I am working on a DVD booklet

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Calhoun07
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I am working on a DVD booklet

Post by Calhoun07 » Nov 28th 2002, 2:24 pm

I started last night playing around with making a DVD booklet and I think that I can do this. I will be glad to share the finished project with the posters here, but I was curious to know what you all want to see in the booklet. The majority of the text I was going to pull from MSCL.com (giving proper credit, of course) and I thought of including a few other things, like Jason's interview at thedigitalbits and, of course, an episode guide, and the stories and poems from the series and the letters too. Don't know quite yet how many pages I will have it, but I am thinking off the top of my head somewhere between 16-24, depending on what kind of feed back that I should include.

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Re: I am working on a DVD booklet

Post by fnordboy » Nov 28th 2002, 3:00 pm

Very cool. I said a while back that i would start to work on something but i got overloaded at work and just didnt have the time recently. Glad someone is doing it now.

You might want to get permission for the digitalbits interview though. I'm sure it wouldnt be a problem but better safe than sorry.

If you need any help with graphics, layout, another set of eyes, etc., feel free to to PM me.
Calhoun07 wrote:I started last night playing around with making a DVD booklet and I think that I can do this. I will be glad to share the finished project with the posters here, but I was curious to know what you all want to see in the booklet. The majority of the text I was going to pull from MSCL.com (giving proper credit, of course) and I thought of including a few other things, like Jason's interview at thedigitalbits and, of course, an episode guide, and the stories and poems from the series and the letters too. Don't know quite yet how many pages I will have it, but I am thinking off the top of my head somewhere between 16-24, depending on what kind of feed back that I should include.

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Re: I am working on a DVD booklet

Post by NIGHTJESSI » Nov 30th 2002, 1:59 am

I love this idea. You're best bet is probably directly contacting the MSCL.com team and Jason to see what they think would make a great booklet. I'm sure there were some talks prior about what they would like to see in the booklet, and then, of course, it was left up to BMG.

One thing that I think would be really cool, if people were willing to wait, would be to include short interviews with some of the people involved in the show. If Another Universe does indeed come through with the bonus disc, we would have something new from the creators. But why not try to reschedule the interviews with those actors who agreed initially to do interviews for the bonus disc? It wouldn't be the same as watching them on screen, but it would still be nice to hear from them again in all-new interviews.

I run a monthly online newsletter for La Femme Nikita, and the actors from that show have been great about interacting with their LFN fans and doing interviews despite the show airing its last new episode nearly two years ago. I know we don't get visible visits from the MSCL alumni on the forum, but maybe some of the actors would be willing to do interviews via e-mail or phone for a fan-created booklet for the DVDs. And if you need someone to conduct them, I would be more than happy to help. Otherwise, if you're just looking for help with editing, feel free to call on me since that's my line of work.
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zero
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Post by zero » Nov 30th 2002, 2:28 am

My only suggestion is that you include a thankyou and tip of the hat to jason from all of us.

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Post by leerosevere » Nov 30th 2002, 5:01 am

Yeah I couldn't believe that Jason wasn't thanked in the DVD credits. If it weren't for him...

He should've received a special thank-you. When I look at the names that are there, I can't help but snort and think "yeah right...as if YOU gave a damn about this project!" :roll: And the credits sure are prominent enough in the menu...like these people worked sooo hard. Ha!

Got my set from Amazon.ca btw... The way I'm trying to look at it now is, I made a "donation" to AnotherUniverse, which helped get the sets made. Sure it would've been nice to receive a "complimentary" set from AU, for being a "sponsor/investor", but oh well. (Kinda like when you help support public television and they give you an overpriced thank-you gift if you donate lots of money.) :P

Hey it helps me stay calm. Now if I can only convince myself I'm rich enough to afford to make large donations... :)

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Post by GaryEA » Dec 4th 2002, 12:26 am

Just wondering how you're doing with the booklet. Any chance we'll get to see a preview when it's ready.

I'm looking forward to final product. Thanks for taking the time to make it!

Gary

p.s. I second/third/fifth the notion that Jason should be credited in some form or another.

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Post by So-Called Loon » Dec 7th 2002, 12:29 pm

This booklet idea is great!
GaryEA wrote:p.s. I second/third/fifth the notion that Jason should be credited in some form or another.
Here, here.
Been a member since sometime BR (before Ross)

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Calhoun07
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Post by Calhoun07 » Dec 7th 2002, 1:19 pm

GaryEA wrote:Just wondering how you're doing with the booklet. Any chance we'll get to see a preview when it's ready.

I'm looking forward to final product. Thanks for taking the time to make it!

Gary
Slowly, this past week, I'm afraid. I had a cold that pretty much knocked me out and I was going to bed just a couple hours or less after getting home from work and sleeping like 10-12 hours at a time. Feeling better now, tho, so I hope to get back to work on it.

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Post by ithurts2look@u » Dec 13th 2002, 7:59 am

The booklet is a great idea! I was a little narked that there was no booklet, or even a simple folding sleeve, when I got my set. It would have just been nice to have a run-down of the epsiodes, airdates and synopsis etc...

You could make it a really great project.. I'm sure lots of MSCL fans will want one. Keep it up!

Gem
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Calhoun07
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Post by Calhoun07 » Dec 14th 2002, 3:36 pm

ithurts2look@u wrote:The booklet is a great idea! I was a little narked that there was no booklet, or even a simple folding sleeve, when I got my set. It would have just been nice to have a run-down of the epsiodes, airdates and synopsis etc...

You could make it a really great project.. I'm sure lots of MSCL fans will want one. Keep it up!

Gem
I am still working on it. The graphics program (well, actually, I am using about three or four programs to help me put this together) that I was using mainly to assemble the pages and position the text kept on giving me hassles with my fonts, not properly displaying them and such, requiring me to go back and keep doing things over. I finally said screw it and went and purchased a new version of the program and I am learning new features on that, and I love it. I don't have any previews yet (don't know how I would post them if I did!) but it's coming a long pretty well, if I may say so myself.

BTW, if anybody has how the DVD credits should be, as I want Jason to get all the credit he deserves on this, please post the DVD credits as they should be! It would be appreciated!

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Post by nashienet » Jan 27th 2003, 7:58 am

zero wrote:My only suggestion is that you include a thankyou and tip of the hat to jason from all of us.
good lord yes, i viewed the credits and was astounded jason did not get a credit on there.

shocking stuff.

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Post by Jason R » Jan 27th 2003, 8:08 am

I'm not surprised. That's pretty much par for the course for BMG. I wasn't even on their dime, I was on Ross Rojek's (even though I never got paid what I was owed).

At least I get a killer bad-debt writeoff with the IRS this year. :P

I did once suggest that BMG thank the fans as a whole somewhere, but what can I say? It's not the first time that my advice was ignored. Note the wealth of bonus material. /sarcasm.

Your covers kick BMG's ass. Be proud of that. It's not often that a company is proven wrong by its customers, and you seem to be teaching BMG this lesson over and over again.

Jason Rosenfeld

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Post by GaryEA » Jan 27th 2003, 1:51 pm

Calhoun,

How's the book coming along? I'm toying with concept sketches for the inserts I'm planning on doing, not something as extensive as a book mind you, and remembered that you were going to do this. Any news?
Your covers kick BMG's ass. Be proud of that.
Thanks Jason! :D

Gary

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Calhoun07
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Post by Calhoun07 » Jan 31st 2003, 11:32 pm

I haven't worked on it in the past month. The program I bought didn't work the way I was expecting to, and I just got so frustrated with it. I want to get it done, but I just can't seem to find the right program that gives me the freedom to do what I want with text and graphics.

I was using Print Artist 4.0, Corel Photo Paint 10, and Microsoft Publisher. Corel allowed me to do some really creative and impressive editing with pictures and allowed me to make some awesome looking graphics, and Print Artist was the best program I had that allowed me to import those graphics and then insert text and play around with the font sizes and font choices until I had a good, slick looking page. I got 6 pages done this way. Then I would copy and paste the pages into Microsoft Publisher, where I could size the pages to be the size they would be in a DVD booklet. I even got submitted the final pages to Abobe.com and had them made into PDF files in hope that one day I would be able to offer the booklet in either PDF or Microsoft Publishing formats here on the board.

However, Print Artist 4.0 started to just go crazy on me. I'd work hard at one page, then suddenly the text wouldn't display or I couldn't do what I wanted to do with the text, and I would lose pages and hard work and have to start over. So I decided to go out and buy the latest version of Print Artist, since the one I had was from like 1996 and I have a much newer computer now to run a more modern version. And the new Print Artist version allowed me to do even more fun picture editing and make even more awesome graphics and I was just happy as a clam with it...until I decided to paste the finished pages in Microsoft Publisher, and the text didn't paste well and everything else was just fuzzy and horrible looking.

So, I guess what I can do now is just use the latest version of Print Artist solely and construct all my pages in there, but the crappy part of that is the file format isn't exactly universal for people on this board to access, and adobe.com couldn't transfer those files into PDF format. I can made PDF files in Corel, but again, I had copying and pasting issues from Print Artist to Corel, tho I can copy and paste from Corel to Print Aritst just fine.

So thus my frustation, and why I haven't had the energy to tackel it for the last month. Either I have to spend more money on a new program or figure out how to use my existing programs to do what I want to do. OR, I could see if a place like Kinkos could make the booklets from Print Artist files and just do it that way and have people just send me money for printing and postage costs to get the booklets, but this is something I want to post online for conveinence and to have people download if they so desire. But if Kinkos can even do the current Print Artist files, I still have 6 pages in Microsoft Publisher that I would either have to completely redo on Print Artist or hope that Kinkos could combine the two into one project.

If anybody has any suggestions I am open at this point. I just want a universal file format to use for the entire booklet. I just may uninstall the new version of Print Artist and go back to 4.0 and just deal with the various bugs I was experiencing if nothing better can be figured out.

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Post by fnordboy » Feb 1st 2003, 2:15 am

Sucks to here about your troubles. Your best bet would be to use industry standard programs like (my preferred) Quark or Adobe InDesign.

Both are fairly costly programs though, Indesign far cheaper than Quark though.

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