My excellent prizes
 

I just thought it fitting, as a final thank you to the one and only sponsor of the DVchallenge - DVcreators.net - to report on what I received for my 100 $ DV e store gift certificate.

I took the opportunity to try out some of the exclusive training materials offered by the DVcreators.net. I don't use handbooks much, I have only bought two, third-party Instructional handbooks in my life, one for After Effects, and one for QT Pro. The QT Pro book, was pretty much a waste of money, and the After Effects book "Creating Motion Graphics" by Trish and Chris Meyer - basically taught me After Effects, I highly recommend it.

So I feel the chances are 50/50 that additional reference material that I buy will be any good.

Normally I wouldn't buy something like "Livetype Powerstart" which is a tutorial DVD on the use of Apples Livetype titling program which comes with FCP. This program has always been a mystery to me since it is included with FCP, but has no documentation of it's own (that I could find). On top of that, it is not very "intuitive" (as we Apple people like to say). So I have found it impossible to figure out, just by fooling around with it.

Anyway, to make a long story short - the "Livetype Powerstart" created by DVcreators.net is highly excellent. It has opened the secret doors to Livetype for me. I now have access to a "new" program that has been sitting around on my HDD just taking up space until now.

Furthermore, this type of tutorial is a lot more entertaining and engaging than a handbook. I am surprised at how high my retention of information was after watching the tutorial. It is a lot like looking over someone's shoulder who knows what they are doing with a program. This type of learning saves hours, compared to learning by going through a handbook. Especially in the beginning phase of learning a new program.

My many thanks to DVcreators.net for making these tutorials (I wonder if the market for these tutorials is as good as it seems it should be) (I guess not if most people are like me) and especially thanks to Guy for making them available to us as prizes. Now I'm going to be even better for the next DVChallenge!

Cheers,

I'd Like To Thank---
 

Thank you very much Dylan, Chris and all. Got my certificate yesterday, and it is framed already!

I'm already very nervous about the next one, DV #3, but I'll be there and trying hard. I learned a lot and will keep learning.

Mike

So I still haven't heard any feedback on asking established industry Director types to join in our little to-do, not to be judged, but as a teaching method. Anyone for or against this idea? I doubt anyone with huge merit would join us but it would be thrilling to have someone like Ron Howard or Rob Reiner, etc. submit a short on the same topic.

I was however thinking of this the other day. Why wouldn't they want to do it? Well, they could do badly on a simple project like this having been out of the small circuit we are in for so long. I think they would want to do it but might want to remain anon. Actually, has anyone ever even seen the real Dylan?

Anyway, if no body is against it, I'll see what I can do to dig up some agent addresses to write to.

Sean McHenry

Sean, let's wait until we get well established first. Some street cred might help.

As for why they wouldn't want to do it... if I was them, I wouldn't just on the chance that I might get upstaged by an unknown.

Fair enough. I think it would be a good learning experience and some of the big guys (and ladies) might find it fun to take out their personal cameras for the weekend and "play" with us.

But yeah, that's what I was thinking too. They might get stumped and blow it.

Probably wouldn't look too good if David Lynch or Penny Marshal were on the "Wall of Shame". That might just teach us that it's still possible to do bad once in a while and still do good work overall.

Still, it would be fun.

Sean