THE HOLIDAY SEASON STARTS IN AN INTERESTING WAY!!!!

I woke up early very excited today because it is one of the best shopping days of the year, "BLACK FRIDAY"! It is officially the first day of the Christmas season, which is my favorite season of the year. I am burning a mix CD of the best new Christmas song versions I could find on Youtube, and Judy is going to pick me up very soon but, I wanted to just write a quick post because I had an interesting thought!

Look at the number of the day today, it is the 25th of the month. What else has that number? CHRISTMAS DOES! I bet that means this year is going to be extra special. I don't think I have ever seen it do that before.

We are going to see what type of "door buster deals" we can get today, so wish us luck!

AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

I will not go to camp.

I can't belive this. My grandmother told me at dinner that she was going to stop giving me an allowance next year and I guess she was looking for a fight or something. I was very calm and I just said "no I don't think that is fair" and then before long she told me she was thinking about sending me to a WILDERNESS THERAPY CAMP. That sounded crazy.

Look at this https://www.google.com/search?q=wilderness+therapy+camp&oq=wilderness+therpy+camp That is what I am talking about

I thought she was joking and I will admit that it got heated and out of control but I didn't know what I did to deserve that. After an hour I asked her what got into her. She made me apologize and then after five minutes she confessed she saw an article about it in a magazine and was sort of kidding and didn't expect the reaction from me.

I laughed about that because it was kind of funny looking back. I couldn't tell if she was joking when she said she is going to make me find a job.

DVD commentaries: a history

I finally got around to recording the audio commentary for THE BATTLE FOR CREATA FOREST like I have wanted to do for the last month almost. I needed to write some bullet points to make sure and cover everything I wanted to talk about because there is alot to cover. I wont spoil anything but just keep in mind I couldn't cover all of my secrets. Maybe in the future I will write some blogs about various topics about the movie. So let me know if you have any questions about the movie-making-process.

We take all of these things in our lives for granite like audio DVD commentaries. I was wondering where they come from? So i looked into it on the internet, and it turns out commentatires have a good history all to themself.

The first audio commentary on DVD happened in 1997 for the movie CONTACT (A movie I have seen before that has a pretty cool space station thing in it, it stars Matthew McConahey) which was a big leap forward. Just kidding, it turns out the first audio commenataries were made for Laserdiscs, a type of giant DVD that was not as popular. It was first done for the movie King Kong. I think the original one obviously not the new one by the Lord of the Rings team. A company called The Criterion Collection made them after they liked hearing people talking during the process of making the Laserdisc. I have never heard of that company but I clicked on them and they make a lot of important movies so I will need to check them out.

And now commentaries are everywhere! I made one myself today!

That's a pretty interesting history, isn't it? It is interesting the kind of histories you can find when you just ask the right questions.

Routines in the movie business

Routines are an important part of life. Holidays like Thanksgiving, which is coming up very soon, and Christmas, and St. Patricks Day are routines that we follow every year to have some joy break up our year. If we didn'r have days like Thanksgiving to have all the stores close to give the workers a day off some of our routines to need rest and relaxation would be hard to uphold. We take showers and eat and wear clothes because they are the routines we are use to doing. If we did not have these routines the world would be a much different planet! The movie business also has it's own types of routines that are important to the making of movies. I am going to tell you a few of these routines and why people do them. I had to think about these for a long time to figure them out because when you first look at them they arent very straitforward.

PREMIERES, Movie premieres are big parties the moviemakers through for all of the people that were in the movie and all of the people that were interested in it. This happens also so the newspaper reviews can come and see the movie to print reviews in the next mornings paper. Premieres let the people who worked for days on the movie an opportunity to see there work on a screen before everybody else gets to see it. It is an important part of the whole process.

SAYING ACTION AND CUT, A director will say action and cut to let editors know where to start and stop the cut. It's a simple practical thing.

ACTOR TRAILERS, This is a luxury that bigger movies have and we didn't but you hear a lot of reference to it in the movies that have movies in them. They are mobile homes that let the actor sleep on set and not have to drive home so they can start early and end late without disrupting the movie. It is a practical thing that is very smart to consider.

AFTER PARTY OR DESERT, After a movie is over, the people in the premiere hold an after party that gives everyone an opportunity to talk about the movie so they don't talk during the premiere and spoil or ruin the movie for the watchers. Without it everyone would go home and go to bed or get on the internet and not have those conversations that keep friendships going and make new movies happen. If an after party doesnt happen, sometimes just some desert at a restaurant might. I have heard that movie partiies generally have chocolate cake, so that's what you have to do.

I hope these were neat for you to read. Can you think of any other routines for other jobs that are strange and need to be explained to us?