whole "convention" lifestyle.
Another project is actually connected to Tailwind. During the interview process the previous producer, Todd Hewey, asked a lot of questions about the Montagnards. These are the indigenous people of Vietnam, and they've been treated horribly. We have enough material to start a documentary about their plight and maybe even help raise some funds for the foundation that's been established for them in North Carolina. I'll be posting more about this project as time goes by.