SoaPatrick

The Problem of doing it all alone

I’m sitting at home, alone, having the whole day to do something creative and the idea would be to film something and then cut it together. But it’s hard to do it all by myself. I can’t put together a nice composition if I don’t see the actor, the actor being me, inside the frame.

I think this was also the reason I started with Webdesign because that I could do all day and all alone and have something to show for at the end of it.

The reason for the urge to do something today is the realization I once again had under the shower to just fucking DO something. Just take the nearest recording device close to me and start to put ideas together, doesn’t matter how good they turn out, but at least try and learn something in the process.

So instead of doing something right now, I’m here writing another blog entry, hoping it has a therapeutical effect. Not sure yet, maybe another shower might help… maybe the whole creative process of taking a shower each time I need an idea is something which can be explored in a short film. Mmmm ok that sounds interesting.

Factory Feed

SoaPatrickSix Theme Preview Image Reflection Short Film Preview Image Soap Lab Logo Preview Image Zum Lange Inseli Promo Video Preview Image

The rest of the Factory can be seen here.

Some work done under the hood

Ok so at work there was a lot of discussion about page speed optimization of websites, so I checked how this place is doing and I think it did ok. On Google’s Page Speed Test Website, it scored around 45 Mobile and over 90 on the Desktop but there was room for improvements.

I looked at the final score and decided what can be optimized on my hand and what was out of reach for me.

The first thing I did was caching all the resources, it made sense to cache scripts, stylesheets, fonts and images. That was easy and it improved the mobile score. (funny thing is that there are still some resources google says are not cached, but I don’t know why). I also gzip all text resources which made me gain a few points as well.

Then I activated lazy loading, which loads images when the browser starts to display them, and not before and reduced the number of Instagram images from the feed to 10. No one scrolls through 20 Images.

So now the main page scores a 61 Mobile and a 95 on Desktop, that’s quite alright I think.

Other things I still could do is compress all images which reduce their file size and use modern web formats (like Google’s WebP). There are plugins which do all that automatically but I’m not a fan of getting a plugin for everything.

I might as well just compress future images and leave the current ones be. But I know what you’re saying

Why are you working on the theme again and not film your next short film!!!!!

My two visitors

I hear ya, I really do, I get distracted by website stuff too easily because it’s quick and it’s doable all by myself. Shooting a short film alone is hard. BUT I will hopefully deliver something by the end of the month. I need a deadline and there I just made one.

SoaPatrick is closed due to extreme heat. Once the temperature will drop to a human-friendly level, I will get back to writing and doing stuff, but for now, it’s time to have cold thoughts.

Ok that was Nonsense

Yesterday when I wrote that I like to keep things close to the chest and not reveal anything here until I’m ready, I quickly realized that this was nonsense. I mean the point of this blog was to put those things out there and use it to make the next step, so why not actually do that? It’s not like my projects are a bit secret and that the “thousands” of daily visitors will “steal” my ideas.

So with that said and done, here’s the gist of my idea: I thought that my struggle to come up with a story for my next micro-film could be an interesting subject to explore. Maybe through that process, I find out what actually keeps me from doing more film stuff and break free from some of these habits.

A big issue for me is the distraction of consuming other things, like clips on YouTube, some Movie or an episode from a TV Show. I sometimes catch myself looking for anything to watch on Youtube just to avoid doing something productive. I think finding a story there might be interesting and therapeutical.

So far I have a beginning which is in some part written as a list of what’s happening and part as storyboards but I need to dig a bit deeper. This week will be tough but maybe watching a bit less YouTube and actually deal with this issue once in a while might be helpful.

I think writing all this down and getting it off my chest was helpful already. So maybe I will keep on doing that…

I’m working on Something

It’s been a while but I’m having an idea for a new micro movie and I started to write down some notes, draw some storyboards and test some shots. I don’t wanna put TOO much pressure on me with a timeframe so I take it step-by-step.

But of course, I have to move forward. The idea is to give me another week for the full story with storyboards and then start shooting. I won’t reveal anything else at this point, like theme or premise, since I love having these things close to the chest until they are ready for release.

On a side note: I did change something on this theme, even though in my last blog post I promised that I’m done, but I thought I should reduce the header height on subpages to put content first. Not every page needs to have those animated bubbles.

Instagram Feed

If you have the time and feel like it, why don't you follow me on Instagram?