so i have this book and it's full of scribbles and lists and things. basically every thought floating around my head eventually gets jotted down in there. it's my all-purpose book. it's never too far away.

anyway.. when mike and i get together to work on pedal stuff, i always end up pulling out the book and working my thoughts out on some page... or even better, writing something out to try and show mike how my brain sees things.

so.. before we wrote the last episode, we got together and planned out the entire 64 days series. we decided how many episodes there would be and what each one would be about. i worked it out in my book. to this day, that page, somewhere back in the middle of my book now, is the only tangible thing that exists in the world to remind us of our episode plan.

every once in a while mike will say.. "what's episode such-and-such about again?" and i flip back through the book to find the page where i scribbled down the plan. last week upon doing so, i showed it to mike, and he couldn't believe what i was going off of.

here it is.

and if this makes any sense to you.. you get a cookie. and you now know what all of the 64 days "behind the scenes" episodes will be about. congratulations. peace guys.

Labels: Post-Production

For those of you who saw the last 'weekly update', you already know that a few nights ago, around 2 in the morning, I tagged the last reel of footage for Pedal off of the three main cameras. The feeling of being 100% logged is one of *the* biggest weight-off-my-shoulders moments since coming home from the road last summer.

I now know for sure that I have seen every minute of footage on these drives, that I have tagged this footage in a way that is amazingly search-able and, best of all, scale-able. I say now that I am "100%" logged, but I know full well that I will always be building on-top of what I have now, and that's part of the reason I choose to organize in the way I did, because of how easy it is to add to what I've already done.

I thought I would share my reference notes for the footage (download here), maybe some of you will be able to suggest things to change or add onto this spreadsheet to help me better stay organized :P

The next major to-do on my list is finish writing episode 9, and then, take a deep breath and begin cutting the film.

For those of you out there working on your own films, with your own money, on your own time - I can't recommend enough publishing episodes of *some* aspect of your film. Whether it's a behind the scenes, like Amanda and I do for Pedal, or something else that is tied into your project. The episodes will slow you down from time to time, they will distract you from your main project - but they have taught me so much about what works within this project's context. What people react positively to, what they don't care for. What I am decent at, and what I need to improve on. And if I had waited to learn these lessons and make these mistakes with my final film... I'd have a lot of regrets.

I guess that was a bit of a side-rant, but I think lately I've been excited to just get to work on the film, and I need to stop and remind myself of how grateful I am for everything the episodes have done so far.


My Last 3 Hours of Logging Pedal's Footage in 3 Minutes from mike ambs on Vimeo.

I recorded my screen during the tagging of last dozen reels of Pedal's footage. It took me about 3 hours, and I was left with a 20 GB movie file :P

So, I threw it in FCP, speed it up about 4,300% - and put a Mogwai song behind it. I thought maybe it would be semi-interesting'ish to watch, and also show a little better the way I organized so many hours of footage.

Thanks again for all the love during this process, it was a long and tedious 31 weeks... your comments helped us get through it. Now the fun part :)

Labels: Post-Production

Post Production - Week 31 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

Holy crap. The day has finally come - as of tonight I have 100% of Pedal's footage logged and organized. Yay.

To celebrate I went to Ralph's and bough some Ben & Jerry's 'Half Baked' ice cream, although it's not my favorite :P but they were out of the brownie one. Anyways... I feel so relieved :)

Labels: Post-Production, Vlog, Weekly Update

I started off this morning with a little over 200 un-tagged clips to log from Pedal footage, at the moment I'm down to my last 60. I've been having to take mini breaks all day to keep from burning out, not sure I managed to completely avoided that feeling.

Earlier today I spent two hours by the pool, swimming for the first time in months, and reading 'The Great Gatsby' in the sun. Then it was back to the computer to chip away at the last of this long, long organizational road.


The other day I bought two new composition books from the Ralph's, I hadn't realized I'd filled up all of my old ones... I only mention it because I just caught myself blanking out while looking at them, my hands were still on my laptop and started to get sweaty. Yea, I didn't avoid burning out today.

Perhaps tonight's not gonna be the night I finish 100% of logging, I don't want to blow through the last 60 clips and be lazy about it, I need to be focused when watching for tags, otherwise it's just a waste of my time. I think I might pick up one of these composition books and start rambling in it.

Sorry this post is a bit all over the place. Lots of things on my mind tonight.

Labels: Post-Production

Post Production - Week 30 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

Yay. Today I finished logging the 1st scratch disk of Pedal's footage, which is 1,700+ individual video clips. I'm moving on now to the 2nd (and last) scratch disk, which has about 250 clips on it. After that there are a several hundred miscellaneous clips from personal cameras that Larry had while riding, and that Amanda and I had during filming. Not *all* of them needed to be tagged for the film, but most need to be looked at for the episodes.

Labels: Post-Production, Vlog, Weekly Update

The last seven days have flown by, sorry it's been quiet on the site, but thanks to all of you who've been leaving such great comments lately. I feel like the discussions on post have picked up dramatically since swapping out Blogger's default comments with Disqus', anything that helps this site be more interactive always makes me smile.

I've been keeping busy with some website stuff to go along with a big announcement Amanda and I plan on making soon regarding the actual film. Don't worry, it's good news, not bad news, I wouldn't tease you like that with bad news, that would just be mean. We still have a few weeks though, we'd like to finish logging all the footage first, don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves.

I've been feeling sorta-kinda overwhelmed lately, I think sometimes I have trouble putting things in the right order so they are more approachable - more baby-step'ish. With only Amanda and I doing the majority of the work, it's hard to keep all the aspects of the project moving at a decent pace. Sometimes we get caught up on one thing and let others linger. I knew that importing the last tape from the film would be a big step, and I knew it would bring on all kinds of pressures with it. Pressures to finish logging as soon as possible, pressures to begin editing the film, pressures to get a lot more on paper regarding the narrative.


My typewriter right now is surrounded by stacks of notes and half-finished thoughts written on everything from colored construction paper to taco-bell napkins. Plus there's the pressure of putting out another episode before we really go anywhere with the film, it's been three months since episode 8, and people are starting to ask questions. Plus I have responsibilities outside of Pedal.

I guess I'm not saying all this because I need babying, I just need to write it out, and acknowledge that we have a sizable hill ahead of us, and that I need to focus. It's been hard scheduling meetings with Amanda lately, my schedule has been a bit all over the place, I'm sure I'll feel better once the two of us sit down and make sense of what's been keeping me up at night.

Until that happens, I just need to look down at my feet... like Bob says, "baby steps, baby steps". If I look up at the big picture, I'll realize I've bitten off far more than I could chew a long, long time ago. To be honest, this is my favorite part of filmmaking: the anxiety, the doubt, the nagging voice in your head that says "you're gonna fuck this whole thing up"... this comes and goes in waves that last weeks, and each time it subsides, I feel clearer and that much closer to the goal. Deep breaths.

Labels: Post-Production