Avatar

Posted on December 22nd, 2009 by Danny F. Santos

So, I saw Avatar over the weekend in 3D because everyone, their mom and hidden space alien in the attic was curious what this game changer was going to be like.  In the end, the story was “meh” but the visuals were stunning!  You have to see this in 3D it’s just visually fantastic!

But the story is still bland and it bothered me because I just couldn’t enjoy the film from anything other than a technical standpoint.  Yes I know it’s Jim Cameron and he’s gonna give you something great to look at but predictable. Even so I wish they would have done something really cool with the story as opposed to “Dances with (12 foot) Smurfs”.  The good thing is that the story makes logical sense as opposed to something like Transformers 2. :: shudder :: Although the Na’vi could have used some better tactics during the final battle.

Want to know what I would have done?  A mockumentary of the excellent BBC series Planet Earth (Planet Pandora anyone?).  I think all Cameron really wanted to build this world in as much detail as possible with it’s own history, evolution and living organisms and then explore it.  I love world building myself and have several worlds and universes planned out to one degree or another.  I don’t really intend on doing anything with them, I just like to create new worlds.

So in the end, I would say if you want spectacle without much substance, you can’t go wrong at all, no one does it better or with more attention to detail than Cameron.  And it’s always great to see Ms. Weaver in action, she hauls ass in this movie.

Social Media Consolidation Update

Posted on October 28th, 2009 by Danny F. Santos

As the months have gone by, I’ve been check out a slew of social media services. I unknowingly started using google docs more and more until I’ve reached the point where I use it almost exclusively. I also was able to get on Google Wave’s preview! While it’s pretty bare bones at the moment, it’s fun to toy with.

I’ve also been planning on uploading my earlier short films to Vimeo but the drive they’re on doesn’t want to talk to my mac. Talks to Ubuntu just fine, but the is read only… Still working out that particular problem.

I finished some online viral promo’s which I’ll be uploading fairly shortly. This was for a local improv show and I’m pleased with the way they ended up, I’ll keep you informed of that.

Back to social media, I’m still not sure how many of these services I’ll continue to use. Right now I have them all updating at the same time. Twitter has my largest following by far, so I’m keeping that one for sure.

One other thing going on is I’m on a big productivity kick. Cleaned up my home office and my work desk, it feels damn fantastic to finally clean those suckers up! In the process I simplified them, tossed a bunch of uneeded crap and reorganized. I highly recommend this to everyone.

As I restructure my life, I’d like to get into blogging more. I’m a pretty passive online kinda guy but the reality is that if I want to move forward as an independant director, I’m going to need serious backing from somewhere. And couple of fans I guess.

The Social Media Consolidation Project

Posted on September 2nd, 2009 by Danny F. Santos

Twitter , Facebook, Blogs, IMs, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, Yelp, it’s a truckload of information on me on the net as well as a truckload of great places for social interaction but the problem is this: it’s still a truckload.

There’s gotta be a better way.

I recently started taking FriendFeed seriously and glad that I did.  It’s my favourite social media platform and allows me to discover and discuss various topics in realtime.  I haven’t really been using it to it’s full potential to aggregate all of my networks into one place nor have I really gone and fine tuned all of my social platforms and this has caused at least one problem.  I keep forgetting whether I have accounts at some of these places.

The other thing is that while Facebook has an image gallery section, Flickr does it better.  FriendFeed is better at having conversations than Twitter, but Twitter has way more activity.  These duplication of services kill me, and I don’t want one place to do everything because if it does everything, it generally does it badly.  Web-apps that are focused are way better at doing that one thing than an app that does several. Yes, I’m looking at you Facebook.

I also detest the clutter that accumulates as some of these web-apps grow (again, Facebook, I see you there).  I want to have clean interfaces and focused content for each app while still having somewhere to aggregate all of it. And so, the great social media consolidation officially begins.

Tags: facebook, google, social media, twitter, youtube

Google Wave and Filmmaking

Posted on July 21st, 2009 by Danny F. Santos

Google Wave has announced that come September 30th, regular people like me and you will be able to open an account.  Well, 100,000 of us anyway.

This reminds me of an interesting article that I read at the Candler blog called Google Wave for Filmmakers.  Basically, applying the idea of Google Wave to filmmaking where you have a hub from which everyone can work from.  Whether anyone takes this idea and runs with it or not will be up in the air (I’m very tempted to develop it, but don’t have the time or resources at the moment) for some time to come.

Still, as a production tool, Google Wave is dynamite and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.  Here’s hoping I’m one of the 100,000.

Social Media + Old Media + ? = Profit!

Posted on June 19th, 2009 by Danny F. Santos

photo credit: nDevilTVx

So goes the gag.  Lately I’ve been concentrating on building an online social soapbox, so to speak.  I have a twitter account, a friendfeed account, facebook etc. but I’m not entirely sure where to take them.  This of course leads to the big question that I’m straining to answer: how do you make a movie utilizing all the new media options available to us?

The answer eludes me.  Are there opporitunities? Sure, but will they work and are they the best way of going about it.

I have several ideas of powering the creative process by utilizing social media, but how do you then turn that into a profitable film.  Micro financing is a great way of going about it and several sites exist that build on that premise but something that’s uterly web 1.0ish it.  It’s not an interactive social conversation, it’s using new ways of finding money other than picking up the yellow pages and calling doctors and dentists to bankroll your film.  Thats great and all but it doesn’t push the envelope far enough for me, it feels like we’re just slapping a new coat of paint on and calling it a brand new way to make films.

I hope to have several conversations in the coming week with people who are much smarter than I about such things.

Just something to chew on for a while.