Monstertrucks 2022

Luxoreum Production Reel Racing Research

Here is what you are up against.

Here is what you are up against:

"It’s the magic of immersing yourself in a motion picture masterpiece, or a new track from your favorite band, or the spectacle of a live Broadway show.  It’s hard to define and even harder to create, but that’s what we do at The Walt Disney Studios.  Ours is a culture of innovation, collaboration and creativity.  We raise the bar, then step over it, blazing trails through the production and distribution of world-class entertainment around the globe.  If you want to help tell compelling, enduring stories through movies, music or stage plays, then we want to hear from you."
                     - excerpted from The Walt Disney Company's LinkedIn account

And then down the page it says this:

The Ghost Saturdays QSKY radio promo

Equipment

Today's blog entry is about equipment choice.

Over the years I have used MANY types of analog and digital equipment.

There are some brands that seem to stand up against the test of time.

One of the best purchases I ever made was a General Electric air conditioner. I paid $111.00 for it back around 1980. On my last move about 5 years ago I gave it to the local Goodwill and was sorry to see it go. It still worked. At that time it did need a new belt for the fan and as such I let it go. I was sorry to see it go. It was EASILY some of the best money I ever spent.

Many years later Sony introduced a slogan, Sony No Baloney.

They weren't kidding. One of the camera crews I worked with had a very experienced camera operator go out on a boat to do a recording and he dropped a Sony Betacam into the water. Sony Betacams back then were hugely expensive. Like maybe 30 thousand dollars.

The crew brought it home to the TV station where the tech team basically dried it out for several days.

Then they turned it on. And it worked just fine.

It is no wonder why it became the "standard" equipment for the broadcast industry.

Over the years other brands have made their inroads and the Sony name has been somewhat diminished as the go-to brand. Panasonic cameras, for example, tend to have the most pleasing colors, imo.

But, try dropping one in the drink and then make it work later.

It reminds me of my Honda Interceptor. A friend once said you buy Hondas because they will start everytime. That is pretty much the truth. The time mine didn't start Honda paid for the repair, and I think it was off warranty at that point. The reason they took care of it they said: It was impossible for what happened to have happened. So they paid the bill.

It is important to buy good/great quality up front when choosing good equipment.

I have a friend that insists that Canon cameras are the choice of professional still photographers.

But I think my next camera is probably going to be a Sony.

Squirrels

This entry is titled squirrels.

When I came home to Corning, New York in 2009, I find myself out of work, unemployed, no vehicle, and with a lot of time on my hands.

During the Summer of 2010 I found work only occasionally. With some of the money I had on hand I would go buy large bags of peanuts and then walk down to Denison park, one of the local city parks here in town.

And I started to feed the squirrels.

It didn't take too long to gather around a group of squirrels. I was after all giving away free food.

It was interesting to see them "adjust" their normal foraging behavior to the new behavior I was presenting, which included handouts of free peanuts.

It started innocently enough but as more squirrels came around, and I started tossing more here and there I began to notice a change in behavior.

There were squirrels that would fight off the other squirrels. As if staking their claim to this free food.

It happened over and over again.

It made me think about social situations with human beings. Here in the United State have a similar system of giving away sustenance. It is called the unemployment system, and for those apparently unable to help themselves at all we have a system called Welfare.

I am not going to enter into a discussion on whether or not it is right to have such systems. It is beyond my knowledge and teaching to know positively what the correct thing to do is.

My point for this entry is I am giving away my science fiction story online for free.

And now, just today, have decided to publish the blog pages as a Kindle eBook.

It takes me back to an all important question, how do you make money on something you are giving away for free?

The question applies to my old website, videofeedback dot com, where I used to post videos for free. At one point in time I discussed it with my college professor of Radio and Television, and his reply was how do you monetize it? How do you make money from it?

What I am leading to is that converting my online story to an electronic eBook for sale is probably not going to work out. At least it isn't going to provide a decent income at this point in time.

People will not pay for what they have become accustom to getting for free. Not until they become very hungry for it. And since my book is not food, the need for it is not very great.

My story is presently receiving about 1000 hits per month. What I have noticed is readership drops off quickly if I don't post another entry soon after the last one. What this implies is that my story doesn't hold a great deal of interest for my net readers, and thus when I go to convert it to an eBook, I suspect readership will drop off entirely.

What I can hope for, is that somehow something else besides a modicum of interest will manifest itself in same unknown fashion I have yet to see, or understand.

I will let you know.

-CRB

Strategy

As I have been writing my science fiction story "The Diegisis Series by Nik Alinaru", I have come at it in a way that wouldn't meet with approval by most writers.

I have been writing out segments that have interest for me, and then I am going back and writing in the in-between parts to build the entire story.

This actually harkens back to my English Comp 1 and 2 professor, one Betsy Griffin, who I so enjoyed as a professor, and who laid it on me one day that I shouldn't change my writing style. She wanted to know how I learned my particular way of writing, and my reply was that I simply write the way I speak. She replied that writers spend years developing that ability, which comes to me naturally.

And so as I have dreams, I write them into the blogs, and thus into the story. I am sure I am driving my readers nuts as my tale isn't linear, anything but.

And my dreams...I had one last night that I have not written in as yet. But it is a continuation of the opening thoughts the main character, one Larry Devaryo, has in the story. What was different about last night's dream was the feeling of terror was still there, but the aliens didn't show up this time. Highly unusual. I generally awake right around the time the aliens appear in the skies and I then see them in the dream all about the area. These dreams of attacking aliens really scare the hell out of me. I used to wake up in a sweat from the fear.

When I was in high school my room mate woke me one night, he and another school mate were drinking beers in our dorm room. A no-no. But apparently I had been talking in my sleep as he asked me, who's coming Chuck?

I asked him what he meant through sleepy eyes. He said you were talking in your sleep saying they're coming, they're coming.

My brothers used to tell me they held long conversations with me when I was asleep.

I can't say what any of it means, but hopefully writing all of this out will help.

Additionally I have decided to start adding graphics to the story. I am going to use Norman Rockwell's method, which is kind of a cheat, and actually means I will be doing things backwards to achieve the results I am looking for, for the time being. Maybe down the road I can improve on this approach. I do this because my freehand sketches aren't, imho, very good.

The Norman Rockwell approach is to stage the moment, photograph it, then project the photo, and then draw and sketch and paint in the image from the projection.

I won't have the luxury of a Saturday Evening Post paycheck, and so no models other than those I ask who are willing, will be in any of my illustrations.

Oh yes, something to add to the above, I will also be going back and removing the bulk of the blogs of this story. As I turn them into graphic novellas. The idea being to then post a link to either a kindle version, or the graphic illustrated "comic book" version, which I will load someplace like Blurb, except Google (Blurb) already has my business, and I believe I'd like to take the graphic novels somewhere else, like lulu dot com, for publication.

And continuing in that same thinking, what Dr. Bernard and Empire State refers to as depth and breadth, I will record MP3s of the story, and then CDs for sale, and then a board game, and then continue, hopefully, building out this story more and more.

Here is a link to some sites one can do all of this with:
http://mashable.com/2009/09/05/sell-products-online/

Having posted all of that I want to add an interesting post I found the other day about the best way to make money and have to mention then that all of us apparently are being duped:
What is the best way to make money?

Wish me luck,

-Charles