SEQUENTIAL Pictures

ntbullock · Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2009 12:51 am Post subject:

Working on another design for a DVD cover. Jared and I are trying to schedule a trip to LA.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 2:32 am Post subject:

Almost done with the site redesign. Just needed to spruce it up a tad and add a couple of sections. Going to Jackson Saturday, Winona Sunday, Atlanta early next week and then down to New Orleans for a bit. Wow. From hardly any traveling to quite a bit. Between all that traveling the DVD and graphics have to be finalized.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 12:17 pm Post subject:

Made the redesigned website active. Got a few small things I still need to do, but it's up and running.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 7:25 pm Post subject:

Got back from Atlanta today and headed to New Orleans on Sunday. Jared and I recorded a DVD commentary before we left so I've got to throw it on the disc this weekend. Almost done with the disc, but we still need to finalize a cover graphic.

We've got a company interested in helping us distribute the film. We are going to read the non-exclusive contract and maybe make a decision next week sometime. This would be a good start by trying to get us on Netflix, Amazon, etc.

We have a showing in Jackson, MS on December 22nd being planned. Other showings are being talked about but aren't nailed down yet.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 12:04 am Post subject:

Made it to NOLA. Jared and I start teaching a class tomorrow at the NOVAC center. Most nights we'll be working on movie details.

Side story: The two posters that were printed for the movie premiere in New Orleans a bit of a ways back were framed recently. Good framing. They looked great. I did mine first and was envied greatly by one Jared Hopkins. He sent his poster through the same people who framed mine. Exactly the same everything. It... looked... beautiful. But, it took awhile to transport it to Jared's because it just never worked out where we felt safe moving it. Time was taken. Patience was extended.

Well it was finally time. I brought it down with me after it sat at my place for a stretch. We unload my car. I brought in the last load and there it was, already hanging gallantly on the wall. Beautiful. He couldn't wait any longer to display it.

Five minutes later it fell, crashed to the floor, shattered, and laid a heavy thud. The glass broke so hard it scratched the poster in many places. It hit the floor so hard it busted the bottom of the frame.

The lesson is... ... the lesson is... hell, I don't even know. It was heartbreakingly ironic. Figures.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 10:46 pm Post subject:

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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 1:23 pm Post subject:

Alright, so I've been busy with Jared in NOLA teaching this video class. It should slack up now a bit because the students are editing next week. Anyway, we made some design changes to the DVD insert and we ordered another small batch of discs. We have a showing in Jackson, MS on the 22nd that I'm going to try and have these discs finalized and burned for. It'll be our first showing outside of a festival setting. Jared bought a new projector for us to use for this purpose.

We're in a slight holding pattern with online distribution [Netflix, etc.] but should have that figged out early next year. Just setting it up to sell our DVD through the site is what we need to set up first.

The DVD is pretty much done. There's a commentary and some screen tests on there to boot. Subtitles are still being worked on but that'll be next year before they show up on the disc.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 11:58 am Post subject:

Our printed DVDs should be in Hattiesburg tomorrow. When I finish teaching I'm headed back to finish up that business and get ready for the showing in Jackson. I've got to set up to sell it through the site next week too.

We also have scheduled a showing at the University of Southern Miss for February 10th, so I'm trying to contact publications and radio for help getting the word out.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 12:14 pm Post subject:

Finalizing the DVD now. Here's an early flyer for the February show.

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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2009 3:13 pm Post subject:

A DVD is available through the site now:

http://www.iranagainstus.com/dvd.html
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:21 pm Post subject:

We're looking into some other online venues for the film. iTunes has apparently accepted us.

Jared and I are attending Festivus in Denver. It'll be nice to go back to Colorado.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 5:22 pm Post subject:

Been doing some design work and getting ready for the Denver trip. We've been accepted into iTunes and I have to ready the deliverables. It's a whole process. Reordered some DVDs. Had problems with the mailing list to let SP fans know the movie was on DVD now. Technology has now made me look foolish. Nothing new. : ]
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 2:24 pm Post subject:

I think I figured out the mailing list. That thing is an odd beast and takes all day to do.

The reordered DVDs came in. The German subs will be included in this batch of discs. Portuguese is almost done too. Still looking for French and Spanish translations.

Been working on a new poster design for the movie that's driving Jared and I nuts because we're trying to incorporate Mahmoud.

We're actively working on trying to get the movie available online in different formats.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 12:28 pm Post subject:

We made it to Denver and really dig our hotel, The Curtis. Denver has one of the best downtowns I've seen in awhile. Looking forward to the stay here.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 11:06 pm Post subject:

We've been back from Denver for a couple days. We had a great time there and hated to leave.

Now back to work on trying to get the movie more "available."

Doing some design work, promoting another showing, readying for iTunes, finalizing subtitles, etc.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 7:48 pm Post subject:

Been finishing up a new poster:

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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 11:58 pm Post subject:

I've been getting ready for the showing next week. I'm altering the DVD cover a bit and we also had to change the credit music. Here I thought we were done and now I'm cramming to get the update to DVD. No biggie to the movie overall - just more work. Finally, though, we'll be able to send out to iTunes, etc and our clearances will be in order. It's been holding us up. There hasn't been much that wasn't aggravating to post, so I've laid low for a bit. We're trying to change companies for printing our DVDs and that's more setup work as well. We've also been looking into selling digital copies of the film through the site. After all this I can move on that too.

There's a brief write-up of the movie, which I'll find someplace for it on the site, in LA VIDEO & FILM. This link may not always work, but here's the digital version of the magazine too [page 12]:

http://openpub.realread.com/rrserver/browser?title=/MIP/LM8-09-1024

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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2010 2:38 pm Post subject:

We were finally able to send off to iTunes. Netflix has been submitted to as well, but we've had problems getting it to them recently.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:30 am Post subject:

Holy WOW. Like I've posted before, most of what I'm doing now isn't interesting work or noteworthy for the journal, but this may save someone some time if they do a web search and find this post.

Here goes:
We haven't changed the timeline on this movie in MONTHS. That constant means quite a bit. If you change the length of the movie at all it has a ripple effect. Well, we went and did it and it's cost me almost 20 hours of work. I wish I were exaggerating.

There's a scene about 38 minutes into the movie that just has two too many f-bombs. They were absolutely superfluous and have been bothering us, but we ignored them because of the implications of removing them. I'll skip to the part where we removed them... WE REMOVED THEM.

Ultimately, the movie is one second and five frames shorter. So, I had to re-render out the movie, compress it for DVD and fix some deliverables [iTunes].

The ripple effect comes in when I have to redo the DVD commentary so the background movie track matches up after the 38 minute point. Fine. Done. That's when the debacle started... the subtitles. They were off 1:05 past 38 minutes.

Now you'd think you could just select the subtitles in DVD Studio Pro and slide them back in sync. You cannot. *heavy sigh*

Now I'm going to skip ALL the ideas that didn't work, the hair-brained ideas, the conversions that didn't keep the specific characters of the different languages, and skip to a summarized version of what eventually worked. Hopefully this will save someone some time. There are some programs that are supposed to be able to shift timecode, but I couldn't get the one I "found" to work logically. Anyway, here goes:

First off, I'll mention that I typed all my English subs in Final Cut Pro, exported as an XML and converted that to an STL file online.
I fixed the timecode in FCP but needed to change my German and Portuguese language subs.
So, I started with my foreign language STL subtitle file [basically a TXT with an STL extension].
To keep specific language characters, the STL file is saved as UNICODE-16. Otherwise I get odd character substitutions. I wanted to copy corrected timecode into the foreign file so I had to convert it to MAC OS ROMAN to be able to bring into Excel.
I imported into Excel my newly created [Roman] TXT file and created one column break between my timecode and dialogue.
I had already "column broke" my corrected English subs and copied the timecode from 38 mins forward, so I highlighted column A at that point in my foreign subs and pasted the new timecode in.
From there I had to manually adjust the width of column A so that when I exported, the spacing would be correct between the timecode and the dialogue - slight trial and error but easy.
Then I saved the file as a Space Delimited Text file [.prn].
I opened that and saved as a UNICODE-8 TXT file.
Then I saved again as UNICODE-16. This might be convoluted but it was the only "stepping stone" process that retained the original foreign text.
From there I did have to manually add two spaces back to the line breaks where two people were speaking at one time on screen. After all that conversion it lost those two spaces, which resulted in text pushing up on the screen when two people spoke at the same time but slightly off from one another [hard to explain].
Reimport back into DVD Studio Pro.

So there. I think that's basically it. I hope I didn't leave out a step because goodness knows there were a lot of them. All this because we changed the timeline by a second. It has literally cost me almost an entire day of my life rectifying the repercussions of that decision.

Was it worth it? Yes and no. "Yes," for myself and "no" for probably everyone else who ever watches it but Jared. :]

If someone has a free and easier way to do all this then I need at least a week before I hear it or I might actually punch a pillow unrecognizable.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Sat Feb 27, 2010 7:19 pm Post subject:

We've finally got the movie available as a digital download on the site, currently $8:

http://www.iranagainstus.com/dvd.html
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 3:41 pm Post subject:

Minor updates:

- We're working on getting Spanish and Russian subs
- We may be going to Texas for a film fest [will update time and place]
- Still working on iTunes and Netflix for the movie [harder than you'd think]
- I'm sure there's something I'm forgetting...
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 11:13 am Post subject:

The Texas festival we may be showing and going to is:
www.hillcountryff.com

The update on iTunes is that although we are already accepted we are caught in the middle of a transition by the company that's handling our submission process.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 11:45 pm Post subject:

We've submitted to Netflix through another company. Now we'll see how this goes. They said that Netflix will sometimes create a page for the movie and see if it reaches a threshold of people adding it to their cue before accepting the film.

Also, pretty soon here we are going to offer three free digital download links a week on the I Ran Against Us Facebook fanpage, so join up if you haven't already to be eligible.

www.facebook.com/iranagainstus

I've also joined twitter: www.twitter.com/ntbullock
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 1:03 pm Post subject:

Jared add a section on the Facebook fanpage for subscriber reviews. If you've seen it then drop by and let us know whatcha thought.

www.facebook.com/iranagainstus

We're also sending out a couple handfuls of festival submissions today.

The Russian and Spanish subtitles seem to be coming along but a bit slower than they expected. It's a lot of work!
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

ntbullock · Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 2:11 am Post subject:

Took a few days to redesign sequentialpictures.com but I did order some more IRAU DVDs to take to Texas with us.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]