The past year has had ups and downs.
In January Youtube dropped the hammer on casual creators. By August I gave up making tutorial videos on Youtube. I still think this was a dumb move on their part.
That was followed by Amazon lowering royalty rates for their AVD content. So, I pulled my series off Amazon (and off Youtube). I placed it on Christian Cinema. Both of those decisions cost me money. My first (and to date, only) royalty check from Christian Cinema was $0.74. That means no one is watching it… Even when the series was on Amazon I was making maybe $5 a month. But more people were watching it. Half of my reviews on Amazon were 1 star. The other half were 5 star. Oddly, It’s the same on Christian Cinema… Also oddly, you can still find new and used copies of the Peculiar DVD on Amazon.
But current film projects… Well those are moving along.
Did you know I made a short film? Yeah, it was part of a challenge someone told me about: Make of movie using only stock or public domain footage. I cheated a bit and used a VO. But chose to show the NASA Apollo 11 landing.
Meanwhile I was primarily focused on my feature length doc film. I completed production, which is major for any film. Then started down the new-to-me road of post production on a documentary. I made a paper edit, which was fun and productive. And have made several passes on the over all edit. We had a screening, which gave me great feedback.
The current edit is 1:50:40 in length, down from the first assembly of over 4 hours, down from the pre screening version of 2:05:00. It’s definitely a feature project. And the response so far has been very good.
I did not complete the film this year. I had some stuff happen, which I will go into later, but generally life happened and the release will happen sometime early next year.
At work we built a new website from the ground up. It took 9 months because we had to do it in between projects.
Pretty soon after that I started seeing doctors. I’ve seen more doctors in the last 3 months than I saw in the previous 10 years combined.
Generally, I’ve been blessed to be healthy. I had a few accidents, asthma as a kid, but over all, I have been healthy most of my life. Maybe that helped lull me into a false sense of security, and helped me fool myself into thinking I could live in an unhealthy manner without consequences.
This year in health, I threw out my back doing yard work- was down for 2 days. I went to the ER twice, back to back days, for high blood pressure events, which led me to the new pill/diet/exercise routine I am on now.
I lost 11 pounds of the weight I’ve gained over the last few years.
After all of this I developed persistent, unexplained, low-grade pain in my abdomen. After trying to treat it as an infection, I had a CT Scan.
Thank God, it wasn’t anything serious. Gall stones. There’s not a lot of treatment short of surgery, so before that happens I am continuing my diet and exercise routine, which at the least will help keep more from forming. And may shrink the ones there. A lot of people had gall stones their entire life. A lot of people have their gall bladder removed. I want to try to not have surgery.
Currently, I feel OK. Blood pressure is regulated, and I’m more active than I have been over the last few years. The movie is almost complete. Family has had some health challenges, but we are on the mend and doing well.
I imagine that like 2018, 2019 will have some good stuff and some bad stuff. But overall I expect it to be a good year! I’m praying for less health issues and more success with filmmaking in 2019!
Scott Link Media 