Another Presentation via Skype on the Way...

There will be a project meeting with the directors of the "Folktales Animated!" project with the Tuldok producers and CICT this Oct. 1 (Philippine time). I'm almost done with my presentation. Just have to add a few more images and things will be all set. Will be testing the online presentation with Mon soon. :)

Nostalgia... Past Meets Present

I'm trying to finish my script. So I thought it's nice to go back to the past and view this old work. This film was primarily shot in the same location as this new Bernardo Carpio film. Although not directly related to this new project, I thought of watching this trailer and the film itself to hopefully get rid of a creative writing block I'm currently encountering (sigh...). It's been a rough few months with all works and almost no play for me... :s

Also, in line with the ever-evolving means to keep things archived and readily accessible, and as people start encouraging me to create "Movie" pages for my films via Facebook, here's the link to that page (where you can also check out more pix and videos). Enjoy!

August 2011 Works and Developments

Our FB Group has been very busy for the past weeks. Lots of concept studies and developments. This FB platform is really very helpful with our production set-up. Plus, we don't need to always print out materials and the documents and photos always come in handy any time. :)

Here's one photo I found while doing some archiving of my old hard drive and finding some old pix along the way. This photo was an ocular we had in Montalban from many years back -- the time when we were about to shoot my film "Aninag" (Light's Play). So I readily took the uploaded photos in our FB group for references for our backgrounds.

Who would have thought that after a number of years, after shooting a live-action fantasy children's film, I'll be going back to this very location to shoot a new short?

It's actually an animated film about the Legend of Bernardo Carpio, but there are minimal live action parts in the script. So, see you soon again, Wawa Gorge! :)

Rough Works and Juggling Around... May 2011

I've been working on the sequence treatment for the film, finalizing it, actually. And at the same time, I've been juggling in between researches, preliminary sketches, concept artworks, character designs, and background designs. All those on the side since professional works are really piling up (need to pay the bills!!). So I've been pretty much working on my free times for this indie project. It's very much like how the rest of the team are working. Like the rest of other Tuldok projects, it's always been a "virtual office" set-up given our limited resources. That's not something to stop you from doing things anyway ;-)

So far, I've been working online with my previous production designer for most of my other live action films for initial ideas on the costumes. I am also regularly working with the project's concept artist/background and set artist. I've been giving some updates and asking for creative inputs from my editor and art director/storyboard artist as well.

I'm starting to pile up on lots of materials from documents to artworks. Looking good!!

It's really a work-in-progress... but it's definitely taking some shape now. Ayos. =D

Presenting My Story and Treatment from 8,000 Miles Away: From the Other End of the Line... The Manila Perspective

So here are the events that happened from the other end of the line... Thanks to Frank Aldana for sharing the photos! =D

Working out the kinks:

Finally! Connected!!

Pitching session!!

I'm definitely missing here... =p

Presenting My Story and Treatment from 8,000 Miles Away: So This is What Happened...

After a couple of Internet issues, iChat and YM blocked by the office network in Manila, troubleshooting, iChat started working but screen sharing disabled! Thinking fast... Screen sharing via Skype worked! Took a few good minutes. Well worth the wait, at least I was able to present on my own and not with the last option of having video conference then Mon is gonna click the Keynote presentation for me from there -- as I look on the video for the cue for the next slide to show.

Took a few shots. Here they are:

Presenting My Story and Treatment from 8,000 Miles Away: Planning and Testing

Artheus, my workhorse MBP

Yesterday, I woke up quite early with Internet as breakfast. I actually slept quite late, just a few hours before, but I think it has something to do with the music playing on the background that woke me up in no time. After falling asleep with my laptop on my bed (it was a productively tiring work night as usual), The LOTR 1 soundtrack has been looping in my iPod and it's not really a "pro-sleeping soundtrack."

Anyway, I think it was about 10pm or so in Manila. And had to talk to Ramon for the pitching session for the stories.

I have to present my project as well. But obviously, I can't be there until the last quarter of 2011. I'm currently in the U.S. and the most I can do is to provide all the materials to people in Manila. I got a spoonfeeding type of Keynote presentation with PDF backup and video peg for the animation also sent  separately so all materials are already there prior to the Saturday session.

A slide from my Keynote presentation exported in PDF format (backup copy I sent to people in Manila)

I could have sent a representative from my creative team already, but decided not to first. I thought it would be better to have somebody from my team once we "officially start," with their contracts on hand. There are other options anyway. I'm looking for ways to present, that for the first ever pitching and presentation about my plans for my film, I'm taking charge.

Initially, Ramon will be my "proxy." He has the materials from me and he considerably knows my story. We actually developed it while riding the plane back to Manila from our animation workshop in Aklan last March.

So Ramon was online that morning. Good! So it's time to talk about how the presentation will go. Prior to that, we were looking for ways to make an online presentation possible. Suggestions included Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Facetime, Google Wave, the Share button in Keynote, among others. Apparently, only one option seemed appropriate: Apple's iChat.

Awesome MBP!!!

Since we both have Macs, we started exploring the program. In a breeze, my screen got shared to his screen from 8,000 miles away! Awesome! Successful test! Technology is so cool!!!  Best of all... it's free!! It's as simple as opening iChat in the two Macs. =D

His laptop is going to be an extension of my laptop. Then his laptop will connect to the projector and an external speaker for better audio from the conference room where the presentation will be done in the Philippines.

The plan is to also have one of the many laptops during the presentation to be used for Skype or YM. I'll be there via video conference. That laptop will just be beside Mon's Mac and the projector so people can see my face and I can see them. It helps, too, that the conference room's table was long and rectangular (with a vertical orientation from the projection wall) -- making me have a good view of people there during the video conference. They see me, I see them!

This is my first time to do a professional presentation from thousands of miles away. Really cool. Let's see what happens... session starts in about 12 hours from now. It's 2pm, Saturday, Philippine time, which is also 11pm, Friday, Pacific Standard Time.