out of space

I have three external hard drives: an old 20 GB that's full of my music, an 80 GB that has a bunch of different image & graphic files stored on it, and a 200 GB that's holding a good 160 GB of raw DV footage. Mostly from Amanda and I's bike trip along the Pacific last summer... but also video I took for & during the pilot.

Two days ago, I took the subway (because we were spending $600 to fix the brakes on the car) into Pasadena to meet with Matt, Tim (DP) and Aaron - we went over the footage from the June 5th - 9th shoot, and I brought home Tim's 300 GB drive to look, more closely, at the video. But I've been franticly shifting my 200 drive to DVD's to make room for the pilot clips. All this on-top of editing.


I need to just give in and buy myself a 300 GB external - I know even after I empty the 200 I already have, that by the time I dump the pilot footage on it and start cutting - the render files will eat every last bit of space in no time. Which is frustrating because Final Cut 5 has dynamic editing & playback - which means you don't have to render to work - unless you have a mac mini and are working with HD footage... then dynamic playback is just choppy-as-hell.

Which is half the reason I want a 300 so badly, I could fit everything on it, including the project files and just sneak it with me into iFilm when I'm working late, I'd be able to get my editing done about 15 times faster. But... we are $600 in the hole for the brakes, so I'll keep holding my breath.

05 footage

As I mentioned in my last post - I've been transfering the footage from our 2005 bike trip off my 200 GB-drive to DVDs. I'm only half way done (and starting to think that I should have just gone out and bought a new external...), but I've been skimming over the clips and picking out random stuff to post, here's a small handful. Enjoy.

This clip doesn't do the wind full justice here - I remember turning around, with our backs to the wind, and, literally, without pedaling - we were coasting at 20 miles an hour. That was a rough day.

This was behind a hotel in Cambria, California - I think if we could have figured out a safe way to take one of these kittens with us on our bikes, we surely would have...

Nick and I hiked to the top of a hill to investigate an old water-well at the top, unfortunately, it was sealed off with rocks. But pay close attention to the guy who looses his ladder on Hwy 1. Somehow, Amanda claims she didn't notice.

At this point, our train was already hours & hours behind schedule for Seattle. Amanda and I stepped outside to stretch our legs and get some fresh air while Amtrak fixed a bad engine at Union Station, Portland, Oregon.

This morning Amanda woke up to find a slimy surprise inches from her face...

I'm not sure why these rocks were piled up this way - but it was an interesting place to stop and rest during a long day of biking.

Amanda and I spent over a half an hour at this look-out point, waiting to see more than just a cloud of mist from the whales gathering around the small boat... it never happened.

This is a long, and sometimes bumpy, shot taken along Hwy 1 in Oregon - I know it's rough and windy at first, but everything calms down once we start heading back away from the ocean, you can even hear the birds as we bike past.


That's all for now - be sure to check in on the "05 trip" channel for more clips. I actually haven't even uploaded these yet, but I have much more on the way soon.

post

After getting back from our five-day shoot at 2 in the morning on the 10th - all four of us crammed our bikes and gear into the apartment and crashed... hard.

In the morning, Amanda and I took Tim to Trader Joe's, he had promised to go there for a friend who was watching some things at his lab, then we ran over to a bike shop on Lankershim to grab an empty box for the bike (that Tim bought for $5 at a thrift shop).

We wanted to leave the apartment by 'noon to make it to LAX for Tim's flight at 1:45 - but we left closer to 12:30, and might have made it if it weren't for a major traffic jam next to the Getty Center, all the way past Hwy 10. Amanda, Nick and myself didn't get very far from LAX before getting a call from Tim saying that he had missed his flight and couldn't fly out until much, much later.


The four of us drove up the PCH to 'Back on the Beach' for a quick lunch - Nick, unfortunately, still had to leave at 5:30. I wish the both of them could have stayed an extra week, everything was so go-go-go before and during the whole trip, it would have been nice to relax with them - take them around town a bit.


As for now, Tim (DP) is in the process of importing and backing-up the hours and hours of HD footage into the G5 at Matt's. Speaking of Matt - I was very excited/ relieved/ flattered to hear from him that the crew was very, very optimistic and were sure they a "solid pilot" from the 5 days. Matt sounded very happy - which is probably a good sign.


I've been cleaning out my 200 GB drive to get ready to dump all the back-ups onto it, from there I'll do my best to start compressing and posting footage in our video library... check back for a dedicated channel for the pilot footage.

day 5

“It’s a wrap”. That was unnecessarily cheesy - I apologize.

It’s about 7 o’clock - and I’m having a hell of a time typing this, the road we are driving on, through Death Valley, is shaking the hell out of Amanda’s iBook.

We filmed the end shot about three hours ago a few miles north of Beatty, Nevada, on a government road that lead straight up into the mountains. By “government road” I mean that we could only go so far before the polite police-guards would have opened fire on our RV.

I have to interrupt this post to say that we just turned the AC off, and cracked open the side windows - if my eyes were closed I would have guessed that a three foot tall blow-drier was pointed directly at my face... it’s freakin’ hot out here! Moving on.

We spent over 2 hours in Goldfield this afternoon, filmed a lot of the 4 of us rolling through town, looking at the empty buildings lining the streets - then each of us had some “alone time” with the camera (and Tim-DP), talking about the (hypothetical) last few days of our trip through the desert.

I’m very excited to see the footage - I’ve only seen bits and pieces of certain shots - I’m anxious to see how the story pans out, I know the one we have in mind, but it’s likely that when we get everything in front of us, that something else will surface.

On a side note - we have 896 photos of the pilot’s behind the scenes. It’s around 2.1 GBs of pic’s, so I’ll have to upload half of them this month and then next half the first day of July (since Flickr pro only allows 1 GB of upload per month).

Okay, that’s all for now, I need to go cool off.

day 4

I just tried to mooch off an internet connection we picked up on US 50 named ‘Jesus is Lord’... unfortunately none of passwords we tried (Genesis... Psalms... etc) worked. I wouldn’t even be looking for wi-fi connections if it wasn’t for one that we picked up in Carson and held onto - while driving 55 miles an hour - for at least 10 minutes. I would have posted something I wrote for yesterday night, but Blogger is down for maintenance.

From here on - it’s nothing but dry-dead grass and roads that go on in a perfect line for as long as the eye can see... which out here, is a very, very long ways.

I’m a bit worried for Amanda - yesterday, as I mentioned, she stopped at the Urgent Care in Davis, California, to get something for her bladder infection - the doctors had told her that if she started to suffer from headaches, lower back pains or nausea, that she could have a kidney infection, and would need to go to the hospital as soon as possible. Now, Amanda’s lower back is usually soar at any given time - but she can’t tell if it’s a different pain (that she should be concerned about) or if she is freaking herself out subconsciously. Not to mention that we are in the middle of nothing - I’m not even sure how far away the closest hospital would be. Hopefully her back pains go away and her antibiotics do the trick.

It’s 6:20pm as I’m typing this - the sun is scheduled to set for Walker Lake (north of Hawthorne, Nevada) at 8:17... the only things we have on our shooting-list is: film us eating / hanging out at under a train-tracks bridge near the Lahontan Reservoir (which we are about 4 miles west of right now), then we’ll continue to Walker Lake (another 50 miles away), to catch a sun set, and lastly, we’ll drive into Hawthorne to sleep at Scotty’s RV Park.

Then tomorrow - will be our last day of filming.

day 3 - cont'd

Amanda has her antibiotics and we are back on the road - it’s 7:45 and we are very behind schedule, but we are using it to our advantage by driving as close as we can to Sly Park Recreation area and shooting us biking in the dark down towards the lake. This way, hopefully, when we cut the pilot, it will seems as though Amanda’s stop at the urgent care put us behind enough to bike past dusk. Not that it will be a ‘blame’ situation... these things happen - a lot.

We had hoped to film at at-least two separate camping spots to add to the illusion (GOB reference for you A.D. fans) of more than just five days on the road. But we spent a majority of our time in the vineyards and orchards before Winters, California - we ran into a group of 5 from Canada, I mostly talked to a lady named Doris about her all her previous trips... I was wearing the wireless mic’, so we’ll see how much got picked up between the wind and the distance of the RV.

One thing that is standing out is the lack of recorded conversation - it’s an easy thing to forget how little you actually discuss the trip itself and how it’s going when you are still on that trip. Those conversations are more reflective and come months later - which is a small reason I’d like to rely more on voice overs and narratives than on-scene audio - but still, too much of any thing is bad, and we need a mix for this to work.

Wish us luck - xoxoxo...

day 3

We’re somewhat stuck in the RV - across both lanes and a shoulder of Cantelow Road outside Neil’s Vineyard, attempting a 20-point turn around. After getting in late last night to the campsite, which we had reservations for, the night-supervisor that we were told would lead us to our site, was no where to be found. Long story shot, we figured out on our own, after 30-some minutes, where to go and how to pay the next morning. Tim and I crashed on the roof of the RV and around 6 in the a.m. I fell off trying to get down to go to the bathroom - it was a close call.

[Four hours later...]

We rushing through Davis towards a health clinic for Amanda - who’s been suffering from a bad bladder infection - we decided to work in the bladder-problem to the actual pilot-episode. We have Amanda mic’ed and she’ll leave it on while getting checked out, we’ll see what we get while Tim, Nick and myself sit in the waiting room.

After the clinic, the plan is to cut through as much of Sacramento and Folsom as much as possible - getting to Sly Park (near Sly Lake if I remember correctly) to set up two separate camping shots - we need to fake an extra few days somewhere during the next 3. Okay, we just pulled up to the hospital - more later.

day 2

We are heading towards the 505 at the moment, blaring ‘we built this city’ on the iPod (we’re all feeling very 80’s-ish after our diner at Applebee’s) from there we’ll turn off onto Midway Drive and sleeping at Neil’s Vineyard RV park. A few minutes ago I managed to upload a handful of pictures to Amanda’s flickr account from the parking lot of a Safeway, more to come very soon.

I would say that today has gone very well - we captured about 95% of the shots I had planned to shoot - and the 5% that we didn’t wasn’t anyone’s fault - for instance, I had a few ideas of things for the ferry ride to Vallejo, but I had never been inside the ferry until this afternoon, and it was nothing like I had pictured - so a lot of that stuff didn’t quite work out the same. But I’m very happy with what we got.

Despite our having woken up today at 4:30 to catch the dawn at San Gregorio State Beach, everyone seems to have made it through most of the day without appearing too exhausted. Just a few cat-naps in-between locations. Although now that it’s 10:00, I’m starting to have a hard time keeping my eyes open. All that’s left to do tonight is, if possible, start a campfire, set up the two tents we have and crawl in them. Whether or not we’ll actually sleep in the tents is up in the air - Tim might sleep on the roof of the RV for the second night in a row.

Tomorrow we should be in the Lake Tahoe area for lunch - I’m looking forward to the snow capped mountains and sudden dry-desert landscape that follows directly after. As hot as it’s going to be - I think I’m looking most forward to the desert the most... especially the Goldfield-area.

day 1 - cont'd

It’s now 8:40 at night - we’re 20-some miles outside of San Gregorio on the 280, looking for the 92. Despite not having biked or filmed much today, it seems like everyone feels mentally & physically exhausted. Tim is passed out in the fetal position to my right, Nick is having a hard time keeping his eyes open as he reads ‘Prince’, Amanda seems in a daze listening to her iPod.

[30 minutes later...]

I just had a conversation with Aaron and Luke about the plans for tomorrow (as well as the next few days), we talked about what kind of plot points and moods we’re working towards. It was a very smooth, constructive discussion - and I feel like we are on the same page, which is always a good sign.

Actually, I’m quite excited / anxious at the moment - not to say that I wasn’t before, but shortly-prior to our conversation, I was more focused on the filming to come, going over moments in my head, building on the different narratives, etc... but there is a huge comfort in knowing that the people helping you make this happen are happy with your ideas - and have a lot to bring to the table.

I’m sorry - I’m trying to focus on this post - but my head feels cloudy, I can’t seem to think straight - I’m not to sure how coherent this sounds. So... goodnight.

day 1

At the moment, the 7 of us (Amanda, Nick, Tim, Nick, Luke, Aaron and Tim-DP), are slowly driving north on the 101 in 7 o’clock morning traffic. Aaron is behind the wheel, Tim-DP is navigating and I’m watching the rest play a game of euchre.

On today’s agenda: get from point a, North Hollywood, to point b, San Gregerio, by nightfall... somewhere along the way, ideally Big Sur, we’ll pile out of the RV and get some shots for the intro of the pilot-episode. If all goes as planned, we’ll be done driving by mid-afternoon and able to sit down and all talk, in detail, about the next morning, which is very, very planned out. Shot for shot. After the ferry to Vallejo, things, shooting-wise, will slow down a great deal - taking a more documentary approach.

And now... I need to go eat breakfast.

1 day left

This is it. Tomorrow we leave, driving the RV up the coast towards San Francisco, and we'll begin to film at the State Beach outside San Gregorio. Much to do today.

2 days left

I feel wiped out. This morning we woke up at took our bikes for a ride - ending up in the mountains behind Burbank. Seeing as how it was 97+ degrees today, the hottest day for this week, the 4 us were feeling the effects of the extreme heat. Actually, Tim felt it the worse, spending half the night on the verge of blacking out or throwing up - only after a cold shower and some migraine medicine did his body start to cool down.

Then Tim and I went to work on a camera-man rack for the crew bicycle - which has proven to be very tricky. If it were a rear-rack, similar to a kid-carrier, I think we would be done with the homemade set-up, but this design, because of a particular shot I want, has to face forward on the bicycle. It's been interesting.

It's now very late, and I feel about 4 hours past my bedtime. Things to do tomorrow: finish the rack... easier said than done. Rethink the itinerary to account for the loss of a day in shooting. Which shouldn't be a problem at all - days 3, 4 and 5 of shooting we only expected to cover 60 miles each day. Tacking on an extra 20 or 30 miles near the end is very do-able.

I'm sure there's more on that list, but I'm not thinking straight right now. Goodnight.

3 days left... again

I realize that the post for three separate post in a row now, spread out over two days, all say "3 days left...", that's not a typo. As I mentioned briefly in the previous entry, the leave-date was pushed from the 4th to the 5th. So now there is 3 days left, I promise... until further notice.

So today Tim & I drove around North Hollywood, hitting all the Thrift shops on Lankershim, while both of us were squatting down looking at a very green and very banged up Schwinn Varsity, a guy, who worked at the Goodwill, approached us:

"You two looking for a bike?"

"Uhh... yes."

After looking around, "Follow me..."

We snuck back into the stock area, where he showed us two bicycles, a Trek 800 Antelope and a Nishiki Backroads, both in very ridable conditions.

He looked at us, gesturing towards both the bikes, "Ten bucks."

Tim assumed he meant each, as did I, which would have been a great deal all the same, but the shady salesmen meant $10 for both. The Schwinn that was sitting back on the floor was priced at $24 - I figured since we needed 3 bikes, 1 for Tim, 1 for myself and an extra for the crew members - that we would take the 2 for cheap, and I would just pay for the Varsity also. But when I mentioned this, the man hurried back onto the floor and came back with the bike as he peeled away the price tag. He looked at the bike and shrugged saying, "10 bucks, it's yours".

I hurried outside to pull the car around to the back, hoping to load up and take off before getting busted by someone who actually cared.

Long story short, we bought 3 bikes for $20 bucks - and we should have just bought the first 2. The Varsity needed a lot of work, when I took it down to my favorite bike shop, my parts & labor added up to be $120 bucks just to get it decent. So the owner took me to a used road bike that he had already fixed up for the same price - since I'm on a tight schedule - I took the bike that was ready to go. But... even considering we spent almost 200 dollars on 4 bikes - that's a cheap average.

Nick flew into LAX tonight around 8 o'clock - we found out that Northwest charges 80 bucks to check-on a bicycle... $80! Each way! Afterwards we hurried back to grab some Panda Express (Nick had been craving Orange Chicken the entire flight out) and then race to the Arclight to see a showing of 'An Inconvenient Truth'.

Okay it's late - more tomorrow.

3 days left - post meeting

I just arrived back from the meeting in Pasadena - Matt introduced me to Aaron, who will be the person who makes sure the production doesn't go to crap for any number of reasons. Everyone's emotions seem calm and very optimistic, and any worries I might have had before - are quickly starting to fade.

One minor shift in plans, Tim-DP doesn't get back to town on the 3rd, he gets into town on the 4th, which means we won't be leaving in 3 days, but rather 4. So that buys me a little more time to get the last-minute details in order, but it also cuts into our shooting time. Honestly we only lost half a day, June 4th was just going to be spent driving up Hwy' 1, taking our time, getting pick-up shots here and there. Now we'll spend the first few hours of our day driving up the 5 to San Gregorio State Beach. Not a major set back at all considering after San Francisco we only have to cover 60 miles a day to stay on schedule.

The biggest hassle from the drop in days is I'll have to re-look at the camping spots and areas where I'd like to be during sun-up and sun-down. Ahh, which reminds me of the song 'Sundown' by Gordon Lightfoot... good song.

3 days left

Lots to do. Here's a bit of interesting behind-the-scenes madness for you: there are 3 short days left, and I still do not have a bicycle, or bike-racks, or a tent... Tim, who, as I mentioned, arrives tonight, is without a bicycle - his was (what's the right word) broken. And I'm still without a cheap-o huffy and jimmy-rigged kid-carrier for the crew to get unrestricted shots of us biking. When I say "unrestricted", I mean by having to film from the bulky RV at all times.

[28 minutes later - just got off the phone with Tim] Here's what we are going to do about a few of those problems. When Tim gets here tonight, we plan on buying a used cycle from a Goodwill or second-hand shop. Which might also be where I'm buying my bicycle from - if nothing turns up on Craig's List. As for the tent, I have one laying on the garage floor of my Dad's house in Onsted, Michigan, that Nick, my brother, should be packing with him on his flight tomorrow.


Last night I mentioned briefly that Olivier, the DP for Pedal, is no longer flying out from Brussels as originally planned to work on this pilot.

This is a very layered story and I don't think I could get into the details having only my own persecutive. But, a summary of this could be chalked up to an undelivered email message, that for a day, caused a huge amount of tension and worry - but in the end, things were fairly resolved. Yes, I know all that is incredibly vague, maybe someday - when you're older - I'll tell you the rest of the story, but now is not the time or the place.

So - who is our replacement DP you ask. Good question, it could be Tim (no, not my Tim from Hawaii, another Tim... who I will refer to for the moment as Tim-DP to avoid confusion) who was originalhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifly taking on the job of on-board editor. Now I'm not sure if he plans on juggling both editor and DP, or what. Our other options is some one new - which could be tricky being it's so last minute, but later on today when I meet with Matt and Aaron I'm hoping I'll meet any possible takers. We're cutting it close...


One more thing, above (in thhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifat little light-grey pilot info box) you'll see three pictures. Right now, as I'm writing this, those pictures are all the same, and if you put your mouse over them they just say, "Pictures Coming Soon!". This is a set we've created on Amanda's flickr account - which last night we upgraded to Pro', we're still waiting for it to take effect - so if you were wondering why that seemed so stupid, it's just not up & running yet.

But the route (plotted out in Google Earth) is working just fine - so don't forget to check it out, and follow the directions by clicking the "Huh?" link. Enjoy.