Once again, Indieclub comes through for me. Not the local chapter, but the national/international forum with a suggestion from a fellow user who suggested I put my movies out to all the web video sites via a new service that tracks all your videos as well as lets you upload to 12 sites simultaneously. Now THAT is something that helps me out. I have a ton of videos, shorts, news clips, etc. so this service saves me a TON of time getting the videos all up in a single shot. Plus, the main purpose of this service is to track the views and statistics, so I get a twofer which I love. Now for another short film update on the current stats on my experiment – HOW TO DEAL WITH TELEMARKETERS. On the site that it was made for, Sony Picture’s CRACKLE.COM, I have not yet cracked the 5,000 views barrier. It may not make it for a few months at this rate. On Yahoo, part 02 has not cracked the 30,000 views ceiling, but this one seems to be a matter of days (possibly hours). Overall we’re at a combined 42,260 views on Yahoo Video.
When I last checked in on these statistics I made mention that one of the more interesting problems is that the series HOW TO DEAL WITH TELEMARKETERS is so popular it’s being stolen, as in literally the files themselves are being re-uploaded on multiple sites, including the ones they are already on – and getting sometimes more views. Someone uploaded them to a site called THATVIDEOSITE.COM where someone had uploaded the movie in Windows Media and allowed everyone else to download it as such and distribute all over the video sharing sites in the world. I have mixed feelings about this, as I don’t like losing control, but hot damn a lot of people liked the movie and wanted to share it.
The major coup that was done for me by ‘Anonymous’ was to Ebaum’s World. Part 02 has gotten 110,134 views on this site alone in less than a month. Whoa. That’s heavy and luckily they didn’t shave off the Sonnyboo.com at the end either.
That puts my total at over 200,000 combined views of all the segments from every site playing them as of today. There might even be more with the uploads by the ‘anonymous’ users out there.
The BEST OF SONNYBOO DVD has been released on Amazon.com. That makes my 4th product to be released on their site and not as an ‘Amazon Advantage’ where I set up an eStore. This is via Amazon.com’s own limited run service. This was presents a new way to get small runs of books & DVD’s out there to the peeps. I don’t have any idea how many will sell if any at all. I’ve already been selling the ‘Best of Sonnyboo’ DVD for a few years, so most people who would want it already have it.
Why do I feel like I haven’t accomplished enough yet? Because I’m motivated to try harder, I want more. I have not achieved all of my goals yet. I reach the small plateaus, but I’m still on my way to Everest. I think with making movies, I will never feel ‘done’. With music, I did reach certain goals, and I achieved what I set out to do in some respects. I stopped ‘feeling’ it, stopped being hungry.
I came across a VHS tape whilst making a cleaning overhaul in my basement. It was a compilation of video material from my first two years in high school with some friends. They were really awful attempts at making short films that I forgot existed. A flood of memories came together when I saw this footage. I recalled pulling everyone together to do this and had ideas on how to cheat with editing by using cognitive reasoning, so one actor that was a good guy, via editing, also played the bad guy. We cut it together with two conventional VCR’s.
I remembered being very pleased with the result at the time, but I never tried anything like that again until 2000… Why not? I put music first. I tried that for as long as I could and where I failed miserably with music was not being able to effectively communicate my ideas to any audience. With movies, right out of the gate, no matter what technical problems there were – I could get my ideas across far more clearly. That is why I made the switch from songwriter to moviemaker. Seeing what I did when I was 14 years old shocked me into a realization that I should have listened to the muse more clearly then.
What does my muse tell me today? Never mind the bullocks, naysayers, and stalkers – just keep doing what you are doing. That’s what I feel today. With all my heart, I know I’m doing what I am supposed to do. Ne’er does a doubt creep in. Ne’er doth negativity get through the shield of support I have from friends and family. I never dreamed I could have the support I have at this point.
I backed up a bunch of DV shorts on DVCAM master tapes. I had been tinkering with old short films, so I liked to have a tape backup instead of just files on a hard drive that may or may not crash. Better to have hard copy back ups on tape – and DVCAM is a great mastering format for standard definition video.
That’s all I have for now, my droogies.
Keep on keeping on, I know I will.
– Peter John Ross
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