I got a side freelance gig this week, which was nice because our work has slowed some. Of course, inside of 12 hours, I have spent a great deal of this money already. I have been submitting the new short Accidental Art to several film festivals, even some big ones.

Here’s a big secret admission. I have never submitted one of my movies to the big festivals ever before. I think I submitted Bitter Old Man to Sundance in 2001, but that was it. As much as I like many of the movies I’ve made, I never thought they were good enough to be accepted to the top ten festivals (or even top twenty fests for that matter). Even the most recent material like Uncle Pete’s Playtime and Relationship Card, I didn’t think would warrant attention on the big film festival circuit. Now with Accidental Art, I have a little more faith. It looks like a real movie, not just because of the RED ONE camera, but Greg Sabo’s skill as a DP.

First, I made 30 DVD’s of Accidental Art Wednesday. Then I compiled a list of free film festivals, most of which have deadlines within the next 2 weeks. I weighed out the odds and decided to submit to several of the top ten film fests with this movie. It’s about time I at least tried. It cost money at a time where I have other things and future projects would be better spent, but there is a method to this thought process. I had to burn another 2 discs to meet all the submissions.



Getting accepted and even playing at the big festivals is an award in and of itself. I’m not into the competitions or winning awards, but I never dislike it when it does happen, but it is NOT a motivating factor. I drive myself with my own needs to improve and be a more effective filmmaker. Being allegedly “better” than someone else doesn’t do anything for me, nor does less experienced or subjectively more talented than me cause me to want to kick your ass metaphorically with a movie. These things seem so petty, small, and uninteresting to me. I can’t get motivated by that. Some people do and there’s nothing wrong in that… FOR THEM. If a driving force for making a movie is to cause envy in others, then I feel greatly sad for you. It’s somewhat pathetic and belies emotional and mental issues that need addressing.



I am motivated by telling stories. Most people who speak with me get that dull look in their eyes as I start to spin a story that goes on endlessly, BUT they know I love to tell stories. I make a trip to the grocery store seem like Lawrence of Arabia, even though no one else agrees with my belief in its epic nature. I enter film festivals and try to get press not to feed the ego, but because it’s business. In order to tell bigger, more ambitious movies, that takes $ Money. In order to warrant getting money, you have to play in the bureaucratic sandbox to work and play well with others (that have money).
I want to make movies, but I am anchored by a sense of honor in that I don’t want to lose someone else’s money to do so. So many filmmakers are selfish and want to make their movie so bad that they cut corners or solely want to make an artistic expression, which is fine if they are paying for it themselves. When you work with other people’s money, there is a moral and ethical obligation to do whatever you can to help get return on the investment.

That means a business state of mind. Making a movie is art. The creation is birth to a unique artistic expression. Once it’s done though, you have a product to sell. In this age of digital filmmaking, EVERYONE’s a filmmaker and there are millions, soon to be billions of movies out there. How do you make your movies stand out?



Film Festivals are a great way to show that unbiased 3rd parties selected your film and decided to put it in front of a paying audience. That means it is indicative of how some people believed enough in your vision to add a monetary value. The more festivals that accept and play it demonstrate a potential that you have a movie that crosses market places, and is potentially more suitable to audiences preferences. That’s not rocket science to figure out.

Finished Accidental Art’s 6 minute scene and it feels good to be done, although “done” can still be construed as subjective since I keep making these little adjustments. One of the last things done was a license plate replacement done digitally by TJ Cooley, but tweaking it takes hours and hours, then because of the proxies and HD editing setup, every file has to be re-rendered down the line. Each time I make a 1 frame tweak, it’s 30 minutes to render the 4K files, 30 minutes to render the 1080P, and 30 minutes to render the MPEG2 for DVD, and 30 minutes for the MP4 for the web, and so on. And yet, I cannot let this go without it being closer to perfection, at least my own definition therein.



I’m already set to send the 6 minute piece to over 16 festivals this week alone, not including my own Cowtown Film Series, which will mark its premiere screening. If I never get to make the rest of this feature film, I could be content with this as a singular piece. There is an ending to it, and you cannot really guess where it goes from there, but it does have a compelling story. In the mean time, I intend to get this seen. If it wins awards, so be it, as that is not my goal per se, but they certainly won’t hurt the fund raising efforts.

A fascinating technical tidbit, even though this is shot 4K and I’m creating 1080P masters, I’m particularly impressed with how this piece looks on the CRT (Cathode Ray Tube), older TV’s. When playing off DVD or via component video from the timeline, Jesus Marimba! This footage looks drop dead amazing. Part of it is obviously the down-sampling of picture information, but regardless, the look is staggeringly impressive.

I have made a markedly clear change in my methodology; quality over quantity. My own personal bar has been raised. I can’t look back much now. What was in my head isn’t as good as the movie I made, thanks to the entire crew, not the least of which was Greg Sabo’s camera and lighting work.





Johnny DiLoretto from Channel 6/Fox 28 and formerly from the Other Paper has agreed to host the Cowtown Film Series for the Thursday night show. Every time I do one of these shows, they get bigger and better. Getting the Alive to sponsor the event was a big score for me. I’ve never had that big of a sponsor before. Hopefully Time Warner will follow suit soon, if not then maybe next time.

So I just had several movies play at the MADLAB FILM FEST downtown. I wasn’t able to make it, but I was told it was a decent crowd, but that the DVD’s played kind of skippy. Apparently they didn’t read my MOVIEMAKER MAGAZINE article. It’s the whole reason I wrote it; to avoid presentations snafu’s like that. Oh well.

Peace to all the brothers and sisters suffering,
Peter John Ross

Slowly but surely my movie gets closer to being finished. Sound mix is officially done. I did some interesting panning for voices and sound FX to match the on screen action. The toughest thing to do was to add some room tone noise to shots that were crystal clear. Since one angle of an actor was noisier than the reverse shots, that meant I had to add that basic sound to these shots too. I hate making something sound worse, but it’s a lot less distracting than hearing each cut go from a sound to no sound. It wasn’t particularly bad, but it was not my happiest moment. It happens on shoots.

Two title effects left to do. I did the scrolling credits last week along with some other titles, but the main title at the beginning and the one at the end needed some motion tracking and insertion, so that was something TJ finished off and emailed me the project files. Either tomorrow or Monday I’ll insert these shots, tweak them to fit the music score by Bill Wandel, and that will pretty much put this project to bed.

ACCIDENTAL ART

The title to my next movie is ACCIDENTAL ART. It will screen on December 3rd and December 6th as a part of the upcoming COWTOWN FILM SERIES. These 2 shows have come together so fast, my head is still spinning.

I got a call from the theater, and the owner wanted to know if I was going to do any Cowtown Film Series this year. I hadn’t thought about it, but I knew I wanted to screen ACCIDENTAL ART soon. Also, I had never done cast/crew screenings of REFRACTORY or RELATIONSHIP CARD. So I started to put feelers out for a few shorts I knew were out there and got a pretty immediate response.

Within 24 hours I had over 2 hours of short films to play. Not a one of these are 48 Hour Film Projects from Columbus 2008 or 2009. My sole purpose in avoiding those movies is because many of them have already played in movie theaters twice in the last couple months. I like to show material that most likely has not been played in a real movie theater. The real reason I make movies is to sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers and watch a story unfold in pictures and sound.

Since many of these movies showing will be cast & crew screenings, we didn’t want to charge admission, so splitting the box office with the theater was not an option, so we’re splitting the costs of renting the theater, as well as getting sponsors, many of which are already on board.


The biggest difference for this year’s Cowtown Film Series will be projecting in HD. Last year was on DVCAM tape, although great, is still a letterboxed 4:3 image with 720x480 resolution. This year we’ll be in 1920x1080 from an HD deck. I want the best possible color and detail, especially for the movie shot in HD. The colors and details should really pop off the screen.



I’m going to work hard to make sure the projection and sound is top notch. For whatever reason, I guess it’s respect for all the filmmakers’ hard work, I don’t want any screw ups or poor presentation. Few things in filmmaking are more disrespectful than not making sure you’re giving the best possible presentation to EVERYONE’s movie, not just your own. I was partly responsible for a screw up in the past at a similar festival, and I’ll never allow that again. It’s all in who you choose to work with, and I prefer professionals or people who care enough to work to make everyone look good.

The Cowtown Film Series is about the community. The selections this year indicate that the quality of filmmaking in Ohio has increased dramatically. While some local filmmakers are content to remake the same movie over and over again, most are pushing the limits of what you can do with a minimal budget.

I tried to take this week off of my new project in a way. I’m a little burned out, at least creatively, so I wanted to take a break before delving into the sound mix, plus I needed a score and finding the right composer was eluding me.

Part of the problem for me is that this is the first project I have ever made that I did not already know what kind of music I wanted. I was completely and totally without a clue as to what I wanted for music.

I am a former musician. From the time I was 5 years old and began tinkering with the piano, and later saxophone, guitars, keyboards, drums, and virtually ever instrument on the planet (sans the harmonica that ultimately defeated me as the one instrument I could not even begin to get a real note out of), I only wanted to write film scores. The first 45RPM I owned was STAR WARS MAIN TITLE and a B-Side of CANTINA BAND. Until my late 20’s, this was the singular goal of my entire life to write music for movies. I gave it up when I started writing and directing and I do NOT miss it, not even a little.



Every movie I’ve ever made, I had some idea or notion as to what I wanted musically. Even if I gave up my preference for that of the composers, I at least had a starting point that could always fall back on. Now, this movie stumped me. The tone of the film is odd enough, but I was without even a single direction to go with. I tried several temp tracks, and nothing worked. I even screened the current cut at Indie Club Columbus this past Monday with temp music. That made it evident that I needed just the right music more than anything.

Since last week I started talking to Bill Wandel (www.billwandel.com) the composer who did the action music for HORRORS OF WAR. He’s a pro and does this as his sole income, so I generally don’t pester him for my low to no pay shorts, but this is the introduction to a new feature film. I need to pull out the stops and make this as good as I can. The music needs to match Greg Sabo’s cinematography and all the actors’ performances, all of which are top notch.



Bill got the chance to see the cut, placed ever so secretly online sans any temp music; don’t want to influence any compositions with outside music, plus I wasn’t 100% sold on the temp music (hence the term “temp”). That’s not to say the quality of the temp music isn’t good, but it wasn’t written to match the mood of MY movie.

I wrote out my spotting session in an email. That means I wrote down the time codes of where I felt the music should start and stop, and also places where I thought if Bill wanted to try something musically, to go ahead and try it. He said he only had 2 days to get this done, but he’d try.

Yesterday morning I got the email with a link to music files and that was a mere 16 hours later. What I wasn’t prepared for was the perfect score. The style was modern and familiar, and yet I never would have thought of it. The moods and melodies are perfect. Basically, he says with the music what I wanted to convey to the audience about how to feel about the movie I have. Because of how complex and strange my story is, Bill Wandel’s score set the tone right from the start and it will be hard for the audience NOT to be in the right frame of mind that I intended.

My aforementioned aspirations to be a composer aside; sometimes music still knocks me on my ass. If ever I needed proof that I never need pick up an instrument ever again, Bill Wandel’s music is my proof. We share a love of several film score cats, and his talents equal any one of them.



Sound is 50% of the experience of any movie. Music is 25-49% of that (variables on the scene, dialogue, and other sounds of any given moment of a movie). This is how important music is to a movie. This music has me so freakin’ jazzed; there will be no time off. I foresee some late nights and weekend hours working on audio mix and finishing this sucker off ASAP. Also, I have found many film festival submission deadlines that I intend to make this month.

It’s amazing to me how much this reinvigorates. The music has generated a lot of creative juices and now I have to change my underwear.

Too bad I also booked a shoot Friday for two new podcasts, one a general helpful film tip version, and another set of short film specific video podcasts featuring my shorts past and present. I have cast My Sexy Girlfriend Veronica ™ because let’s face it; people would rather look at her than me. I have to put my ego in check and think of the greater good.

Has anyone else noticed that I’m getting really good at using the semicolon in my blog?

- Peter John Ross

I’ve been reading a lot lately. Books that is. My normal modus operandi has been alternating between a film book, and then a fiction novel. The last three books have been great reads, so I wanted to share some thoughts on them. I prefer non-spoiler reviews, so have no fear of anything important being ruined by me.



I’ve been an unabashed fan of Nicholas Meyer for years, and as I get older, I appreciate his film work even more. Ever since seeing TIME AFTER TIME, then STAR TREK II THE WRATH OF KHAN and into the oft-overlooked movie VOLUNTEERS with Tom Hanks and John Candy, I have been a big fan.

As self diagnosed obsessive-compulsive, I look up a lot of the works of artist I like and try to do some homework. Nicholas Meyer wrote a Sherlock Holmes novel called THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION, a reference to the liquid form of cocaine the fictional character was addicted to. It was an amazing book to read, as I love Sherlock Holmes stories. The novel maintains the spirit and tone of the original novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and yet delved deeper into the characters psyche, quite literally since Sigmund Freud is a character in the story. I look forward to getting Nicholas Meyers 2nd Holmed novel soon.



I quickly tore through the pages of an autobiographical account of substance abuse and humor by the ever witty and amazingly insightful Carrie Fisher. Too many people know her solely as Princess Leia, but the reality is that she is the daughter of Hollywood royalty and her wit is unparalleled.

Carrie Fisher has written, especially uncredited many screenplays as a script doctor for Hollywood, and is a writer for the Academy Awards for over 10 years. Her life and her point of view have no equal, as the tenacity and self deprecation create a hilarious narrative and retains every ounce of femininity. I read this book in only 2-3 sessions because I couldn’t put it down. My sole example is describing how her father and mother were good friends with Elizabeth Taylor, and when one of her first husbands died, her father consoled her with his penis.



Because I couldn’t get enough, I had bought brand new, an incredible rarity for me, the Nicholas Meyer autobiography VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE. Sadly, as his own forward mentions, the focus (and book cover) put an emphasis on his involvement in STAR TREK, but he has done so much more and has so many other facets, all that are equally (if not more) interesting. The book starts with his struggles to be a screenwriter and a director, something most filmmakers can relate to.

I’m not done with this book, but I don’t suspect it will take me long since I’m turning pages a lot with this one too.

Next up is a book on loan, another Sherlock Holmes adventure, this time by THE ALIENIST author Caleb Carr, whose other books I liked. I had no idea he wrote a Holmes story, so we’ll see how this one turns out.

Color correction is done, so the picture is pretty much locked on my newest movie. This introduces the next full length movie, as it’s just a 5 minute piece (down from 6 minutes a week ago). Greg Sabo came up and worked some magic on the RED footage. He likes some more extreme color palettes than I do. Also, in a 3.5” window on a computer screen, what looks radical ends up looking perfectly fine on a 32” HD monitor. I’m very happy with the tone and colors. Some shots differentiate, and that’s not poor cinematography, that’s a fact of life on most professional shoots. Some shots need tweaked to fit into the overall color scheme. The whole feel of the piece is coming together.



I learned another more efficient way to achieve the goal I was doing. I was making duplicate folders of the 1080 raw footage and the 720 footage. This was a waste of time. Now that we’ve color corrected the R3D 4K files in Premiere, I can export the edited piece to 720 and 1080. Duh. I still have to synch the unmixed audio, but now I can narrow it down to only the exact clips we’re using, which will save a ton of time on shots and takes we don’t use. All I have to do is then replace the audio on those shots only and I’ll have the correct audio to work with.

Now comes the music. I have a composer in mind, so we’ll see if we can work this out. Sound mixing is the end of the road for post production…then?

ARTICLE
The article I wrote for MOVIEMAKER is out on newsstands now. It’s in the 2010 GUIDE TO MAKING MOVIES issue, which is pricey. It has already caused two separate controversies in that John Whitney is mad because they lopped off his credit as co-director of HORRORS OF WAR in the side-bar where I talk about the screening at Two Boots Pioneer Theater in New York. It was in the submission word doc (I checked), and they still have his picture with a caption on the 3rd page of the article. Not good enough. Not much I can do about it.

The 2nd controversy comes from some guy named Justin Lewis, aka Frighty McGee aka J. Lew. This is a guy who has convinced himself that I am his nemesis, or some kind of Lex Luthor to his Spider-Man (analogy specifically done wrong to make a point). Okay, let me clarify a few things. The article was a culmination of SEVERAL bad screenings I have attended in the last 11 years of independent movies, not just a singular one. From some of the bigger named film festivals in Indiana, Ohio, and beyond, to local screenings of individual’s features, the article was written in a general sense and address a wide range of issues. Sorry Justin, it ain’t about you.




My new book is now on AMAZON.COM. I put together a collection of several of my screenplays of shorts and I’m doing something a little different with this. By buying the book, you are buying the royalty free right to re-produce the included scripts. I don’t know if anyone has ever done this before, but I have some of these scripts remain unproduced by me that someone could make as an exercise of making something written by someone else, or just director’s who aren’t writers looking for something to produce. Didn’t cost me anything to make it. Why not try something different?

Another weird side note on AMAZON.COM, there are people selling allegedly “collectible editions” of my books for $39.95…. What? Who is doing this and why? What makes them collectible? I surely hope no one anywhere pays for those. September was the best month ever for sales on AMAZON.COM for me. Adding the new products have helped, but IN THE TRENCHES is selling the most, with the new MOVIEMAKING TECHNIQUES DVD coming in 2nd. The book IN THE TRENCHES has always been a good steady seller for me.