So far . . . .

A bit of a gap since my last post so I apologise for that – if you have fervently followed me of late you will know that I have been working on a film all by myself which has been taking my time.

My aim – my experiment – is to edit it on MovieMaker, which is free software from Windows. I am also making it on a very reasonably priced camera from Sanyo and on Monday the film will go to the Edinburgh Film Festival, The Los Angeles Film Festival and the Brooklyn Film Festival. That will be it for now and after this I will probably get Final Cut Pro or one of the other cheaper downloads; I think Avid, which is what most editors use over here, will be too expensive for me.

Everything has been going quite well but the one thing, when you do everything yourself – and I mean everything from the music to the sound editing, acting, shooting and writing – you have some mishaps. What I do is to put the camera on the tripod, get on to my mark and then, to make sure, I look through the lens with a mirror. I also record the sound on a separate sound system (with a film called SoundZ the sound has to be good) so I usually start that, then do the bit with the mirror and start the camera.

The other day I was doing a fairly close shot of me sitting in a chair and I had to step over the microphone lead. The camera was on a tiny tripod on a book which was on the desk. As I stepped over the cable, I touched the book which knocked the camera on to the floor.

This hurt the focus and the rest of the shots from that day were out of focus. That is the problem with the small cheap camera – if it had have been a camera with a lens I would have been able to see the focus but it wasn't till I transferred it to the computer that I could see it properly.

I looked on the Internet but couldn't find the same type of camera; I saw some, but they weren't what I wanted. I eventually found that lots of the shots are now in focus as long as I don't use the zoom – today out of 24 shots one was out of focus so that's not bad; I can live with that. The zoom, by the way, when shooting yourself, is only to save moving the camera closer as you would never show a zoom shot in a drama – maybe some of the movies of the 80s but not now.

Having said that there is an excellent series on the BBC here – first episode last night – called Line of Duty where the director used a few zoom shots; when that happened I was reminded of the old series here The Avengers.

The other mishap on my movie – which happened yesterday when I couldn't shoot anything because of the horrendous weather – was that I broke the computer!!!! Yes I broke it. I previously wrote on here that I had problems saving stuff on High Definition; I know what is causing it and it is the background programmes that run and take up a load of space – you know useless things to me like Instant Messenger and the like.

So I got rid of some programmes and one of them I got rid of was something that ran the computer – I don't know what it was but it ran Windows the system that runs the whole shooting match – so when I put it back on I couldn't open anything. BOIIINNNGGG!!! It went; like a great clanking iron bar banging on my head; just like the character in my movie!!!!

So here I am on my lap top typing away whilst my computer bloke (computer guy to all my American friends) mends the big one.

And isn't the weather terrible.