The Buddy Group held a pumpkin carving contest at lunch today. Five departments each worked together to make an entry for the competition. The winners will be announced at lunch tomorrow.

DotLot’s entry…

Client Services carved an homage to our CEO, Pete Deutschman…

Hello? Is it Dev you’re looking for? (Lionel Richie courtesy of our Development team.)

Audience Engagement gave us this social media message…

And our fancy designers came up with this inverted gem…

Happy Halloween!

– Mike

It finally aired, so now we can share it with you here! This is the PSA that Mike edited for the Death Valley Fund. If you want to see it on TV, it will air on KCET right before National Parks Episode 5 on Thursday night. If you’re setting your tivo, be sure to record the show before the Ken Burns doc, too, because the spot actually airs at 7:58pm.

Or, watch it in High Def by clicking here!

– DotLot

We just found out that the PSA that DotLot Director Mike Kirsch edited for the Death Valley Conservancy will air on Tuesday, September 28th, right before the third episode of Ken Burns’s new National Parks Series.

The commercial will air at 7:58pm on KCET, right before “National Parks: The Empire of Grandeur”. Get more information on the KCET website.

– DotLot

DotLot Creative Director Mike Kirsch was tapped by the Death Valley Conservancy to edit a PSA promoting the Death Valley Fund. The 30-second spot will air on PBS (KCET-LA) September 27th during the premiere of the new Ken Burns documentary “National Parks”. (Check your local PBS station’s website for air times.)

Reps at the Death Valley Conservancy sent Mike more than 13 hours of historical, modern and aerial footage, stills and postcards. They asked for a spot that would make Death Valley look heroic and beautiful. Mike sifted through all the footage to cut a spot centered mainly around the Borax 20-mule team and amazing 35mm aerials.

The spot is being conformed to HD in DotLot this week and then will move on to a post-house in LA for color correction and output.

You can learn more about the Death Valley Fund at DeathValleyFund.org.

– DotLot

This is a short BTS clip that I shot this morning as we were prepping for our Western Digital shoot. I’m on a quick break right now and then it’s back to shooting!

–Mike

Hi Friends!

Just a quick post here to test whether we set up our Facebook page to properly display posts from blog.dotlot.com.

If you’re reading this on our blog, be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter (@dotlot).

This month we celebrated July 1^st as Happy DTS 7.1 Day! “Give me 7.1 surround sound or give me complete silence”.

http://www.celebratesevenone.com/

Celebrate 7.1 on 7/1! from DTS Digital Entertainment on Vimeo.

DotLot played the producer role and called on some of our finest crew to shoot this production. We had the chance to work with some amazing talent: Fred Willard, Lou Wagner, Richard Horvitz, Robbie Troy, John Pollow along with some talented DTS buddies. This was a quick one day shoot which took plenty of preparation. We all had a great time on-set and off-set!

Even the Agoura Hills Mayor Denis Weber got into the act by proclaiming July 1^st to be “DTS 7.1 Day” in honor of their cutting edge 7.1 surround sound audio technology.

Also … signup and be a part of this celebration as DTS is given away Blu-Ray Discs, Playstation 3 and a 7.1 audio system! Go on and have some entertainment!

We are a studio. We have gear. Gear breaks.

I’m all for sending pro gear back to the manufacturer to be serviced, but in this economy, I also like to save where I can. When one of the four ballast boards on my Kino Ve 4Bank Ballast took a permanent nap, I decided to fix it myself.

With a quick search on the Kino site, I was able to identify the part number I needed. It took a few days to get the board (Kino made me order it from Samy’s) but once it came in, it only took about 5 minutes to swap.

I took some pictures…

Here’s the main ballast unit…

That had a dead ballast board, as evidenced by the non-op tube…

Start by removing 10 screws from the case cover. 3 on each side and 4 on top.

Here’s what is looks like inside. You can see in this picture (and the next) that I have already removed the white connectors on either end and the smaller red connector at one side on the second board up from the bottom.

To remove the board, just undo the three hex nuts. Two are on one side of the board (I’m pointing to one of them) and one is one the opposite end. DO NOT remove the small phillips head screw - it’s part of the board.

That’s all. Now, back to making movies…

- Mike

A few months ago a friend came to DotLot asking for some help in producing a PSA for an organization he was involved with called Know Newspapers. His goal was to produce a short spot that he could put up on the website of his organization whose primary goal is to save newspapers and prevent the downfall of the printed word. 

According to Newspaper Death Watch, no fewer than 11 newspapers have failed in the past two years, and I have heard several stories of other papers in Chicago and San Francisco that are faltering, too. 

Then, today, the crisis hit our industry, too. In a lengthy email from Studio/Monthly’s Beth Marchant titled “Last Letter From The Editor”, it was announced that Studio/Monthly will no longer be publishing a paper copy of it’s monthly film and video industry trade mag. As a director and as someone who runs a stage rental facility, this is big news to me. Our little production niche has been hit hard over the past year by a faltering economy and reduced client budgets. Those people who I work with frequently all tell the same story - “We’re holding on, but it’s tough.”

I’m glad that Studio/Monthly will continue to publish its online version, and from the info in Beth’s email, it sounds like they might even be expanding their coverage. But as any grip who has ever spent six hours in a dimly-lit green room knows, it’s still nice to have a few magazines laying around. 

Here’s the full text of Beth’s email…

“Dear Readers,

Maybe it was prophetic that the coverline on Studio/monthly’s June issue included the words “to Web.” I wrote that coverline long before the decision was made to end the magazine’s four-and-a-half year run as a standalone print and digital publication. But the Web is where The Studio Group is strongest and where we’ll continue to grow. Studio/monthly will deliver the same award-winning content at www.studiomonthly.com. The magazine online will do what it’s done from the start: provide practical, well-edited product reviews, in-depth tutorials, first-person advice and analysis of emerging trends at Studiomonthly.com and through our portal, Studiodaily.com. You’ll see the site evolve, however, as we refresh it more often with the kind of dynamic content that a monthly magazine could simply not deliver.

The flow of the magazine-its visual impact, its organization and the way each article was designed and edited-was thoughtfully constructed with you, the reader, in mind. I’m proud of what we built. And I know from my conversations with many of you that Studio/monthly, when it was launched in 2005, gave you exactly what you needed: practical advice that helped you improve your kit, your skill set or your business. One special word of thanks to those who wrote to tell me over the years how much you valued the magazine in its initial print form for giving you the chance, however briefly, to step away from the computer without leaving your work entirely. You read it on set, on the train, on a plane, in a facility lobby, or even far away from the dark cave of your edit suite under a shady tree. I had hoped you’d be able to do that for years to come on a Kindle. We’ll certainly be thinking about ways to curate selections of our content for viewing devices like the Kindle.

Due to the end of the print/digital editions, the position of managing editor has also been eliminated. I’d like to thank Jessica Clegg for her talent and dedication to developing the magazine, Web site and spin-off e-newsletters into valuable components of The Studio Group’s broad and deep network of production and post-related content.

Stay in touch and come back often.

Regards,

Beth Marchant
Editor-in-Chief
Studio/monthly”