I may or may not have had to deal with a small electrical fire this morning, so there's that. Late Saturday afternoon Oklahoma County was under a tornado warning and I'd unplugged my computer and server setup just incase things went absolutely south. It's storm season here and you grow up learning to pay attention to the weather. Luckily the storm petered out by the time it was close enough to us to have done any serious damage, but the power in our neighborhood went out for a few house.
This morning I started to plug everything back in for the start of the work week and had a legit cloud of white smoke rolling out from under my desk. A power adapter for an external hard drive had shorted out and the metal part you shove into the hard drive was getting crazy hot, vaporizing the plastic around it. Luckily it wasn't connected to a hard drive at the time and even luckily'er I was able to put out the small fire that'd started. So, technically – I'm assuming – that'd be (delayed) storm damage and not just me being an idiot for having too much plugged in.
The last couple months were focused on applying to grad school and various "adult/parent responsibilities." Now with that heavy lifting behind me for the most part, I've been able to get back to my rubber stamp doc.
The teaser has been updated after some previous notes I'd gotten plus I added a couple new sections. I still don't have a title for project, but that'll come soon enough. I've also connected with a few new people in the stamp world that I'm hoping can help add meat to the skeleton I've already got. And considering how my last name constantly gets butchered, I bought rubberstampdoc.com and rubberstampfilm.com to help make life easier. Those URLs just forward to the webpage I've been using for months.
More and more people have started asking about updates on the project, so I've also added an email list you can sign up for if that's your thing. No plans at this point to do a regular newsletter or anything, but I do know it's helpful to have an idea about a potential audience. I've been thinking too about possible distribution, film festivals, and all that vs. just putting the thing on YouTube and moving on. There's still quite a lot I'd like to do and people I want to interview.
So far the project has been self-funded with business profits and stock footage sales. At times too I've been able extend client related travel so I'm able to land additional interviews (NYC, San Francisco). I've kept production costs super lean by one-man-banding all things, but that becomes a liability soon enough. Ideally I'd be able to hire out audio (priority) and a cam op (secondary) so I can focus on the interviews. Once we get to full-on post-production I'd like to work with a colorist plus someone who knows what they're doing in terms of final delivery. There's also an aspect of animation and graphic design I'd want to incorporate, but I'm not there yet. There's all the things under the hood of a film that no one outside the industry talks about, but you absolutely recognize them if they're not there.
Oh, and I actually finally finished reading that Capital in the 21st Century book by Thomas Piketty. Seriously I've not read something that interesting in a long time. Thick and dense AF, but dang this amateur economist was glued and completely nerded out. St. Anne the Wife asked me to stop talking about it more than one occasion. I also finished Dave Grohl's The Storyteller this past weekend. In a former creative life I was actually a musician and learned to play thanks to listening to hours and hours of Nirvana. There was so much in his book that I related to with his time and experiences on the road. He seriously seems like such a nice guy. I've already started re-reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and I've got a couple other books waiting in the wings. Months ago I'd ordered the 11th Edition of the American Cinematographer Manual and it was finally delivered this past week. I'd also picked up the 4th edition of Directing the Documentary by Michael Rabiger at a used bookstore awhile ago.