Trailer Technology

So the trailer is done, obviously, and posted prominently on the front page.  It’s largely unchanged from a few weeks ago, except I tweaked the ending a bit (the clips that play over the music).

I knew that Flash was the way to go for embedding video on the site (I used to just link to WMV files back in the old days, but that was when it was before H264).  For the curious, I simply downloaded the JW FLV Player and placed it in a folder on my site, and after that I encoded an H264 file using MeGUI (also had to install Nero stuff for audio) and for older versions of Flash I encoded a Sorenson Spark FLV using Sorenson Squeeze (not free, so I won’t link to it).  After I made the files, I just used this wizard to generate the code, and I slapped it on the site.  I checked Flash9 in Firefox and Flash7 in IE, so I’m set.

I mention all of this in the off chance that this would be useful to anyone looking to do the same thing.  It wasn’t that bad.  Of course, most people would just upload to Youtube, but I didn’t want to sign my life away to Google.

CineFile Video

My favorite video rental shop is now stocking The Mustachioed Bandit! I saw it on the shelf yesterday when I went in to rent Fido.

This is of course more symbolic than actually significant— a few viewers might rent it eventually, but more than anything I’m excited that once it’s out of New Release, it may well sit on a shelf alongside so many of the obscure films that I was only able to see because Cinefile stocked them. From an Arabic-subbed bootleg of Face to Face to a bad VHS-to-DVD sub of The Big Gundown, the Western section at Cinefile is awesome, and I’m flattered to have my film even in the same store.

The trailer is stuck in limbo until I get my lazy self to finish it… I was in Portugal for 2 weeks (hello, Porto Film Fest application) and I’ve been sleeping far too much since my return.

I did cut together some footage for Caz’s reel since I’ve been back. Caz is of course “George” in the film, and he’s playing the lead in a play I’ll be attending next weekend: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.