One year ago today, the world first trem­bled before the might of the Diary of a Mad Filmmaker vod­cast. It was a heady time, flush with pos­si­bil­ity and the hope that “vod­cast” would some­day become a real word. This was a time before “vlogs,” and Snakes on a Plane was noth­ing more than a dis­tant possibility.

Today, this vod­cast turns one. A lot has hap­pened in one year. Against all odds, Wholesale Souls, Inc. was fin­ished and Exploding Goldfish Films, now based in both Fort Collins, Colorado and Minneapolis, Minnesota, has moved on to other projects. Again defy­ing all odds, we shot an entire film in one month, in high def­i­n­i­tion, no less. And we con­tinue to move up in the world. Today I will finally announce that “big news” I’ve been sit­ting on for weeks and weeks. But first, I want to take a lit­tle look back, in hopes that I can answer the ques­tion: how long can this mete­oric rise last? How high will we reach before our suc­cess ulti­mately peaks and we are inevitably flung earth­ward at tremen­dous speed? But more impor­tantly, what kind of a phrase is “mete­oric rise?” Don’t mete­ors gen­er­ally fall? I ask you, when is the last time you saw a meteor rise? The only rea­son I can think of why a meteor would pos­si­bly rise would be if it was shot out of a can­non. These ques­tions and more will be answered.

Thanks for watch­ing, and here’s to another good year.

You can find a high(er)-definition ver­sion of today’s install­ment (640x480; iPod com­pat­i­ble) here (46 MB).

The Magical Murderous Kingdom of Eat Street was not, repeat NOT funded by the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce. But Eat Street WILL blow your mind, whether you like it or not.

The head explo­sion was accom­plished from effects ele­ments by Detonation Films (they have a whole bunch of ele­ments avail­able for free down­load), and inspired by an Action Movie Essentials tuto­r­ial by Creative COW con­trib­u­tor Andrew Kramer: Assisted Suicide. If you’re try­ing to learn After Effects, I really rec­om­mend Creative COW as a tuto­r­ial resource, and this is a really fun project to try. Especially once you drop in a few really juicy sound effects.

There is still BIG NEWS COMING for Terminal Philosophy, but I still can’t tell you what. I know you’re all on the edge of your seats and I’m sorry, but this has to be con­tained until every­thing is set and we’re sure it’s going for­ward. Thank you for your patience.

Finally, the included scene from Terminal Philosophy is one fea­tur­ing Leroy Twarogowski as the God The All-Seeing, and of course Sir Vincent Gaggneepainn as Leo. This scene was shot on our sound stage and, on an inter­est­ing note, lit almost entirely with tele­vi­sion sets punched up with a tiny bit of incan­des­cent light­ing to bring in some color. In addi­tion to the two vis­i­ble tele­vi­sion sets pro­vid­ing light, there is a third, larger set on the floor illu­mi­nat­ing the walls.

Howdy, all! I’ve just got a cou­ple quick ques­tions about the future of the Diary of a Mad Filmmaker vodcast.

From the begin­ning, I’ve been com­mit­ted to keep­ing the vod­cast com­pat­i­ble with the video iPod, pri­mar­ily to appeal to a wider audi­ence and get a jump on the whole video pod­cast­ing stam­pede that I saw headed my way. This is why I chose to author videos at half-resolution (320x240 pix­els). I retain this com­mit­ment because I know for a fact that some view­ers do, in fact, watch the vod­cast on their iPods. I also was com­mit­ted to keep­ing file sizes down (I’ve done badly in that respect recently), which is why I chose Quicktime 7 over MPEG-4 encod­ing. However, some­thing new and excit­ing hap­pened when Apple announced their new prod­ucts this month. A new iPod update allows users to down­load full-resolution (640x480) videos from iTunes and play them back on their iPod (not just new iPods; any video-capable iPod ever made).

Here’s one of the ques­tions: how would peo­ple feel about hav­ing a sep­a­rate feed for high(er)-definition vod­casts? I don’t want to release the vod­casts only in 640x480 res­o­lu­tion because I know not all of you have blaz­ing inter­net con­nec­tions (I didn’t either until last month). Instead I would offer a sep­a­rate URL for the high-resolution vod­cast that sub­scribers could use instead of the cur­rent URL.

Please com­ment on this post with your opin­ions. Would you sub­scribe to a high-res feed (even if it meant an aver­age down­load size of 100 megs)? Do you pre­fer that I just work on keep­ing down­loads small? Do you fear change and just wish I’d keep on doing things exactly the same way I have been (inconsistently)?

Also, if you wish, please let me know what you’d like to see in the future of the vod­cast. I feel a bit bor­ing com­ing to you every cou­ple of weeks to show you a new clip and tell you that there might be light at the end of the tun­nel. What do you want to see? Short films? Guests? Roundtable dis­cus­sions? Personal drama? Shorter vod­casts? Longer vod­casts? Tall, arro­gant vod­casts? Tell me what you want! The cus­tomer is always right!

Here’s a (regret­tably long-is and a bit dron­ing) report on how I’m doing as far as get­ting set­tled in at MCAD. Not much movie news per se, but plenty of com­plain­ing, tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, an inter­view with Jesus, and some Minneapolis trivia.

Incidentally, that bit of trivia at the end is a bit unread­able (I’ll rework the text for next time), so here it is again:

Thanks for your con­tin­ued view­er­ship. Without you, America would be a dark and dreary place.

If you don’t know me per­son­ally, this prob­a­bly isn’t worth watch­ing. Be fore­warned: I get a bit touchy-feely.

“We were friends and have grown dis­tant from one another. But it is right that should be so; let us not dis­sem­ble and obscure it, as if it were some­thing to be ashamed of. We are two ships, each of which has its des­ti­na­tion and its course; our paths can cross and we can cel­e­brate a feast together, as we did—and then the brave ships lay so peace­fully in one har­bour and under one sun that it might seem they had already reached their des­ti­na­tion and both had one des­ti­na­tion. But then the almighty power of our task drove us apart, to dif­fer­ent seas and dif­fer­ent climes, and per­haps we shall never see one another again—or per­haps if we do we shall not rec­og­nize one another: dif­fer­ent seas and sun have changed us! That we had to grow dis­tant from one another is the law over us, for the same rea­son that we should also become more ven­er­a­ble. And thus the thought of our for­mer friend­ship should become more sacred. There is prob­a­bly a tremen­dous invis­i­ble curve and star orbit within which our so dif­fer­ent paths and des­ti­na­tions may be included as tiny stretches of the way—let us raise our­selves to this thought! But our life is too short and our power of vision too weak for us to be more than friends in the sense of that exalted pos­si­bil­ity. And so let us believe in our friend­ship in the stars.”

–Friedrich Nietzsche