Time to go to work (part 2)

Now let's jump into movies. This is a little more fun but not as much information. Just watching movies will do nothing for you unless you know what you're looking at. The rule is watch the movie first, commentary second...that's because I hate spoiling the end of the movie; simple as that. But it also keeps the movie fresh in your head and you can focus on the commentary (sometimes this is hard).

REWIND - What am I talking about? Most, not all, DVD movies have an extra audio track where the director, writer/director, screenwriter(s), producers, actors...talk about the movie while it is playing. I'm sure most of you know this but it brings me to a point. My personal opinion is that the best, most educational, of these commentaries are the ones by...can you guess?...what do you want to be?...an actor?...not if you're on this blog...a producer?...probably not, they're PRODUCERS...Okay! You got it - screenwriter(s), writer/director, or director.

I've also found that when there is a group of these people on the commentary, they tend to say things like, "Ooo, that was cool." OR "This is the part I like..., That was neat...A funny thing happened here." This is all fun stuff, but doesn't teach YOU how to MAKE your own movie. Though that's not always the case, I've just found it best to stick with commentaries with just the director or just the writer(s).

This is a little touchy, but you'll need to, inexpensively, get your hands on some software to take your movie commentaries with you. 1)IMToo DVD Ripper Platinum 4 will rip audio tracks from a DVD into 192 bps mp3 file...Nice!

However, some new DVD's are copyright protected and the ripper won't work. But since we're NOT copying movies and reselling them, it's illegal, get a copy of 2)DVD Decrypter. Which is easier said than done. It is so good, Macrovision (the copy protect people) bought it, i.e. it's hard to find. But if you manage a copy, the Ripper will rip the audio from the file created by Decrypter.

Lastly, 192 bps is a big file and you want to cram as many educational audios on your mp3 player as you can. Remember, I mentioned 3)the software that comes with a Creative brand MP3 player in part 1? (say yes) It has a nice converter that will take a 192 bps file and compress it into a compact little 32 bps file and, as far as I can tell, there's no quality loss. Windows media player, I think, will convert to 64 bps (and .wma file, which is the same) so that's better than nothing.

As I mentioned before, listening to the podcasts and commentaries will point you into other directions to learn such as books and blogs. This is enough to get you started on the right track. It doesn't happen over night but it's a fun process.

Let me know what you think.