Pedal (Blog)

better very, very late than never

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:36:00 +0000

Yesterday was the first time Amanda and I have been able to really work together in a while, she's been going through some things and I really didn't expect, last night, for us to get as far as we did with the script for Episode Nine. But, around 2 o'clock this morning we finished writing the next episode, nine has gone through a ton of changes since we first outlined it, but we're both really happy with what we have on paper.

I'm very anxious to get to editing it, and also to film the several pieces we still need to piece it all together. On a strange but related note, if anyone out there happens knows of a really great underwater (preferably HD) clip of blue or sperm whales, please send me a link of where to watch it.

Last night I also sat Amanda down to play the first 6+ minutes of the For Thousands of Miles timeline, with the exception of one 20 second shot, Amanda seemed to really like it. We're trying to build on that, but before we get too far, we know we need to really lock down the film's outline.

I was walking home from the Redline subway station the other night, and I wrote a bunch of ideas I had about narration for this episode, but when I got home I thought it would work better for the film, and I had Amanda read those too. Which she got really excited about - I guess I'm mentioning it because I was very relieved... sometimes I worry that everything I need to say in the film... I've already said in the early episodes.

A part of me wants to just share the notes now, but I guess it's way too early for that.

Anyways, thanks for bearing with us between episodes, I know it's been ridiculously slow... but I hope people like nine, we've worked hard on it.

teaser 03

noreply@blogger.com (Manda) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:32:00 +0000

Teaser 003 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

This is Larry. This is somewhere between point A and point B. Where ever it is... I miss it. I miss kneeling on-top of the van, working the crane, watching Larry push through the wind. Knowing that every mile meant something to him... something people wouldn't see passing by in their cars. Something subtle.

Finishing Grants

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:13:00 +0000

Since coming back from the road last summer, we've been making (and putting off) plans to go film follow-up interviews with several people from the road. More importantly, much of the film is structured in a "looking back" kind of way, and we have still yet to fly out to visit Larry for a week, and film all the every-day-life shots we need with him. I'm still trying desperately to pay my rent *and* put aside money for these things... and so far, in the last year, it's been not so great savings-wise.

So, we need to start looking into documentary or narrative film finishing grants... and, since none of us have taken any film classes where they teach you that kind of thing, we have zero idea how to go about this. I've done some searching online and managed to find a handful that don't really apply to us, or that have already closed their deadlines. Yesterday my friend, Eric, said I would just write a letter and then mail it to grant-giver-peoples that I could find directories of at the library.

Which sounds easy enough. Yet, I am confused easily... so I thought we'd turn to the blog and our readers to ask for advice. Does anyone out there have any experience with applying for grants? Does anyone have any good links we could look into?

It's taken us five years to get to this point - and I feel like in the last 2 years we've made leaps and bounds considering it's our first film. Considering before this, I'd never edited anything over 5 minutes. I think we're doing okay, but a film grant would help tremendously. Tremendously.

So it's time Amanda and I start looking into this - we'll post whatever we find on our end, and look forward to hearing any advice anyone has. Thanks!

Post Production - Week 42

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:25:00 +0000

Post Production - Week 42 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

Coming home to find things like this is very touching, it keeps me going, it keeps me focused and ambitious. So thank you, Lori, for writing this.

I know my own journey will continue. I've not reached the Atlantic coast yet. I undoubtedly have thousands of miles to go. Every biweekly trip I make to Texas or California to visit my children or my wife brings immense fatigue to my body but resolve to my awakened spirit. With each milepost sign I pass, I find reasons to be thankful for this journey whether the desert basins are ablaze with sunshine or enshrouded with pregnant monsoon clouds.

I embrace the long hot black road now. God only knows what my final destination will be. There is no guarantee for success in my life. But like Mike, I "keep going, keep trying after failing, time, and time, and time again." Entire post here...

So Far, So Good

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:03:00 +0000

I was very happy to wake up this morning to find new (and some of our first) videos in the Stockpile group on Vimeo, and I wanted to take a moment to thank the people who were the first to join and upload to the group.

The first member to join, outside of Angela, Amanda and myself, was Stephen Niebauer. And the first video added to Stockpile was called, 'A loney valley in Nevada' by Merten, he took the footage during a NY to SF solo-ride he took just this last summer. I embeded a video below from the end of Merten's coast to coast ride. It's all in German, but it's exactly the kind of footage we were excited about getting.

The end of my tour from New York to San Francisco from Merten on Vimeo.

I really hope we can pull this off and reach out enough to collect a massive amount of other traveler's media, it would greatly add to the film to actually *show* the way we are all connected by the places we've been at different times.

When I think of the film's core message about the importance of doing something you don't believe you're capable of doing, and the way that I might be able to cut together thousands of videos from all kinds of different people and places to support that idea, it's just very encouraging. And something I can't wait to see come together.

Stockpile is here :)

angelasauceda@gmail.com (angela) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:34:00 +0000

Hello there.

Things have been going great working with Mike and Amanda on all things promoting and spreading the word about "For Thousands of Miles".

I've been in love with this idea ever since they told me about it years ago. It's always had a special place in my heart, and I would do anything to support the message they are trying to convey.

In the past week we've a launched a few communities involving "For Thousands Miles" and Project Pedal as a whole. We've started a spiffy new Facebook group that you can join and support here.

We have also launched a Ning community and Vimeo group called Stockpile. It's actually a really cool community for travelers. We are basically asking anyone who has great stories, pictures or film of their travels to contribute to the film. Doesn't matter how recent the trip was, it could have been 4 months ago or 40 years ago. Anything would be fantastic! By sharing your adventures with us, you will be giving us permission to use it in the final cut of the film.

As you all know we love to share our pictures and video with you. So we would like you to share with us :) We want to hear you voice, this is YOUR chance to be creatively involved with the film.

And thanks everyone for always supporting this project, means the world to us :)

Oh, and check out this short clip of one of our meetings at our favorite cafe.

Pedal Meeting :) from Angela Sauceda on Vimeo.

I Miss Everything About This Shot

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:37:00 +0000

Teaser 002 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

I believe Olivier shot this with the SGPro 35 Kit and the crew's FX1... we had Amanda's 300 zoom lens mounted (which was a lot of fun to film with).

We waited at the highest switch-back in Cascades National Park for Larry to pass and ride down into the valley. We took a lot of footage from this ledge, it was a very beautiful spot to spend an hour.

Amanda was hoping our 2nd teaser would be a clip from an interview we just transcribed, but I had this as a backup, and she hadn't gotten a chance to come over and tell me which section she wanted.

On a side note, the title for this post: I miss everything about this shot - is just referring to all the little things I remember about standing on that cliff, the temperature, the smell that comes off snow-capped mountains and the mist from the waterfalls. I miss watching Larry pass by... I miss the crew. Just everything.

I know this post is short... perhaps a little *too* short. But I'm hoping to get some writing done tonight.

what is at stake

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:53:00 +0000

I'm in one of those moods tonight. Perhaps it has a little to do with my smacking my head into a car, pulling an unexpected u-turn, at 30 miles an hour - I think the whole event (that happened last tue) has me thinking about... just stuff.

Maybe it has nothing to do with my accident, I do tent to go through this thought-process every few months. I really get caught up in what's at stake if I fail. Not in a panicky kind of way, but in a: stay focused - make progress - work towards "something" kind of way.

I guess I just find it important to remind myself that I've put the last 5 years of my stupid little life into this one film... and if I mess it up, if I slack off or become slow and distracted, that it will set a precedent in my life. That the stories I want to tell after Pedal, won't ever be if I do not see this through successfully.

And it's a good feeling - I just walked two miles back home after dropping off the rental car, and it was a nice night, it was quiet out, there was a cool breeze - and I just felt calm... but highly motivated.

I used to run Cross Country in high school for Onsted - my Coach, Mr. Hunt, taught me a lot about patience and pushing myself, but the moments I miss the most, from those four years of XC, are the several seconds at the line: I remember so clearly the tingling in my lungs from the warm-up run before the race, the focus I had, the quite as hundreds of people held their breath for the gun.

It was peaceful... even though you knew you were seconds away from running as fast as you could for 3+ miles. Imagining the blood-taste in your lungs, the heavy-oxygen-deprived acid in your legs, the pins and needles in your arms, the instinct to slow down... to ease the hurt... all of that seemed like perfect meditation. I guess I feel that way tonight, like I'm on the line. I have work to do.

Post Production - Week 39

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 06:27:00 +0000

Post Production - Week 39 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

such a tease

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 04:33:00 +0000

Teaser 001 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

I recorded a weekly-update vlog two nights ago, but I literally don't have any USB ports left open right now, and all the drives are busy backing up at the moment, so I guess I'll have to wait till tomorrow to post it. Not that anyone is holding their breath I'm sure, but still.

I have the next five days off and I plan on shacking up in my room for most of it writing more of Episode 9, which Amanda and I are embarrassingly aware has taken way, way too long to release. I guess we lost the balance we had going for 6, 7 and 8 and shifted our energy onto the film. We *have* been meeting a lot to discus where all the remaining episodes are heading, as well as the film.

I mostly wanted to write this quick post to share our first official "teaser" of 'For Thousands of Miles', I have several timelines in Final Cut for the film, most of them are simply for SmoothCam preparation, others are for other things like clips that need to be trimmed up and re-exported for what-ever reason... I have a lot of random clips scattered around my extra timelines and we thought it would be fun to share them.

So we're hoping every two weeks to post another clip - it's Amanda's turn to pick the next clip, and she's leaning towards something funny, so we'll see. The clip above is very short, I wanted it longer, but Amanda talked me down on the time. So... it's very much a teaser. Let us know what you're interested in seeing and we'll post those clips first.

you people are amazing

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:47:00 +0000

It's amazing to me that... a project as small as Pedal could come so close, so fast, to a disastrous dead-end, having drive failures like we did last week almost seemed the snapping point of the project. But, it's amazing to me that, as close as we came to loosing the last 6 months of work, that so many of you helped out on such short notice.

I just kept thinking about how things would be different without this blog, without the people who visit it and communicate with us so regularly, how watered down the film would be without your feedback... how alone Amanda and I would feel carrying this highly ambitious project. Last week was a huge reminder of that difference. And I wanted to say "thank you" to everyone who left a comment, everyone who was able to donate, everyone who crossed their fingers for us.

Last night I came home from work to find 7 new hard-drives waiting for me, five of them being 500 GB USB drives, and the other two being 500 GB firewire (800) drives. As I'm writing this I'm balancing out all of the film's footage onto the two firewire drives, which are named: Eko and Kate.

When Locke stopped mounting, I tried the usual tricks to get it to come back, I used an 800 cable, then a 400 cable, I plugged it into my MacBook Pro and then my Mac Mini, it wouldn't show up in the finder or with Disk Utility. I let it sit overnight to still have no luck, but for some reason, and I'm not complaining, last night I daisy-chained it through Eko and managed to get it to show up in Disk Utility! After a failed verification test, and a failed repair, I managed to "rebuild" the drive using Disk Warrior. I was so happy and relieved I wanted to run down the street screaming. It looks like we got through this without loosing a single file. *knock on wood*

As the footage is migrating over, it's being mirrored on dedicated USB drives, Benjamin and Charlie. I'm worried that just because Locke came on for the time being, that it's still too unreliable a drive to be used for anything Pedal related.

I sealed all the drives onto the top shelf of a bookcase next to my work-desk, and mounted a dual window fan to blow all the hot air *off* the drives, and also keep the dust out. I think they'll be happy in there.

On a side note, I wanted to mention that we have two new site features I released in the last two weeks - and I'm really excited about both of them. The first being a new re-designed music suggestion page, you'll find it in the menu bar to the left, it's called help us find ♫, the old blog post we were originally using wasn't built around "conversation" enough. Since we launched it a few days ago, we've already gotten several great new band suggestions. So thanks, and I can't wait to get more.

The other site feature is the new "get involved" page - this is completely differnet from anything else on Pedal and I'm really dorked out about it. Please take a moment to check it out, I think you'll like it, and you'll find a lot of cool stuff on there - free SWAG being one of them.

post production week 38

noreply@blogger.com (Manda) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:44:00 +0000

post production week 38 from amanda walker on Vimeo.

mike and i, hanging out, transcribing interviews and thanking ya'll for all your love concerning our hard drive dilemma :)

State of Emergency

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 03:19:00 +0000

Or should I say: "state of #@%$ing emergency". I've always tried very hard to not let day to day problems build up and cause high anxiety in my life - I know that taking my first bicycle trip in '01 has helped with that greatly. Whenever I get stressed or run into road blocks, something in my head has always snapped me back to the road, and it "turns the volume down" on what ever I'm dealing with at that moment. Having said that... I think both Amanda and I are about to have heart attacks.

I have 3 TBs of storage for Pedal, the first TB is a drive called 'Desmond', it housed 70% of the film's raw footage, the second TB drive, Hugo, was used to copy all the content from 'Desmond', both of these two drives where Western Digital MyBooks. The third TB of space, 'Locke', a Lacie Big drive, contained the last 30% of footage and also my Time Machine back-ups for my MacBook Pro.

In the last week, I've lost 'Desmond', and 'Locke' - which means I'm working off my back-up, 'Hugo', as a primary drive. And 'Locke', well if it doesn't ever mount again, I'm fucked on that last 35 hours of footage, I'll be recapturing it and re-logging... assuming I don't end up in a stress coma.

All this drive failure has left us in a position of being 1 drive away from losing 100% of the last 6 months of work. I plan on calling Western Digital and demanding my money back - but who knows how far that will get me. Amanda and I are, in a state of panic, buying what we can off Amazon. I just purchased a 500 GB Lacie USB drive, which is to be used as my Time Machine drive, I have lots of important Pedal related files that need to be backed up on a daily basis. Our goal is, in the next few days, to purchase six separate 500 GB drives, two of which will be 800 firewire, and the other four will be USB. I'll work off the firewire drives, and be constantly backed up on the USB drives. If something happens, we'll replace the firewire drive and continue working.

If you happen to be interested in helping us out, there's always our "we heart donations" page, which is greatly, greatly, greatly appreciated - there's also Pedal's Amazon wishlist, we believe we have the USB drives covered, that's about $400 we've scrapped together to begin to mitigate this problem. If you're like us, and are broke, then please just keep your fingers crossed for us. We are trying to remain semi-calm'ish.

google map conundrum

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:26:00 +0000

So I'm stuck on a small yet annoying problem that has to do with Google Maps, months ago I spent a few hours plotting (as best I could) Larry's route from Anacortes, WA to Bar Harbor, ME. Since his route avoided almost all major roads I had to "drag" the blue route line in a bunch of places, which made the map very complicated. Apparently when you do that, it causes all kinds of craziness with embedding.

Every few weeks I sit down and try to figure out a fix but I'm out of ideas - all I'm trying to do is take this map, and embed it onto a single page where it's stretched 100% for both height and width. The latest problem I'm having now is when it's embedded, the map is simply the map with no route on it. Something awesome for who ever figures it out... I don't know what that "awesome" is yet... but I'll think of something.

not just for looks

noreply@blogger.com (Manda) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:14:00 +0000

mike has been getting the same question a lot lately, and actually we both think it's kinda funny. but i guess i should clear things up a bit.

"You don't really write on a typewriter do you?"

yes, he does actually write on a typewriter. it's a vintage smith-corona that his brother, nick, got him for christmas a few years ago when we were visiting in michigan. i believe he bought it at a garage sale or something of that nature, but neither mike nor i can remember for sure. nick showed it to me before giving it to mike and i remember thinking "mike is going to LOVE this.." followed by "how in the hell are we going to get this thing home!?" it was extremely heavy, but we took our chances and placed it in our checked luggage, carefully wrapped-up in our clothes.

mike has said of his typewriter, "I fell in love with it. I actually write on it all the time, I like the sound of the keys* hitting the paper... helps me think."

i think it's the simplistic nature of staring down at your fingers over letters that helps mike. there is no world wide web to distract him. there is nothing "just a click away" except what's in his imagination.

i have to say it's pretty fun showing up at his place to work on an episode and getting handed a pile of typo filled papers with all sorts of scribbled notes along the margins. i like taking the pages and switching their order around.. figuring out how best to present what's been written.

mike recently went out and bought a newer sears electric 12 portable typewriter. here is what he had to say about it:

"I'm going to start writing a lot more than usual, and the manual typewriter can get to my hands after a few days of heavy usage :P

So I found an electric typewriter at the Goodwill to help me write a lot more while not making the tops of my hands ache. It's nice to have both :)"

*you can hear those "keys hitting the paper" in episode 8 as i'm crying and he turns to his typewriter to write what i'm saying.

"Pedal's PR special lady friend"

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:27:00 +0000

I'm in Vegas for the night with Justin and his brother, we woke up this morning around 5 and just finished walking up and down the strip from the Stratosphere... my feet have no skin left on them.

But that's not why I'm posting, last Wednesday night, after I left work, I met with Amanda and Angela at our favorite cafe', Solar De Cahuenga, and we talked about all the areas of Pedal that needed to be kick-started again after a long two week break. As of a few weeks ago, Amanda and I asked Angela to help us with aspects of the project that we just aren't that good at... and especially lately just aspects we haven't been able to focus on.

She's started submitting 64 days episodes to several film festivals, and is even preparing a 'For Thousands of Miles' press kit. I just wanted to officially announce her addition to the Pedal team, but really she's been helping out since as long as we've known her. She's awesome.

Okay, I'm falling asleep at my laptop, I am completely exhausted right now.

It's been 10 days...

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:50:00 +0000

Okay, okay... wow, 10 days without a new blog post or even a quick vlog... is there anyone still out there? No? I suck.

Like I mentioned in my last blog post, I was in Michigan for a few days, then as soon as I got back into LA, my Mom flew in on Tue' - it's her first time out in California, tomorrows her last day here, it's been fun, and crazy, my Mom is wearing me out, I need a nap after all this sight-seeing "slash" shopping.

I've been up early early every day this week and out late either touring the Queen Mary in Long Beach, walking Hollywood Blvd, wandering around the Getty, avoiding the crazies in Venice - I've been begging Amanda to update the blog with a quick blog post, I'm sure most of you out there would rather look at her then my scruffy face. But seeing as how today is already the 18th, I couldn't let another night go by without at least explaining my laziness.

I promise starting Wed' I'll be back to two blog post a week and one vlog update on the weekends. Till then, goodnight... I'm sleepy.

feedback is the coolest :P

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:07:00 +0000

I've been in Michigan the last week, enjoying the August weather and mid-west sunsets - so I haven't been update as often as I like to on the blog. Amanda and I are so, so flattered and thankful for all the great reactions people have had to the announcement of 'For Thousands of Miles'. It was very nerve racking to finally put that out there for everyone to see. Some of your feedback has been good, some has been unsure, and it makes me happy that we have so many people out there who are open and wiling to tell us what they really think.

I think it's so important in helping us shape the film. We rely on people's feedback a lot for things that have to do with almost every aspect of the project, and I think if people stopped sharing their thoughts with us we'd be lost.

There's a lot to be done in the next few weeks, we need to finish writing the next episode, and sit down and begin piecing together the scenes that we have rough-cuts of in our heads. There's website work to be done, film festivals to submit to, finishing grants to apply for (which we've never done, if anyone has any tips, we'd love to hear them), and so on.

On a side note, I'm excited because today the last large video file (45+ minutes) finished it's SmoothCam analysis in Final Cut today. All that's left are smaller clips that take anywhere from 2 to 6 hours to analyze.

I'm also kind of dorked out because I've been using an app' called Hazel to watch for new SmoothCam reference files (which are basically tiny little text-like documents) and to copy those files into a folder on my MacBook Pro. The reason I'm having it do this is because the SmoothCam files are created where the source file is - which, in this case, are two separate 1TB external drives, which are only backed up as often as I remember to do so. So by having Hazel automatically copy those files to my computer, Time Machine backs them by the hour. Those files are very important considering some of them took 40 hours to create.

Okay, I know this is not much of an update - but I just wanted to check in and let people know we've been really excited at all the love people have been showing us this last week.

for thousands of miles

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:36:00 +0000

So, deep breath, Amanda and I have, many times, talked about when to announce the title of the actual film, and we agreed that after all the footage had been logged we would start distinguishing the parts of the project more clearly.

post production - week 33 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

I feel all butterfly'ish in my stomach - I've been waiting a long, long time to put the title out there, I'm anxious to hear people's reactions... I've already gotten a few emails, some of them positive reactions, some of them not-so-much, I'm sure it's going to take some time for it to settle in and really feel like it's own aspect of the project. I feel though that it fairly represents the mood of the film (or at least what I hope and want the film to represent).

Also a huge, huge, huge thanks to Patrick Moberg, who was so great about letting us use his artwork on the 'For Thousands of Miles' website, he even did the designing of the site itself!

64 days: a story of episodes

noreply@blogger.com (Manda) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:42:00 +0000

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.

100 % Logged... Kinda'

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:13:00 +0000

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 :)

post production - week 31

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:40:00 +0000

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 :)

I Can See the End

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:18:00 +0000

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.

post production - week 30

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:17:00 +0000

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.

don't panic

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:41:00 +0000

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.