Okay, I finally have a website. It's not that special, certainly not that fancy, but it is what it is. All the links and stuff seem to be working, though I am having some strange problems. Thanks to anyone who helped me get this all started. Hope you guys like it. I'll add more material later. Let me know if anyone has any problems or suggestions. Everything on there is WM9 encoded.
Relatively small file sizes for your viewing pleasure (only one over 17 megs, I believe).

http://www.joshbass.com (creative, huh?)

my short films are on the "Non-Practicing" page, and my work for hire is on the "camera work" page

Josh- That is a very clean site. A bit too clean maybe? The only problem I experienced, is with the buttons being on the right side. My old 17" monitor died, and I'm forced to use an antique 13" CTX. Max resolution is 800x600, and on some pages, the buttons are off of the screen

The videos all looked good, and I thought the intro to your reel was brilliant when you push the play button. As for the reel itself, you might want to cut the clips down, like the Sluttex was a bit long. The last part of it was fantastic, the way you cut the clips together. Very nice job

Thanks. I'm leaving the reel like is for now, as it was recommended that I used complete clips instead of a montage, which is what I used to have.

As for the buttons on the right, that's the ipowerweb template I chose. I'll go find one that has buttons on the left.

Nice stuff Josh, I enjoyed looking at all of your clips. I was in Houston yesterday....I didn't see you though. I also liked the "cleaness" of the layout. It did look new....but, it is. I'm sure it will evolve with you. Fantastic job overall, lots of funny stuff. Could you list your equipment? (cam, NLE, etc) Also, are you in school? If not, how do you get all those folks to help "realize your vision"? Hehe, thanks for sharing the site! (all respect to Keith, I wouldn't change the lay out to accomodate his current pc display specs) I smell all fishy.

please delete, double post.

Actually, that thing with the buttons on the right has been twice suggested to me, as of today. I changed it, no big deal. The lame layout is due to the fact that I know little about web design, and so opted to use ipowerweb's templates. If any of you web gurus out there (who also happen to be ipowerweb users) will volunteer to hold my hand, I'll start making certain changes with your guidance, like replacing the picture of the satellite (new), badass as it is, with something else, and maybe some more drastic stuff.

As for gear, I use an XL1s with a manual 16x lens, most of the time, occasionally a .6x century optics wide angle adapter, sachtler DV4 tripod, Vegas 4, and a bunch lighting crap that I've gradually acquired.

Those who helped me realize my vision, if you mean the stuff that I didn't personally write and direct, well, that's all from a little public access show here in town called Texas Live, that fuses sketch comedy with Wild On-style event coverage. The skits were done for them. They pretty much have their own actors, writers, etc., who do it on a volunteer basis for the fun and experience. All the skits were written by actors or writers from the show, except Ponda and Sluttrex, which are mine. These people, with their collective power, have numerous connections so that we were able to shoot in bars, offices, places like that (even off the back of a flatbed tow truck), for no financial compensation.

If you mean my personal movies. . .it was just waiting till people were available and doing what I could. Peter and I took me about 5 months to finish shooting, from the time I shot the first frame til the last scene was done, simply cause that main actor has a terrible schedule, but at the time I wasn't ready to work with people I wasn't familiar with, so I stuck with him til he was available.

More stuff to come, as it becomes available. I deleted some material, and I wish I hadn't, and stored some on CD-Rs that don't seem to want to read it back to my computer. Some I simply haven't put up yet.

What a long-winded bunch of crap.

I was wondering. . .do you guys recommend putting a gear list, and my home phone number on there? I left the # off for the time being.

Josh - Brilliant clips! Love 'em . . . Website looks neat . .bit too clean for what is IN the site . . you are one very funny Bloke! - I was in London yesterday . .I didn't see you there either?!?! . . hmmm...

Yer wana set me up with a website . . ?

Grazie

Dudes. . .and dudettes. . .I really don't know what to do about the "look" of the site. Rather not pay anyone to design it, and therefore I have to work with the templates that ipowerweb has given me. Like I said, if someone wants to guide me, once I figure out what I want to do, I'd appreciate it. But, it's the content that's important anyway.

Right now, I'm glad you all like the material and can view the clips without significant problems. Good enough for me.

Got that right Josh!

Grazie

James- As for the layout, I doubt many people are web-surfing with an ancient monitor like this one, so the layout shouldn't be a concern for most. I'm not used to seeing the buttons on the right, and I merely stated the results I had. Other than having to scroll to the right to find the buttons on one or two pages, I liked the site.

Josh- Don't worry about any of my comments, as I did enjoy everything you had up. I'm still working on a real reel for myself. Keep doing what works for you.

Josh

If you have free time this weekend, I recommend boning up on HTML code. It's really pretty easy -- back in 1996-ish I learned the basics of coding from reading a webpage tutorial and looking at the source code of pages I liked (in Internet Explorer, got to View -> Source).

A quick Google search will turn up numerous sites with free tutorials on HTML. One site that is good for information on all types of design is Webmonkey: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/authoring/html_basics/

another one I found, but have never used (it was simply the first Google hit) is http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/

It may seem daunting, but if you've got a weekend to learn the basics, you can go into that template and tweak/play with it and see what happens. You find yourself catching on very quickly. It's really not too hard. And even though I've played with coding for a few years, I tend to keep things very simple, as on my website. (So don't come looking to me for incredible web design! :D )

I like what I watched of your video, but even as a Windows user I must say that I do wish they were available in Quicktime as well :D (sly reference to my recent reply to your previous thread about websites and encoding).


Keith said --> "I doubt many people are web-surfing with an ancient monitor like this one, so the layout shouldn't be a concern for most."

Keith and James --

Conventional Wisdom used to say (within the past 2 years, at least) that a designer should create a website so that it can be viewed well at 800x600 resolution (meaning buttons can be seen w/out scrolling, etc.) Now that LCD monitors are more prevalent, this belief may have recently changed, but I still know many PC users (especially at the University I work at) who are running 800x600 resolution on their monitors. One, in fact, is an otherwise incredibly intelligent fellow who didn't even know he could increase the rez on his monitor. Personally, I'd recommend optimizing your site for viewing by the lowest common denominator (800x600) if possible (although some modern sites eschew this idea and design for whatever the heck they feel like! But even then you will often see disclaimers that say something like "Best viewed at 1024x768" as a courtesy)

I'll take a look at those sites. Does anyone know how to optimize for 800 x 600?

The easiest way is to right-click on your desktop, choose "Properties," click on the "Settings" tab, and set the "Screen Area" slider to 800x600. Click "Apply," etc. Then look at your webpage and see where things fall. Make adjustments as necessary.

Usually you just have to bring things in a little from the right and from the bottom. Alternatively, once you get a handle on the code, you may be able to center the buttons across the top of the page, which will look fine at any resolution.

Josh,

Funny stuff. I live in Houston, and never see you either.

And no, don't put a home number on the web.

Ever

Trust me

Richard

www.roadsterproductions.com

John has made some very valid points, which mirror my own experiences. When I started doing web design, pages were usually designed to fit a 13"-14" monitor, running at 640x480. Only a few were up to 800x600. Those were the days of 14.4 modems, so sites needed to load quick too. My sites will usually fit on a single 1.44 floppy disk, minus any video.

And as mentioned, WebMonkey is a great place to learn the elements of html, and a site I visited frequently.

<<<-- Does anyone know how to optimize for 800 x 600? -->>>

Josh, I usually create a table, centered on the page, and set to 740 pixels wide. It's viewable from 800x600 or higher. Easy to do with any WYSIWYG HTML editor.

See my site (click here). (http://www.bungalow28.com) I have menus on the right hand side, using a centered-740 pixel table throughout the site.

** Keith, if you're reading, could you take a look and see if my site fits on your CTX?

Michael -- I assume, though, that the point here is that Josh doesn't have access to a wysiwyg a la dreamweaver, go live, etc. Hence his use of supplied templates.

That would be a good recommendation to Josh, though: download a demo of Dreamweaver and bully around with that. A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web design application makes life infinitely easier. You could probably design you whole site during the trial period, all for free!

Thanks. I'll take it into consideration. Isn't there a wrap command, though, that causes the contents of a page to conform to the size of your browser? Or do you think centering the tables is the way to go?

I'll try the Dreamweaver demo tonight.

I'd like to ask. . .that design that encompasses the top and left sides of the frame--how hard is that to alter? Is it simply replacing one graphic with another, or something more sophisticated?

Michael- Your site fits my monitor just fine. Not much content, but it looks like a clean, sensible, design. On a side note- The pic of the girl with the knife and cake was sort of frightening, and sexy. I did notice that all of your pics seem stretched... Is this an intentional effect? And what camera do you use?

As far as web tools, everyone with windows has a free wysiwyg editor- Front Page Express. It isn't quite as powerful as Dreamweaver, but still very capable. I have yet to use a fraction of the stuff in Dreamweaver.

The webpage looks good except that there's no spacing on the right hand side. It loads nice and fast too.

Hey Josh (Bass), did you do any work with the show "Houston Live"? I don't know if it is still around, but I met the guys that were doing that show back in 1993 when they did a show in Victoria, TX. at a nightcub I DJ'ed.

You guys recommended a centered table, correct? configured to fit a 600 by 800 screen? I'll work on it. I'm currently trying to upload quicktime versions of the files on there, and make more "Josh-y" graphics . . .but still feeling my way around.

Josh,

You could also try setting the table to fill up a percentage of the browser: 50%, 100%, 200% etc.

FYI: the template you're using is just a table holding all the text and graphics in place - the table is set to automatically fill up 98% of the browser window.

You could make a copy of the template pages and just replace the text/graphics with your own stuff. There's some extra stuff in the pages like scripting for the mouseover effect on the buttons and style sheets, but nothing you'll really miss.

No problem.

<<<-- I did notice that all of your pics seem stretched... Is this an intentional effect? And what camera do you use? -->>>

The pics are from a Canon G2 - no stretching involved, that's just the way they look normally.

<<<-- The pic of the girl with the knife and cake was sort of frightening, and sexy. -->>>

Yeah she's perfect for a horror flick :-)

I've been trying to upload quicktime versions of the files on there, but unless they're on the smaller side (under 10 megs), I keep getting errors, a lot of the time "this session timed out" "you can only upload to the so and so page" (when I AM trying upload to that page), and things like that. What's going on?

Josh,

There's there is a WYSIWYG HTML editor built into the ipowerweb control panel. It has all the basic controls for formatting a page, manipulating tables, and inserting graphics.

Log into VDECK
- go to File Manager
- find the file you want to edit, and click on the icon with the pencil on it

Yeah, that's what I've been using. It seems somewhat limited, though. I downloaded frontpage express, and as soon as I have the time, and figure out how manipulate it correctly, I'll change the overall template of the site.