I have my voiceover intro and Brian's stuff edited. I just need to finish John and record a couple of voiceovers and I'm done.

Also, a friend has kept encouraging me to include Homer Simpson saying "star wipe!" and a star wipe somewhere. My only way of resisting is that iMovie doesn't actually have a star wipe.

Writing voiceovers is awful. I had something ready, I said it, and it sounded like crap. I tried writing again and it was crap. Then I ad-libbed something and it sounded good until I flubbed it. I ad-flubbed and now I have two good lines after 15 minutes. Jeesh.

Wasn't able to touch base with this other autocross guy Chris. Unless I can find someone else over the weekend, I might have to make do with Brian and Jonh. I have plenty from the both of them, but eh.

This is going to be a pain to edit together. I have Brian to narrate the autocross footage (he's also going to give me some in-car footage of a run in his dad's car) and John for some Miata history as well as his take on the generational divide, not to mention a metric ass-ton of HD footage, plain audio, and recordings from my digital camera. Then I'm talking to unconventional-owner Chris possibly on Friday. I should make a 20 minute video and throw it on double speed with subtitles.

Cincinnati was awesome. John gave a good interview and took me on some great backroads. The HD Canon from OIT takes amazing video.

I have a few clips of the drives up here: I'm in the yellow car except for the inside shot.

http://www.vimeo.com/4775657
http://www.vimeo.com/4775727
http://www.vimeo.com/4775695

Brian gave a good interview. Had damn helicopters going over the whole time, but not a lot I can do about that.

Checked out one of the Canon HD camcorders for OIT to take down to Cincinnati tomorrow in addition to my other one, plus another tripod. Should be good for along-the-road exterior shots, providing there's a road where I can leave a camera stationary on a corner.

I have roughly 2 minutes of usable autocross footage. Why did I film so many launches compared to the rest of the runs? Because I am crap at tripod tracking, that's why. I should check out those Panasonics at OIT to see if they would be better than my Canon - I really want quality stuff from my big Thursday excursion.

Talking with Brian from the autocross on Wednesday. Loves autocrossing his car but will have to get him going on the right subjects, not a very talkative dude (I thought I was bad)

Didn't get a chance to record any interviews at the autocross, but I did get good race footage and get to ride in a 1991 turbo owned by an OSU student I'm going to talk to on campus later this week. People were going through the lines for runs fairly quickly and couldn't dawdle afterwards due to other folks needing the lot, plus I'd forgotten I'm quite the bashful bastard when it comes to crowd social situations. Excuses! Bah. On a purely film-unrelated note, I'm definitely going to run in the next one - just need to get some front suspension stuff sorted out.

The Cincinnati guy outright suggested I just drive both of his cars. Which is cool, but now I have to think of how to mount the camcorder, since I was planning on just crouching down in the passenger footwell...

Will be driving down to the Nasty Nati next Thursday to meet with NB/NC owner, who was also president of the city's Miata club for 8 years. I should be able to get a good full-arc perspective of the car's evolution from him in addition to the whole NA/NB vs NC thing. Also hope to get some good in-car driving footage from both of his cars - showing people driving their cars as they describe them using at least 2-3 angles should make for a good look.

My camcorder is FireWire only. Doh. I'll still have to import on-campus. At least I don't have checkout windows to think of.

Also may be talking with a guy in Cinncinnati Cincinnatti Cincinnati who has both an NB and an NC and has things to say about the generation gap between the NA/NB and the NC. For sure I'm talking with this self-described large blue collar guy and a student with a turbo 91 on Sunday, I'm going to ask them who they know to try to find further interviews. Camcorder has good optical zoom and the tripod is pretty call, hopefully I can get some good footage of runs.

Found some gigantic scans of original 1989 brochures I can use for an introductory Ken Burns section. I'll need to write some kind of voiceover introduction that sums up the run-up to and first years of the car.

I got tipped off to an autocross hosted by the Buckeye Miata Club this Sunday. Two people on Miata.net will be there, including a guy who calls himself an "unconventional" Miata owner - a big blue-collar worker with long-hair rock and roll son in tow, as he termed it. It lasts almost all day, I need to find out when the best time would be to come by - I don't want to get in the way of prep, nor do I have the time, tape or battery power to stay for the whole thing.

I bought myself a Canon ZR800 off of eBay. Living east of 270 and 24 hour checkout windows for cameras is going to be too big of a PITA.

I think for the length requirement, 3-4 different people would be ideal; otherwise it'll just be a bunch of sound bites without any cohesiveness.

I think I'm most comfortable with this individual passions idea that's been floating around. I'm not sure if I'd like to go with Miatas or something else that comes to mind, but how hard is it to get folks to talk enthusiastically about things you're enthusiastic about?

Obviously not the entire point, I'm just having flashbacks to my flailing attempts to find news leads.

That yada yada qatsi thing is a bad idea. I've learned from this ___ in 60 project that I don't have the camera skills to pull anything like that off. Maybe something to do with Hocking Hills? Miata club is always a good fallback, I had a guy approach me at the carwash one time with a business card...

I'd really like to be able to achieve something visual, visceral - something like Koyaanisqatsi with more words.

Probably nothing to that degree, but I want to avoid just people talking, regardless if they're sitting, walking, talking over themselves doing something else, etc.

The Beginning

Pledge 1: low on jokes/snarky comments, because that's just painful. This is my first and last one for awhile.

I'd like to do something more conceptual, as at heart I'm more creative than journalistic (and I have a year of hating journalism under my belt to point me in that direction). That's all I got until next class time. Living east of 270 doesn't help much for collaborating with the youths.