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| Update 11/14--
Just finished Swing. Next up is Bolero. I'm happy to report that things are running well ahead of schedule. All variations should be compiled and ready for when F.J. and Catherine arrive on Thanksgiving day.
After they leave, I will begin rendering the video and compiling the DVD project. This may take as little as a couple of days, or as much as a week. Then we send it to the duplication company, which has a turnaround time of 7-10 days. Since that runs us very close to Christmas, I'll probably start taking advance orders... possibly as early as Dec.1.
Regards,
Jonathan |
| Jonathan,
I am extremely grateful that you are putting these variations onto DVD! They are gorgeous--and the variation video footage along with the wealth of information at BallroomDancers.com keep me coming back again and again to this, my favorite dance site.
Your site has helped me progress steadily since I first became a dedicated student of Dance a few years ago.
The video footage has been so useful because there are some dances that I do not get to see danced that often "properly". Therefore in the past I've had difficulty visualizing how a dance should be interpreted; Samba and Bolero being two examples.
Keep shining on my friends at BallroomDancers.com. Let's keep the world dancing!
Raymond Sison
DanceMakers of Texas
Fort Worth, Texas |
| 11/17 Update --
I've finished assembling the Bolero variations and final combination. The only dance remaining now is Mambo. Things are definitely on or ahead of schedule now. With more than a week until we see F.J. and Catherine, I should have no problem finishing all of the editing on time.
Jonathan |
| Is the Bolero anything like the 1934 film in which George Raft danced a Bolero for about 15 minutes. The music as some of us will remember was reborn when Ice Skaters Torvill and Dean did it in their freestyle section of their Ice Dance Olymic routine. I love the music but can't imagine what other music it can be danced too except Ravell's Bolero. Incidently I saw the film when I was quite young and still remember how well it was danced by George Raft. That's going down Memory Lane |
| 12/2/2004 UPDATE --
FJ & Catherine did not come out to Los Angeles over Thanksgiving weekend as expected. Both of them were sick. So instead, I flew up on Tuesday (Nov 30) to see them. Everything went smoothly, and we got all of the audio we needed.
In the meantime, I have finished editing together all of the Mambo, so all of the variations are now complete. Here's what's left to do:
Edit the opening & closing remarks.
Compose the opening montage sequence.
Compose the "meet the dancers" mini-documentary sequence.
Run audio effects over everything to try to reduce background noise and enhance overall audio quality.
Render all of the video to mpeg 2.
Build the DVD menus.
Finish the cover artwork.
If I can get all of this done over the weekend, I'll deliver the DVD master and artwork to the replication company on Monday. If I meet this deadline, they say they'll have it ready by Dec. 15. If not, it may not arrive until just after the holiday, which means I'll miss the opportunity to sell it for the holiday rush. So you can bet I'm working like crazy to make the deadline. We'll see what happens... |
| 12/6/2004 UPDATE --
Well, I didn't make the Monday deadline as I'd hoped. There are still too many details to work out with the audio. I'd rather spend the time cleaning up the audio now and push back the release date a few more days than to order 2000 copies of a DVD I'm not totally satisfied with, just for the sake of getting it out in time for Christmas. Whatever the final product, we're stuck with it for 1-2 years (or however long it takes to sell 2000 copies), so I want to make it good.
I still have to do the opening & closing remarks, the first-play video, and finalize the cover and main menu artwork. I might simplify the "meet the dancers" section to save some time, since it's not as important. But even so, we're probably looking at next Monday before I can get it in to the replication company. Assuming (and this is a pretty big assumption) it takes them the same amount of time to duplicate whenever I submit it, that pushes back the release date to December 22. More likely, though, they'll close up shop a few days before the holiday, and we won't have a product until the first few days of January.
The suspense is killing me!
To be continued... |
| Jonathan,
We appreciate with your efforts. I concur with your thoughts that it is better to have a DVD "for the ages" instead of a rush job simply to make the Holidays.
I'd rather wait for January and have the best DVD that in your estimation you can be proud of!
Keep up the great work on this site.
Ray Sison
DanceMakers of Texas
Fort Worth, Texas, USA |
| [by the way, who are the dancers in the clips doing the Samba and Rhumba variations? I don't think they are in the "Meet the Dancers" section]
Jonathon, I can gladly wait for the quality you are building in. I think your DVD is going to be a very desirable, popular teaching tool. You are going to sell more than 2,000 DVDs. From my lips to God's ears!
I'm a software developer, and sometimes we have to sell what we call "vapor ware." That means we get a payment before the software release to keep the cash flow going. If that is necessary for your production, why don't you go ahead and put it in your store? I would go for it. People can see the quality in advance by looking at the dance lesson clips for Mambo and Samba, etc.
A DVD for the ages.. does that mean aged, Old Badgers?
:) |
| The dancers in the Samba and Rumba clips are Donald Johnson & Katarzyna Kozak... my own teachers. They were our guinea pigs during our first few failed video shoots. We spent a lot of money on those shoots, but ultimately got it right this year. Unfortuanetly, by the time we produced videos good enough to sell, Donald & Kasia had already signed on to an exclusivity agreement with Dancevision. So I lost them. But I still have the video from those first shoots, and although they can't be used for instructional videos and DVD, at least I can get some good web clips out of them. More clips to come later...
I will probably sell the Variation DVD in advance, but I don't want to do that until I have a release date I know I can stick to. Things keep coming up and slowing down the project. But I think I really am getting close now, so I'll probably choose a release date and start selling advance orders sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Thanks for the support and encouragement!
Sincerely,
Jonathan |
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