The Little Ricki Song - Mckenna Faith Original Song

Mckenna Faith wrote this song honoring guide dog puppies for us a few years ago. We decided to release the unplugged recording we did with her that day. Big thanks to Mckenna and her family for making this awesome song for us.

What's Going On With GURILLATV?

After 6 years of the initial plan in late 2008, the GurillaTV story comes out in my first public offering via this blog post. This is an honest evaluation of GurillaTV and what has happened up to this point. It also reflects the nature of trying to start a visionary idea. Ideas are great, but making them happen is a different story. Although the video website part of the GurillaTV is no longer viable, i still feel the web series has a lot of potential and the two 'Lost" episodes can be viewed as pilots moving forward. If any production company, or platform, or whatever has interest in GurillaTV the web series, I am willing to listen as the sole owner in propriety. So what was GurillaTV supposed to be? GurillaTV was supposed to be a online media platform where video creators could use a integrated forum to discuss film making topics, a place to watch webisodes from GurillaTV where video producers could learn more about the online video making paradigm, and it also would have been a place to distribute videos via the Tubemogul.com distribution tools which were to be integrated right out of GurillaTV.com. We were going to build the number of producers on the site slowly partnering with 3 new producers every two weeks. We were only going to bring producers with a successful track record and a history of making original content to fight the large amount of video piracy that was rampant at the time. Our producer affiliates were to be called "Gurilla producers" and part of their participation required making a short video segment which would be integrated into the GurillaTV web series that would be released every two weeks along with their debut on the GurillaTV site. I had originally raised funding for the progressive idea and found a partner to move forward with as I could not produce enough seed money for the idea all on my own. I hired a marketing company who reviewed my proposal for the visionary idea. The marketing agency was also a website design company who specialized in SEO technology. The CEO of the marketing company accepted the proposal and we signed a contract to implement the idea in 3-6 months from the time we agreed on the contingencies of the contract. The idea was very unique and sparked the interest of some financial backing which would be put into effect in stages once milestones began to occur. The idea also had a backlog of producers who were ready and willing to join on as partners. The marketing company who was to build the site knew up front what the web portal was supposed to be and gave no indication that they would not be able to perform the task. They expressed that It could be a great learning experience. We filmed two pilots in early to mid 2009 for GurillaTV. We cast a few dozen people for the series and had developed "Roy" as the mascot who was a guy in a gorilla suit. The webisodes came out well and I was really excited for the future. After we finished the first two episodes we held off on the third episode as the website became our focus of concern. After almost six months the website had hardly anything to show for it, my partner and I had only received screen capture images of the site. Concerned with what was going on, we tried to make a effort to help speed things up by paying the marketing company more of the money owed even though our contract didn't require it. We hoped this may help. More months went by and we still had nothing to show for it. In the summer of 2009 I went to visit the company CEO in person to see what was the hold up. This individual was blaming drupal technology and saying that they had decided to scrap all the original design so they could implement word press instead for the back end of the website. Not being a web designer myself, I had no move but to trust this man and hope that he would have better luck with this new plan. Well the new word press site was not complete until nearly a year after our initial contract was signed. This was now 12 months instead of 3-6 months as promised. In early 2010 we finally were able to see the beta GurillaTV website. My initial reaction was that of total dismay. The site was very amateur looking, and had more technical problems with its functionality then anything I had ever seen. How on earth can I put this website out there as constructed? My reputation would be ruined. The website looked as if it had been designed by a 10 year old child who was just learning how to design websites. By this time my partner was ready to sue the marketing company for breach of contract. I was really hesitant to do such a thing, because that would seemingly make it so we would never get this GurillaTV project done, and I would have to scrap it. I had poured hours and hours into planning, had my reputation on the line, and just didn't want to go that route which would mean I would have to accept my vision was not going to happen. My partner and I had a falling out over my decision to not sue, and I eventually bought him out around mid 2010 to relieve him of the headache which was more mine than his. It was my brainchild after all. Now a year and half had passed since the original inception of the LLC. The webisodes we had shot had not been released for over a year, and no solution seemed to be in sight. At the beginning of 20111 I had tried everything I could to politically put my feelings aside and resolve this issue of incompetence with the GurillaTV beta website. The marketing agency at this point stopped giving me hope and trying to fix the beta site cause it was like trying to fix a disaster I suppose. They stopped answering my emails, phone calls, and attempts to communicate. Maybe I had made a mistake and should have just sued these guys when my partner wanted to, cause they seemingly were to incompetent to fix the problems and probably knew it in my estimation. In mid 2011 i took the marketing company to court. The defendant was unwilling to dialogue out of court and settle the problem. Although they had failed me, I would have been willing to pay them for the GurillTV logo which was awesome and the only thing they did well. I am a reasonable guy, but wanted the rest of my investment back. After litigation in small claims court the case was heard in front of a judge in Alameda County. A few weeks later I got the results in the mail to find I had won. Although it felt good to win, it really was anything but happiness. My idea never came to pass. A few months later when I thought this thing was finally all over, the marketing company appealed the decision and I was to have to go to appeals court. Now I was allowed to have a lawyer, but so was the defendant. So I hired a layer, we built up our case which was even stronger than the first hearing. In late 2011 we ha arrived at the appellate court with our lawyer, and prepared to battle the appeal. Our evidence in the case was very impressive. We had documented evidence of all the lies, incompetency, and bad business practices done by the defendant. After sitting in the court room for 10 minutes, It became apparent that the defendant had not even showed up at his own appeal. Wow, this was really frustrating. It was the perfect example for the judge as to why I was there in the first place. I had won yet again, but nearly all the compensation I got back went to the lawyer I had hired for the appeal hearing. What a difficult "win" to swallow. So that is the story in a nutshell. It is the truth and facts about GurillaTV's past. Now years later, after much thought I finally have released the two pilot episodes of GurillaTV. My co-founder who I have no ill will against, requested to remain anonymous which I respectfully have done by blotching out his face and changing his name in the webisodes. I won't rule out the GurillaTV series moving forward, but currently have no plans for it. I wanted to make sure It was distributed in honor of all those involved who gave their time and energy. Thank you, Matt Chapman Founder of GurillaTV

My Evolution to the WEB SERIES

Back in 2009, I was creating how-to videos released under my moniker "ChappyShowcase" which were videos about low budget film making. Although I released all kinds of videos in different genres, the how-to film making seemed to resonate more than any other types of videos I made. The economy had collapsed, video creators had no money, and low budget film making spoke to that. Consistently I found good feedback and people offering to pay me to make my "$30 Steadicam" for them; named after a how-to video of the same subject. I was not interested in doing this, but found it a pleasant experience to get so much feedback. It was amazing making a video rendition of a recycled design I had learned about nearly 7 years earlier back in the dial modem days of the internet. This single video got me more serious about doing more although I had already put out a few dozen videos scattered over a few months. After a few years of freelancing as a cinematographer/editor, as well as producing an exhausting amount of wedding videos with my production company, I was deeply affected by the crash of my video business in late 2007. I lost nearly all my clients, however took the opportunity to look for other avenues to do video. I recently had read about sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Revver, and Crackle in Videomaker Magazine. I had really wanted to tell my own stories, not work for other people, but this idea was kind of a dream. What had seemingly been good as a videographer, no longer existed in a flash so what did I have to lose? Up to that point Youtube and other "user generated sites" had only been around for months not years. These sites seemed to have a stigma of only containing crappy videos from amateurs. I remember the sentiment that respectable filmmakers didn't do that sort of thing. No one I knew in the video business was making videos and putting them up for free on these unique sites, I thought I might as well put up a few I had created since they had screened and then died. I put "Nerves of Steel" and "In Case of Emergency" up. Two films I had screened at some smaller film festivals. After figuring out a dozen "user generated" sites or so, I instantly loved the fact that there was immediate feedback and fulfillment from an audience. Before I had to find a place to screen a film and it could take months if not years to find a festival. By the time that happened, I may hardly remember why i made the film in the first place. What an amazing thing this "user generated online distribution" was for producers. I uploaded the same videos to all the sites and was able compare the views and reactions. Not only did I learn about what videos were most popular, I also learned the value of working with the right distribution partners. One week in the summer of 2008 I had the opportunity to film Streaming Media West at their annual conference which took place in Silicon Valley. This conference put together by Dan Rayburn featured one panel about a new thing called a web series. Show creators with titillating new brands included Rocketbook, and Political Lunch spoke about what they were doing. The market for such an idea was really immature, but the opportunity was good according to them. The web series was to be the next big thing in their estimation. The internet was the wild west where there were no rules to speak of. No technical specifications, no close captioning, no format restrictions, and the list went on and on. A video creator could do whatever they wanted and tons of sites like Youtube would host the videos for free too. This seemed to be a no brainer for me to experiment with more. I though more and more about producing a web series in 2008 after a year of distributing videos all over the internet. My documentary "Nerves of Steel" featured on Crackel for nearly a year, then ChappyShowcase became a partner producer with Metacafe. Shortly after that Youtube accepted my application to be a "producer partner" as well. These events really got my hooked into the possibilities of what a web series may present. Especially now that i had learned the value of intellectual property and money working for you and not the other way around. I felt a web series was a better idea because it was serial or episodic in nature. This sort of distribution approach could be a better way to build an audience. I experienced that my videos were often one-off and not serial even if some of them were getting pretty good hits. The one-off videos were not seemingly connected from one upload to another. Perhaps this gave my viewers no reason to necessarily check back in and watch new videos. One week I may put up a Samoan music video from a guy who had not payed me (so this was my way at some sort of monetization) for the work. Another week I may put up a grease monkey video of a time lapse car repair I did. Yet another time I would release a parody I made with my brother years earlier; shot on analog video. Although I did find many would simply binge view my content all at once for a day or two, a serial show may bring people back by the nature of the release and continual story forward. This could go on for moths, or maybe even years. More and more people (on Youtube especially) were starting to put out a web series of some sort. Some releasing a new episode once a month, or once a week, or even some did it once a day. Some years before all of this, my wife and I started raising guide dogs for the blind in 2002. Over the following decade we really started to enjoy it and couldn't believe how fulfilling it was to help other people. "Could we make a web series about this guide dog stuff?" We became good friends with the visually impaired partner who received our first guide pup Macklin. Her genuine appreciation and ability to raise her level of productivity in life was so apparent that it just smacked me in the face. "This is a whole new narrative world I have hardly seen in tv or movies" I thought. After a few days of talking about it, my wife Amie and I decided to give it a shot and make a web series. Growing Up Guide Pup was to be the name of the series. We really didn't have much of a plan as we decided to experiment and remove conventional production bureaucracy so we could move quickly. We had a new puppy arriving shortly. Two days after the idea, I already had camcorder in hand and was filming cause a puppy had become available. That first episode we decided to design a format that even the visually impaired could enjoy through colorful description. At first we focused on story, not production value. We filmed with a cell phone for the first time so we could get footage in the grocery store without a hassle. We focused on spontaneity and decided to keep the amount of oversight and cost to a minimum. My in kind equipment from my video business would be fine to make the series, and my prior online distribution experience with ChappyShowcase made me comfortable enough to move forward with a once a week video release approach. We released a video every week as our new puppy Ricki matured. Episode after episode we couldn't believe how fun the process was for us. We also got more feedback and appreciation than we had anticipated. We started hearing from people who lived in other parts of the US, and even other countries. The service dog school we were working with at the time caught wind of what we were doing and starting promoting our videos and writing blogs so get more PR for themselves. The next thing we knew, our series was not an experiment anymore. it seemed to be working as a moving story piece and the puppy appeal was undeniable. Our series was accepted in the New Media Film Festival in 2010 while we were still filming the first season about Ricki. This was about 8 months after we had started. It was amazing how fast things work with the internet. Before we knew it, we had made a relationship with Nylabone dog toys and did our first contest giveaway. After a year, we had several thousand loyal fans as we continued to make the series and grow our core followers of dog lovers, puppy raisers, service dog people, and the visually impaired. Eventually this landed us an invitation to screen our series at the first and still largest web series festival in the world. Its called the LAWebFest and was founded by Michael Ajakwe Jr. It rendered awards for many things, but most importantly "Outstanding Non-Fiction Series" two years in a row in 2011 and 2012. In 2013, we also received an award at CreaTV Awards in Silicon Valley for "Outstanding CreaTiVe Award Feature Winner" As of May of 2014, I am excited for the future and what it may entail. One thing is certain, the web series genre will be intertwined with us. Hope you enjoyed my story and evolution to the web series. For any filmmakers out there deciding to make a web series of their own. Don't let anything get in your way, because opportunity is upon you.

69 Charger Burnout

So I tested my GoProHD Hero again this week. This time i performed a burnout. Dirt, rubber, and dust was kicked all over the camera, but it performed great.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 63 - Final Decision

You know when we first started this web series we had no expectations. Sure, I hoped Ricki would go on to become a guide dog. Not only would it be cool to raise awareness of the process, but damn; talk about a cool Hollywood ending. This episode really sums up the reality of the guide dog raising world however. Unpredictable twists and turns in the story always result. We wanted Ricki to graduate as a guide dog, but at the same time we wouldn't mind her becoming "career changed" so we might be able to keep her. There is always a lot of ups and downs and it can be crazy.

Now we are faced with a whole new challenge. Ricki has made it clear she wants to keep working. She paces up and down the living room as soon as a day or two go by without her working, or training. If she didn't show this tendency perhaps we would think about keeping her. But we want to give Ricki every chance at doing a job because we feel this will give her a much more fulfilling life based on her personality. She is prepped for something other than guide dog work so lets see what happens.

The future is uncertain as I write this blog. The one thing we hope people have learned from the series is that becoming a guide dog is hard. We strived to raise awareness about this, and hope people have a larger appreciation for the "puppy raisers" involvement in the process too. At the end of the day, if we met these goals, then Ricki has done her job as far as this guy is concerned.

69 Dodge Charger Meets GoProHD

My two favorite things are filmmaking and muscle cars. This video is the first time I have ever made a piece showing the appreciation I have for my 69 Dodge Charger. I mounted my GoPro to 10 different locations all over the car a few days ago. When I went out to shoot it began to rain, but because I was using the GoPro, it didn't hold things up at all. I just shot in the rain. Why the hell not?

Specs:
Shot 1280x720P @ 60 Frames per second
Mpeg4 files converted to quicktime pro res 422 Using Mpeg Streamclip
Conformed frame rate for slow motion with Cinema Tools
Used the H.264 codec for compression for the web using Compressor
Edited the video with Final Cut Pro 4

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 61 - Aqua Dogs

This week Ricki has made huge progress. She is able to walk alongside a group of pigeons without going crazy. She can handle looking at one or two at the same time with no problem especially. This is a dramatic change from how she reacted when she saw pigeons for the first time in Week 29. Seth and Bamboo demonstrated how it's done, while Ricki was totally crazy.

Ricki has also made big improvements with her squirrel distractions as well. She is able to walk by the toy squirrel without pulling on the leash and trying to chase it. However, if you squeek the toy or throw it in front of her, this is a different story. This is an area we are going to continue to work on by not jumping ahead of ourselves. We probably went a little too aggressive this week.

The last thing we wanted to show is that a working dog needs to have fun too. We took Ricki swimming with her mom Tulin again. I had fun playing with my new GOProHD Hero camera that can shoot underwater. The footage is totally cool. Check it out!

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 60 - Toy Squirrel

This squirrel distraction thing is so much work. We have been training Ricki everyday with it. She has made huge progress in the past week, and we hope it makes a difference. We will be getting another evaluation from our community field representative soon. We don't know if Ricki will have made enough progress, but we won't have her fail for lack of trying. It's frustrating because Ricki has so many other things going good for her, and yet her distraction issues could end it all. She has had the best relieving habits of any dog we have ever had. She is incredibly patient and rarely gets uneasy or bored. She strives to please and really enjoys working. These things mentioned are equally hard to get a dog to perform well at. Eli could care less about the birds and squirrels when he was training. He ignored them like a champ, and yet he couldn't handle the simple things like actually doing what he was told. Anyways, I'm just venting off the top of my head. Stay tuned and we will see where this adventure takes us next.

Mckenna Faith - Lost

This video marks the third of a series of videos that I shot with Mckenna Faith. She is a up and coming country artist, and really talented. I'm happy that our families have become friends, and working together was awesome. This particular song is one of my favorites, and I'm really excited to have it in the line up "guerilla unplugged" style of videos I did with Mckenna. Two other Mckenna videos are already done called "He Doesn't Even Know it Yet", and "Sugar and Spice".

If i told people that I pushed aside my regular gear and opted for low budget alternatives, they may say "you are crazy". But that is exactly what i did. Mckenna and her mom were very gracious with my experiments and they ended up working really good. A majority of this video was shot on the Flip Cam Ultra HD which only costs a few hundred dollars. Of course I used many of them, and also had a myriad of other equipment as well as some other professional cameras in the final cut, but never-the-less, the flip cam image is dominant. I also left my professional lighting equipment in their bags, and performed all the lighting for this video using work lights I got at Home Depot for $60. Last, this particular video has audio only from an iphone. I used an app called Recorder Pro as an experiment. See the results for yourself.

Recorder Pro iphone App

As most people know, I'm constantly looking for ways to save money as a filmmaker. Guerilla filmmaking is a evolving trend I like to explore, and the iphone just so happens to provide cheap solutions for the everyday video creator. Now I am not going to pledge the undoing of conventional audio acquisition by any means. But I am going to add this iphone app to my filmmaking bag of tricks.

It's called Recorder Pro, and it only cost .99 cents. The audio quality that i recorded was 44.1 kilohertz and 16 bit. It can acquire the audio in the .wav or .aiff file format too. The sound quality is fair when working with an iphone. I can't say that I have had the same results using a audio app for my wife's Samsung Moment. The audio recording tests revealed a big difference and i think this says something more about the phone than the app, but I can't be certain without more tests which I could come back to someday.

Next week I'm going to post another Mckenna Faith music video where all the audio was acquired with a iphone and the Recorder Pro app. Stay tuned.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 59 - Pigeon Progress

Amie and Ricki have been working everyday on her bird distraction issues. Pigeons are the worse of Ricki's bird distractions so this is where most of the focus has been lately. Ricki has been making big improvements because we have taken a few steps back and started rewarding her for the small things. One of the most effective training tips we got is requiring Ricki to Watch Amie, and ignore the pigeons by constantly redirecting Ricki's focus. Amie walks Ricki away from the distraction and rewards her with a treat. It seems to be making a difference, and I look forward to seeing how our community field rep judges Ricki's progress in a few weeks.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 56 - Off Duty Ricki

This week we won Outstanding Reality Series at LAWEBFEST. It felt really good to get recognition from the filmmaking community for our endeavors . It was also nice to see that our uninspiring viewership doesn't reflect it's content. LAWEBFEST is the only film festival in the world for web shows currently so we feel like mavericks exploring a new world. Our format is one of a kind, and I'm so proud that we make the show format easy to follow for the visually impaired. It's very descriptive and we don't take for granted anything that is going on. We describe everything. Big thanks to everyone for supporting our series and keep watching because it could get interesting from here.

Flip Cam Contest

I acquired a ton of equipment on a recent project. I don't need all of this stuff and thought why not give some of it away to my viewers. I like helping aspiring video creators, and low budget filmmakers. This has kinds become my new angle with my videos that come out every week.

If you interested in this contest. Hit me up on youtube with a comment on the video below and don't forget to subscribe.

Fire by my house

There was a fire by my house yesterday. The first thing I did was call 911. Then I grabbed the garden hose and tried to put out the fire with no luck. So i decided to grab the flip cam and document what happened. Everything was spontaneous and real. I experimented with the Les Stroud approach of creating video because i thought it was the most appropriate way of making the video.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 49 - Giants Fan Fest

Amie and I are big Giants fans. Since they won the world series, it only made sense to attend fan fest for this weeks episode. We decided to take the train to the park so we could add some training for Ricki into the mix. She has been on the train a few times, but never with this many people. The ride there was really packed, and almost completely full with fellow Giants fans. Ricki did a great job this week on the train, and she did an even better job at the ball park. We were very impressed with her ability to stay calm despite her being surrounded by wall to wall people. The attendance was crazy. The doors for general admission opened at 11:00am, and by 11:10am they were already telling people on KNBR to stay home because it filled up so quickly. I heard that more than 50,000 people attended which is funny because the park doesn't even sit that many people. Another job well done by Ricki and I can't wait to see where are adventures take us next.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 44 - Airplane

It took us a long time to get Ricki ready for travel. Amie felt Ricki was not ready when we traveled back in May of this year, but now she seemed ready. All sorts of things have to be in order before we consider flying with a pup. Our dog has to have awesome relieving habits, our dog has to be calm, our dog has to be able to handle curve balls that we can't anticipate, and our dog has to reach a level of maturity that gives us confidence that the adventure will work out. Ricki performed beyond our expectations. Even though the weather was bad both days we flew , Ricki handled it great. In the video we mention the delay on the air flight home. Well we also had a delay in the terminal leaving to Santa Ana. So between both flights, Ricki had an additional 3 hours to deal with on top of the the normal routine traveling stuff. Great job Ricki and here is our latest.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 43 - Xmas Tree Farm

Ricki and Eli rarely get to go out and do something fun together. Dogs are not allowed at most places we take Ricki for our outings, but a tree farm was a great exception. We had a lot of fun. Amie and I really experimented with our training of the dogs, as well as the approach to how we shoot the show. I loved putting a camera on the tree and watching it timber. Growing Up Guide Pup is my petri dish of camera experimentation.

I'm in LA right now writing this blog. We just finished our big travel from SF to LA. Ricki is exhausted sleeping on the ground next to me. She really handled traveling well so stay tuned for the next episode. It is going to be really great. Airport traveling awesomeness.

So Ricki turns 1 years old tomorrow. I can't believe it. Our little pup is growing so fast. Pretty soon she will be going back to school for her formal training. Won't that be exciting. The next several weeks should be a lot of fun, and packed with more content than normal to celebrate her first birthday. We are going to release a birthday special episode, and perhaps an additional behind the scenes video for the first time.

Thanks for your support.

Growing up Guide Pup - Week 38 - Dog Park

We love thinking of creative ways to help train Ricki. This episode is a perfect example of that. We have not found a better way to expose our dogs to lots of dogs in a controlled environment. Luckily we have lots of dog parks in the Bay Area. I don't know if it is like this everywhere, but it should be. We went to Seal Point Park in San Mateo. They did a great job of converting what was once a landfill to something great for the community. The views are amongst the best in the Bay Area too.

Please continue showing us your support by subscribing on youtube, becoming a fan on face book, and telling everyone about what we are doing.
Thanks

Growing up Guide Pup - Week 36 - Pumpkin Festival

This week turned into a dog distraction episode. It was weird. Even though there were posters that said "No Dogs Allowed" everywhere, no one was listening. People had dogs everywhere. The police were all around and they were not doing anything about it? Go figure? It certainly made for a good training session for Ricki.

This episode is shorter than normal because we didn't do very much filming. Ricki just had surgery the other day and we have been letting her rest. Enjoy our latest.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 34 - Guide Dog Reunion

This week we actually shot a episode without Ricki. I feel kinda bad because we forgot to mention what happened to her while we were in Canada. She stayed with our co-raiser Elizabeth for the weekend which was great for her. Mixing up her schedule will only help her be better prepared for the day when she will go back to Guide Dogs for her formal training.

This episode was all about Prudy. Prudy was our eighth dog and one of my favorites. She is gentle but confident. On a typical day at our house she could hold her own with Eli while playing tug a war, and then turn around and cuddle with Amie. Prudy holds the trophy for most cuddly guide dog. She is such a sweet dog and we are really happy she is with such a great family. Our North American brethren were well represented by Donna and the rest of the Hudon family. They showed us great hospitality, and I'm sure we will be more than just facebook buddies from now on.

Enjoy our latest episode and I promise Ricki will be back in our next episode.