Pedal (Blog)

Teaser 011

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:31:00 +0000

Teaser 011 from mike ambs ☂ on Vimeo.

This was one of the rare days that the wind was to Larry's back - which also meant that I didn't have to fight the wind when working the crane.

Most days it felt like trying to steady a massive sail with a camera on the end of it - but this day, the wind kept perfect pace with us, and I could move the camera almost anywhere without any real resistance.

This shot is a snippet from the middle of a longer 360˚ that follows Larry. But if I posted the whole rotation, it would be about 2 min... and that's not much of a teaser.

Planning for the Future - Cont'd

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:24:00 +0000

Back in January, I wrote a post about planning for the future by making the most of tools we have online: Twitter, Facebook, social maps, etc. It focused on the importance, for indie filmmakers, to build an audience outside of a theatrical distribution deal. Because if you're not a rare-enough-breed to make it into Sundance and then on-top of that strike a fair distro' deal... then you're stuck with your film and no one to watch it.

A photo from our Pedal Push Party fundraiser back in May of '07, just days before we began filming in Washington - via Mike Hedge.

But there's another aspect to planning for the future that I've been thinking about: the actual event(s). Sure, you've made the most of social tools and built up a great base of people interested in your film. Now you have to plan the events these people are interested in attending - at this stage, you could blow it without any past experience.

I think it's important for Amanda and I to release the 64 Days episodes for a number of reasons - one being that they are great learning experiences. We learn what people react positivity to, what they react negatively to... or what they don't react at all to.

64 Days - Part 1 from mike ambs ☂ on Vimeo.

And it's not a clear 'do this, and not this' learning experience. There are aspects of the episodes that I personally love, and that people seem to not care for, or at least they aren't moved in the same way. But regardless, what I know at this point, after only releasing a total of 9 episodes, compared to what I knew before is a - not huge, but still - vastly beneficial gap.

So I have to take that into consideration when realizing that the day will soon come when the film is complete, and I will likely not have a distribution deal, and I will need to plan the actual screening events for people to attend. Will I be ready?

This idea is not set in stone, and I'm sure people's reaction to this post will help shape my decision, but I am currently thinking of planning a series of 64 Days events. A multi-state, re-occurring screening event of the 64 Days episodes - both older and new releases - at venues ranging from local-movie theaters to art-friendly warehouses.

We have a very ambitious goal of having the film at 90% complete in 11 months - it's ambitious because there's still three follow-up interviews to be scheduled (and plane tickets to be bought), we have pick-up shots to film with Larry in Northern California, we have more Stockpile footage to collect, there's 64 Days episodes to release, and I still have a day job, etc. But let's go with the 11-13 months from now the film will be 100% complete, that leaves us enough time to plan 4-6 events in cities like: Ann Arbor, San Francisco, LA, Austin, Seattle, Chicago, Fargo, Portland...

It would require lots of organization, lots of volunteers, lots of aspects of event-planning that we aren't familiar with. We would need to be able to build onto each event - drawing on more interest, giving those people who are present at the events the info to help spread the word (if they enjoyed 64 Days), as well as request to see the actual film when it's released. Stickers. Buttons. Fliers. Organization. Fold-out chairs.

If you are making an independent film - I would highly recommend making (promotional / behind-the-scenes / tie-in) episodes to: a) help spread the word, b) set a tone for people to associate with your film, c) make your mistakes early on (when the stakes are less high). And if you have those episodes, it's time to put them to maximum use: a) organize events, b) meet the people face to face who enjoy your stories, and c) be involved with the community you're building on a personal level.

Be sure to let us know your thoughts on the idea of a re-occurring 64 Days event. Would you go if there was an event in your area? What would you expect from the event based on other events you've gone to? Would you be interested in getting involved?

11 months to go - time to get to work.

t.minus + babelgum

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:02:00 +0000

Last year we entered part 1 of 64 Days into the Babelgum Online Film Fest' - it was the first time Babelgum ran the competition and they had partnered with Spike Lee and Cannes. Amanda and I were pretty amazed at how many people took a moment to vote for our project - and because of all your efforts we made the 10 finalist for the contest. From that point, a panel of judges picked the top 3 that went on to meet Spike Lee and attend Cannes.

This year I've submitted a special 22 min edit of parts 1 & 2 under Babelgum's documentary category. Voting is open until April 2nd (but it looks like you're allowed to vote once a day).

If you support this project - if you believe in the story Amanda and I are trying to tell - if you'd like to see us stay independent - then this could be our best chance at moving forward and completing the film on schedule.

There's a total of $125,000 in awards for winners spread across four categories. If we placed top three, we would secure the funds needed for travel (follow-up interviews), additional HD storage, minimal but essential camera equipment, promotional expenses, etc.

I also wanted to introduce a new branch of the site that we'll be using to power time-sensitive aspects of Pedal (like this online film festival), it's called t.minus, and the site is very simple: there's a current focus, a how to help, and a large countdown of the days left to do so. You'll also notice a special link in the left sidebar of this blog when there is an active event.

I know that voting takes time - and that doing so several times a week is redundant and not the-most-exciting way to spend your time online. But your support is greatly appreciated - the efforts that so many of you are willing to put forward for this film are really amazing to us. Thank you. Thank you.

Also, while you're in Babelgum be sure to check out and vote for the short film White | Red | Panic by our very talented friend Ayz Waraich.

Film vs Digital Question

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 07:13:00 +0000

A few weeks ago Ayz and I were talking over IM - and at one point we ended up on the subject of film vs DOF adapters. Ayz has impressed a lot of highly professional people with his short film White | Red | Panic, which was shot on a tiny little HV20 (no kit was used), and he gave the short an amazing look with color work, and an eye for beautiful shots.

At the time of our chat, I just had received the 16mm back from Burbank, and was surprised at how slow, regarding turn-around time, it all was. (Not to mention a bit expensive, but that wasn't really surprising). I think from the time I dropped off the 4 small reels for telecine, I had to wait around a week to get the 15 minutes of footage back. And as beautiful as the footage looks, as unique and nostalgic a feel as 16mm film gives - the workflow is just not something I am used to.

Ayz, although he has had a lot of success outside of film (and with next-to-nothing budgets), was saying he had decided that he needed to shoot a feature on film - that all his favorite films were shot on 35.

And I should make clear that I don't think people shouldn't use film... I don't think film has no benefit. I'm just thinking out loud and interested in people's perspective on this.

But I was wondering - how do I word this - okay, one of my favorite films is Days of Heaven, I think it's beautiful, I love the slowness and anti-climatic unfolding of the story, I love the sounds and the editing. And I wonder if I would love any of these things less if Terrence Malick happened to, in 1978, have access to a Viper - or even an SGPro, and had made a decision to shoot digitally?

I know that something about the image would feel different - maybe the weight or grain would be slightly off if compared side by side. But I'm just asking - would it really make or break the movie itself?

I guess, at this moment, I have almost no interest in shooting a feature or even a short on celluloid. I think it's very interesting having mixed formats to play with; 90% of For Thousands of Miles is filmed on HDV, but the 15 minutes of 16mm we have to use really stands out against the rest of footage, but so does the Mp4 in it's own low-quality / personal way.

I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts on this - what's your favorite film? Was it shot on film? And what do you think would be the difference if it had been shot digitally?

t.minus + awesome people

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:46:00 +0000

It's been a week since launching t.minus and announcing the Babelgum Online Film Festival. We've been keeping our fingers crossed and carefully monitoring all the available stats - I thought I'd be transparent and share all the info I know with the people who've been coming back everyday to vote.

Up front, the least informative part of this whole process (for us) is the actual vote tally itself. There's no log-in or dashboard page for our progress with voting on Babelgum. So our only insight into where we stand in votes is a once a week email updating us on the count. Since we've only gotten one email so far, we don't know much - but as it stands several days ago, we were at 49 votes. Which was enough to pull us from the back of the line (600+ videos) to the top 20.

Here's a snapshot of our Google Analytics graph from Feb 15th to the 22nd: You can see that the first two days were our strongest, now keep in mind this graph is only for page hits on t.minus, our stats for people actually following the "vote here" link are different.

Out of the 900 t.minus page hits in the last several days, the tr.im url we have linked from the t.minus page has been clicked around 180 times. But it's safe to assume most people, after clicking the link once, would either save a bookmark (if planning to re-vote each day), or just leave a tab open in their browser.

We can tell from our Crazyegg stats that 90% of our t.minus traffic is coming from a) Twitter, b) Facebook, and c) the production blog. So everyone's RTs have been amazingly helpful in keeping the site active and the votes growing!

This basic graph above is very comparable to the Analytics' info - but I've been going through and doing my best to track the tweets pointing people to the contest. It's a rough count, because not everyone uses the tr.im url I'm able to track, and not everyone puts an @Pedal or @FToM - so some slip past my radar, but the above graph is close.

The light blue is the number of clicks on the t.minus url, and the dark blue capping each day's hits are the number of RTs on Twitter. So you can see a very immediate effect from your twitters and driving people to the site - it's especially amazing to watch how fast the stats jump when several people twitter within only minutes from each other. People's likeliness to click and then vote seems exponential to the frequency of the t.minus RTs - which sounds all fancy and science-like.

The graph is, of course, not entirely accurate to twitter's relation to page hits because we've blogged about it, we keep people updated on our Facebook group, we sent out Virb announcements, and contacted some our Vimeo friends about voting. But the numbers are helping in finding what's actually effective and what's not.

Amanda and I have been trying to figure out how to keep the graph tipping upwards - it dipped near the end of the week, but the last two days the RTs have been climbing, and if we can keep that momentum, then t.minus could prove to be very powerful. Making the top 10 of Babelgum could lead to award money; which would immediately lead to paying for help to really getting other aspects of this project moving at full speed.

Thank you so, so much for all your votes, all your tweets, all your support - I don't know how to full explain the way it makes me feel to see so many people fighting for our project. Also, if anyone has any ideas on how we can be more effective in getting the word out, please let us know!

Post Production - Week 64

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:50:00 +0000

Post Production - Week 64 from mike ambs ☂ on Vimeo.

A quick update on what I've been keeping myself extremely busy with the last week - keep checking back at FToM - it won't be long before we launch the new site. I've worked very hard on it, so I hope everyone will find it much more useful and engaging.

Also don't forget there's still 28 days left of voting for 64 Days in the Babelgum film fest! Winning would give us all the money needed for post-production! Greatly speeding up our schedule.

building a team

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 07:47:00 +0000

I've been thinking about this for several weeks - and I've been hesitant to write about it, hesitant to ask people about it, hesitant to really admit that it's a problem. But we desperately need help with this film. Not in all areas, but there are goals I have that, it is becoming more and more apparent, will fail if it's just Amanda and I.

I can handle the editing. I can handle the writing. I can handle keeping myself on schedule - not that I don't fall behind, but it's more a matter of too much to do and too little time (or not enough help).

And because of this I am always falling behind in one area of the project as a whole - I am always falling behind on emails, falling behind on blog post, on vlog updates, on reaching out to new people, on making advances with the script, on encouraging write ups and interviews to get our name out there. The weight of these un-marked to-dos has been growing the further into post-production I get.

An example; we have goals of planning multi-state screening events of 64 Days to build more awareness and practice DIY distribution (for when FToM is released). This is something I could take on myself - the managing of localized people who are helping to book venues, RSVP guest, handle equipment needs, etc. But I could not do this while at the same time writing as much as I need to, and editing the film. So I feel stuck - I know it's something the project would benefit greatly from, but how do I pull it off without more help? How do we find more help when we have no budget?

I suppose this post is simply a feeler - I'm curious about people's thoughts on this. What people's ideas and suggestions are on the possible trade-offs for people joining our team. We have a long road ahead of us... there's a lot of work left to be done... and it's a lot to ask of people. Is it crazy to pull outside people into this mess?

Post Production - Week 65

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:33:00 +0000

Post Production - Week 65 from mike ambs ☂ on Vimeo.

Big announcement this week - it's been a few weeks in the making but we're finally ready to release the new design of the For Thousands of Miles site! I worked till 4 or 6 in the morning for about two weeks straight getting all this coded correctly and set up. We're really proud of the new site and we hope it adds a lot more interaction to FToM! We could use a lot of help in spreading the word about the new site - if you're up for blogging about it we'd be flattered.

There's a few more little additions I'd like to make over the next few weeks - but they weren't critical enough to push back the release. So stay tuned for those and be sure to leave us any comments or questions you have about the new site. If you think something is missing we'll try to include it.

There's 19 days left to vote for 64 Days on Babelgum - again, this contest could fund our entire post-production process! If you enjoy the 64 Days episodes, or Pedal on a whole, please take the 60 seconds each day to vote for us. It really means a lot to us. The t.minus website lays out quickly and clearly the steps you can take to get involved.

'Pathetic' Compared to What?

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:32:00 +0000

Amanda and I weren't able to go to SXSW this year - which had less to do with 64 Days not being accepted, and more with money and timing issues - but if one of us had gone to Austin we might have caught a panel discussion with several big doc' directors including Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), and Gary Hustwit (Helvetica).

During the panel they debated digital distribution options and had some disagreements on it's value. Spurlock said, "The reason numbers aren't released (for digital distribution revenues) is because the numbers are pathetic."

And, from what I could tell, another comment, from Steve Savage, of New Video, was somewhat in line with Spurlock's, "It's good to be agnostic, and I think it's a good way to put everything out there and see what sticks but there's also other ways to do it," he asserted, "to be really strategic, to find where the money is."

I know it's important for distributors to crunch the numbers and track current and emerging trends, I know it's important for them to chase after the biggest pool of money - but I don't agree with Spurlock at all about online numbers for indie-films being "pathetic".

Keep in mind the numbers these higher-profile filmmakers and distributors are calling pathetic aren't compared from the perspective of marketing-resources. Sure the online numbers aren't very impressive when side by side to the theatrical numbers for Super Size Me - but how many marketing dollars were behind that film? When you take an indie-film with a promotional budget in the $10,000 range (basically whatever they can swing on a credit card)? Then the internet is, dollar for dollar, far more powerful. And is getting more so very quickly.

I watched a video recently that briefly went into the time it took different technologies to reach it's first market audience of 50 million. Radio: 38 years, TV: 13 years, Internet: 4 years. The tables turn a lot faster online then they do anywhere else.

I haven't heard the entire panel discussion yet, only bits and pieces, so I'm not saying that anyone on it feels the internet is a waste of time for indie-filmmakers. But I am saying that focusing so confidently on where the "money is", is missing the point. I'm curious how long any of you reading think it will be before a majority of modern theaters have a high-end equivalent to AppleTV, or Roku running off an internet database of high-quality films that can be torrented or streamed on demand? 2 years? 4 years even?

The filmmakers currently tapping into the internet to distribute and push their films might not be rolling in it, they might not even be able to "pay their rent", as Spurlock mentioned, they might not be the talk of town during Sundance and Cannes - but they will be the pioneers that shape the very near future of online-film-distribution.

t.minus 12 days

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:58:00 +0000

I have great, great news! When we first started t.minus to encourage and simplify the voting process for 64 Days in the Babelgum film festival, it required people to create an account, download and install software, oftentimes people needed to restart their browsers or computers to finish the installation, etc. Basically, what I'm saying is that was a terribly high number of hoops to jump through just to start casting votes.

As of this morning - Babelgum has relaunched a new design of their site, and it appears to be from the ground up. No more software necessary to watch or vote! If any of you out there tried to vote before, and were one of the many who had issues or ran into bugs with the player, then this is just in time! And for everyone else who's been voting once a day, well, now it's much easier.

We're really getting down to the wire in this contest - from what we can tell, we're very, very close to the top 10 position (possibly 15th place in the Documentary category, though it's hard to tell). And with 12 days left, we're gonna have to push this very hard to make sure we a) don't get bumped back on the list, and b) manage to move up in the top 5 positions.

I know I've mentioned it on this blog before - but doing well in this contest could secure us the finishing funds towards For Thousands of Miles. It would greatly speed up post-production and give us a head start on promotional funding, and allow us to hire help that we desperately, desperately need. Thank you so much! We can do this.

post production - week 68

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:04:00 +0000

post production - week 68 from mike ambs ☂ on Vimeo.

We're down to the last 24 hours of the Babelgum contest - we really have no idea where we stand at the moment, since the relaunch of their site it's been impossible to even do a rough count of our position. So it will be as much of a surprise to us as anyone when the release their shortlist on the 3rd.

So keep your fingers crossed for us - if you can cast one last vote and tell everyone you think might take a moment to vote. Remember, now there's no signing up for an account or downloading software. Voting could literally take as little as 5 seconds and two clicks.

Okay, enough about the contest for now. I've been trying to get back into writing and editing mode, and haven't been able to re-acclimate as fast as I'd like after spending a few weeks neck deep in html, css, javascript and all kinds of other initials that are mostly over my head.

closing our first t.minus campaign!!

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:51:00 +0000

Whew. So our first t.minus campaign is over as of this morning. It was a very interesting experiment in focused promotion for the project and I'm really happy with the way it all turned out.

The shortlist results of the Babelgum contest will be posted tomorrow and I honestly have no idea if we'll make the top 10 or not, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I can't thank everyone enough for all their support - so many of you voted, so many of you twittered and send friends messages on facebook, some of you even wrote blog post and put badges on your personal site.

We ran our t.minus campaign for 45 days - ending with around 700+ votes - averaging about 16 votes per day - a total of 3,381 total clicks through Twitter (on our specific shortened url alone... other people used their own tinyurl but we didn't keep track of those numbers).

The numbers are very interesting in how they break down, it's pretty clear that early on in the campaign less people were able to vote (most likely, judging from the wave of emails I received, difficulties in downloading and installing the software), but they still Twittered about the contest for others to see.

Near the end of the contest, when Babelgum opened up their voting and ditched their software, voting really took off.

Twitter was the most powerful and efficient way in which we got the word out about tminus - like I mentioned above, the shortened url we used was clicked 3,381 times. There was a very big jump in the number of clicks and the number of votes - but that gap began to close quickly when voting became more simple.

Above is a graph from Tr.im that shows the ups and downs of the RTs (re-tweets) for tminus. We normally saw between 5-15 tweets a day about the contest, and from that saw between 60-200 clicks from twitter, with a spike around 700 clicks near the end.

I have a lot of ideas of how to make better use of tminus for the next campaign, not sure when that will be or what it will focus on (perhaps 64 Days screening events), but I do think it was a success. It was a long 45 days and I really appreciate so many of you sticking with us through it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what parts where good and what parts were annoying or could have been done better.

Do you think we should stick with Twitter as our main driver? Or should we experiment with other sites, like Digg, or Facebook? Do you think one has more influence then another? Tminus won't always be geared towards contest or award-related campaigns - we'll try to keep it a mix. Thanks again so much for all the support! We'll let you know the result as soon as we get them.

Teaser 013

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 05:07:00 +0000

Teaser 013 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

This was taken around out 9th morning of our trip - we're either on the far end of Washington or just getting into Idaho.

In the background you can half see a group of female bicyclists that we ran into several times up until Montana. They had a pretty inspiring mindset about traveling - and one of the women would later email me on the memories from her ride, saying: "...It haunts me now like a dream that only exists in my head, separate from everything in my day to day 'real' life."

I thought that was one of the most perfect and beautiful ways I'd ever heard a person describe the after effects of their trip.

2nd Year in a row!

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:54:00 +0000

The results for Babelgum's 2nd annual film festival were posted two days ago, and we were very excited to find that (for the second year in a row) we are finalist! The first year the contest wasn't very competitive - it felt like, I think, a lot of filmmakers hadn't yet heard of it. But this year it was much more popular and the climb to the top 10 was a lot more difficult.

An email I received yesterday had our total vote count at 904! With that final vote-count it's pretty clear just how fast voting took off once they simplified their site and video player.

Again, we can't thank everyone enough for all your votes and support! We would have gotten no where fast without your help.

I wanted to take a moment to stress the importance of focused campaigning. Most film sites have a lot of links branching off into a lot of areas of the project. Our sidebar alone has around 20 links, half of which take a person off the main production blog and to other sites all-together.

We have a handful of ideas for upcoming t.minus campaigns, and like I mentioned earlier in the week, they aren't contest related. We plan on coming up with collaborative projects that tie into the film or episodes, and are confident now that t.minus is the best way to go about them. The focused site could be used to plan a digg event, raise a smaller amount of money for a specific part of the project, give away a limited supply of swag or work-in-progress DVDs, a sudden boost in film request to reach a number more attractive to DIY-friendly theaters. Et cetera.

By having a branch of your film's site that does one thing and does it well - as opposed to linking to a post that is surrounded by sidebar links and recent entries - we were able to really focus the site's traffic (from other people's tweets) and have one main goal for visitors.

The final results for the film fest will be decided near the end of the month by a panel of judges and eventually Spike Lee. Keep your fingers crossed for us - and in the meantime, we have lots of other work to do!

Post Production - week 70

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Post Production - Week 70 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

Larry shared a pretty personal and emotional letter recently - and I asked if he would mind my sharing it on the site.

I realize that many people might find his words in the letter a bit strange - but that was half the point of me reading it... I'm curious how these feelings come across to other people.

For me, the letter makes perfect sense, all the emotions seems right in line with what I went through... with what I'm still going through - but I know that won't be the case for everyone.

tomorrow... and the next day

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:24:00 +0000

It's been over 10 days since my last post and always feel awful when the blog sits here quietly for that long. I guess I've been in a bit of a mood the last week and every time I sat down to write something... I just kinda' blanked out. "Why is that?", you might be wondering.

I think it had something to do with where I'm at in writing the script recently - I've come to a point where I need to find a way to say what the trip means to the people in our film.

That might seem like an easy'ish thing to do... but I've been trying to find the words of how to express my own bike trip for the last 6 years... I've never been happy with anything that I've come up with. But it's time for me to make a decision on that - I can't let the film collect dust forever just because I'm lacking the perfect way to express something. It's become a fight of what needs to be said and what should left for interpretation. It's slowed me down... and that always leaves me down.

But - moving on: tomorrow Babelgum will announce it's winners in the film competition. It's been nerve-racking this last month waiting for the final results... especially considering we reached this point last year in the competition. Regardless though of what happens tomorrow I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone again for all their support and votes - we couldn't have been finalist the last two years without you. Keep your fingers crossed for us tomorrow - and keep an eye our twitter accounts (@Pedal, @Manda, @FToM) for word on Babelgum!

And before I go - I know I've been jumping all over the place in this post - I wanted to mention the virtual panel discussion happening on the New Breed Workbook Project. I did a video-response with my perspective on film festivals. If you have any thoughts be sure to drop by and join the panel.

Post Production - Week 73

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:04:00 +0000

Post Production - Week 73 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

This is a very big announcement... and it was a decision that was more than difficult for me to make. I don't know what else to say... except that I'm prepared to work harder than I've ever worked to make it all come together as planned.

New Pedal HQs

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:13:00 +0000

Whew. I made it - barely, but still, in one piece. Next time I insist on driving across the country in a loaded station-wagon with no air-conditioner, someone might want to ask me to double think it. Despite my heat-rashes, I don't regret driving - I just couldn't afford it.

But, moving on: so I'm still living out of half-empty boxes and milk-crates, most of my hardware is unpacked and connected. I setup all my external drives and ran test on them to see how they handled the road trip and the 108 heat - everything looks great so far.

I have a lot of work to do today - so I'll try to keep this post short and sweet - and I don't have much to update aside from "I've been doing lots of unpacking and heavy lifting", but I wanted to stress just how much all of your comments, tweets and support have meant to me the last few weeks.

I would be lying if I said that my decision to move here was easy, and that the change in my life came with no aftershocks. As a struggling filmmaker, or really just as a human-being, I am full of second-guessing and nagging anxieties. And that's where all of you come in - you've helped me believe in myself. So thank you.

A few quick things before I go: 1) I started using Campaign Monitor to power our newsletters and out-reach goals.

If you're not subscribed yet, you can view an archive of yesterday's newsletter.

2) We launched a new Kickstarter fundraiser - in only 3 days 4 people have already pledged $65.

We have 31 days left to raise out $1,000 - which will go towards follow up interviews and pick up shots in Northern California - drop by and check it out!

3) We quietly launched our new Join our Team (formally our "Get Involved" site) and we are looking for people who are excited about indie filmmaking and anxious to become a part of the driving force behind Pedal's out-reach goals.

I'd love to hear feedback on what people are most interested in hearing about. If you want to know more about writing, or editing, or our out-reach, leave us a comment saying so.

Teaser 014

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:39:00 +0000

Teaser 014 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

This was taken in Glacier Park Montana - it poured there for about two days.

At this point in the trip Larry didn't even own a tent, I'm not quite sure how he managed to sleep and stay dry. He used a tarp and a picnic table to create a kind of make-shift tent.

It's a strange thing to be so cold and so wet in weather like this - and not have a real roof over your head. Not only for just a few hours, but for days. When the sun finally comes out and hits your skin - it's an amazing feeling to be back on your bike.

Up Bright and Early

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:41:00 +0000

I'm excited about editing today - last night I was making changes in the film's timeline - currently I am working on the section of For Thousands of Miles that deals with Larry's trip in a more linear fashion. FToM doesn't start that way at all, and I was using a different (more structured) approach earlier on - but that approach carried over into other areas of the story.

And I realized last night that those solutions didn't work on this problem. So I'm excited about today because I'm going to try something very simple to solve something very complicated. I'm going to run through, clip by clip, and drop in the shots that I like. That's it.

It's how I usually go about editing more personal videos, not too much thought, not too much structure (at least at first), just grab what catches my attention, and set it in the timeline.

On the 1st of two hard-drives I have somewhere around 1,170+ individual clips, ranging anywhere from 20 seconds to 20 minutes. So, it's not to say that this is a quick solution, but the approach is familiar, it's simple enough to provide immediate gratification, and sometimes that's very important when editing.

Will I end up with a 5 hour rough-cut of a part of the finished film that is supposed to only take up 30-40 minutes? Yes, at first I will. But that's ok. I'll start picking it apart when the time comes. Time to get to work!

Like a Mad Man

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:32:00 +0000

Since my last post, about simplifying my editing workflow, I've been cutting For Thousands of Miles like a mad man. I created a separate sequence, nicknamed The Odyssey, and went from a blank slate to over 2 ½ hours in the last few days.

Editing FToM Screen Cast from mike ambs on Vimeo

It feels so refreshing to just filter out the beginning, and the end of FToM, and just focus on the chunk that deals with a more linear (emotionally) arc. Treating it as it's own separate piece has lifted so much of the pressure and confusion from editing, and I can see already that having this larger, more complete block of the film actually in front of me, will make it much easier in the near future to tie it back into the bookends of the film.

But editing isn't all I've been busy with, over the weekend I did some updating and re-designing of Stockpile (which will go live in the next few days), I've been putting together a 60 second promotional video for it also - something that the awesome people over at Adventure Cycling suggested we try. We're really excited about the upcoming mention of Pedal in their Bike Bits newsletter, I can't wait to watch all the newly submitted bike-trip footage.

Back to work for now - be sure to let us know in the comments if you anything questions about what's going on behind the scenes of Pedal.

Scatter-Brained

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:22:00 +0000

Last night I twittered that I finished off the first of two 1 TB drives full of FToM's footage - I went through and condensed many of the edits and took out clips I knew weren't working now that I had seen it next to other clips. So the timeline is still just barely pushing 2 hrs and 15 min.

But with another 1 TB of footage to comb through, and 400-some Mp4 clips (from Larry, and the crew), I'll be busy for a few more weeks before I have a solid 5 hours of footage that count as the most usable of the film's media. Then, the plan is, to play that edit on a loop while I make notes, write more of the script and narration, draw out the last of the storyboards for scenes we still need to film with Larry in Northern California... picking out music, et cetera.

I have a long, long road ahead of me. Finishing one of the drives was a great feeling, but it was a small step.

We only have 9 days to go on our Kickstarter campaign - another $300 and we'll have reached our goal! Just as a note; none of the money pledged to this point goes through if our goal isn't reached. This $1,000 will be set aside for the post-production and pick-up shots I mentioned above.

In my last post, I mentioned that I had been working hard on updated our Stockpile project. If you haven't seen the new site yet, please take a moment to check it out and help spread the word. When I was on the phone with Winona, from Adventure Cycling, she suggested I create a promo video for our outreach campaign. I thought it was a great idea, so here it is, our new 60 second Stockpile promo:

Help us burn through the more than 16,600 HD embed'able plays we have left on Vimeo!

It's easy - just copy the code above and paste it anywhere you see fit. Thanks for helping to spread the word!

That's all the updates I have in me tonight. I'm leaving town for the weekend but I'm hoping to record a vlog update while I'm working in FCP in the afternoon.

Post Production - Week 78

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:37:00 +0000

Sorry this took so long to upload - I recorded this friday afternoon, and wasn't able to edit it while in Kentucky like I'd hoped.

Post Production - Week 78 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

But here it is - just an update on how I've been combing through the footage for the trip and making sense of it. It's a basic approach, but the baby-step process seems to be helping.

Update from Ypsi HQs

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:59:00 +0000

I'm sitting by the open window right now, enjoying the smell that comes after a mid-west thunder storm, and an iTunes playlist from Jon. It's almost been 10 days since my last post, so I thought I'd better check in and give everyone an update on what I've been busy with.

FToM: First on the list, the film. I've still been very busy going through clip by clip and dropping what I like in the timeline. I'm probably 1/3rd of the way through the 2nd TB of footage.

Two days ago I sent a FCP project file to Amanda, she has the back-up drives in LA, and I've been waiting for feedback on what she thinks so far. The way it's cut now, it's not much to look at, but when looked at side-by-side with our notes on the arc of film, I can see a pattern emerging, and places where certain moods and points can be made. I'm anxious to be sitting back in-front of the typewriter again.

Stockpile: I've been pushing hard promoting Stockpile on Vimeo, ACA, and popular bicycling forums (like Crazy Guy on a Bike). We're already getting some great feedback and interest so far. And today a few more clips were shared in our group.

One reader replied, "I have a good feeling about the project. It looks like the personal essence of the moments will come through. Teaser number two shows, to me anyways, how profound it is to be insignificant. Good luck on the project."

Our main goal with Stockpile is to be able to visually show just how connected we are by the places we've been - how our experiences are intertwined in ways that are easily overlooked. We have a long way to go before we reach the number of videos needed to do that, but with steady pressure and outreach, by the time the film needs it, I believe we'll be prepared.

Kickstarter: Our Kickstarter campaign finished a few days ago and we were able to overshoot our goal by $105! I've adjusted the funding progress by by $1,105, which felt great to do. I can't thank everyone enough who donated, twittered, and help spread the word in anyway. It's by far the biggest jump in donations we've received since coming home from production two years ago.

It turned out to be a really impressive and supportive community of people. of all the sites we've joined that had fundraising support, it's been by far the most successful.

Also, of course, a huge thank you to those of you who have recently donated via our new funding site. I know we had a few people do so during the Kickstarter campaign and I didn't want to sound like I was leaving them out.

I'm excited about the next round of funding - and have been thinking of ways to incorporate a breakdown of upcoming expenses that we can split into individual campaigns.

t.minus: I've also been putting together the next t.minus project. If any of you have dropped by the site recently, you'd have seen our 'currently closed' splash page - hopefully after this weekend I'll have it swapped out with all the new info.

I can't say too much about it at the moment, but I can tell you it's a collaboration project that anyone can be a part of! And, if I can make up my mind on a design, there could be t-shirts involved too.

Teaser 015

mike@projectpedal.com (Michael Ambs) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:55:00 +0000

Teaser 015 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

So, people have been asking me to post a FToM teaser that had a little bit of dialog in it for a while now. And I don't really have an excuse as to what took me so long to actually picking one out.

But, I have to give Erica some credit here... I had yet *another* quiet biking shot picked out and ready to go and she strong-armed me into saving that for another time and picking out something "different".

This group was one of the first people Larry ran into after having to say goodbye to his best-friend Jay earlier this morning. I know it must have been hard on Larry to carry on as if nothing was wrong or out-of-place.