Over the past couple months Shelley has been developing an idea that she came up with for a new venture. Fortunately, it's writing-related.

It came into the light this weekend as Demo Reel Scenes.

See, the idea is that lots of start-up actors need to produce demo reels. These short films or tapes are necessary to showcase their talents to potential agents, casting directors, or anyone else that can help them in their career endeavours.

And these aspiring actors require material from which to work, in order to get their demo reels made. Now, they could act out scenes from famous movies or plays, or they could write their own, or ... they could shell out a few bucks and buy something designed specifically with them in mind. Such as Shelley's pieces.

She has developed a bunch of three- or four-page scenes for minimal budgets, meant for only one or two people, and few props or effects. People come to her web site and look for a scene that fits their needs, and use a credit card to buy the right to publicly perform it on a demo reel.

Pretty slick idea, if it takes off. According to people that Shelley knows (one of whom just bought a demo reel production outfit), there is need of such a service.

Although the site is live and you can check it out, we have a couple technical issues to resolve regarding electronic file delivery, but otherwise it's good to go and should be in use by next weekend. Shelley spent the entire weekend using bizhosting.com's system to put the site together, and has it free for a month to test out.

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What did I do? Heh. The entire Saturday went into finding a solution to blend the seams on Panoscans when they need it. There appears to be no Macintosh software to do this, except for the $500 package designed specifically for Panoscan. It would be terrific to have that one, however it's so specialized that it's hard to justify at this point.

So the alternative solution, which is cheaper and more flexible, is to use some Windows software that I already own. Of course that means being at home to produce the panos. Or does it? I think not!

After being bummed about this less-than-optimal solution, I realized that Windows emulation software for the iBook would be only $100, so then I could run my Windows solution on the portable, and be all set. Yay! That allows less expenditure, and more flexibility. Time to find out whether it works!



We had GORGEOUS weather this weekend. The rain on Friday cleared the air, and large puffy white clouds sailed overhead the whole weekend. Some moody clouds came through too, and constantly changing light made the outside very pleasant.