After impressively having survived more than a month without technical maintenance I felt the infrastructure behind ThePactProject needed some love and caring. It's also time to evaluate what kind of pressure it will withstand and how to improve performance related user experience. A number of updates has been applied and I've finally dared to turn on most of the cache optimizations in the Drupal content management system. Also I've gotten rid of all the pointless services enabled by default on the Ubuntu operating system, freeing up resources. And I also managed to talk our server provider to give us some additional memory for free, which I immediately handed over to the MySQL database system that stores all of the actual content. There's also possibilities of continuing performance improvements if needed including switching over to the much lighter (but also much less mature) nginx web server software, and thereby delaying costly hosting upgrades.

This should prepare us for the coming community building effort this fall. Bring it on!

I have yet to receive any negative comments on our project, everybody is remarkably supportive. But before I went to a seminar on future business models for music, film and art the other week I asked PerProducer on how I should respond if I met any negativity. We both think we soon will meet some "traditionalists" who think we are doing this project for some kind of "easy publicity" or even more ignorant "easy money". Per's answer made me feel proud and happy. He simply said that we are pioneers and that there is no sign that this process on "crowding"  everything will be easier than traditional film financing  and production.  Rather the opposite. This is unknown territory for all and as all firsts this journey will be tough. There is no doubt that finding, meeting and interacting with one's audience is a technique here to stay in some shape or form. Our take in exploring this is to put an entire feature film production from start to finish out on this site and gauge the reactions on what functionalities and services we offer. Then we change the site accordingly until we get it right. Right now we're all on holiday, the site is up for all to see and we are slowly filling it with content, learning as we go along. In August  I will add lots of stuff on the story and the script at the same time as we will review the site structure and design and we will contact all possible horror buffs and friends in the US and around the world. So be sure to tell us what you'd like to see. There is a forum topic for this here. This fall promises lots and lots of hard but exhilarating work. So much fun I can't wait! Back to PerProducer, paraphrasing ol' JFK:  we are making our horror movie on this site, open for all, together with our future audience, not because it is easy but because it is hard. Take a look.   Our project kind of shrinks in comparison to going to the moon or stopping global warming but nevertheless - we are all pioneers:-) 

Alright Gotta Go...!!  talk to you soon. 

I’m no shopping freak. I buy clothes seldom and efficient. In three hours I’m all set for two years, honestly.  I like the clothes I buy and all, but the process of fitting and choosing, what looks good etc it’s so, I don’t know… arbitrary. But there’s one shopping that I like and of course it’s technology. This project has provided me with some great excuses for shopping. Stuff we need that also are great fun, I’ve started to check off items on my shoppinglist.

1 Small HD-camcorder (Check - Canon HG21)

2 Adobe Master Collection (Check – Thank you Adobe)

3 Audio Interface

If you read my blog from Cannes you recall my frustration with slow internet. Well history repeats itself, now I’m with my family on holiday on the Swedish west coast and the connections SUCK! This project hinges on us linking to all of our supporters, fans and inspirations which calls for some surfing when I blog. I guess my shoppinglist just grew longer.

5 Fast and reliable mobile internet

Anyway, I bought the Camcorder last week and I love it. It’s of course a consumer camera one CCD, not many manual switches all controls inside menus etc but stil it’s great. Fantastic quality both video and audio and syncs well with my mac. I’m gonna add to it a bigger battery, a wide angel converter and two small interview microphones with a XLR-converter and then we’re laughing. Looking forward to showing you what it can do.

Adobe has been indispensible for my filmmaking for as long as I can remember. After Effects and Photoshop, how did we ever make movies without them? (don’t get me started though, I’m old enough to actually have made my first shorts on 16 and 35 mm phew..) Adobe graciously supported our project with a copy of their Master Collection, so now I have to learn Premiere and already I’ve gotten fond of  Soundbooth and Indesign. Thank you! You forwardthinking multinational corporation youJ

My pickypicky companion Anders Sjöman was kind enough to let me know that he hates it when I end my blogposts with a “gotta go”. Well I'm sorry mr writingtalent But it’s true… I have yet to master this beautiful art of blogging and it takes me ages to write and so far I invariably get pressed for time. I hope it rains tomorrow, then instead of going to the beach we can go to the fantastic library in Halmstad where I can get some decent wifi and at least add links to this limp piece of blog entry. Also I want to talk more about After Effects features and why I hate my current audio interface. Maybe I should start a tech forum topic? Also I want to talk more about the script and my ideas for the site, and you know... horror. I have to get organizised (quiz, what 1976 film? ) Well big kiss talk to you tomorrow.