A Referral and a Query.

The Referral:

Via Whateveresque (Yes, I still stop in for a few ongoing threads and to see if anything new/interesting is going on), I've found Talk Wordy to Me. I'll let the host tell you what it's all about:

"Talk Wordy to Me is a new attempt at blogging by me, Brian White. A Philadelphian and a word nerd by birth (thanks Mom), I’ve figured out a way to make one of those things pay the bills. I’m a copy editor at The Courier-Journal in Lousiville. Sure, newspapers could be a dying medium, but if so, I hope there’s beer at the wake.

On Talk Wordy to Me, I’ll be sharing interesting (to me, at least) bits and pieces I find on the English language, especially words.

Thanks for reading."

I know many of you are word-nerds, so give it a look.

The Query:

As a Location Manager, the first major step in my job is scouting for the locations in the script. We used to shoot film, use a one-hour photo lab, and then, literally, paste up photos into legal sized manilla folders. In addition to a lot of standard "single" shots", we also shoot "Pans", four or five shots taken with the camera turned vertical that are stitched together into a panoramic shot. In an ideal world, the pans show the geography of a location clearly, including stuff you'd never want in the movie. (The director needs to know there's stuff that needs to be avoided before looking at a location in person and saying, "Why the fuck didn't you tell me there's a purple monstrosity two doors down?"). In a perfect world, the 'singles' are shots that could be frames from the movie...only missing the actors.

Here's and example of the pans. The first one is from one corner of the pool.


The second, called a 'reverse' is from the opposite corner. Between the two pans, there' shouldn't be any of the room that's not visible. And because of overlap between the two, you get the geography. (i.e. there's a scoreboard in the left corner of the first picture. The same scorboard is in the right corner of the 'reverse'.)

A file for one house might contain four or more pans for the exterior, two pans for each room of interest inside the house and however many singles I shot.

Anyway, some of this is neither here not there...I just want to preface the query by letting you know what types of files are expected of me. In the old days, I'd have a file cabinet for the movie, and the portions of each drawer dedicated to filing the possibilites for each 'location'. Now, this is all digital...but I need to really file everything the same way.

I've been pretty happy with Smugmug as a host. Go take a look. I'll wait.

OK, so you can see that the first page you entered on consists of one link for each show or commercial. Click on a show, and you go to a page filled with categories (the different sets we need to find). Click further onto a category and you see what's been scouted so far for that set.

That all works fairly well, but I'm finding myself stymied by a few things at Smugmug.

1. It really doesn't look all that professional. It's pretty utilitarian looking and, although useful, it's not terribly impressive to look at.

2. The system of categories and sub categories (the movie itself and the specific sets being scouted), is good, as far as it goes, but I've had a number of ocassions where I would have liked the opportunity to create a sub-sub-category.

3. PicLens works on Smugmug. That's an awesomely wonderfully beauteous thing. (I keep telling you about PicLens and you don't have it yet? It's an add-on for Firefox. It's a free download. It's the best way to go through photofiles online that I've ever seen. Go get it already.)
Anyway, the problem is that PicLens, apparently works off of feeds, so it's disabled on any files that are password protected. Since I don't want to put pictures of hundreds of peoples homes online with all of their private contact information, obviously I need to password protect certain files. But I'd still like people with the password, (including me) to be able to use PicLens to view the files.

So here's the query: Are any of you willing/able to:

A. Tell me how to make Smugmug do the things I want it to?

or B. Tell me of another host that will do the things I want?

or C. Take on the job of designing a page for me that will do the things I want?

Some other requirements for my page are:

• I need to be able to give access to people working for me to post to the site and otherwise administer(?) it. (.mac is linked directly to my hard drive, so anyone can post there...they just have to do it from my computer...not an option).
• I have to make it so that each job can be found at one URL and only require one unique password for anything protected on that job. (On any movie, there are anywhere between 10 and 20 people who need regular access to the files and navigating it needs to be a simple as possible.)
• People using the site, need to have access to the full sized jpg's so that they can print copies.
  

Unlike my blogging activities, which I refuse to pay for, I'd be happy to pay for a design and to pay for wherever it ends up hosted, since this is my job after all. Having said that, I also might find that I can't afford what I really want, which would really put the kibosh on things, wouldn't it. I'm sure I'd have more wishes/requirements than what I've thought of here, but we could get into that later.

Comments anyone?