Several weeks ago, during a post-production vlog update, I mentioned using a 2nd computer as a poor-man's smoothcam farm, Leslie asked if I would write a post outlining the how-to for this. I meant to do this weeks ago, and plus today I listened to a voicemail from Mike Hedge asking me how I was doing this. So it's time.


Before I got in a crash, and the insurance replaced my MacBook Pro, I had an alternate idea for spreading the weight of smoothcam analysis, and I'll cover both options in this post.

What's the huge benefit of smoothcamming footage before-hand? A clip that is 12 minutes long can take up to 4 or 5 hours to analyze in FCP, so if you're editing away, and want to see which take of this tracking shot you have turned out the best, and you have 4 takes, you could be waiting up to 2 days to really see which smooths out exactly the way you want. So, doing this before hand really saves you time when you're in the middle of editing.


First let's go with the way I'm doing things now, I feel like I'm about to detail cooking directions: you'll need 1) Hazel, 2) a secondary computer you can leave on 24/7, and 3) Final Cut Pro.

This option is very simple, now I have all the footage for the film mirrored on two drives. The main drives I work off of are firewire 800 LaCie drives (500 Gbs each, I've had too many nightmare issues with 1 TBs), and they are synced with USB drives of the same size. Except the mirrored drives are no longer connected via any cables to each-other, the firewire drives connect to the machine I edit on, and the USB are connected to a second machine altogether (they sync over my network).

I've created a Final Cut Pro project called Smoothcam Farm. FCP has a limit around 10 hours per sequence, so you can't go dumping all 100+ hours of footage in one timeline and then just walk away after dropping smoothcam on the whole batch. I've had issues with crashing if the waiting-line for smoothcam gets over 400 clips, so be careful. All the footage that is being anylised on my 2nd machine is working off of the USB back-ups, so they never slow down my editing drives.

Note that if you need to restart FCP or it crashes, you'll have to kick-start the analysis again (I'm hoping FCP fixes this in the future), even though clips in your timeline have the smoothcam filter applied, and even though it still needs to be analyzed, it just won't seem to start unless you re-apply the filter. This doesn't hurt or double-up anything.

Anyways, now that you have FCP set-up and working away on the clips you need smoothcammed, you can use Hazel to automatically sync those smoothcam reference files to the original drives you work off of.

This is as easy as making a smart-playlist in iTunes. You pick a folder or drive, tell Hazel to search for smoothcam files (.mtdf) in the last few days, and then to copy those new files over to the main drives. That's it, Hazel will automatically connect over wifi to your main machine (when it detects it on the network) and begin backing things up.

If all is working as planned - which I have never had any issues - when I'm editing in the film's main timeline, and I drag and drop the smoothcam filter onto a 30 minute long dolly shot of Larry in Montana, it immediately references the smoothcam file that my other machine analyzed, and there's no waiting at all, I can make my adjustments and move on without the 4 hour wait!


Your other option: Now most people don't have two MacBook Pros sitting around waiting to be set-up like above - I know I couldn't afford it, I had to smack my head into a car at 30 mph to get a 2nd computer - so this is another option I was testing out before, and it worked perfectly.

For this you'll need an app called Papaya, from a company called Lighthead (they also make Caffeine, which is the best little app ever if you don't already have it). Papaya turns your computer into it's own server, you can grab any folder or file on your machine, drag it into Papaya, and ta-da, anyone from anywhere can have access to it without the need to first upload it somewhere else. Of course, you can password protect anything you share, and it can handle massive amounts of files.

For example, both the USB drives that have the mirrored footage are shared over Papaya so I can check in at anytime from anywhere to get files I need, in total it's about 950 GBs of videos, and over 1,000 individual files. Here's a screen-grab from the machine I'm writing this post on, this is the browser view of my other laptop which is, as I'm writing, busy analyzing away:

So how could you use this app to spread out the burden of analyzing? Any friend with Final Cut Pro can be given specific access to specific files or folders that have raw footage you need smoothcammed. It doesn't matter if they live across town, or across the country; you'd drag the handful of video files you need analyzed, and set-up a password so only they can see what you're sharing. From there they can download the footage overnight, drop it into Final Cut, let it smoothcam and when it's done, they'll have a tiny smoothcam reference file for each video they dropped the filter onto. The reference file is dumped where ever the source file is at.

The other great thing about Papaya is it accepts uploads, so your friends can upload those tiny mtdf files right back to you, or they are small enough to easily just send in an email.

Papaya is the safest and most controlled way I've found of sharing your footage, which can be irreplaceable to you if stolen or misused, there's also a great activity-log that Papaya keeps so you can see a step by step of who accessed what and when and how many times.

Overall, I've smoothcammed about 40% of my footage using the first option, I have around 700 clips left that need a reference file and I've been thinking about opening up a handful of folders to select people to chip in and help with the analysis time.


Obviously, using Papaya has benefits beyond saving time with smoothcam, instant access to your footage is a huge life-saver when collaborating with other people. It would be almost impossible to upload 500+ GBs of film somewhere just so they could then in-turn download it. With your machine and personal hard-drives acting as servers; you could be editing in LA and have friends in SF and NY helping to fine-tune scenes all while keeping everything instantly accessible.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this - if anyone out there is using interesting workflows to make the best use of time feel free to leave a comment below.

Labels: Post-Production

Teaser 010 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

This is almost a cut & paste right from the first 14 minutes of the feature film - I just decided to pull the music out because I'd like to keep that a secret... or something like that.

This is Larry watching the sunset on the Mississippi... he sat there and watched the sky for a long time on that bench. Tonight he sent me an email, and near the end of it, he reminded me of a few things from that night, he wrote:

"I remember watching that movie that was like Quiinosquatsi but callled something else [Baraka], in the van. And than I went and waded in the Mississippi and drank beers listening to Jeff Buckley and wishing he didn't drown in that river."

Labels: Post-Production, Teaser

We've been getting our fair share of emails lately offering help with the project - and I can't even express how much it means to us. We've had offers of help building the tools we blogged about recently, offers of help with the new site design for the film, and just last week Elliot Cost said he'd like to offer merchandise!

So now, not only does the project have awesome buttons from the lovely Karen Abad that you can get from our Get Involved page, we also have handmade iPhone pouches! I think it's official, I need to cancel my contract with Verizon and get an iPhone, just so I can sport a snazzy Project Pedal iPhone pouch.

You can get them off Elliots' shop page, and not only would you be helping in spreading the word about the project, but all the profits get donated to the film!

Labels: Post-Production

Post Production - Week 59 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

It's been another busy week - I just finished getting the Netflix Competition and the Rooftop Films DVDs all sealed and ready to go for tomorrow! And I was about to export a new teaser, then sit down and get a few more thoughts down on paper for the film.

I have to say the Netflix Competition is a long shot - more accurately; it's a really, really, really crazy long shot - but it feels good to enter and at least give it a shot. You never know unless you try. But I'm pretty excited and anxious about the Rooftop Film Fest. I don't know if it's possible, but I've wanted to attend for the last several years. And being accepted would be a great excuse to buy a ticket to NY!

Labels: Post-Production, Vlog, Weekly Update

Amanda and I submitted a special cut of parts one and two of 64 Days to both the 47th Ann Arbor Film fest, as well as the short film fest at SXSW. Not sure how likely it is that we'll be accepted to either festival, but I can't say I don't have my hopes up. Either one, or if we were really lucky: both, would help bring a lot of much-needed attention to the project.

SXSW interactive and SXSW film take place between March 13th-21st. I've only been once before, just last year, and even though I had the interactive pass (Thanks to Lan and Bonny), I did manage to run all over Austin sneaking into special screenings of films like Mongol and Choke.

The AAFF also takes place in March, from the 24th-29th. I should say that I get extremely excited when thinking about 64 Days playing at the Michigan Theater - for as long as I can remember it's been my all-time favorite theater. I have a lot of great memories from that place, it's a historic and very beautiful building with large hanging chandlers and wide-mirrored stairways that curve around up to the upper balconies. They have a organ player perform before majors shows. Everything there just makes me very happy.

But there could be a problem if we were lucky enough to be accepted in both festivals - to be honest, there could be a problem regardless, work might take me to SXSW to begin with, and having our short play in Ann Arbor would give us only two days to make it from Austin to Michigan... with no money. I know this is a problem 90% of filmmakers run into when trying to grow their projects.

Plus this puts the pressure on us to get our redesigned main site up for the film. Running all over Ann Arbor and Austin for two weeks, handing out flyers, stickers, buttons, who knows what else, all of which promote our site doesn't do us much good if our site can't make good use of that traffic and interest.

I guess I'm just writing a post to say that we about to be very busy. If you're planning on being at either festival be sure to leave a comment and let us know!

Labels: Post-Production

The six months it took me to import and tag the more than a 100 hours of footage - the main bulk of the film - was fairly easy for me to keep a pace with. It was "easy" because there was a solid goal: x number of tapes. It was "easy" because my progress was obvious: I would log the number of tapes imported by date, I would mark when that entire tape was properly tagged, I would keep track of which drive it was kept on. The process of importing was done in baby-steps, and as long as nothing stood in my way - ie, hard drives filling up - then I kept moving along.

But now, the footage is imported, it's scattered in chunks across a timeline that can be overwhelming to make sense of some nights. There is no x number of blank for me to track... there's 100 of hours of footage, and millions of ways to structure it.

There's pieces of the edit that I cut, and then re-cut a week later. There's pages of storyboards and scripts and hand-scribbled notes that get pinned to walls and scanned into Evernote. And they are built upon, over and over again.


So, after a few months, near the end of last year, of unsatisfactory progress - I decided to try and trick myself into a more reliable and steady "schedule". I maybe not know how many pages total I'll have to write before I'm done with the film, and I may not know how many storyboards and notes I'll have taped up on my wall before I'm finished... But if I have tiny goals set-up for myself, and I meet those goals, then it feels more trackable. Here's what I've been trying:


Set the bar low... very low: Each Wednesday my iCal reminds me that I need to write one page of script for the film. I realistically know that I need to write more than that each week to make any real progress, but I also know that a constant reminder to write five / seven / ten pages is intimidating.

Writing one page is easy, it usually starts off as notes, just thinking on paper... and then that sheet gets set aside and I write another scene down, and I grab a pen and scribble two more pages of notes. Writing is usually contagious - especially when I'm on my typewriter, that "ding" is very therapeutic - and by having a goal of one page, which is met very quickly, I feel good that I met my goal, and the next few pages that come out do so much smoother.

Share all of it... even the bad stuff: It does me little good to have a growing pile of storyboards and half-finished script pages pushed off to the side of my desk. Even if I think it's good enough to tape to the wall, it eventually becomes overlooked.

Every day that I type more of the script or detailed notes I scan those pages into Evernote, same with sketches for shot ideas we still need to get of Larry in his "present day routine".

Our Evernote account is shared by Amanda, Angela and myself - seconds after I add a new note or image, it's viewable by either of them. They can make notes, add their own revisions or tell me if something isn't working yet.

Distract yourself... but not for too long: This is the one that I have the hardest time sticking to - I have a tendency to work and work and work on Pedal. It's not a habit (good or bad) that was easy to form. This being our fifth year of working on the project, it took many years for me to be so... addicted, I guess is an okay word, to Pedal. I wake up in the morning and I start working on Pedal, I get home from work and I sit down and look over the film's timeline, I spend my weekends updating the blog or tweeking the site to work better.

But what I have to remind myself of, is that I get much, much more done on the film - mainly writing and storyboarding - when I take a break: to watch an old film that a friend recommended (or just a favorite, I can easily watch Days of Heaven several times a month), go for a long walk with a notepad and pen, lay down on the floor and listen to music for a half an hour. Something... just step back, let your head rest and clear, when you get back to work you'll be much more focused.

Do any of you have tricks to make yourself stay on schedule and be more productive?

Labels: Post-Production

Post Production - Week 57 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

It's been a few weeks since our last video update :( it's always hard to keep up over the new years. But it feels good to do one of these, we've been keeping ourselves very busy since being back in LA. Here's a quick update on what's been responsible for my lack of sleep the last week

Labels: Post-Production, Vlog, Weekly Update

When Amanda first posted about us (mainly me) being concerned with our lack-luster number of RSS subscribers - ie: less than 5,000 - It came across as a "why do our numbers suck" post, and that's a fine question for us to be asking, our numbers do need improving just in a general sense.

But I'm less concerned with specifically the RSS stats, and more with our lack of tools in place to prepare ourselves for the future.

Even if our blog has subscribers in the thousands, we have nothing in place right now to make the best use of that readership. And that, out of everything, is what I stress about the most. Mainly because it's a problem I don't have the technical skills to solve on my own, but also because for every week that goes by, on editing and writing, it's another week we have make-up for in the future.

I have ideas on what tools I think we need, and I've been searching, within my little social circle, for someone qualified to help build them. And I'm interested in building tools that would help every filmmaker, and even beyond that, tools that could easily be used for projects of any kind.

I'm not a fan of forums, I've never been able to get into them or find them efficient - even in the 90s, when that's all there was outside of IRC. And there are a handful of tools, like Ning, that allow you to structure your own social network, but I'm snot ure a network, or a forum, is exactly what an indie film "movement" needs.

Before I talk about the two tools I've been thinking about the most, I wanted to stress that my main motivation behind worrying about this at all: is planning for the worst (or to be realistic, planning for the most likely). It's highly unlikely that For Thousands of Miles will blow people away at Sundance. Hell, it's unlikely it will even get into Sundance. It's even more unlikely that the film will be picked up by any distribution house. It's even more unlikely beyond that, that even if we got an offer for distribution we would take it. Amanda and I have come way too far with this film to sell it away for a next-to-nothing first-time-filmmakers compensation, loose all our control of the film, have them make a half-assed attempt at a theatrical run, and be stuck in a shitty DVD-release contract.

So, I want to plan on distributing this film ourselves. I don't want to spend a great deal of energy and time cutting For Thousands of Miles, and then, when it's complete, have it sit on a shelf and collect dust because we didn't have a plan B in place. It is time for Amanda and I to start putting into motion the audience now that will want to see the film later. So we can hit the ground running when it's ready to be seen.

Okay, two quick tools: A basic map-based request tool. Arin and Susan of Four Eyed Monsters used a Google Maps mash-up, plus a piece of code a friend wrote to allow those interested to put their name and zip down. Once that number reached a certain point, it was enough for Arin and Susan to cold-call theaters, which got them several screenings of their film all over the country.

I'm working on a map that has "phases" to it, all states begin at phase 1, all states have a low, realistic goal of needed request. Once a state reaches that first goal, let's say California needs 100 people to complete the first phase, it moves onto phase 2 and Amanda and I are required to dump more resources there with the people interested in the film. Using the first 100 request as a stepping-stone, asking those people to see if their friends would like to request the film, and so on. Mailing out flyers and buttons to those people. Branching out in baby-steps. I have the map designed, and the state-shaped-links are all entered into a basic template... but I'm having issues building a smart request tool around it.

Which brings me to the second tool I've been thinking about. Amanda and I had lunch the other afternoon with the lovely Jessica Stover, from Artemis Eternal, near the end of our lunch, we started talking about Twitter. Jessica said that Twitter seems to be nearing the point where a filmmaker could almost drive their entire movement with Twitter alone. Which got me thinking about Facebook Connect, which then got me thinking about Twitter Connect (which doesn't exist... yet).

A tool that I would give anything for; would be the ability to have people interested in the film, request it not with a basic "fill in your general info here" box, but to link their request to their twitter account. Allowing you to build a movement not enclosed on a forum, but open on Twitter's timeline. It's such a simple, powerful, immediate tool that tying it into a film's network of fans would be very interesting.

Giving you options of having people's activity on your map, or community, be broadcast automatically to their stream (if they want it to).

With the way things generally work now, a person would fill in their info for the map, request the film, be taken to a thank you page that ask them to also twitter about it. I'm sure someone out there is working on such a tool for general use, but in any case, I am looking for people savvy enough to code it.

Online tools are always presenting themselves, and people are always looking for new ways to take those tools and expand on them. Indie filmmakers stand to gain so much by re-packaging those tools to best fit their project. Do you have a project of your own? How are you planning for the future?

Labels: FToM, Post-Production

I have a dozen things to do today, and maybe that's why I'm taking a breather to write this quick post... so I don't pull my hair out. It's been a few weeks since we've stopped to talk about Stockpile, and where we are at with it currently.

When we first launched Stockpile back in September, we did so using two different sites: Vimeo and Ning. If you've been to Stockpile's overview page, you've seen that Ning has been closed down, at least for the moment.

The main reason for shutting down the Ning group was we were having issues getting access to the original files uploaded to Ning... so for us, it was going to be a problem when we had a beautiful clip someone shared with us of their bicycle trip, and we only had access to the flash version. Yes, I could grab the .flv file if I wanted, but I wasn't about to stick a re-compressed flash file in a feature film's timeline.

As for Vimeo's Stockpile group, that's been going very well. Although we haven't been able to commit as much time to it yet as we would ideally like to, I've been doing a lot of writing, story-boarding and editing lately. But I feel good when I make the time to watch a few new videos, many of them are inspiring and remind of different aspects of my own trip. They get me excited about how to use those clips to tie together different moments in the film.





The group has grown to 33 videos, 95% of which are specifically personal bicycling videos. We have 37 members, and are excited about seeing more from them. And we currently have 5 discussions happening in the forums. Over the next year of editing the film, we have goals to grow Stockpile to hundred of members and videos. We're still trying to find the best workflow for watching and taking notes on clips people upload for us.


If you haven't joined Stockpile yet, drop by our Vimeo group and add yourself! And if you know anyone who knows anyone who's taken their own long-distance bicycle trip, we'd love to see their footage.

Okay, there was my 15 minute break - back to working on the things I mentioned in my last post.

Labels: Post-Production, Stockpile

Our friend, Zadi, from Epic FU, sent us a link to the Netflix Find Your Voice Film Competition, the description sounds perfect for us. First off, if you are selected for the film grant, you retain *all* rights to your film! Secondly, they not only award your film money, they provide all the steps necessary beyond post to see that it gets out into the world.

A downside is they only accept 2,000 submissions, and that is going to fill up insanely fast.

So Amanda and I, after we both got out of work yesterday, spent as long as we could working on the submission requirements. Which has been a real wake up call for us. The only synopsis for the film we have is around 300 words, Netflix requires that plus a longer synopsis preferred to be around 1,000 words.

They also require a script, or in our case a detailed treatment of the film... which I've never written. A budget breakdown of the expenses left in post-production to distribution. Bios for the cast and crew. And a 1,000 word cover letter introducing myself and the project. None of these things are something we have prepared sitting filed away for ready-use. Which is resulting is long nights writing treatments and budget-drafts that we have no real experience with in a professional setting, which, I'm sure, Netflix is expecting.

But nothing like a hard deadline to get you moving on to-do's you've been putting off for months. Our Without a Box information has been lacking under 'For Thousands of Miles', so all this work will pay off and make it easier to submit to upcoming festivals.

We have very ambitious goals for 2009 - and I have a feeling this stress is only the tip of the iceberg for us.

Labels: FToM, Post-Production

Teaser 009 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

There's something about this clip that is heavily nostalgic for me. I can remember so clearly nights from my past bicycle trips, laying in my sleeping bag on the grass... hearing the bugs... watching the sun sink behind the horizon as I tried to finish writing in my journal about that day when I'm watching this.

Labels: Post-Production, Teaser

I'm writing this post on my flight home from Michigan to LA - we're about an hour outside of California right now and these Spirit seats are killing my shoulders. I think I'll be taking a hot bath for sure when I get home - I'm gonna barely be able to move.

Thanks to everyone for baring with us over the holidays on the site - I know it's been far too quite the last two weeks but I'm very, very anxious to get back to work. Which includes more post and video-updates. I'm behind on a teaser, so perhaps I'll have to pick out two.

For those of you who follow the project (and also my personal updates) on twitter, you might have seen an update before Christmas about the first 13 minutes of the film. Amanda and I haven't got a chance to discuss it yet, she watched it alone while at her family's. I'm sure we'll talk about it tonight on the way back to North Hollywood from LAX (she's picking me up).

There's been a lot on my mind the last few weeks and I'm going to posting questions here on the blog about what all of you think out there on several different subjects (including: a request the film tool... bettering Stockpile and finding creative ways to reach out to bicyclists with trip footage... a FToM website redesign... ways of reaching out to press... and a project roadmap...).

Amanda's post about readership and subscribers and my concerns with it got a lot of people talking - and it was great to hear the feedback, as well as helpful. So, I think we'll try to keep that going - we're always weighting the pro's and con's of focusing our energy here or there on aspects of the projects and we could benefit a lot from outside opinions.

Okay, well I'm down to 20 minutes of battery on my laptop, so I'm gonna turn the overhead light off and catch up on some podcast. As always we'd love to hear any questions you have about the project or just filmmaking in general. Hope everyone had a wonderful New Years.

Labels: FToM, Post-Production, Stockpile