The pilot to Wentworth and Buxbury is online at YouTube.



Enjoy!

Other news: Unfortunately, I've been doing some damage to myself over the past couple of days. I've been battling pneumonia and recently broke my toe. Nothing much to report there, except to say that both are getting better with time.

It's not been all bad, though. I'm happy to report that I've recently bought a new MIDI controller: the M-Audio Keystation 8es. It's very nice. My primary workstation up until this point has been an eleven-year-old Korg SG Pro X, which is a wonderful instrument, but an old one, and to be certain a cumbersome one. The new piano is a little under half the weight, takes a third less space on the z-axis, and has lighter key action. The weight of the action (this being, essentially, the amount of resistance you get when you press down on a key, combined with how long it takes the key to come back up) on the Korg was remarkably realistic, but sometimes a bit heavy and could occasionally end up tying my fingers while trying to navigate a particularly complex section of music. The new equipment has been better in terms of sheer ease, though the action is maybe a bit too light and slightly unrealistic as a result, though it has its own benefits. I'll be keeping both pianos around, as I am certain that I'll need to swap them out or use both simultaneously, at some point.

In other music news: We're going forward with production on Wentworth and Buxbury, so I've been doing some work on that: a full piece for the title screen, some incidental music, and so on from there. There's a project I'm working on with a friend, which I'll tell you more about as it progresses, (kind of similar, in terms of core concept, but not in terms of core content, to 5ideways). Another friend hopes to plant the seeds of another idea in my head in a couple of weeks and see what sprouts forth.

Beyond that, it's relatively quiet on my end, though it may not sound much like it. I'm pondering a project where I make cover versions of video game pieces, both to keep my creative mind active and just for fun. If I do go forward with that, Ill post the files here for everybody to enjoy.

Alright, that's what I've got going on here! I hope you enjoy the cartoon!


-Pete

Labels: NYTVF, Shiny New Toy, Wentworth and Buxbury

So! I am back in Phoenix, now. Which is wonderful, because I am completely exhausted. We, unfortunately, did not have 'net access for the last two days at the hotel (seriously, folks, the hotel was wretched on so many levels-- this was just the gross icing on an overall terrible cake), so I did not get the chance to update beyond the twitter feed for the past couple of days.

Here's the long and short of it.

• I have networked with more people in the past week than I ever thought I would in my entire life, and it was both highly stress-inducing (after all: everybody thinks their project is the best, everybody has their press kits ready) and terribly exhilarating.
  
• One of the best conversations I had for the week was largely not-related to making a television show. Specifically, I got to speak with Shelly Palmer (who is an accomplished composer as well as the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer). He was the host of a panel regarding monetizing (oh, that word came up so much!) digital media. The conclusion of the panel, and rightly so, is that there isn't yet one standard way to fund digital media (in this instance, I am specifically meaning shows put on the 'web, like Mr. Palmer's), both because of the newness and the nature of the media. But the important part was that at the end of the panel, he took a couple of minutes to talk about Net Neutrality and the United States' Digital Deficiency. These are terribly important topics which are being largely overlooked, so I was thrilled to hear him speak about them. I actually pulled him aside at the after-panel mixer and thanked him. Matt admitted to a lack of knowledge over the key points of Net Neutrality, and so we were treated to an absolutely fascinating ~30 minute crash-course on the history behind and some of the specifics of the battle that's silently being waged in Washington. Everybody has their opinion regarding the subject if they know about it at all, and I'm not going to delve too deeply into that aspect of it here, but I encourage you to read his site regarding the issues, because this is a huge, scary subject that we all need to be aware of.
• Everybody at this festival was awesome, from the top on down. We absolutely want to go back next year, if only for the chance for further networking and further education. This is a neat industry that is in transition, and that transition is inspiring more and more independent thinking and innovation, and simply watching it happen before your eyes is something wonderful.
• Here's the important news: Wentworth and Buxbury did, indeed, win an award: Best Writing. For those who are interested, there wasn't any category for music, so- a few people asked if I was miffed about not winning for best score?- the answer is "OH MY GOD WE WON FOR BEST WRITING THIS IS SO AWESOME." We are gearing up for the next episode, along with doing some retooling of the first episode, and then it's on to (maybe) more festivals, getting out more word of mouth, more talks with more people...this is so exciting.

So, to conclude: Much like Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, I've Had The Time of My Life. I could live this week over and over for the rest of my life and be perfectly contented. Television is an amazing medium, produced by driven, creative people; everybody from the lowest-ranked to the highest-paid is an artist, working in collaboration, and I'm thrilled to have been a part of that, even just for a week. As soon as all of the pilots are uploaded, I will put a link here.

Thank you so much for reading.

Labels: NYTVF, Wentworth and Buxbury

Hello!

Day 1 of the New York Television Festival is done (at least for us- it is definitely time for bed!). Here's how it went:

First and foremost, the NYTVF is held at the New World Stages, which is a beautiful theatre with striking architecture. It almost looks like a decidedly polished approach to a warehouse, with the entrances to the various stages screen printed on glass which is bolted to stainless steel. I've got some pics, but bear in mind they're taken with my cell phone, so the lighting isn't wonderful...



This is just a shot of a hallway, freshly gussied up before the show started. (We arrived early, so I had a minute to take a picture). I think it was around this time that the reality of the festival set in. It's one thing to plan a trip, it's quite another to be there, in the mix. Right around the corner from this shot was the red carpet, where all the various big-ups from the networks were later interviewed.



This shot was taken about two hours later after the first panel (more on that in a moment). If you look in the upper left-hand corner, you can see what I was talking about earlier with the screenprinting on glass. It actually provided a neat effect, though it also occasionally reminded me of the Alien films. Neat, either way. Shortly after this shot was taken, it got completely crowded. It was nice, though! We made a point of speaking with some of the folks from the other pilots, and even though this is ultimately a competition, there really was a sense that we're all in this together, that we're all pretty much at the same point in our careers, and that we all want to see everybody succeed equally.

The panel, of which I unfortunately did not take any pictures, was sponsored by ABC and the William Morris Agency, and had the producers of Desperate Housewives, Life on Mars, Ugly Betty, and Samantha Who? as their panel members. The panel brought up a good point: Television is at a crossroads, right now, as shown in the recent WGA strike. The advent of online streaming, combined with the fact that televisions and computers are rapidly merging into a single unit (think Apple TV, think Hulu.com) means that the landscape for television is changing, and changing rapidly. The question was asked: is the future of television going to be managed much in the same way that Google manages their ads, where a crawler looks through your emails or possibly just pays attention to what sites you visit and then delivers television to you, tailored exactly to your tastes? Imagine being able to tell ABC, "I don't like ___, don't show it to me anymore," only to have ABC listen to and agree with you? It's a fascinating concept, because for so many years, television has united us as a society. The number of people who watched the series finale of M*A*S*H was, for the time, a record. Think of how that would change if I looked at you and said, "M*A*S*H? What's that? Never heard of it; must not be in my interest list."

Let's see...oh!


From left to right, these fellows are: Hayden James Weston, Tim Nash, and Lucas Crandles. They are the writers (and some of the voices) in Wentworth and Buxbury. Obviously, we met up with them, too. Tragically, we had a bit of a mishap (of the "where on Earth ARE we?" sort) in getting in from Newark to Manhattan, so we didn't get to spend as much time with them as we wanted, but of course we'll make up for that in the coming week.

For the record, every one of them is 1.) Australian, 2.) Terribly nice, and 3.) at least 37 feet tall. Seriously, I don't know what they've got going on in the water down there, but they were all taller than me, and I tower over most everybody. I would resolve to wear stilts for the rest of the trip, but I don't think they'd allow me to take them into the subway.

Alright, one last photo and then I am turning in for the night:


Macy's at Penn Station. I intend to get a proper picture of Penn Station during the day, but this was a neat enough site so that I couldn't pass it up.

All in all, New York is amazing. It's hard to not feel very small, here, but at the same time that feeling of smallness almost gives you more freedom. It inspires exploration. I can't wait to do more.

Labels: Dark Heart Productions, NYTVF, Wentworth and Buxbury