George Lucas said, "There is nothing more important than filmmaking."

Sherri Sheridan said, "Writers and filmmakers hide their ideas inside their stories, and can change what people believe if the highly charged emotions, insights and experiences ring true to the audience."

Steven Subotnick said, "By amateur, I mean someone who works for the love rather that for money, whose main motivation is a drive for personal satisfaction and artistic fulfillment."

What I want to do:

I wanted to make "short stories" on my video and my computer.  I would like do it all by myself and not hiring director of photography, production staff, set operations, set decoration and property, wardrobe, lighting, electrician, make up, editing and music.  As Robert  Rodriguez says, "Fast, Cheap and In Control".

My Software and Stuff:

For that I got a Sony miniDVD CR-HC32 NTSC camcorder for video and a tripod.  I would also like to do animation in my computer.  I bought Carrara 7, Hexagon 2.5, DAZStudio 3, Paint Shop Pro 9, StarBits 7, ZBrush 3.5, Apophysis, and Ultra Fractal 3.  I bought Sony's ACID Pro 6 (looping and film editing software), microKORG synthesizer / vocoder and now I can make music for my films.  

I wanted to assemble my short films on my computer so I got Apophysis, Sony Movie Maker Vegas Studio 8, Poser 7, DAZ Studio 2.2, Sony DVD Architect Studio 4.5 and  MonkeyJam  for my Stop Motion Films.

FREE Software:

CELTX is the resourceful program, which is FREE by the way, provides users with the tools to write a correctly formatted screenplay, upload and organize storyboards and create schedules and call sheets.

Audacity is FREE, open source software for recording and editing sounds.

MonkeyJam is a FREE software for making your Stop-Motion images.  It takes in from DVD camera, .wav, .jpg, etc. and exports a AVI movie. 

Blender 2.46 is a FREE program that replaces Bryce.  You can do Booleans, mesh, NURBS, curvature, bones/skeleton rigging and fluid animation.  You can check out Bender Art Magazine and Blender Artists and Blender Nation for news and tutorials.

Adeona  is the first FREE Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there's no need to rely on a single third party. What's more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner's choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.

Robert Rodriguez on YouTube.

I delved into BOOKS:

Storytelling through Animation by Mike Wellins.  ISBN-10: 1584503947  With a CD.

Inspired 3D Short Film Production by Jeremy Cantor.  ISBN-10: 1592001173  With a CD.

The best book for short films is: Sherri Sheridan, "Developing Digital Short Films" ISBN: 0-7357-1231-X  With a CD.   Introduction opened with, "Without a good story idea developed into a carefully crafted script, it is almost impossible to create a compelling film" - Ehh Men!!  Sherri's right!!

Robert Rodriguez, "Rebel Without A Crew", ISBN-10: 0452271878.  I liked the candid look with his "Special Features" in the double "El Mariachi & Desperado".  It amplifies  and his "Rebel Without A Crew"!  I adored his "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" with Johnny Depp, Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek & Eva Mendes.  The tour of his garage, where he can make films, without relying an anyone else.  It's a George Lucas version of filmmaking.  That's truly impressive!

Stu Maschwitz, "The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap", ISBN-10: 0321413644  With a CD.

Kim Adelman, "The Ultimate Filmmaker's guide to Short Films" ISBN 0-941188-89-2

Joseph V. Mascelli, "The Five C's of Cinematography"  ISBN 1-879505-41-X

Steve Wright, "Compositing Visual Effects: Essentials for the Aspiring Artist" ISBN-10: 0240809637

Mark Sawicki, "Filming the Fantastic: A Guide to Visual Effects Cinematography" ISBN-10: 0240809157

Michael Slone, "Special Effects: How to Create A Hollywood Film Look On A Home Studio Budget" ISBN-10: 1932907262

George Maestri, "Digital Character Animation 2 volume 1 (Essential Techniques)" ISBN 1-56205-930-0

Richard Williams, "The Animator's Survival Kit, A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators" ISBN 0-57120-228-4

If you have Bryce, you need Susan Kitchens, "Bryce 4"  ISBN: 0-201-35438-1  It's 977 pages and has a CD.  It's a dense work!

Michael Burns, "Digital Sci-Fi Art: A Step By Step Guide To Creating Stunning, Futuristic Images" ISBN 0-06-072433-1

Archetypal  and Spiritual Images:

Joseph Campbell, "The Inner Reaches of Outer Space" ISBN 0-06-096353-0

Joseph Campbell, "The Mythic Image" ISBN 0-691-01389-1

Meher Baba, "Discourses"  ISBN: 1880619091

Joseph Goldstein, "Insight Meditation"  ISBN: 1-57062-025-3  

Joseph Goldstein, "One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism"  ISBN: 0-06-251701-5 

Jack Kornfield, "Living Dharma: Teachings of Twelve Buddhist Masters"  ISBN: 1-57062-138-1 

Robert A. Monroe, "Journeys Out of the Body" ISBN: 0-385-00861-9

I delved into DVD's:

Alien (boxed set), Matrix (all of it), Harry Potter (1-5),  Lord of the Rings (1-3), Animatrix, Slaughterhouse Five, Stargate, Exorcist, Star Wars (all of it), The Thing, Brainstorm, Blade Runner, 2001 A Space Odyssey,  2010 The Year We Make Contact, Buckaroo Banzai, Forbidden Planet, Silent Running, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Godzilla, Videodrome, The Fifth Element, Infinity's Child, Planetary Traveler, Illuminated Manuscripts, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Big Trouble in Little China, Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends (1 &2), What Dreams May Come, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Computer Animation Extravaganza, Jacob's Ladder, The Cell, Donnie Darko, Kill Bill (1), H.P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator, Mars Attacks, Strange Invaders, Invaders from Mars, Babylon 5 (5), Crusade - The Complete Series, The Chronicles of Riddick, Spider-Man 2, Van Helsing, LifeForce, Outland, Highlander, I - Robot, Alien versus Predator, Mission to Mars, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Grudge, The Bride of Chucky, The Ice Pirates, Event Horizon, Star Trek - First Contact, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Scanners, Primer, National Treasure, Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Desperado, El Mariachi, American Movie, Visions of Light - The Art of Cinematography, Shorts #1, 75th Annual Academy of Awards Short Films, Hardware Wars, The Brothers Quay Collection, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Team America - World Police, White Noise, Sleepy Hollow, The Ring, Cursed, Constantine, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dark Star, Return of the Living Dead, Solaris, Baraka,  Cartoon Noir, Leonard Maltin's Animation Favorites From The National Film Board Of Canada, Smash Cuts! - Totally Twisted Shorts Fest, IMAX - Chronos, Ultimate Shorts Collection, Sin City, The Outer Limits - 6 Disc Set, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Seconds, Dark City, The Island, Serenity, Brothers Grimm, What The Bleep Do We Know?, The Name of the Rose, The Fall (2008)...

Web Sites and my latest films:            

You can look at my latest films, Apophysis,  First Contact  and microKORG with KAOSS PAD on YouTube.

WIS-KINO  Wis-Kino is a group of independent filmmakers in Madison, WI and surrounding areas. Our motto is "do well with nothing, do better with little, and do it right now!"