Tales from the Cellar

I’d say this is a huge step forward for Blender 3D. Creative Cow forums are only for serious topics using production-worthy tools. This truly signifies Blender has opened some eyes in the industry.

Here’s the link: Blender – NEW ! Forum.

Movie Maker magazine online posted a list of their choices of the 50 best blogs for movie making. I’m not on the list, , but there are some other great sites listed. Most I’ve never even heard of. Take a look, and here’s the link to the original article: 50 Best Blogs for Moviemakers | MovieMaker Magazine.

50 Best Blogs for Moviemakers

• Adventures in Self-Releasing
• All About Indie Filmmaking
• All These Wonderful Things
• The Anonymous Production Assistant’s Blog
• The Art of the Title Sequence
• Ben’s Blog
• The Big Picture
• Blog Stage
• Bright Lights After Dark
• Cinema Tech
• Cinematical
• The Documentary Blog
• The Edit Foundry
• The Editblog
• Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts
• Film Dailies
• Film School Rejects
• The Film Sensei
• Filmmaker Blog
• Filmmaking Stuff
• FilmSound.org
• FreshDV
• GreenCine Daily
• Hammer to Nail
• HD for Indies
• Hollywood Elsewhere
• The House Next Door
• In Contention
• The Independent Eye
• JohnAugust.com
• The Joy of Film Editing
• Just F*ing Entertain Me
• Living Your Dream: An Acting & Film School Blog
• Making the Movie
• A Moon Brothers Film
• The Movie Blog
• MovingPictureBlog
• OnSuper8.org
• Persistence of Vision
• Projector Films
• /Film
• Some Came Running
• StudioDaily
• Thompson on Hollywood
• Totally Unauthorized
• Travel Day
• Truly Free Film
• Twitch
• The Unknown Screenwriter
• Workbook Project

I’ve been using Google Chrome for a couple of weeks now and stumbled on this Zemanta plugin. It’s an add-on to help bloggers find interesting content to match what they’re posting about. It allows you to connect to your friends at the various social networking sites and pull from your RSS feed reader. Might be interesting.

By the way, I’m dangerously close to changing Chrome to my default browser. Sorry Firefox.

Related articles by Zemanta

• What Is Zemanta? (yearn2blog.com)

Screenwriter John August posted about a low-budget film (One Too Many Mornings) that will be showing at Sundance, and it spawned a very informative discussion on independent film distribution and how it is changing. Well worth a read. Here’s the link.

Artbeats, a well respected site for stock footage, is now offering a daily clip for free download. They are offering the clips in HD and SD (both NTSC and PAL). Free registration is required. I’ve downloaded a few and they are nice. These clips usually sell for about $200-300.

I want to start posting more this year, and I thought a “write once, post everywhere” approach might help. This plugin will supposedly post to the FaceBook news feed whenever I add a post to this blog. I’m starting with FB,  but may add MySpace and possibly…gulp, Twitter at some point.

Here’s the link to the plugin: http://www.gilfether.com/socialite/

Update: link didn’t show up. Let’s see if that’s fixed…

The LA Times is reporting that Paramount is starting a new division for micro-budget films.

From the Times article:

Fresh off its stunning “Paranormal Activity” success — a $15,000 thriller that has grossed more than $107 million in its domestic release with little paid advertising — Paramount Pictures is set to launch a new production business for movies budgeted at less than $100,000.

The as-yet-unnamed division plans to finance as many as 20 “micro-budget” movies annually starting in 2010, according to people familiar with the studio’s plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the formal announcement has not been made. A current Paramount executive will run the business, but the selection has not yet been revealed  publicly. Funds for the movies — no more than $2 million total annually — will be part of Paramount’s existing production budget. The division does not plan to acquire completed movies at film festivals and markets.

Even if you get a chance to make your film and it serves as a “calling card”, or warrant a larger budget to be re-made, this could be a good thing. We’ll have to keep an eye out.

Read the entire article here.

I originally found the reference at FreshDV, a cool site for filmmakers.

low-budget filmmaking paramount financing

At last the teaser is finished and posted on YouTube. Sealed Fates: A Trilogy of Claustrophobic Terror is Timewarp’s latest feature. The film is currently in post production and should be in the can this summer.

Stay tuned for a post on the making of the trailer. I got to use a lot of fun tools on this one.

The venerable horror host Count Gore De Vol has posted an interview with me conducted by veteran Timewarp actress Leanna Chamish. It was conducted at Horrorfind this summer.

Take a look at the video, then go over to Count Gore’s unique Web site,

Meet Effects Artist Mitch Klein from Gore De Vol on Vimeo.

From John at videokitchen.tv:

We are proud to announce that videokitchen.tv has signed
with Troma Entertainment, Inc. to distribute Blood, Boobs & Beast on DVD.
The DVD is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com and will be
officially released on February 24, 2009. The DVD will come as a 2-disc Double
Feature and will include Dohler’s 1983 masterpiece Nightbeast! Additionally,
the set will include special features for both films including audio
commentaries with the filmmakers, hilarious deleted scenes, trailers and tons
of tromatic extras!