'Tis the season for another screening party! The second event in our Revver Screening Series will feature holiday-themed videos and will be held on Tuesday, December 11 from 7:00-9:30 pm at the Goethe-Institut in Los Angeles. LA's best and brightest independent content creators will be there!! In addition to a hand-picked batch of great videos there will be food and plenty of libations to help keep you warm, so come get festive with us.

We're co-hosting the event with HollyShorts, LA's premier outlet for quality short films, and the evening's program will include HollyShorts Best Animation winner “Once Upon a Christmas Village,” featuring the voice talents of Jim Belushi and Tim Curry.

The event is free and there are still a few tickets left, but space is limited so if you plan to attend please RSVP on our Eventbrite page

*Help those in need this season! We'll be collecting food donations for the LA Regional Food Bank, and encourage you to bring a non-perishable food item for the donation barrel (their biggest needs are canned meat, canned veggies, canned fruit and peanut butter).

***The Goethe-Institut is centrally located in Miracle Mile, very close to LACMA. Parking is free in the building's underground lot WITH VALIDATION -- don't forget to bring your parking stub with you to get it validated!!

Hope to see some of you

This morning a class action lawsuit was filed against Santa Claus over the discriminatory nature of the naughty and nice list. Disgruntled parents from across the globe have banded together to fight what the suit terms as "discrimination and oppression."

The prosecution had even stronger words. "The case is not only examining the fairness of the list, but the inter-workings of the holiday as a whole. Think about it, here we have an old man with a beard who breaks into your house, eats your food, and leaves presents for your kids."
While the entire world watches for the results of this groundbreaking case, the greater holiday community into a general panic. If Christmas isn't safe from lawsuits, is Halloween next?

www.savexmasnow.com

The Concentra Award for video journalism is now open for entry.

In previous years this award has been for broadcast journalism from within Europe only. To reflect the changing news environment the award is now open to video journalism broadcast or published in any news program or on any online news site anywhere in the world.
The award also comes with a 10.000 euro prize.
The closing date for entries is Jan 7th 2008. Individuals can enter at anytime up to that point.
Details, rules and regulations can be found at www.theconcentra.org


The awards ceremony takes place on March 3rd at the DNA2008 conference, in Brussels.
The seven short-listed finalists will be invited to the event with their travel and accommodation costs paid by the organizers.

The Jury members are
Host: Willy Lenaers (CEO, Concentra, Belgium)
Chairman: Michael Rosenblum (CEO, Rosenblum TV, USA)
Sue Phillips (London, Bureau Chief, Al Jazeera, UK)
Cristian Trippe (Brussels Correspondent, Deutsche Welle, Germany)
Bas Broekhuizen (Editor, Volkskrant TV, Netherlands)
Tone Kunst (Editor in Chief, NRK Nordland, Norway)
Leif Hedman (Director, SVT, Sweden)
Vicente Partal, (Board Member ECJ, Director, Villaweb, Spain)

www.theconcentra.org

http://www.thedailyreel.com/users/site-members/roberthegyes/myreel

Subject: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Race on to create studio model for the online market
by Debra Kaufman
Nov 26, 2007
On Nov. 11, the Hollywood creative team of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick unveiled the dramatic series "Quarterlife." Not on network TV or cable, not in movie theaters, but on the massively popular online social networking site MySpace. And they own and control every plot, every line of dialogue and every dollar earned. "Ed and I had a running joke for the last two years that one day two kids in college would make a movie for $15,000, make $8 million and make the studios irrelevant," Herskovitz says. "And then we thought, 'We could be those two kids.'"

Herskovitz and Zwick aren't alone in thinking there might be gold in Internet content. A slew of Hollywood players are entering the fray, from Michael Eisner, whose Internet video studio Vuguru produced "Prom Queen," to Hollywood trio Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy, who founded FunnyOrDie.com, a comedy video Web site with original exclusive clips, as well as user-generated content (UGC).

"If you had a chance to buy IBM stock in 1954 for 8 cents a share, would you do it?'" says actor Robert Hegyes, who has executive produced and written Internet series "The Venice Walk" http://www.thevenicewalk.com with writer Craig Titley (2003's "Cheaper by the Dozen"). "That's the Internet."

The intersection between Internet video entertainment and social networking is emerging as a powerful model. Herskovitz and Zwick have created a stand-alone social networking component that they hope overlaps with the series' audience; Internet video site FunnyOrDie.com allows viewers to decide which content stays and which "dies." And social networking powerhouse MySpace has gotten into the Internet TV business.

"We're excited to provide the content exclusively to our users for now, but we're looking at the model (of posting it on other sites) and will make decisions that are right for the show and our users," MySpace TV general manager Jeff Berman says. "The whole focus here is serving the MySpace users. We're really community first and a video site second." http://www.myspace.com/thevenicewalk

Whereas the Hollywood players rely on their production expertise to create "premium" content, which they're betting will win out over the hit-and-miss dynamics of lower-quality UGC, social networking sites believe their experience in creating communities will give them a leg up in generating loyal audiences. "We really approach it from the perspective of how our community engages with content," says Berman, who notes that the TV series' characters will video blog and respond to feedback on their MySpace pages. "It's about discovering content, sharing it, using it to express yourself and communicate with others."
the venice walk productions @ 2404 pacific ave. venice, california 90291 310 666-8008

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE - SKATE ON OVER TO THE VENICE WALK
Showcasing Venice Teens on The Verge of….You Name It! Produced by Welcome Back Kotter Star and Venice Local Bob Hegyes Who’s Back With The Next Gen "Y" of Sweathogs
*the VENICE WALK `Web Series Benefits Communities In Schools "Drop-Out Prevention Program at Venice High School

VENICE, CA, October 31, 2007 -- He calls his new series the “Anti-O.C. Teenagers on Probation. Bad kids getting Badder.” And who better to tame new age juvenile delinquents than an older aged juvenile delinquent? He’s not a Crip. He’s not a Blood. He’s a Sweathog! Robert Hegyes, Epstein from Welcome Back, Kotter, a veteran actor, writer and director, has created a new series for the Internet with partner and feature film scribe, Craig Titley (Sam Raimi’s upcoming remake of 20 Thousand Leagues Under The Sea) revolving around a retired NYPD Gang cop turned Venice Beach Juvenile Probation Officer, and the seven Venice High School delinquents who must report to him.

“Write what you know” is the age-old adage Hegyes quotes when describing how he came up with the R-Rated Kotter. “My B.A. is in Secondary Education. I’ve been a full-time teacher at Venice High School, hanging out with 4,000 hormone driven teenagers a day,” said Hegyes. “I live with my four teenagers (two 19 year-olds & two 16 year-olds… don’t ask!) plus all their friends at my beach house in Venice. I’ve played a juvenile delinquent on one hit series, and I’ve played a Gang Cop on another hit series (Cagney & Lacey). “I think that qualifies me to write about teenagers.”

Shot as a docudrama with dark comedic overtones, The Venice Walk stars teenagers on probation for such crimes against humanity as grand theft auto, credit card fraud, computer hacking, possession of drugs, felony assault gang-banging under the Witness Protection Program. Robert claims it’s not really his show.

“These kids carry me along for the ride,” said Hegyes. “There were 2,000 young actors who auditioned in L.A. for these roles, and the actors we’ve found are explosive and dynamic. These kids are the next Brat Pack.”

The Venice Walk is just what the Internet Webisodic genre has been waiting for -- an established television star appearing in bite-sized portions on a computer or mobile device near you, with an original thrashin' soundtrack provided by local Venice bands including Matt Ellis, The Cheat, The Janx, Holly Long and Matt Tecu.
THE VENICE WALK - LINKS
THE VENICE WALK MySpace http://www.myspace.com/thevenicewalk
THE VENICE WALK Web Site http://www.thevenicewalk.com
ROBERT HEGYES LINKS:
ROBERT HEGYES WebSite http://www.roberthegyes.com
ROBERT HEGYES imdb http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0373881

During a recent shoot, we had 3 cameras. Two were on tripods, and one was hand-held. While I was editing I found the hand held a little too jarring, and so i kept trying to edit around it, until....I was leisurely reading the FCP User Manuel (yes, i know), when I stumbled across the SmoothCam Filter.

It's quite simple to use. Select the clip(s). Choose Effects > Video Filters > Video > SmoothCam.

The clips process, and viola, a little better.

However, it isn't all magic. To reduce the shaking, the clips are enlarged enough to cover up the steadied movement resulting in them being slightly blurry.

The manual offers a few tips. First, the SmoothCam should be the first filter before anything. Then you can adjust the Filter Parameters. You can decrease the Auto Scale so that it zooms out. There's also the option to control the steadiness of the shot by three independent parameters: Translation (left, right, up, down); Rotation (around the center point of the image); and Scale (forward or backward camera movement).

Scale seems to be the main culprit behind the distortion that I'm hating, but again, this can be fixed by the Auto Scale I mentioned above, or by the three parameters I was just mentioned. By reducing all three, less motion correction is applied, and less black around the clips, resulting in needing to scale less (big breath).

A few other tips offered by the manual include isolating the clips with the most movements with cuts, especially when there are noticeable changes within the frame (like before someone enters frame, and before they exit).

Seems like it takes a lot of work, but when you're just not happy with everything you shot once you're back at your computer editing, at least fixing little visual things like this will help you focus more on your story.