Working on new Sonlight Pictures Website

When I started this Sonlight Pictures endeavor, I never realized how much peripheral work and cost there would be attached to the process. Shooting a movie is hard enough, but then you have to edit it. To edit in true High Def, I needed to upgrade my computer. To distribute it on the web I had to invest in a quality software that converts video files from one format to web friendly ones.

And now I have to update my Sonlight Pictures website. It is serviceable now, but not good enough. So, I’ll have to invest in some web site creation software to spruce things up a bit. I’m old school, raw HTML guy. I love to go an edit the raw code. But, I lost the competitive edge with the advent of flash and embedding files, etc., etc. and I don’t have the time nor the inclination to learn it all from scratch. So, I’ll plop down a couple of $20s in a web site creation software that will give me the bells and whistles that are needed to bring my website out of the late 90s and into today.

Club God – DVDs are Done

After the purchase of a printer that can print on DVDs as well, I was able to finish the first 15 copies of the Club God DVD.

The DVD is bare-bones… just the short and that’s it. But, since the entire short is available online for free at ClubGodMovie.com, these DVDs are not for sale, rather for distribution to cast and crew.

I’ll be sending out and handing out copies to those involved in the production starting this week.

It’s nice to be able to check that off the list.

Club God – Article at Christian Film News Now Online!

The fine people over at Christian Film News has published our press release for Club God. They do a nice job of researching the information and presenting it for fellow Christian film fans in a very professional manner.

You can read the entire article at Christian Film News.

Club God – You Tube Annotations & Internet Viewing Habits

Found out through an article at camcorderinfo.com that you can overcome the 10 minute limitation on You Tube by using their annotation option. You Tube now allows you to put Speech Bubbles, Notes and Spotlights on your video while it’s playing… like Pop Up Video in the 90s on VH1. Anyway, you can use the Spotlight option to link to other You Tube videos. So, at the end of Part 1 I put a link that will take the viewer to Part 2 without “leaving” the video.

That should help as, currently, there’s about a 30% drop off from the amount of viewers who watch Part 1 vs. Part 2. Too bad, they’re missing God’s stand-up routine.

Or it could be that Club God isn’t there cup of tea. Either way, I hope adding the link helps.

Also, per NewTeeVee.com, most online videos are watched within the first two weeks, with the peak happening three days after the release.  After studying viewer habits over 90 day release cycles, they found that on day three, 11% of all views occurred.

And that falls in line with Club God.  Unless a video transcends and/or becomes a viral video that gets forwarded around over and over again, the life of an online video is currently two weeks.

In the entertainment world, that’s a very short release window.  If you want to build momentum you’ll have to have something ready somewhere between two weeks to 12 weeks.

I’ll have to take that into consideration when determining the release strategy of Purgatory, USA.

Purgatory USA – the calm before the storm

Things are quiet, for the moment.

Most of the cast is out of town at various activities. The To Do List for Purgatory, USA has not diminished, but the resources available to help complete that list is minimal.

So, I’m taking some time to rejuvenate the mental batteries. The amount of work on getting Club God out and about was tremendous. And I still have some final things to do before I can put that one to bed.

For the next week I’ll be enjoying my son’s participation in Little League All-Stars. He’s on a team of really nice kids and we’re enjoying our time together during this annual event.

After July 4th, however, things get really, really busy!

But, for now, I’m getting as close to relaxed as I can muster.

Club God – Compression Woes Fixed

After more tweaking and Blip.TV I was able to get a VASTLY improved version of Club God on the web. Now when people go to ClubGodMovie.com, it is substantially better!

Whew.

Club God – Compression Woes

This whole compressing a high-def short and crunching it down to some web-capable viewing is painful. It’s like taking a painting by Monet and the only way you could share it with the world is to show it on an etch-a-sketch.

But, it is what it is.

What has surprised me, however, is the problem with audio syncing during this process. Both God Tube and Vimeo have audio drag in various sections. Facebook is the closest so far at keeping things accurate, but even it drifts a bit.

Frustrating. But a good learning experience.

Club God – Screening Website

Okay, I got Club God up at God Tube and Facebook and Vimeo.

However, to make things simple, I’ve created a webpage called ClubGodMovie.com. If you go there I will embed the best quality version I can get. I’ll keep playing around with compression and uploading. Right now the winner is Vimeo. I’m not overly happy with it, but I may be able to upload a better quality in the near future.

In any event, we all know how these things work. We need to SPREAD THE WORD.

So, if you like the movie, please go to God Tube and Facebook and Vimeo and rate the film highly so we can get more hits, more interest and more viewers.

Pope John Paul II called us to take the media back for Jesus Christ. You can do your small part by getting more people to watch this film. It’s only a mouse click, an email message and/or a rating away.

And, as always, keep us in your prayers! We need ‘em!

Club God – You Tube Irks Me

When I tried to upload Club God to You Tube I got the following message:

“You can no longer upload videos longer than ten minutes regardless of what type of account you have.”

This means I have to break Club God into two parts and upload it. Ugh! What a pain.

I was able to upload to God Tube, but the quality is not very good. I was also able to upload to Facebook and the quality is better, but the compression still looks bad. I’m working on finding a higher quality website to upload the file to…

I’ll put all of the links to all of the places to see it in the next entry.

Club God – Let the Encoding Begin

After further research I’ve found that You Tube has a “Director” program where you can load files greater than 10 minutes.  So, I won’t have to split the short into two parts and this allows me to use the same file to upload to both Facebook and You Tube.

In order to get it uploaded to God Tube, which has extremely small size limitations, I had to convert to a flash file (FLV), so the quality of that encoding may be the worst.  That’s disappointing because that was my first choice.

The point is to get the project out so that’s what we’re doing.  I’ll have all of them uploaded today.  Hopefully they’ll be available later on in the afternoon.

I’ll let you know…