Tuesday 2 November 2010

Trailer Tash

The Trailer 
It's been a while since our last post. Life and work has just sort of been happening and Tashalaska has been bubbling away in the background as we try and juggle making a living and making a film.  Thanks to our contributor David promising us a bear skin rug if we get on with it progress has been made, we now have a trailer. Watch it here...



Trailer Tash from TASHALASKA on Vimeo.
            

The Edit                                           
Our sequence is taking shape and after a trip to the stationary shop to buy a flip chart and colour coded post it notes we now have what largly resembles a real edit suite in our front room. I guess this equated a bit to work avoidance, like having to tidy your room before you start revising...




Yes, these are actually scenes in this film.





                                                                           




Some stella screen shots if we do say so our selves.







Tea and Cake. 



Largely what we have been sustaining ourselves on









Networking on a Shoestring
In other news Tessa is off to Sheffield DocFest this week to plug Tashalaska. Realising she had left it a bit late, an emergency business card production line took place last night in our kitchen... 















Thats all for now folks. Thanks again for your support and best of luck to all of you out there growing for Movember!


Until next time...


Big Tash Love!


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Tuesday 20 April 2010

The trials and tribulations of social networking.



A few months ago I really felt like this was all beyond me. How do you maintain an audience when the main thing you are trying to do is sell an idea? It's not even a finished product yet so how are you supposed to get people interested in hearing about a film thats yet to be made. This is a particularly daunting prospect in the early stages of the edit when it feels like their isn't really much to say and quite frankly who gives a s%£*. 

I'm not going to lie to you, setting it up and understanding how it all works was fairly painful, and does take a couple of days but once you have got past the...'what the hell am i going to say' and 'who is going to be interested' it starts to make sense. Since i've been on Twitter i've realised that, aside from building an audience for your film, their is plethora of people tweeting info that is pretty essential to anyone out there trying to do this on their own. Personally I find it a much easier way of digesting all the info that's out there for filmmakers because lets face it, most of us working on unfunded projects are working day and night to make the best film we can and the less time spent actually having to go and find all that information the better. Here are some essential follows for independent film...

For making

For watching

Because they are just cool

There are definitely mistakes to be made, for example, its a wonderful thing to be able to hook your social networking sites and film platforms together but beware of clicking those buttons. I managed to post our short to my facebook profile about 6 times in the space of 2 minuets without realising and then had to ring my friend to get her to tell me how to delete on the iphone (i'm new to that too). Already conscious that I might be spamming you all with my plees to join, vote and support I was mortified, but it was definitely a lesson learned. Twitter has a good way of telling you that you are being tedious, your followers simply unfollow you, particularly i've found if you tweet too much information in one go. 
Follow us as we wrestle to find balance between being interesting and engaging to our audience while trying desperately not to scare people off with mindless self promotion...


Thursday 25 March 2010

If you can’t pay them, feed them!

The other day during a displaced morning of editing at Curzon Soho bar my editor and I fell into hysterics. This is a frequent occurrence when we both become delirious with moustache fatigue but this time it was something different. The cause of the hysterics was not simply the loud slurping noises we made as we tucked in to the home made soup that I’d sneaked in, but the fact that I had served it in what was readily available: a plastic cup and a straw. 
It reminded me of a great podcast from Shooting People where Amy Sewell, director of Mad Hot Ballroom says 'If you can’t pay them, feed 'em well...don’t just feed them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.'
find it here along with some other great podcasts from Shooting People...
Well, I'm not sure if soup counts as feeding them well but I'm persevering; for tonight’s edit I’ve gone all out with bowls and spoons!

Monday 15 March 2010

It’s been a while...

...since our last blog from Alaska the home of the 2009 World Beard and Moustache Championships. I arrivied back in June amongst a sea of tapes and minus my wonderful partner in crime Helen who I left behind in Canada.

Below is an extract from a blog I actually wrote in November but never got round to publishing, probably for lack of confidence. I hope it is of use to some of you no budget filmakers out there and better still I hope my future musings might steer you back from the brink of going mildly insane, I nearly did...

This picture was sent to me by a friend, It's what my screen is doing most days.

'Friends; they are invaluable. Not only do they provide emotional support, audience to endless Facebook messages, votes, tweets and enthusiasm when you ask them to a screening of your film they have already seen a million times, they can also be integral to the making of your film. I went to Sheffield DocFest for the first time this year where I partook in Digital Bootcamp, a fantastic workshop run by Shooting People. It was here, after listening Jenny and Mark from Future Artists speak on the subject, that I realised what a wealth of talent I have amongst my friends. Better still, I realised a lot of them are in the same position as me; at the early stage in their prospective careers and trying to carve out a name for themselves.'

Well, no sooner had I jumped off my train from Sheffield than I was enlisting my friends who were delighted to help and better still, excited at the prospect of being part of something outside of their day jobs. As a result of this amazingly talented group of people and a lot of hard work we are about to launch a trailer, a website, some fantastic artwork and a marketing campaign.

'Team Tash' is in full swing! ...watch this space

keep up with @Tashalaska on Twitter