Hello, Patrons! As you can tell, I've taken some time away from active video production, and I can't thank you enough for your patience. This time was not spent being idle, however -- and I have some exciting news to share: I am moving to Philadelphia.
Obviously there's many exciting things about this for me personally (most of which in the fairly predictable realm of "young man moves to the big city" social aspect), but where it has specific relevance to Homemade Documentaries is this: I will be 2 hours away from the National Archives center at College Park, MD. A day trip, easily.
What makes this particularly exciting is that being able to work in person at the National Archives will make this whole process of finding, previewing, and ultimately facilitating high resolution scans of never-before-digitized film much more efficient both in time and dollars. This will pay dividends and make your contributions go so much further than before. One particular area of great help will be in the discovery phase: working remotely as a certified independent researcher, I can only request up to 5 reels per month of moving film magazines. Working onsite, this limit is effectively removed, meaning I can preview and catalog as many reels as I can fit into a day. I'll be able to blitz through massive collections, finding hidden gems, making a smarter determination of which reels would benefit from an HD scan, and which were out of focus, blurry, or simply didn't capture anything of great value. I genuinely think this will be a game changer and will greatly assist the increased cadence of videos. It will also increase the volume of footage I am able to share with all of you through this Patreon. I'm not sure if they will actually let me scan the film myself -- but there may be some kind of telecine mechanism in which I can share something before subsidizing an HD scan through an approved third party (Colorlab).
I'm very excited to have the National Archives at my literal fingertips -- who knows what stuff they have hidden away back there? Things not catalogued on their website, etc. It's an exciting time. I have spent my sojourn away from production both assisting my family in the process of burying and mourning my sister, and finding an apartment in Philadelphia. Both of those tasks have been completed, and my moving date is 1/23. All of my attention is now back on Apollo 8, and it is my hope and confident belief that it will be released by 1/15, which represents an approximately 1-month delay from its original target.
I have mentioned this in the past, but for the sake of transparency I should mention again that this move, and the switch from side-gig to full-time focus, is made possible due to the monetization of two films: Voyager and Mariner. Because I used licensable music in them, I am in fact receiving ad revenue, and so far the performance has absolutely blown me away. Enough to move into my own place for the first time in my life. Enough to continue to pursue the things a young adult wants in their life and still leave the Patreon totally intact for its purpose, and that's the production of these films. So that's what the financial situation is at this moment. Being able to have control over the monetization benefits the viewing experience as well, since I am able to actually place a limit on the frequency of ads. Videos I cannot monetize, such as Mercury, Apollo 16:R, Space Shuttle 1984, etc -- those ads are set by the music companies, and word has gotten back that there are simply an atrocious amount of them. I apologize for that. For those reasons, both limiting the number of ads AND actually seeing some handsome financial rewards from views, I am pursuing a route of monetization for future videos. This is all old news, but since it ties into the Philadelphia situation, I felt I should recap it again here so there's no misunderstanding.
Now that NARA is back up and running, I hope to have more footage to share with you soon. In the meantime, the script for Apollo 8 is progressing well, and editing should begin around 12/15. There's one final batch of film I am trying to acquire from a third party company, some 65mm of the Apollo 8 rollout that looks absolutely gorgeous. I have also settled on a crazy $6500 budget for ASTP, the follow-on project due next April, which I reiterate will not be the 'new normal' -- that's a uniquely expensive project due to the particular rarity of its film. (And I hope to trade some of it with some archivists for Skylab material.)
So, Apollo 8 in January - then off to Philadelphia!
-Jackson