Wednesday 15 June 2016

37. Load, schedule and Marketing scheduled.

Load videos to YouTube and DailyMotion, playlist them schedule them, then tweet and market, all scheduled for future dates and auto release.

Shades Of Bad is still a weekly 3 to 5 minute web TV series, rarely does it go over or under that, length and we have released constantly since going live a year ago.

We also have the Doris Visits travel series and are away again on another ship from this weekend where we will be filming cruise stops in Denmark, Sweden and up to St Petersburg, so we expect to come back with 7 or 8 new travel films for Doris Visits.

then we have the behind the scenes films from our features and a How To Film series which this video falls under. So, although we haven't counted, we reckon about 150 films in a year.

We now are using the scheduler more and more and that means the episodes are uploaded early and scheduled to go out at later dates.

On top of that we schedule tweets to go out on the back of those episodes and a blog to go out on the back of the tweets, then tweets on the blogs on the back of the blogs. Next we have OS TV, the operating system for TV and TV apps and Opera and Strimm..... yes, check out Doris running as a TV show. So, we can't worry about hitting deadlines, we have to deal with uploads in bulk. Eventually the plan is to have a TV channel and produce a constant output, that is an interesting future. So, when someone tells you they are making a web series and it is just three or four parts, you can see where that ambition might lead.

To keep all our films, blogs and web pages and the links thereto all listed, we keep a huge excel sheet of all the links, short links and blogs and blog's links we can make those marketing moves and also randomly blog.

Uploading is not straight forward and becomes a huge job that has to be done in a certain order and the boxes ticked. There are many little tricks that one has to deal with. like if you schedule a video to go out and save it, then you cannot add the film to a playlist. So you have to do things in the right order.

We have done two more films this week to help film makers and content owners build their channel, the first was the terrific interview Jean (Doris) did with our composer Mark Blackledge. That dos nicely to the film she made a few weeks ago about laying music cues on the episodes as she now has a library and lays her own music on as the others in the team start to plan films again.

This video is a film of Doris at the desk again, buried in wires, uploading films and marketing. It is an interesting insight into the workload and makes you realise that the filming side of film making is just a tiny bit of what you have to do.

Load, schedule and marketing scheduled ...... take a look.  Below.....


Then come back and see where the ambition of clever shooting can outstrip the limitations broadcasters have.

Enjoy the current episode of Shades Of Bad where Jean as Doris is on a ship approaching Bergen in Norway. Jean now directs and has been directing Olympian Derek Redmond, who is back in the UK in the Kitchen .... Derek is in his screen debut. (auto available from Friday is his 6th episode)




Tuesday 14 June 2016

36. Doris sits with Mark Blackledge in his writing & recording studios and talks music composition for film,TV and Shades Of Bad.

Doris Interviews film music composer Mark Blackledge


Doris Shades spends the weekend with composer and orchestra conductor Mark Blackledge and his
wife Maryam. Then on Sunday morning she manages to get a very rare interview with Mark in his writing & recording studios. This adds to the blog on her web site found by clicking this text.

They talk about music composition for film, TV and Shades Of Bad as they have now done three feature films together as well as the web TV series and travel show spin off.

Actress Jean Heard has known Mark for 20 years, he has composed the music for the INDYUK films she has co produced, Freight with ICON, Bula Quo with Universal and Devil's Gate which was signed to an American company that went into bankruptcy, (which now they have back and hope to put on Amazon).

The music from Shades Of Bad helps lift the web TV show to a level way above the current web TV show, maybe other web TV shows do not consider music and sound enough. Mark's sound design in episode 13 was quite brilliant. He plays the music and breaks it down talking about the key changes and moods he produces.

Mark has now supplied Jean with a library of music cues that she lays on after each edit, but up to about episode 30 Mark did the complete sound design as well as composition.

Mark has also done other major films and TV from Nativity to many US cartoon shows some which he was never allowed to take the credit for, but that is the business and it now affords him to pick and choose what he does, sitting at the grand piano in his recording studio space which could house a mini orchestras or a large band comfortably, or on his mixing suit with screen projection on the wall opposite his desk which he also uses to remotely watch the musicians he mixes.

This is a very rare and unusual insight into film composition and Mark's methods. Good post production means better pictures. If you find the DORIS VISITS botanical gardens videos in Barbados (East Coast) and St Lucia and Tortola, his music is played throughout.



Finally as Doris has a library of music which she now lays on the dramas and the Doris Visits travel films, you can click here for a film on how she does this in the edit suit.