Face Time Is Golden Time

Just came back from shooting a web video for a financial adviser in Wilmington, DE. This is one of several videos we've done for Ameriprise, Inc.

I'm actually constantly astonished by how few professionals have videos on their websites, especially considering how much they can benefit from having them. Say someone is looking for a lawyer. A listing will give that person a firm's name and address. An ad might include a picture and some copy about what the firm does. A video takes the firm's marketing to a whole new level.

A web video allows a lawyer (for the purposes of our example; it could be any professional) to make the case for himself directly to potential clients. A video gives potential clients a taste of the lawyer's appearance, demeanor, personality - all important factors when considering which lawyer to put your trust in.

Furthermore, lawyers in particular are adept at making persuasive arguments. That's an essential part of what they do. Well, if you're a lawyer, why not show off what you can do best: argue a case. You can't do that with an ad or a website without video. And you certainly can't do that with a mere listing.

Of course, it's difficult to get any professional to devote his most precious resource - his time - to sit down and actually shoot the video. What many don't realize is that the shoot itself will be an hour - 90 minutes at most - and can be done right in the professional's office.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures. To get a picture of what a Reel Stuff professional video looks like, you need look no further than the following link, which will take you a previous video we produced for an Ameriprise financial adviser. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/user/ReelStuffEnt#p/u/17/9SHR-lsfmJA.

What else can I say to sell you on a web video? How about a statistic? Online listings that are accompanied by a video get a whopping 70% more views than those that don't.

I can't say it any better than that.

A Missive From Sisyphus

I guess it's time for an update on "Europe After Dark."

This is the 10-episode travel-lifestyle TV series about European nightlife that we shot in Europe last summer. Sounds great, right? Shot last summer. Done and done. We contacted the Fox Station Group and showed them a few sample episodes, and they were quite enthusiastic about it. Chris King, who heads ad sales for the company, told me they would be willing to move other programming around to accommodate our show.

The problem is this: we have to sell the advertising ourselves. To do this, we signed with a media buying firm with a lot of experience selling advertising time in the paid programming arena. They tried, but to date have gotten no firm commitments to sponsor the show.

The reason? "Europe After Dark" is an untried entity. It has no track record, no ratings - nothing that could be used to sell its worth as a vehicle for delivering a particular advertiser's message. A solution would be to do a test run in a single market, and that's what my associate Van Sher is doing now.

We'll keep on trudging....

The Final Hours...

Well, The Tolltaker's first screening before an audience is tonight. Just a few hours away.

The only way I've ever experienced this movie was on my computer screen, with the audio being piped in through headphones. Tonight I'm going to see it projected on a screen (how big, I don't know) before an actual audience of actual people. I hope everyone's work shows well. I think people are going to like it, if they can forgive it for the flaws sprinkled here and there.

It's funny the set of expectations a person has when considering others' reaction to his work. You want everyone to love it. Anything short of that, of absolute perfection, means the whole thing's a failure.

And it's not just that you want them to love it. It has to be one of the best things they've ever seen, a real watershed moment for them. As the Creator of this Work, you'll be satisfied with nothing less than the audience dividing their lives into two parts: before and after they've seen your movie.

And if that doesn't happen? If all they do is clap politely? Or if it turns out that they like the movie, but like someone else's better? That's the reaction you have to steel yourself for.

I guess this feeling is something akin to what a gambler feels after he's tossed the dice or pulled the handle on the slot machine. A lot is riding on the outcome, and along with anxiety there's a certain rush. Every moment from now until the outcome is decided is significant.

In the end, I guess I'll have to content myself with the following sage advice: it's not about the destination, but the journey to get there. Whatever happens tonight, the experience of making this film has shaped, in some way, who I am. No audience reaction is going to change that.

Radio Ga Ga

Life's too short not to let yourself bask in the glow of kind words, if only for a moment. You never know when you'll have the chance again.

Such was the case today during my radio interview with Bert Baron about The Tolltaker. The occasion was the movie's screening on Friday, September 23 at the New Jersey Film Festival. A filmmaker from the festival is interviewed once a week on Bert's show - today it was my turn.

I had sent a link to watch the movie a few days ahead of time, in case Bert wanted to take a look at Tolltaker in advance of the interview, which was scheduled for 2:30 this afternoon. I had been instructed to call in to the station a few minutes beforehand.

Bert actually called me unexpectedly this morning, right after he had watched the movie. It was around 10 or 11 a.m. and my phone rang. The number didn't look familiar, but I answered it, thinking it might be work-related. It was Bert.

As I look back on it, I'm not entirely sure what the call was for exactly, other than to offer his congratulations about the movie. He was very pleasant and cordial. We chatted for a few minutes, and then I said I would call into the show a few minutes before 2:30, as directed.

When I called into the show this afternoon, I was stunned by the words of praise he bestowed upon The Tolltaker. A few quotes, which I pulled later from the podcast:

"I thought it was unbelievable."

"I was just wowed by it. It was a real treat to see."

Bert said it "used music expertly." It's "just a great movie."

"I couldn't take my eyes off of it, it was that captivating to me. "

And there was this:

"Everybody who has a chance to come down and watch this movie is going to be absolutely blown away by it."

Some of the best praise was reserved for Cullen Clancey, who plays Bobby in the movie. Another quote:

"I'm gonna see this kid on a red carpet someday, giving an acceptance speech. I have no doubt."

Of course, an obsessive-compulsive, over-analytical sort might try seeing between the lines here. It could be that he was just offering encouragement to an aspiring feature filmmaker, and talk radio hosts tend to speak in superlatives. Was this just a pat on the head?

Who knows...I guess I'll just have to wait until The Tolltaker screens tomorrow night, and see what the audience's reaction to it will be. Then, instead of one person's opinion, I'll have a whole theater-full of them.

To hear the podcast of the interview with Bert, go here: http://www.wctcam.com/BertPodcasts.aspx.

Gazing Into the Depths

Now that it’s finished, I look at “The Tolltaker” and ask myself: is it any good?

I think I’m the last person to be able to judge that. I’m much too close to it. I know every frame, and every flaw announces itself to me with the subtlety and finesse of a fog horn.

I hope it’s good. If “goodness” equals dedication and hard work – not to mention sacrifice, particularly of money – then “The Tolltaker” is superb. But of course, life isn’t fair that way. Nor should it be. I’m sure people put a lot of time and effort – not to mention expense – into Battlefield Earth. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

If goodness equals sincerity, then I believe the Tolltaker wins points. This is a story I honestly wanted to see told. Why? As I’ve said before, the setting and circumstances remind me of growing up myself in the Philadelphia area in the 1970’s. For that reason I tried to pack it with as many “cultural markers” as I could.

But beyond that, I really felt for the character of Bobby. I sympathize with a confused and anxious boy, an outsider, wounded by life at an early age, and endowed with sad wisdom as a result.

There are so many books I read when I was a kid that were about some youthful hero stumbling into a fantastic – or terrifying – alternate world. I guess Alice in Wonderland was the first of this type written. The first of the modern era, anyway. Heroes have been venturing into the netherworld for various reasons since the very dawn of story telling.

Am I over-thinking it? Am I making connections and deriving levels of meaning that others just don’t see? I know how easy it is for an artist to go into obsessive detail about his own work, in the mistaken belief that others share his enthusiasm with this new creation. I’ve got to stay on the look-out for that tendency in myself.

I think I must have watched Tolltaker at least 500 times so far. Even so, I’m still making discoveries in it. Levels of meaning that could be inferred. I ask myself: did I put that there? Did I know I put that there? Did I know the reason?

Not consciously. But then story-telling isn’t entirely a conscious process. The wellsprings of inspiration are in the unconscious, which is why sometimes a story will pop up fully-formed into a writer’s mind. According to Jim Sneddon, that’s how the Tolltaker novel came to him. The unconscious has already been working on it, putting it together below the notice of the conscious mind, and by the time the writer goes looking for the story – sitting down to actually write it – the unconscious mind hands it over, practically ready for the type-setter.

And what are these “wellsprings of inspiration,” really? It feels like it’s almost coming from somewhere outside my mind. That, I understand, is a common phenomenon, and psychologists have talked and written about it often. You should read William James’ book Varieties of Religious Experience for an eye-opening description of inspiration – both divine and otherwise – from a psychological perspective. It’s one of the definitive works on the subject.

Carl Jung has proven tremendously helpful in shedding some light on this question. I remember reading his books on archetypes and the collective unconscious (which, of course, is the title of his most famous book), and gobbling each one up greedily. The insights were like little bits of light, little bits of fresh air, and I eagerly followed from one to the next. The result, I believe, has given me an understanding of stories that’s both universal and personal.

Of course, to palliate anyone who’s rolling his/her eyes right now, I have to say that I absolutely don’t consider myself a master story-teller. The Tolltaker doesn’t provide evidence of that, and, besides, it was based on a book written by someone else.

But I do believe I have an understanding of story-telling and story arcs that’s both intuitive and intellectual. Or at least I’m starting to. I can watch a movie, say it’s terrific, and understand – both on an intellectual and intuitive level – why I feel that way.

That’s a long way from saying that I’m capable myself of producing something that meets those lofty standards. But I’m learning, and each time out, I hope to do better. In my perfect future, I’ll look back at this, my first film (but hopefully not my last) and shake my head in embarrassment at how rough it is.

That’s something to shoot for, right?

Thou Shalt Spread the Virus

So, as of this morning "The Tolltaker" has been viewed 50 times on Vimeo.

Thursday, September 15 was the halcyon day, with a breath-taking total of 19 views. (And, at this point, that is breath-taking.) Alas, the number goes down on succeeding days: ten each on Friday and Monday, and four the remaining two days.

So, once again, here's the pathogen all the busy little vectors out there need to spread the disease:

http://www.vimeo.com/29022379

Of course, I'm encouraging people to email the link as far and wide as possible. My strategy has essentially two components: place well at film festivals and chalk up views and "Likes" of the film online. The ultimate goal: get a feature-length version of the Tolltaker made. The next intermediate step to get to that goal is to find a partner who has the resources to produce "The Tolltaker" and distribute it to both national and international markets.

When you're asking people to part with money, they're going to want to see numbers. The online views and Facebook "Likes" are going to provide those numbers. The trick is to get those numbers as high as possible. That's where promotion comes in.

These days, the most successful promotional campaigns are viral campaigns. The idea is not just to get the message out to people through some mass medium like television or magazines, but to get each person who sees that message to pass it on to his/her family, friends and associates. That way , the message spreads. Like a virus.

What are the chances of success with this route? Well, she's not trying to make a movie, but web star Marina Orlova, I'm told, makes well into five figures each month from her YouTube channel "Hot for Words." But the channel has racked up somewhere in the neighborhood of 420 million views so far. My paltry 50 hardly compares with that.

One thing I need to make clear is that I'm not asking anybody for money (and neither does Marina, by the way - her channel is ad supported). I have absolutely no intention to receive financial compensation of any kind from The Tolltaker. At least as a short film. As a feature film, that's a different story. But that story hasn't been written yet.

No, what I want is people to simply take 23 minutes out of their lives to watch the movie on Vimeo and "Like" it on Facebook. I understand that's a lot to ask these days. The vast majority of viral videos are no more than a minute long, and are passed between people as a goof. For them to commit to watching something that's the length of the average sitcom, they're going to have to be pretty engaged in whatever that video's about.

So, we have the same task that faces the marketing team on any feature film: hook people's interest, so they'll make the effort to go to a movie theater and sit through your movie, and pay for the privilege. So what do you do? Make the content - the story - leap out at the viewer in a way that's simply irresistible. Plant a question in the person's mind that just has to be answered. A compelling image can do the trick, given context by a clever tagline, the best being one that can be taken several different ways.

I like to think I've done that with my efforts so far to promote The Tolltaker. At the very least, those were the objectives I had mind when I sat down to make the Tolltaker postcard. Does it work? The only way to tell now is if the numbers on Vimeo and Facebook go up.

And, as a call-t0-action (which is that thing, that specific physical action, that most ads exhort you to do), I don't think it's much to ask of a person to click on a link to watch a short film, one that (hopefully) intrigues them anyway.

There are filmmakers out there who are trying to finance their films through subscriptions they solicit online. The hook is to tell the people who are giving them money that they're "producers" of the film. To date, I don't know of any mainstream (or even sub-mainstream) film that's been made this way. My instinct is to condemn this as unseamly, but I'm not ruling anything out yet. Who knows? You might see me out there on a street corner, hat in hand, with a sign that says "The Tolltaker wants your money."

Nothing's off the table.

I See, Said the Blind Man...

I just realized that this blog has no art on it. It's visually boring, monotonous. So I will rectify that by posting the occasional image as well, starting with this one, which is a little 4x6 postcard I intend to start leaving at Film Festivals (and other locations), beginning this weekend at the NJ Film Festival - that is if get the postcards delivered to me in time.

The postcard, you can see, has been cobbled together from stills from the movie, as well as the logo we've had almost since the beginning of production. I wanted to blend the layers seamlessly into each other but, my Photoshop skills being rudimentary (to put it charitably), I couldn't figure it out. So I wound up using the vines as a means to cover up the seams between the layers. Kind of works, though, doesn't it? Necessity indeed does breed invention.

Horror Movies Supply Promising Vector for the Disease

So, good news: The Tolltaker has been accepted into the Big Apple Film Festival. It's screening as part of a midnight program of horror shorts a few days after Halloween. The specific date is Friday, November 4 at Tribeca Cinemas on Varick Street in Manhattan. And it is indeed a midnight screening. They start rolling at 12 and continue until 2 a.m.

When I found it was part of a collection of horror films, I have to confess to feeling a little disheartened. Not because I have anything against horror films - they're one of my favorite genres (although the list of truly stellar horror films is woefully short). Instead, I was a little worried about being relegated to a genre ghetto, one that programmers at the "important" festivals shun like a beggar turned away from a rich man's door.

Still, that also gives me a new audience to pursue. The horror audience is huge and insatiable. No matter what the economic times are, horror movies always make money. The downside is that often this audience has the lowest possible expectations for the movies they choose to see. Rank exploitation is the method, and the formula usually involves college-age kids getting dispatched in ever-more-gruesome ways, after obligingly getting naked and copulating to satisfy the audience's other base lust. Anything that doesn't fit this mold tends to be dismissed as unsuitable.

The thing is, the audience for stories like The Tolltaker is potentially huge. It was crafted from influences which themselves have proven immensely popular. If it can be considered horror (which again would, I believe, create a problem with the audience's expectations), it's closest to the Dean Koontz/Stephen King style that weaves horror elements into character-based stories set - for the most part - in the recognizable, everyday world we're all familiar with.

Now, a lot of Stephen King film adaptations have been laughable abominations. Saying that their film is going to wind up like a Stephen King film would be good reason for most filmmakers to shudder in uncontrollable anxiety.

But even though we have to accommodate a Children of the Corn, we also get movies like The Green Mile, Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption. Those last two aren't even horror films at all. And in The Green Mile the "horror" element is closer to a quasi-religious mysticism.

The difference between these two classes of Stephen King films, between the beloved classics and piles of putrid excrement, centers, I believe, on the filmmakers' focus. When the horror elements alone in a Stephen King movie are highlighted, you get just another cheesey horror flick, where we the audience are supposed to be scared out of our wits by some form of supernatural hocus-pocus or another.

When the people these things are happening to are put front and center, then the movie has the potential to transcend genre and touch people with all sorts of divergent tastes. And that takes good, old-fashioned story-telling skills, the number-one skill being the understanding that just as every verb in a sentence has a subject, every story has a main character. Making that character live in his mind is the most important piece of preparation I believe a story-teller can undertake as he sets about his task.

To every rule, there is an exception: in the Stephen King movie The Shining the characters were less of a focus than the setting and circumstance: being locked through an entire winter in an empty, isolated hotel with at least one - and maybe several - malevolent spirits after you. But the filmmaker in this case was just as exceptional as the film - Stanley Kubrick, who was endowed with the gift of being able to see farther and more penetratingly than most other people. I believe that, like any legendary artist, he had insight into things that remain a mystery to the rest of us.

So that's what I'm aiming for: creating a world that's recognizable and engaging so that the more fantastic elements (which I love just as much as good story-telling) have the greatest impact, the greatest meaning.

In any case, a niche provides a toe-hold, and if a horror audience turns out to embrace The Tolltaker, then I'll use that as a way to build an audience into the more mainstream audience beyond.

As always, I need help spreading awareness, and the movie's Vimeo link, as far and wide as possible. I've used this line enough that I guess it's turned into a sort of catch phrase for this effort: spread the virus. There, I said it again. It feels good.

The Soundtrack of My Universe

Well, The Tolltaker has been online for about a day now, and already has 26 viewings. Not bad, and I mean it in the most heart-felt way imaginable when I say that I am grateful to each and every one of the people who took time out of their day to watch my movie.

The only other thing I ask of people is to spread the link around, re-post it in chat rooms that they frequent, send it to friends. Let people know about it and, importantly, "Like" it on its Facebook page.

Once again, here is the link to watch the film on Vimeo:

http://www.vimeo.com/29022379

I have a little "Tolltaker" playlist that I listen to on iTunes and, in fact, am listening to as I write this. It consists of the tracks from the movie, as well as others that I group into the Tolltaker "universe." Mostly, these are tracks I remember from the early to mid-70's - which means that they were what my parents would have been listening to at the time.

One artist on the playlist is Linda Ronstadt. There have often been times I have day-dreamed about a "Tolltaker" sequel (listen to me talking about a sequel before the full-length film itself is even made!) that features Bobby's mother as single and on the dating scene (meaning, I guess, that the thing with Nick didn't work out). I picture a montage where she goes out on dates with one C&W after another. What's a "C&W?" It's a term my mom invented when she was on the dating scene herself back in the 1970's. It's short for "creeps & weirdos," which is all my mom said she ever encountered on these dates.

Anyway, Bobby's mother in the movie (whose name happens to be, like my mom's, Judy - although that's a coincidence we have Jim Sneddon to thank for) would go through this compressed odyssey among the C&W's of the day, and the soundtrack for this would be Linda Ronstadt's song "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me." I remember that my mom liked that song a lot in its day.

I have similar sequences set to other hit songs of the period (pity the poor music supervisor who would have to clear these songs!). There's a scene in the screenplay where Bobby is playing a game of hand ball with his best friend in the school yard. The song playing on my internal soundtrack? "Me & Julio Down By the Schoolyard," by Paul Simon.

It's no secret that music is a powerful influence on the overall movie-going experience, but one thing that I remain fascinated by is how much influence music can exert. It works, in films like this one, as a powerful cue for the time period. It's indisputable that for many, if not most people, music really does serve as a soundtrack for their lives, and a particular song can have super powerful associations.

But there's also a piece of music's intrinsic qualities to consider. I've been told that I use music for emotional effect, and I suppose that's true. My own response to music is primarily intuitive: I'll know if I like it, and most likely will not be able to articulate why. Hopefully a viewer will see (and hear) things the same way.

I think, also, on a deeper level that music provides a useful model for structuring a movie. If you sit and think about the dynamics at play in a piece of music, how one section builds tension that's released and channeled into new directions by the following section, how it all adds up to a unified whole: it's possible to find corollaries to these things in a story and, particularly, a movie.

There are definitely plastic, formal affinities between movies and music. Both take place over time, and create rhythms through repetition or counterpoint. In one, the medium is images; the other, sound. Both have beats. And these rhythms can be layered, one supporting the other, for tremendous impact. Martin Scorsese in particular, I believe, has a a sense for the kinetic potential of music and images.

It is for this reason that a big point of contention between me and collaborators is the use of music. Others seem to think that the choice of music is almost an afterthought, and you can swap one piece out for another with no ill effect. Not true, not true.

Put that in your book of proverbs.

The Short & Long Terms

So, it's complete. For now.

Of course I'm talking about The Tolltaker. What else do I ever talk about? Four years, and I have a 23-minute short film. Should the feature-length version ever get made, I would hope the timescales wouldn't be proportional.

I've uploaded a cut to Vimeo. You can watch it here:

http://www.vimeo.com/29022379

That does bring up an interesting point, however. What now? All along, I've been saying that I want the short film to be a trailer of sorts for the entire feature-length version. The goal up til now has been intermediary: get the short film done. Then that medium-term goal will support the long-term effort to get a Tolltaker feature made. Well, now that medium-term goal has been accomplished. How exactly do I proceed from here?

Well, obviously, there's applying to film festivals. I have submissions out to several now, and the Tolltaker is screening next week at the New Jersey Film Festival in New Brunswick. And there's building awareness - and an audience - for the film through Facebook and blogs like this one.

But as for the next step in the development of the Tolltaker movie itself? Well, it's been my experience that the projects that are most fully realized are the ones that tend to get approved or get backing. The easier you can make it for the person you're pitching to visualize the final product, the more likely that you'll get that person's backing. That was the whole rationale behind the short film.

It seems logical, then, that the next step in this "pre-visualizing" process is to complete a story board for the feature film. That would take many factors that are now abstract and turn them into concrete things that can be measured and planned for. A shot list can be derived. A budget and shooting schedule can be fashioned. Work on details can begin. All of this adds up to a coherent, rational plan for completing a job, one that only needs the fuel of financial backing to be realized.

There are a couple of intriguing software packages out there for storyboarding a film. You can create three-dimensional spaces for the action to take place in, you can choose from a myriad of stock props and characters, you can design and execute camera moves - create a complete animatic of the film. It should actually be a lot of fun.

In the meantime, my hope is to get the number of "Likes" on the Tolltaker Facebook page up as high as possible. Another medium-term goal.

Cheating Death With The Tolltaker

It's an odd thing watching something you've worked on for so long come to fruition.

Such is the case with The Tolltaker, which I have been working on in one form or another since 2005. First there was the screenplay, which came about as a result of my long-time friend Steve Sneddon telling me that his half-brother Jimmy had written a novel that had been published.

Of course, there's published and there's published. It turns out that Jim Sneddon's book (Jim being his preferred name since about the time he was twelve) was published by a tiny, small-press publisher in Maine that had held a novel-writing competition, with the prize being publication of the winning entry.

Jim's novel The Tolltaker was the winner, and a 500-copy print run was executed. I don't think the publisher is in business anymore, and I don't know where the majority of those copies are; however, I do know you can get used copies on Amazon and similar websites.

Steve then told me that, when they were kids, he and Jimmy (as Steve insisted on calling him) used to climb inside a huge drain pipe in their Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood with candles and notebooks to write the type of fanciful little stories that 10-year-old boys would write.

The habit of writing gradually faded as Jim and Steve grew up, but the creative urge didn't. Steve picked up the guitar and likes to noodle on it to this day. Jim was close to 40 when he finally resolved to re-awaken his childhood dreams of becoming a writer. He sat down at a computer provided to him by Steve's mother (not the same woman as Jim's mother), and out came The Tolltaker.

I'm told he sent it out to every publisher and agent he could think of, but with no success. He just had no ins with the publishing industry. And then along came the writing competition. After the book had been out for a couple months, Steve gave me a copy of it to read.

It reminded me of the kind of book I would have fallen in love with as a kid: the hero was a young boy facing a life-and-death situation, the kind that tests a person's character no matter what his age. The setting was the "real" world, but one in which incursions by the fantastic occurred, with profound effects on one's life. In that sense, it was like The Phantom Tollbooth, A Wrinkle in Time, The Chronicles of Narnia and countless other books that had fed my world view when I was a kid.

And of course, there's the familiarity of a story about a young boy being raised by a single mother named Judy in the Philadelphia area in the early 1970s. That goes without saying.

So, after coming to an agreement with Jim about how to split any potential financial gains, I set about adapting the book into a screenplay. The result wound up a semi-finalist in the Nicholl Fellowship screenwriting competition, which was a lofty-enough endorsement to win me the interest of one or two managers and producers in Los Angeles, one of whom recommended that I adapt the screenplay to a short film, and then take it on the festival circuit, which is a well-tried strategy for getting an independent film made.

And that's what happened. Unfortunately, James Sneddon didn't live to see it. He died unexpectedly about a year after I finished the screenplay, before the Nicholl Fellowship result came in. He left behind a wife and two young daughters.

So, it's probably disingenuous to say that the screenplay, the short film, and the feature (should it ever get made) are tributes to Jim. It's not like I'm not benefiting as well from any success the story might have. However, I do find it deeply gratifying that someone who, late in life, chose to follow his muse found some sort of recognition, even if he had to cheat death to do it, and I had something to do with making that happen.

Sound & Vision Part Two

Well, I got the Tolltaker sound mix from Rodney, as promised. It was a little rougher than I would have liked, and there were one or two essential fixes that had to be made. Fortunately, I caught a break on the New Jersey Film Festival deadline: no one's in the office until Wednesday, so Rodney had the weekend to work on it. I'll be going over to his studio a little later today to listen to the mix and give final notes.

On the non-Tolltaker front, we're delivering a batch of footage that we shot for the Annapolis tourist bureau about a week ago. Part of the shoot involved going to the first home game of the season for the Naval Academy's football team. After filming elaborate tailgater parties in the parking lot, we went on to the field in the stadium and filmed the equally elaborate rituals the Navy team and its supporters performed to take to the field.

The march of the midshipmen was an impressive sight. They came out 0nto the field, marching in formation through an opening at one end of the stadium: seemingly endless phalanxes of young men and women dressed all in white, filling the field before taking their seats in a large swath of stadium seating that had been reserved for them.

Europe After Dark, our spec TV series about European nightlife, continues to limp its way towards completion. While there have been some sales, the main quarry - broadcast on American television - remains elusive.

It's really a chicken-and-the-egg scenario: the Fox Station Group, the division of the Fox Network that owns and operates its affiliated TV stations, is enthusiastic about the show, and is willing to move other programming around on its schedule to accommodate it. However, it's up to us to find the advertisers.

Now, we have signed a deal with a media-buying company called Apex Media to secure that advertising. However, what we're being told is that advertisers are being very close-fisted with their dollars these days, and are mostly unwilling to take a gamble on an untried brand, which is what Europe After Dark is at this point. They want to see ratings data, hard numbers, which you can only get by putting the show on the air.

So, to get the show on the air, we need advertisers. To get advertisers, we need a show on the air. The chicken and the egg.

Sound & Vision Part One

I'm eagerly awaiting delivery of the sound mix by composer and audio whiz Rodney Whittenberg a little later today. He gave me a taste of what to expect a few days ago, which got me really psyched. It's amazing what a professional sound mix can do for a movie. It adds new depths, new dimensions to the experience. Really - it's what turned "The Tolltaker" into an actual movie for me.

Rodney's an interesting guy: he's got this really cool little studio tucked away like a hobbit's warren in a 200-year-old farm house in Plymouth Meeting, Pa. He has an Emmy, for a TV show he scored a few years ago. He keeps it in the bathroom, over the toilet. He says that's what they do in Hollywood. I lived there for 10 years and never personally saw that, but then I didn't generally move in social circles that included Emmy winners.

The plan is for Rodney to put the sound mix up on iDisk in an hour or two, from whence I will fetch it and lay it into the Tolltaker timeline in Final Cut Pro. God willing, everything will synch up, but hard knocks at the hands of Murphy's Law have taught me not to count on that. One way or another, I have to get an export over to Mike Brand at Lafayette Hills Studios by this evening so I can get deliver a Blu Ray to the New Jersey Film Festival on Monday.

The clock is ticking...