Free for Three - indie e-book publishing promo experiment

A little side adventure happening here, from the Democratisation of Film-making to the Democratisation of Book Publishing. 21st Century enabling tech means that books are becoming a natural extension of our media creativity.

IAFilm is publishing "The Master Weaver: Tales of the fantastic for grownups" by Bronwyn Calder. The promo experiment is to make the e-book version free for 3 days: 18, 19, 20 Aug 2021. Will this giveaway work as promo? Will it result in any positives? We are doing our indie thing which is to run the experiment to find out.

"The Master Weaver" as an Amazon Kindle e-book - free for three days

The Amazon Kindle has developed into a reader that can run on many devices including most phones or tablets. It can also deliver through its web page. 

As an alternative for anyone without an Amazon login, we have a sample story free to read on the IAFilm website:
"Gift of the Sea" - read on IAFilm

"Loki" Review - Kafka meets Climate Change

On 17th April 2020, the BBC website published this article:
"Why does cinema ignore climate change?"
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200416-why-does-cinema-ignore-climate-change

Climate change drama makes a welcome brief appearance in "Loki", a big budget fantasy+scifi TV-web series. The protagonists do time travel visiting apocalypses. One of these is a near future climate-change-induced catastrophic hurricane destroying an entire corporate town owned by the  "Roxxcart" superstore, which looks like a parody of "Walmart". Message: hey corporate America, take responsibility for dealing with Climate Change else this is what will happen to you.

Link  to the "Loki" trailer which includes a very brief clip of the Roxxcart scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW948Va-l10

"Loki" is good enough to rate as alternative indie. Is this because the creative principals are women? It has remarkable layers of allegory and satire with the villains being a satirical take on authoritarian regimes. A big influence is "The Trial" by Franz Kafka. We can see that in the beginning of the trailer. The "Time Variance Authority" is a high tech setup with a 1970s retro design look to its layout, equipment and gadgets. And a lot of clumsy bureaucratic paperwork that moves inexorably to doom for its victims as in "The Trial". My following description may or may not be a spoiler - this is my guess as to where this is going after seeing the first 3 episodes. The Authority's mission to bring order to the "Sacred Timeline" threatens to remove free will from the universe. An unlikely flawed antihero, Loki the Norse God of Mischief, Marvel comics version, must step up and save us all.

Congratulations to director Kate Herron, writer Elissa Karasik and their team for going above and beyond the expectations and formulas of this genre. It appears that Marvel Studios is giving its creatives freedom to play variations on their fictional universe in a way that the "Star Wars" franchise is failing to do. "Loki" succeeds where "Rogue One" disappoints.

Indie Screenings finding an Audience

Now that our indie epic "Brave Love" is looking good for completion next year (2021) we are thinking about how to screen it.  I saw 2 different indie movie screenings this week. Both successful with good lessons for us. Both venues were large "lounge" spaces with big comfy sofas and armchairs so an audience size of 25 - 30. They were both full.

"The Man on the Island". Feature documentary, at the Monterey Cinema Takapuna, Mon, 23 Nov 2020. Presented by the film-maker Simon Mark-Brown with a Q and A session. Simon said it well that there are many eccentric characters who we may think of filming. However Colin McLaren is an eccentric character with depth of character and that is what makes this film work well. Simon noted that the current drop in commercial output had made it easier for films like his to get into cinemas. However the opposite may apply to "Brave Love" est. Sep-Oct 2021 with a flood of held-back product. In the 80s and 90s we had a good time doing Super-8 shows in cafes, music festival tents and other non-cinemas, so what does a modern equivalent look like? "Golden Nugget".

"The Golden Nugget International Film Festival". Tue, 24 Nov 2020. Shorts screening in a sports bar at the Kingslander pub. Presented by organisers Emme Lentino and Alex Wilson. The films covered a wide range, beginning with "Cinema of Unease" then moving to what I will label "Cinema of Exhuberance".  Many of the films displayed high production value looks on minimal budgets, as in amazing costuming and attention to detail: especially my show favourite, the satirical and super-exhuberant "Antifeminist".
https://www.sofijasztepanov.com/antifeminist

Emme and Alex were very active hosts. And exhuberant like their show. They welcomed and talked to everyone. They warmed up the audience so we became comfortable talking to each other. The bar was in the same room, closed while the films were playing but open before, after and during the interval. Yes, there was an interval. It worked well to have the one space for films, eating, drinking and socialising. They also had sponsorship from SkullCandy Headphones. We all got SkullCandy beanies and there was a prize draw for a set of  'phones. A second prize draw was for a 15 min podcast interview to promote your business venture. Lessons: (1) do active hosting. (2) events now need an event backdrop for the photos. This is the first time I have seen one at an NZ film screening. 

Me and Emme Lentino

Alex Wilson and me

Audio Noise Reduction - 3 small steps are better than 1 big step

I needed to digitise music from a cassette tape.
I was recording with the software "Adobe Audition 2017"
I first tried "Noise Reduction". That reduced the background noise but I had the feeling that it had also made a small change to the music.
I then tried using 2 x simple low impact treatments then finishing off with "Noise Reduction". This gave a much better and IMO usable result:

1. "De-Hummer" - 50Hz for where I live - otherwise using the default settings.
   
2. "De-Hisser" - "Noise Floor" stay with the default of "8 dB". "Reduce by" 18 dB
     
3. "Noise Reduction" settings "60%" and "-12 dB"

What I was thinking was that the "Noise Reduction" might work better if I could get the noise level down first by simpler means. It worked first time for this example. I am sharing it here in case the  general principle can work for others.

Music is "Walled City" composed by Ian Eccles-Smith for our film "Walled City" made in 1987. Recovering the music is part of my current project of digitising this movie.

The tape is a chrome tape. Player is a Panasonic SA-PM21 which is a domestic mini home system. I was using an audio cable with 3.5mm plugs to run from the headphone jack to the line input (blue) socket of a desktop computer. Noise in silent passages was about -40 dB which is a "good" as in low value in theory but it sounded unacceptable to me. The above 3-step process got it below the measurement scale ie below -60 dB and silent passages sounded completely silent.

Star Wars 8 The Last Jedi Review - Some improvement but needs to do better.

Spoiler alert - may act as a indirect spoiler for readers who know Shakespeare well.

In my review of Star Wars 7 I wrote:

The standout impression for me is the flirting with elements of the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s by using some elements that then go nowhere. IMO this is a lost opportunity to make a far better film as in depth and drama than what I see here.

So is Star Wars 8 better? Has it grown from melodrama to drama? Partly, with some good elements, but they are built on the poor quality foundation of an implausible plot point.

The lead characters are more complex and internally conflicted than in previous Star Wars movies.  Through "Kylo Ren" we get an insight into the mentality of a fascist leader. Heroine "Rey" survives experimenting with the "dark side of the force". "Luke Skywalker" channels "Hamlet".

The ideal Star Wars movie would be the one written by William Shakespeare - if only! I do however see some Shakespeare influence here. The opening scene has "Poe Dameron" comically insulting "General Hux". There is however a major lost opportunity for colourful Shakespearian insult in the showdown between "Rey" and "Snoke". The Force may give "Rey" powers but the power to be witty and articulate is apparently not among them.

In "Hamlet" there is a plot turning point which turns Hamlet from Prince to outcast. "Star Wars 8" has a comparable plot turning point to turn "Luke Skywalker" from hero to reclusive hermit. IMO the original "Hamlet" plot point is a marginal pass in terms of plausibility. But the "Star Wars 8" equivalent "loses the plot" in being based on unbelievable character behaviour. Which for me leaves some good elements including Adam Driver's excellent performance as "Kylo Ren", undermined by a "big reveal" that needed to be better than this.

Review - The Changeover (Movie, New Zealand)

At last! The NZ Film Commission gives us a movie in my favourite genre, Political Allegory! The Commish here calls upon its supernatural powers to tell the story of the recent election and look 2 weeks into the future to predict the final result.

The main character is Jacinda (Erana James), who begins as an innocent young woman with little awareness of her special powers. Jacinda needs to look after Bill (Benji Purchase) which becomes very challenging when Winston (Timothy Spall) appears. Winston is a supernatural creature who has lived to a great political age by forming coalitions and feeding on them. Jacinda, attracted to James Shore (Nicholas Galitzine), turns to the Greens (Lucy Lawless, Kate Harcourt) for help. Jacinda finds them using tarot cards to write policy but they kindly take time out from that to put Jacinda in touch with her supernatural feelings so she is ready to face Winston. In the meantime Jacinda and Bill's mother Helen Clark (Melanie Lynskey) is trying to be a normal person. She is too busy working late at night cleaning the United Nations building to take much interest in coalition negotiations but they have a way of pulling everyone in including Helen.

In a remarkable first for NZ Cinema, this movie time-travels 2 weeks into the future as I write. What will be the fate of Jacinda, Winston, Bill and James? What will happen with The Changeover of the New Zealand Government? See this movie to find out!

Future AI expression - Robots vs Cyborgs - a vote for the Robots

IMO excellent article from futurism.com:

https://futurism.com/elon-musks-attempt-to-merge-to-the-human-brain-with-ai-may-have-serious-problems/

"McKissen warns of how social inequality could render Musk’s neural lace beneficial only to a select few, rather than the human race on the whole. 'What will income inequality look like if only the very wealthy get an upgrade?' "

The debate is warming up about the possibility of AI intelligence growing above and beyond human intelligence in the future. Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and others have warned about the implications of high capability independent sentient robots. Elon Musk therefore suggests a "cyborg" solution where AI technology enhances humans. This "Futurism" article gives some thoughtful criticism of that.

Here is my vote for the Robots. They would be free of the 4 billion years of fighting for survival and obsessing over sex which is the baggage that programmes we humans. They would probably get their thrills from problem solving so they would love trying to help us. We wouldn't be competing for Planet Earth resources because robot living space heaven would probably be Callisto, Psyche and The Moon. There is something of a cultural robot tradition starting of pioneering space exploration with which sentient robots could well define their sense of achievement identity. I suggest betting on Robot companions and allies as our better AI way forward than the cyborgs warned of in this article.