Half of Anything

The film that seems to go on screening...

2008-03-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

I have been asked to screen Half of Anything at this year's Folklife Festival here in Seattle. Needless to say I am honored for the request and have accepted but I am a bit surprised as this film seems to be generating interest for longer than I thought it would. When I know more of what's happening I will be more than happy to share it.

Peace,

Jonathan

Long time, no post

2008-01-10T23:09:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

It has been a long time since I made a post on this blog, much less look at it. This film still continues to go on strong and is still being requested at film festivals which not only surprises me but also makes me happy. An event that this film is screening at can be located at http://www.nativeinstitute.org where a friend and fellow former Native Voices graduate student Marcella Ernest's film, Reclaiming Our Children: A Story of the Indian Child Welfare Act will be screening at the end of February with several other student films at the Ethnic Cultural Center/Theater at the University of Washington.

In case anyone is interested reason that there has been such a long gap between postings is working on a dissertation takes up a lot of time and I would not have it any other way.

Peace,

Jonathan

An update to the update

2006-09-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

I made an update to the update and I felt that in order to avoid any unnecessary reading I would just post the update to the update.

Contacting me: jonathan@jnh1066.com

The new blog: jnh1066productions.blogspot.com

Oh yeah, you might have noticed that it has been a year since I last posted. Let's say I got busy and hopefully I'll get back on track soon.

Peace,

Jon

Finally, an update

2005-04-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

It's been a long time since I made my last blog post to this site, (January 26th to be exact) and a lot has been going on. Half of Anything has been playing here in the United States and Canada and audience reaction has been positive. Momentum has been building up behind this piece and soon I hope to start to enter it into more film festivals. However, there are some things that I need to fix. First is the sound. It still sounds too quiet for me and I need to go into the lab this weekend and work on it plus I need to get the thing off of the HD machine. I should be able to get this all done this weekend so that my fellow HD filmmakers can have room to work.

Another interesting development is that a colleague of mine has directed me to an interesting website, it is withoutabox.com that allows one to submit films to various film festivals around the nation and I imagine around the world. I've signed up for it but I haven't been able to devote as much energy pursuing it as I would like to. However, I've decided that I need to do that so I am going to actively start to submit the film to as much as I can for exposure as soon as possible. Anyway, if you are interested in seeing the film feel free to email me at jonathan@jnh1066.com. I'm also working on other projects that when they go live, I'll post here and most likely, I'll create new blogs for those projects. In fact, I'm working on a new project that while isn't directly another documentary, it is about creating space on the web. The URL for this blog is, http://jnh1066productions.blogspot.com/. As I stated, this blog is concerned with the development of space, or a presence on the web by those who are interested in creating and transmitting content. If this interests you, feel free to check out that blog.

Peace,

Jonathan

The Hell of HD

2005-01-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

Yesterday I came into the HD lab to capture some new After Affects I created for my documentary (what happened is that the University of Washington Archives arrived, as did the ones from the Denver Library, plus I found some stuff at the National Archives) and as I was working, the system crashed and I wasn't pleased. After the crash I did a system shutdown and reboot and I could not get back into the program. The data was still there, the directories were still there and program opened up to the entry screen but to no avail.

The only thing I could think of was to grab my gear, get a beer and think what could be wrong. After a couple of hours I came back to the lab and I noticed that one small transformer that is linked to a small but rather important piece of hardware was very, very hot. I unplugged it, left for the night, came in this morning, plugged it in and viola! It worked! The next thing I did was to create a new archive and I will copy that to my firewire drive after I transfer the After Affects.

The moral of the story is back up, back up, back up.

Peace,

Jon

Long time, no blog, redux

2005-01-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

For those of you, ok, those two of you that actually read this blog, I apologize for not putting anything down earlier but I've been busy. So busy in fact, that I haven't (I don't care if we are not supposed to use contractions) posting anything in a while. Even now, I really don't have the time, but what I do want to say is that hopefully this project will be done this week and will be hitting the festival circuit soon. If and when it does, I will share this on this blog so that everyone, ok, just the two people who read this thing can share.

Peace,

Jon

Stumble, fall, and ascention

2004-11-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

Earlier this week I had a system wide laptop crash that virtually destroyed everything I had on it. Also, my backups were also corrupted. The only thing I can think of is that I was hit by some virus. Needless to say that I was not a happy camper. In fact I was down right pissed off. What made matters worse is that my student grades database was lost and it's back up was corrupted also. However, thanks to their credit, after informing my students of the situation and making a request to get back their papers today a vast majority of them did so. Those who didn't have either some or all of their paperwork asked if they could turn it in late and of course I said yes. Also to alleviate their anxiety I am letting them turn in copies of the original and I am also going to email them with what I have so that they can reconcile any discrepancies.

Now on to the movie.

The movie is at a fine cut stage. Because of the laptop crash I was not able to do some finish work, i.e. two more cutaways and end titles because of well, the laptop crash. What I can say is that the images look good, it flows well and while there are some cutaways I need to redo, for the most part it holds up well and conveys the story I wish to well, convey. The one issue I have is that Sherman's audio is a little "soft." What I mean by a little soft is that it is not as crisp as the rest but the fix is a minor one and should take only about 10-15 minutes.

After that's done, the next thing to do is to transfer it to DVCAM and get all nervous about showing it to a whole bunch of people...

Peace,

Jon

Conversion continued

2004-11-15T17:46:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

Yesterday I came in to capture material from my Firewire drive into the AVID HD system and I had a 15% failure rate of material successfully transferring. To some people, they might think that a precentage that high is a failure but in my eyes, it is a resounding success! I've worked on recreating the media (AVID stated that the data was corrupted), which doesn't take a long time to do, especially since it is simple camera movements of stills plus I've been working on creating new media to replace older pieces that I felt were problematic. I'm still not done and have a lot to do in a VERY short amount of time but I realized I'll get done what I can in the time alloted and hope for the best.

Oh yeah, all of the HD footage has been captured at high resolution and there are no artifacts created. Of course I haven't seen what it looks like projected and when we did a presentation for the Deans last year it did have some problematic streaking but it might be the projecter at fault and not the image. At least I hope so.

Peace,

Jon

Conversion process is on the way

2004-11-14T13:33:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

For those of you who have worked with AVID in its many forms you are aware that because uncompressed video is a space hog and can slow down your computer it is common practice to work with it in lower resolution. For the AVID DS HD the common compression is 1/4 resolution. Well, because I'm preparing the project for its premiere I am re-capturing the video at full resolution. And so far, so good. Now I need to put in my Adobe After Affects stuff and add some new video that I shot but so far, so good. Hopefully I'll not have too many headaches getting it all done. I'm hoping to have it done by tomorrow and any last minute pick up shots added before Friday. I can feel the crunch and having to lead a class discussion in rhetorical criticism in class isn't helping much. In case you're wondering what my discussion is in, it is the rhetoric of social movements. I'm examining the metonymy of AIM (American Indian Movement) at Wounded Knee 2 using a three academic books and a number of scholarly journals.

Peace,

Jon

Pick up shots, part 1

2004-11-07T21:50:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

Today I went out with Christina and I was able to get some pick up shots done for some potential cutaways. It was interesting because we had her two foster children with us and moving them and the gear around was interesting but fun. Another interesting note is that I had Christina dress in warm winter clothes and well, it was rather nice outside. I hope that it invokes a mood that I need for her section and I figure that I'll need to do some more shooting to finish it up BUT the HD camera is going to be used by UWTV until the 15th so that does put me in bit of a crunch.

Anyway, I still have so much to do, redigitizing photos at higher resolution, etc. Oh yeah, I still have a couple of papers to write and numerous papers to grade and tons of reading. Oh well, I wouldn't want it any other way.

Peace,

Jon

P.S. the part 2 will be coming later...

So much to do... and so little time...

2004-10-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

I just have about 2 minutes for this blog and right now I can say that I am feeling a time crunch. Right now I am working on two papers, one is a case study regarding a foreign communication system and the other is a rhetorical study of a social movement speech. Unfortunately time does not permit me to go any further on either but suffice it to say that the James Welsh Inquiry, my classes, my TA position, my films, my life are crowded. Also right now I'm playing with the notion of parataxis and hypotaxis. Suffice it to say that I'm busy.

Peace,

Jon

Clearance and sound

2004-10-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

Post-production on the documentary has slowed a bit. Why, do you ask? Well, we need to get clearance on the photos and other images that I've chosen to include in the documentary (cutaways and such) that are either owned by various institutions or private individuals. Yes this can be read that I don't want to get sued. It's a rather non-glamorous but necessary part of the process and it helps to provide the feeling of closure which I must admit, feels good.

Sound.

In particular, soundtracks.

I've been asked if I would like to put a soundtrack to this documentary and my thoughts about this are no. Why, you may ask? Well, I feel that the text in documentary is strong enough to stand on its own without the need to use music to manipulate the audience. Before I get any complaints on this, I am not saying that documentaries that use music need to do so because their narratives are weak, what I am saying is that I believe that the text in mine is strong enough to carry itself and that adding music would lessen the piece.

Hope that this makes sense.

With that I bid you a good day.

Peace,

Jon

Submitted to Sundance

2004-09-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

Last week I submitted a work in progress (which is about 94% done) of the video to Sundance. The chances of this film being accepted are well, not the best. That does not mean that the movie is not good, it just means that the level of competition is that high.

Wish me luck on this and I'll post more soon.

Peace,

Jon

Delicate flavoring

2004-09-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

Yesterday as I was working on putting in cutaways for my project I realized that the narrative is so strong that anything I put in to cover jump cuts or amplify what is being said needs to be subtle. It needs to create a delicate flavoring to the piece; what I've noticed is that in too many documentaries filmmakers tend to put in too many cutaways which in my opinion is used as a crutch because the filmmaker thinks that the narrative that is constructed is not strong enough to hold its own. Plus I am a firm believer that the viewer's imagination needs to be engaged.

Oh yeah, I've decided that I am going to submit this movie to Sundance. And while it's doubtful it will be accepted I look at it this way. It's like a first date, it will cost a fair amount of money and most likely you won't get anywhere but I think it will be a good experience nevertheless.

Peace,

Jon

Long time, no blog!

2004-09-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

Wow! It's been a while since my last posting and I feel that I should address that. First, I was working way too hard on this project and as anyone who knows me I needed to take a break from it. So that's what I did. I decided or more accurately was invited to go up to Victoria to visit friends and man oh man that was exactly what I needed.

When I got back I was able to visit with a fellow student filmmaker Anndrea who was able to look at the movie and give me feedback on what works and what doesn't, which after I got some rest and distance I was thinking to myself that this stuff doesn't work and it needs to be cut. However, this weekend I need to get back into it and get this thing done however, there is a Husky pre-season football game this Sunday and if you've ever had to deal with UW during a game or other large event it is generally a wise policy to steer clear of this place.

Oh yeah, I'm working on developing an easier way of transferring Adobe After Affects exported files and seeing if my laptop can produce a file of similar quality than that from a G4 desktop system. If that is possible, then I can get some of this work done at home.

Peace,

Jon

Monday, August 16

2004-08-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

First,

Alien vs. Predator did suck.

Second,

If you ignore Alien 3, Alien: resurrection and Predator 2 you have two very neat concepts that one would think would go great together and here are links to some trailers;

Third,

I believe that one should go back to the source to see just how bad Alien vs. Predator did suck;

http://www.darkhorse.com/profile/profile.php?sku=91-044

Fourth,

Why is he writing about Alien(s) and Predator on a blog devoted to his documentary? Well, the reason is that this weekend I decided to take a break away from working, spend time with my nephew who is visiting from California and go with my brother-in-law to see a movie. However, although they it did suck I cannot say that I was disappointed. In fact, it was exactly what I needed. Sometimes you need to see a bad film just because. It got me out of the rut of spending all of my time at the lab, or working at home on something that I can tweak after it gets signed off. I guess what I'm trying to say is this;

Never take your work too seriously
and
take a break when given a chance.

That said, I did figure out a way to help streamline some of the work I've been doing and I'm feeling confident that I will have something good to show this Friday.

Now I've just got to work on the intro and develop some form of narration...

Peace,

Jon

A brief reprieve

2004-08-14T17:28:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

I found out late this week that a trip I was supposed to go to Indiana for the latest gencon convention, http://www.gencon.com was cancelled. Now, normally I might get somewhat upset especially since it was a free trip but low and behold I'm not. Why you might ask? Well the reason is this. Because I was scheduled to leave on Wednesday August 18th and returning on the following Friday I had to schedule my final screening of my piece for my committee to sign off on Tuesday but because of the trip being cancelled, I was able to petition my committee to see if we could reschedule it for Friday. My committee agreed and that gave me three extra days. Also, a job opportunity has opened for my that weekend, which will help lessen the burden of having no liquid cash in order to well, go see Jet Li in Hero the following weekend. What can I say, I like action movies. I'm even going to see the Alien vs. Predator movie although I know it will, for lack of a better word, suck.

Peace,

Jon

Some archival research links

2004-08-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

For the past few days Clark and I have been scrounging the net and local archives for materials for the video. And while there has been some progress, transferring this material to a medium that I can use is well, time consuming. A site that Clark found quite some time ago but never really looked at has provided us with a lot of promising material. The site's URL is, http://www.archive.org. This site has numerous public domain motion pictures however there is very little regarding Indians, Native Americans, American Indians, etc. However, it does have a few westerns which are in the public domain and many are cross listed in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) URL http://www.imdb.com. However, if anyone who is reading this has any interest in doing something with cold war footage, in particular atomic war, civil defense and even bioweapons, then this site is definitely for you.

Peace,

Jon

Image and video collecting, among other things

2004-08-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

Yesterday I was able to meet with Deborah, one of the people in Half of Anything mainly to visit and also to show her the rough cut of the movie so that she could give feedback on the movie as a whole and comment on her section in particular. I am pleased to say that she liked it and of course Deborah did state that there were some choppy areas, in particular in Christina's section and I explained to Deborah that Christina brings up several notions that the general viewing office might not be familiar with. And that the choppiness is there so that I know where I am going to put in some narrative construction that briefly explains what she's just brought up. The problem is, I need to figure out what to say that is a good abstract on it, but then shows the complexities behind each definition and doesn't disrupt the narrative flow.

Fortunately tomorrow Christina is available to see the movie and comment on her section and provide guidance and even help structure the definitions to the notions she brings up during her section.

Perhaps the biggest help has been that Deborah has agreed to share some family images, in particular her grandfather who she brings up quite a bit in her section to help enrich her section of her interview. And I'm hoping that my meeting with Christina will also provide me with images. I'm also going out with the HDCAM and shooting cutaways. Mainly cityscapes, skylines, and hopefully some more intimate shots.

Peace,

Jon

The gear that this documentary is shot and edited on

2004-08-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

Here is some information on what gear was used to shoot this project:

Camera:

Sony HDW750 HDCAM
Fujinon HDTV Lens

Tripod:

Cartoni ENG Tripod
Cartoni Camma Fluid Head

Sound Gear:

Sennheiser ME 66 Shotgun Mic
Sennheiser MZS 20-1 Pistol Grip
Sennheiser MZW 60-1 Windscreen
Shure FP24 Portable Mixer
Sony MDR-7506 Headphones
Sony ECM-77B Microphone
Gitzo Carbon Fibre Fishpole

Lighting:

Natural light with reflector or silk and stand depending on the lighting conditions

Tape:

Sony BCT-40HD HDCAM

Digital Still Camera:

Nikon CoolPix 5700

Editing System:

AVID DS/HD
Apple G4 with Adobe After Affects
Compaq Presario R3000 with Adobe Photoshop
IBM PC Clone with an Athlon 900 Thunderbird Processor (retired)

Peace,

Jon

A weekend off but not unproductive

2004-08-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

Although this weekend I took a little break from working in the editing lab I didn't take a break from working on this documentary. Instead, I decided that I needed to develop material for the web site and to work on finishing my pickup shot and archive sheet so that Clark, who is helping me with the project, can go scout locations and find the images I need. I also realized after talking at length with my friend Terreane, that I need to start thinking of what type of musical score the movie needs. Right now, I cannot even think specifically of what type of music I want (genre(s)) but I do know that I really want to avoid the pitfalls of using any native music that consists of what western civilization has deemed the type of music we are supposed to play and that usually consists of drumming and flutes.

Today will be a busy day as I am meeting with Clark to go over a few dozen things he needs to find by Wednesday. Also, I've just realized that I have 16 days in which to finish a good rough cut that can be signed off and I can be awarded my degree!

Peace,

Jon

A publicity still from Half of Anything

2004-07-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

I decided to post a publicity still that I am considering using to well, publicize my documentary, "Half of Anything."

Top left: Christina Entrekin, top right: Sherman Alexie, bottom left: John Trudell, bottom right: Deborah Bassett

What is interesting is that these images really do not do the quality of what was shot justice. The only work I've done on them is to give them more contrast so that they show up a bit better on the web.

Peace,

Jon

EEKS!

2004-07-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

Today I decided to look at the calendar to see how much time I have left before I need to present my project for approval and well, it is 19 days! Or, 456 hours. Now, let's figure out that I need at least, let's say 6 hours of sleep a day, that's 114 hours. Next is work, and that is 56 hours for a running total of 166 hours, 456 - 116 = 340 hours. Next is travel, eating among other things, let's say that takes 5 hours a day, for a total of 95 hours, so 340 - 95 = 245 hours. Now, lets subtract 38 hours just for well, just being lost (and that is a conserative number) for 245 - 38 = 207. Ok, let's take 207 and divide that by 19, 207 / 19 = approximately 10.9 hours a day. Now that does sound like a lot, but it really isn't. I guess I better get on it!

Peace,

Jon

Two new email addresses

2004-07-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

Just to keep things straight I've decided to create two new email accounts. The first one, halfofanything@yahoo.com is just for people who want to know more about the movie, make comments about it, and establish discourse with me regarding it.

The other email address I created, forndnz@yahoo.com is more for when I need to do some casting calls for my projects. Now, my projects are done as a graduate student so I have very little in regards to money, making a video is expensive!

I'm just a little curious if either email account will receive any email...

Peace,

Jon

The hell of editing in HD

2004-07-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

I've been spending the last few days in high definition HD editing hell. Mind you, I'm not complaining about working in HD, it's good for my career and it is a hell of a lot of fun. The problem is, that I'm having to reinvent the wheel so to speak. What I mean by this is that much of what I am interested in doing for this little documentary is unexplored territory for me. Not that I haven't done something similar in SD (standard definition), it's like I think I've said before, the interface is different, the terminology is different, and now this isn't a complaint, except I wish I had more time to experiment with it, is that the HD editor gives you a lot of freedom, which if not put into perspective, can be overwhelming.

To give you an example of what I'm talking about, there are certain areas in the documentary that need some form of narrative explanation, an example of this is when Christina discusses the notion of tribal enrollment. For most people, this notion might be foreign, so I decided that I needed to find a point in her narrative when she brings this up, plus a few other concepts, like blood quantum, and trust relationships that I'm sure will need a short explanation to keep the viewer up to speed with what's happening. The notion of freeze framing was brought up by a professor friend of mine (David Silver) that I wanted to watch the documentary because he's not familiar with all of the concepts brought up and I needed someone who could watch it and give me feedback on what needs explanation. Anyway, David brought up the notion of perhaps using freeze frames, and the movie, "Lock, stock, and two smoking barrels" came to mind. Sure, there are a lot of films that have used freeze frames, in fact, "Office Space" has one scene that really works, but I am digressing and I figured that it has the potential to be a good device to take a step back from the narrative without being too distracting.

Well, the AVID systems that I have worked on before, you can just click an option on a menu and pull frames that can be exported. The AVID HD doesn't work that way. Without getting too involved in it, I spent the better part of 3 hours last night, 9:00-Midnight finding the right spot in the timecode, pulling a frame, copying it to mini drive, burning it to a CD-R, transferring it to a G4 with After Affects, resizing it to fit the frame, adding the most basic of animation, i.e. Deborah's name and her profession coming on screen, creating a Quicktime file, burning that to a CD-R, taking that back to the HD system, loading that onto a test timeline, matchframing the clip, creating two subclips, slipping the Quicktime between the two subclips, playing it, and being relieved that it worked.

Now, I just need to replicate this I figure about a dozen times. Nevertheless, I have to admit although this project is stressing me out somewhat it is also incredibly cool having to figure out this stuff.

Well, it's time to go, need to meet with one of the people in my film and look to see what type of images she has for cutaways and such.

Peace,

Jon