Working Knowledge: Behind Apple's Strategy: Be Second to Market. "Apple smartly surveyed the marketplace and discerned that any competitive software platforms would win or lose based on ease of use. Therefore, Apple stressed GarageBand's approachability from the start.

As expected, Apple's software has gained appreciable momentum with desktop musicians in the year since Mayer's performance. MacJams.com, an online community for users of Apple's GarageBand software, has posted more than 7,500 songs made with GarageBand in the past eighteen months while a separate online community, iCompositions, has posted more than 12,600 songs.

By comparison, EMI, the U.K.-based music recording and publishing conglomerate, started operations in 1931 and has slowly grown to become the largest music publisher in the world, holding the rights to just more than one million compositions. The two standalone Web sites mentioned above, with little or no ability to attract (let alone pay) musicians, have compiled 2 percent of EMI's seventy-four-year, million-song catalog in less than eighteen months.

This push approach, supplying all new Mac customers with the software, is complemented by pull from amateur musicians who find the software "good enough" for serious studio work. In August 2004, independent folk guitarist Steve Sobek established himself as the first recording artist to release a complete album produced entirely on Apple's GarageBand software. When asked why he chose to create a full album in GarageBand, Sobeck responded, "I wasn't thinking that big at first. I was . . . just relieved that I could finally record songs on a program without having to read a 500-page manual."

We expect GarageBand to follow with podcast-editing tools. Apple has also received multiple requests to release, through its iTunes service, new music that can be edited using GarageBand. If Apple decides to go this route, we can expect another round of explosive, new-market growth in desktop studio production, no doubt handled with the same savvy attention to marketing, design, and ease of use that the company has recently displayed." I believe the same can be said about Apple's Final Cut Pro Express, and iMovie + iDVD. The video editing is more involving than making music, but it will catch on sooner than later. We are living in a visual-oriented world after all. The real defining question, for me at least, is the story-the desire to communicate.

I recently finished The First Time I Got Paid for It. The top WGA/scriptwriters share their tales of their first sale in this book with humility that all writers share and identify.

Audrey Wells shares what I consider the most critical wisdom in the pursuit of becoming a scriptwriter. "One day, you will sell your screenplay. And then your problems will begin."

If you feel out of luck and talentless hack banging out your scripts like I did in path couple of months, you should give this book a try to gain courage in your work. After all, English is my second language and I got nothing to lose.

What do I do when I wake up in the middle of a night after 8 hours of logging HD footage? Why, I get an idea for a script and fire up Final Draft. That's how I started another script(!) titled, Angelic Karma, a short script that is actually film-able. I mostly wrote far-out, exotic stories that can't be capture on a camera with a modest budget around NYC, but this story is more down-to-earth. I literally lifted the plot from an old Korean folklore, but updated/revised for modern NYC setting. As I feverishly typed up first 5 pages in two hours, I felt the great relief and went to bed again at 4 am for better tomorrow.

I'm currently working on SEVEN(!!) scripts but I hope to bang out two short scripts that are more or less written inside my head within a week. The feature scripts need to be done before the end of the year to put on the block for sale-so help me God.

Here's my current script writing progress report:

• Angelic Karma - Short Drama, 5 pages out of 20-30 pages.
• Tears of Icarua - Short Drama/Action, 5 pages out of 20-30 pages.
• Trigger Digits - Feature Thriller, 5 pages out of 110 pages. Needs to more work on plots and instill the essence of Hitchcock thrillers.
• Dark Tide Rising - Feature Thriller, 110 pages. Gunning to become "Alien" in deep sea. Needs to work on plots.
• Criminal Sphere - Feature Sci-Fi/Action/Drama, 110 pages. Rewrite. Needs to work on characters.
• Belfast Saga - Feature Fantasy/Action/Drama, 15 pages out of 110 pages. Needs to work on characters.
• Princess and Seven Assassins - Feature Action/Drama, 104 pages. Rewrite. Needs to work on characters and tighten the plot.

I'm always searching for next "big" story/idea that I can turn around for a script, but I really need to dig in and finish up the scripts I started. And find if these scripts are worth telling/making.

I could consider myself a rich person if I can finish these scripts in sastisfactory state to make sales pitches to producers/studios. After all, scripts have loooong shelf life...

I got another credit on my belt/resume as I worked on a short production two weeks ago. It's been awhile since I've been mostly concentrating on getting into post production, rather than hauling c-stands.

The 13 hour posting said it was a NYU production, but it also mentioned cash payment. So I shoot my resume over an email, and I was working on the borrowed apartment set on following day. The writer/director/producer was a MFA from Stanford who was taking a film course at NYU over the summer. (I didn't know NYU offered a summer production course.) He was taking advantage of the school facility & equipments to make his short, shot in 16mm. Shooting a film is a notch up and an expensive endeavor in the days of DV and digital world today. Since he paid people, I was there, a pro grip/electric guy, a AC guy showed up, and few more PAs who just got out of (film) schools. I learned and relearned few tricks and tips from those guys.

We shot over two hottest days of the summer where temperture would rise as high as 100 degree OUTSIDE, and higher inside because of people crammed in a small space and lighting. And we had to turn off air-conditioners for the duration of shoots for the sound. Fortunately, DP used mainly Kinos which were easy to deploy and dissipated less heat than other lights. Shot mostly in WHITE wall apartment, I was afraid that the background would be little dull, but it was least of my concern.

The director had a shot list, thank god, but he didn't have either storyboard or camera blocking. He borrowed the apartment for a week, yet he could've blocked the shots and made a digital camera storyboard easily in a day with his DP. This may be just me and myself, but I believe pre-visualization is the most important part of filmmaking. Legendary Spielberg shoots fast and under-budget because he is thorough with pre-viz before the actual production. That's how he squeezed "War of Worlds" into his schedule along with Tom. In visual oriented medium like film, it is imperative that the director speaks visually with his a)storyboard, b)shot list, and c)blocking, so that production team work without second-guessing the director/DP. If you deliver picture fast and under-budget, you will be guaranteed to make more films.

The story called for a kid, and I was wrangling him most of the time if I wasn't busy with production work. Kids and animals big hassles in a production, but the kid behaved well and followed direction well since he was already a veteran in commericals, since his diaper commerical period. He apparently made enough money to afford every gaming console out in the market now and enough games to kill his time between takes. I've talked with his mom about his career and his interests in games during lunch break. Apparently every model wants to move into film world so that they would be more than just a face, and have a longer career. Commercial experience enabled them to earn money with an exposure and an industry connections. Not that ALL models can do that, but by default, they are photogenic, and with some proven acting chops, they can move up faster. Just look at Cameron Diaz or Charlie Theron. Hollywood can't get enough of pretty faces.

Anyhow, in the end, I got paid enough to cover my rent, met new interesting people, got another credit to my glowing/growing resume, and I discovered parts of New York that lent beautifully to the cinematic background. Taking a camera outside was akin to taking a newborn baby outside with fresh perspective on just about everything out there. In a way, each film production is like a birth, rearing a baby that offers a fresh perspective on human life and its conditions, and sharing that experience with people.

Color in Motion. Cute and informative Flash animation about 7 colors and what they represent. I believe people should start with B&W film first before they move onto color films to learn more about composition before worrying about choosing palettes.

That's my 'theory', anyway.

I've been in full-time job hunting mode for last two months, scouring usual places like craiglist NYC & mandy. Despite my suffering... I mean my works in NYC area for last two years, only a few job lead me to paying gigs, much less a permanent job with steady paychecks that I want to secure. (That steady paychecks don't need to include 401k or health insurances, for now.) But, I am more inclined for professional environment where I can work and grow to become a professional filmmaker with steady job offers.

After sending out numerous resumes, I did secure a number of interviews that led me to believe a promising result. One place was a prominent post production company and another was a up-and-coming TV production company in Manhattan. Although I thought I made a favorable impression to land the job, they never called me back. Never. Not even to tell me that I didn't get the job.

It's funny how they stressed client service and professional attitude as the most important parts of the job responsibilites, yet they failed to contact me after the interviews, after long passed their said 'decision date.' I may be starting from the very bottom as a post production professional in this very competitive industry, but I do envision myself to be a part of the industry in near future, where I may well become their client or a partner in a project. (You never know who you will work for/with in this industry, as they say.) I left them a number of messages after long wait, but still no avail. Needless to say, their lack of action spoke louder than their so-called "client service" & "professional attitude" in many different words.

I just wanted to get that out of my system and let you know that was the reason behind my lack of updates lately. Good thing I've landed few gigs since then... that's for another update.

New Yorker: Disk Averse. "What’s becoming increasingly clear is that the people who buy DVDs are, for the most part, not the people who go to the movies on opening weekend. According to research from Fox Home Entertainment, DVD buyers tend to be older than your typical theatregoer. More of them are women, and most of them don’t see movies in theatres before buying them. Most important, the new DVD audience is so diverse that companies can target niche markets and still sell millions of disks. Because specialized markets are more predictable, the risk of failure is much lower, and so small-to-mid-budget movies can be very profitable indeed.

It will be hard, of course, for Hollywood to break itself of the habit of fetishizing opening weekends, but some studios seem to have done it, most notably New Line Cinema (which made “Wedding Crashers”). Over the past four years, the company has flourished by combining lots of small- and mid-budget movies—including DVD hits like “The Notebook,” and “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle”—with one big “tent-pole” investment (“The Lord of the Rings”). Over time, other studios are bound to adopt similar strategies. Selling disks through Wal-Mart will always lack the glamour of a première at Grauman’s. But, as Hollywood learned back in 1918, it sure beats working for a living."