The Streamy Awards announced their nominations today and I received one nom for Best Editing on Continuum.
Very excited about this and the show's 7 IAWTV Award nominations too.
What a great way to start off 2013... The IAWTV Awards are on January 8th in Las Vegas and the Streamy Awards are in Hollywood on February 17th.
One really cool trend at the Streamy Award was there are LOTS of sci-fi shows being recognized.... Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, Drone, H+, Cybergeddon and of course Continuum. :) Great company to be in, especially because we're an ultra low budget show. These other series are multi-million dollar productions. The rumor is Halo was $10 million to produce!!
Be sure to check out the complete list of nominees here.
-Blake
Vimeo now allows people to "tip" (ie. give money) to video creators via their new Tip Jar... kind of like a mini Kickstarter way of raising money and/or supporting independent work.
I've enabled the feature on a few a my Vimeo videos as a test and might try using it in the future as another fundraising tool. Vimeo is also going to do full on PPV (pay-per-view) in the future too. Lots of interesting things happening now in online distribution...
Continuum Season 1 Trailer from Blake Calhoun on Vimeo.
Btw, it appears the only way to use the Tip Jar feature is actually ON Vimeo's site. Would be nice if it carried over into the embeds. I have to believe for this to be successful that will happen on a future update, similar to what you can currently do with Distrify (although there you either rent or buy the show).
Check it out and let me know what you think of this new option. Oh, and if you want to leave a tip as a test that would be fine by me. :)
-Blake
Seems almost every week or so a new camera is released these days... Just this week there are new offerings from Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and Blackmagic.
I'm exaggerating a tad bit of course on the weekly release, but it's not far from the truth. And this is a good thing... no, GREAT thing for filmmakers everywhere.
Since the release of the Canon 5D three or four odd years ago filmmakers have had the ability to create very cinematic images at previously unheard of low prices.
But it wasn't always like this...
When I started making films in the mid to late 1990s we used 16mm film.... and it was very expensive to shoot. Not necessarily because of the camera rentals (very few folks owned their own rigs then) but because of the purchase of the film, the processing and then the transfer to video (DigiBeta or Beta SP back then, no HD!).
Before the rush of affordable video cameras began (in the late 90s and early 2000s), we were all in awe of an affordable Russian made 16mm camera called the K-3 (Krasnogorsk-3). At the time it was revolutionary for it's functionality and price (around $700) - I bought one and used it a lot. It of course wasn't a sync sound camera - way too noisy and wasn't blimped. So we'd shoot a scene and then have the actors do the scene again - right after we shot - to record the audio (with no camera running). Yes, seriously, that's what we did. But again, never before had we been able to afford such a "professional" camera (we had used 30 year old Bolex cameras prior to that).
In 1997-ish (as I recall) the Sony VX1000 was released and it took the indie film world (along with the corporate video world) by storm. It was a sub $5000 camera that shot to Mini DV tape but only in the NTSC interlaced format. It was revolutionary at the time. And I put my K-3 on the shelf (for the most part).
The big rage then was finding software that would make your interlaced video "look like film". Of course it never really did, although we thought at the time it looked pretty good and compared to the footage directly out of the camera, it did. Wow, were these the dark ages, huh?
The Next Big Thing didn't happen for several years.
It was around 2003-ish when the Panasonic DVX100 was released that shot 24p... now this really looked like film! This was the go to camera for indie filmmakers for several years - and to think that it was originally only a 4x3 aspect ratio camera. I don't think it was every truly a wide screen camera, but a later version did have a 16x9 "mode". I say this because it's unfathomable to shoot anything but widescreen today.
And speaking of today... we're now all so very spoiled.
I mean seriously, you can get 1080 HD video out of an iPhone that rivals or is even better than full on video cameras from just a few years ago. It's really amazing if you think about it.
During my 16mm film time in the 90s the main kind of video camera was a Sony Beta SP camera. Those could easily cost $50,000 or more. And DigiBeta were $100k! To that point, when I hear folks today complain about a $15,000 camera (like the Canon C300) I seriously have to roll my eyes. As I mentioned, we are all so very spoiled now.
But I guess in reality, that too is a good thing.
Filmmakers today really have NO excuses for not making great looking films. None.
The hard part of course is making good films. And that's really what it's all about these days (or should be). The camera is no longer an obstacle.
In the past you were often commended for making a good looking film, even if it wasn't very good. It was very, very hard as an indie to make a "real" looking movie just a few years ago. I used to take it as a huge compliment when my friends or family would comment on my work and say, "wow, that looks like a real movie" (usually meaning it was shot on film).
But today, pretty much anyone can make a "real" looking movie with the help of all these great cameras at our (affordable) disposal.
To name just a few of these incredible devices:
1. RED Scarlet (4k/5k camera)
2. Canon C300 (and soon to be released C100)
3. Canon 5D MkIII
4. Panasonic GH3 (just announced)
5. Black Magic Cinema Camera (rolling out as we speak)
6. Sony FS100 or FS700 (amazing bang for the buck)
And there are a dozen more that are all within reach. These are all affordable cameras (purchase or rental) to every filmmaker out there. Like I said, no excuses for making good looking movies today.
Now if we could all just concentrate on making good movies (myself included).
Maybe that'll be the Next Big Thing.
-Blake
Continuum is an entirely indie effort. We have no publicist. No agency repping this project. And so getting press is not very easy in this crowded media landscape we find ourselves in today.
But... recently we've had some good fortune, primarily on just the strength of the show (I'm told) garnering good word-of-mouth "press" (which is great of course) that has lead to some more traditional (digital) press from blogs and such.
The first new piece is from PlacevineStudios and writer Lance Trachtenberg. From the article...
Contiuum’s effectiveness stems from its thoughtful usage of the
emotional pitfalls of distrust, suspicion, and paranoia all blending
together to create a palpable atmosphere of psychological intrigue in
every episode.
Read the entire write-up here.
And the second recent coverage is from a blog interview from a company called Jump Ship Productions. They were kind enough to contact us through our Facebook page and interview me about the production and release of the series. From the interview...
Continuum
is a fast paced, suspenseful science fiction series about a young woman
who awakens on a space shuttle with no idea why she is there or even
who she is. She relies on the ship’s computer to help her piece together
her mission, but quickly becomes suspicious of the motives behind the
mechanical voice.
Read the entire interview here.
I really appreciate the coverage! And if you missed my previous post, I also did a fun blog radio interview for Genre-tainment a few weeks back.
Who needs a publicist? :)
-Blake
Season 1 of my sci-fi series Continuum is now available to watch instantly via indie VOD platform Distrify. The nine episodes have been edited together to play seamlessly and continuously as one "long episode" of more than 40 mins. in total length!
You can watch the trailer below as a free preview, then simply rent the show from the same player for only $3.99.
Make sure to expand the player to full screen to see it in all its HD glory. Hope you enjoy and thanks for the support!
Blake
P.S. The new website and blog are now online too for the show, so please check that out sometime when you have a chance.
As of today 2/28/12 I'm happy to announce that my new sci-fi series CONTINUUM is now playing on a new independent TV network called JTS - Just The Story, and the first season will play exclusively on their platform.
The show joins a dozen other great series such as BLUE MOVIES, ASYLUM and CLUTCH - just to name a few. And I hope you'll join me in supporting this new venture.
Our first episode is currently available as a free preview on the JTS site, and starting today new episodes will be released weekly for the next eight weeks (9 episodes in season one, then later 9 episodes in season two for a total of 18).
JTS is not only offering a free preview of episode one from CONTINUUM, but they are also offering a free preview of their entire site - granting access to all the ad-free shows for a test drive to see if you like it.
Here's the link if you'd like to do a free trial:
http://www.jts.tv/ContinuumTrial/
The cost is only $3.99/month or $39.99/year.
For that you get unlimited access to all the shows on the site, including the exclusives such as my show CONTINUUM, and also favorites like BLUE MOVIES and ASYLUM along with the only place to watch THE JEFF LEWIS 5 MINUTE COMEDY HOUR or COMPULSIONS or CELL completely ad-free.
Additionally you can watch these shows on pretty much all devices like your computer, phone, tablet and coming soon set top boxes like Roku.
JTS also has a very filmmaker-friendly revenue share model and so hopefully creators such as myself will be able to make money on our shows, and ideally continue to make new episodes in the future.
As indie content creators we need this subscription model to work for us to keep this nascent industry sustainable.
So in saying all that... I hope you will subscribe! :) Thanks for the support!
-Blake
