Hey everyone it's Brantman! We really are having a lot of fun creating this "youtube" thing. In my blog today I want to take you behind the scenes for a bit and share some of our secrets and growing pains involved with bringing you - "MovieSocks!"

Many of you are already aware that we have had our share of obstacles in getting this up and going, but you might not know just how hard it's been. When we first started back in March of this year ('08), we had a brand new Canon HD camcorder and an idea of doing movie reviews from home... We thought we were set, I mean who wouldn't want to come watch us talk about movies right? Well, we started with the ready, fire, aim philosophy ringing in our ears because we really didn't know what we were doing. In fact, we thought that our idea of posting movie reviews in a home setting was completely original and had never been tapped before...Man, we were wrong! There are literally hundreds of people that do the same thing on Youtube...Our work was cut out for us. As we filmed the first episode (Vantage Point movie review) from my family room in my home we discovered that we truly were a straight-up cure for insomnia!...Something had to change if we really wanted to get viewers and subscribers. You may notice in that first video that we even called our show Movie Critical with Brant and Brindy, but as we talked it out with each other and our Dad (who at the time was our trusty director/camera-man) we thought it was better to take the criticism out of it because we really are movie lovers and not critics! As we started filming the next couple of episodes for the movie 10,000 BC and the preview review for the new Incredible Hulk movie we took a totally different approach and I started introducing props and more humor to spice it up some...It worked! Brindy instinctively new how to go along with me and instantly the competitive, teasing relationship that we already had leapt out and into the videos.

While all of this was taking shape we needed the videos to be well lit and edited, we never even had a consistent camera person( one day it was our dad another day our sister another day our tripod we call Larry). So I went to Home Depot and bought some outdoor contractor lights on a stand and that is really all we have had for lighting from the beginning till the present. I started with an editing software 30 day trial and learned how to edit basic videos...When I watch those early videos I still cringe a little at the quality of editing, but after 26 videos I am getting the hang of it and love doing it (by the way that 30 day trial has lasted more than 150 days and has been on more than 7 computers). We needed music to start and end with, so I started putting the minus tracks of some of my original music in the videos, but it really wasn't suited for our show, so eventually I bought a ripping software so that I could implement sound and video from other youtube videos. Now I use the exact music from the trailers for every review that we do...I have spent countless hours editing these videos and trying to take 2-5 minutes out of the 30 + we have on film. It is so hard to choose between jokes and different takes because there is so much good material.

I can still remember telling Brindy that I didn't want to approach any movie theaters about getting in to seeing the premiers until we had at least 5,000 hits. well, we are almost at 60,000 hits and we still haven't done it. We would always go and see the matinee' movies during the day together because of lack of funds, and now we just go see them individually and then get together to record (mostly because Brindy dates so much and I'm not aloud to go with them to see the movies)!

Even with the lack of money and editing skills we managed to pull it off and even land a couple of sponsors for our videos: Blemblaster.com and Dailymingle.com and for a while everything seemed to be going great until the incident. Brindy had taken the HD camera to California with her to record a cousins wedding and in the process it overheated!....No!!! It was not working at all for several weeks. We didn't know what to do, we couldn't just go out and spend another $1,000.00 to buy a new one and we didn't want to use a regular digital camera because the difference in quality is significant. Miraculously (in a Moviesockulous way) it started to work but the focus and the zoom didn't, all of this was going on during the time we needed to film the Dark Knight Review. We were having a lot of success with our Dark Knight preview review where i dressed up like the joker but we still couldn't fix the dang camera. We finally got the focus to work a little but the zoom still wouldn't so we filmed the batman and joker Blemblaster commercials to test it out and see if we could get anything worth posting. It turned out that they were worth every bit of hasstle because a couple of weeks after we posted the two videos we had over 25,000 hits just on those two videos. Little by little the camera started returning to normal functionality and we recorded the Quantum of Solace and twilight preview reviews...The first moviesocks reviews we had done in weeks! We also posted a couple more Blemblaster commercials in hopes of getting some additional funding to cover our expenses.

We are currently trying to plan our next moves as far as our website goes. We got on to purchase Moviesocks.com the other day and to our dismay it was not available...bought at the end of may 2008! We pretty much know that someone saw us on Youtube and bought it to blackmail us for several thousand dollares!!! We are deliberating several alternative names so stay tuned so that you can come hang out on the website when it launches here before the end of the year...It will not be moviesocks.com; however, it might be a blessing in disguise because we are implementing so many new facets to our channel (music, spoofs, commercials etc.) that it might be good to not strap ourselves into the "MOViEsocks" Label. We are much more than that. It has been so interesting to watch this evolve over the last few months and I know this is only the primitive beginning of what it will eventually become!

Well as a final notice to all of my fans, my blond hair is no more!!! It is my natural beautiful brown again and it will be cut as soon as our New Harry Potter Spoof is completed this week, so I'm sorry to those that liked it long, or blond...And I'm sorry to those that hated it while it was that way for the filming of our last several videos. I also want to say that I will be doing those type of things a lot because I consider myself a serious actor and I like to get into my roles!

Thanks for watching and reading here at our Blog and we will Sock ya later!

BRANT

Our First Blog

Brant and I are so excited to have a blog! We hope that you can refer to our blog for more information on upcoming movies and other MovieSocks updates. We've never blogged before but our Aunt Pam called me last week to say that blogging would be a great way to spread the MovieSocks word. I decided to give it a try. It's exciting to see our success on youtube and to track our daily growth. Brant gets so excited and I am constantly getting messages saying things like, "Congratulations on 50,000 views!" I love spending time with my brother, and best friend and filming our MovieSocks reviews has been a blast!

Brant and I grew up watching movies and running around the house playing dress-up! I was always the side-kick! Brant was always yelling things like, "To the Batcave Robin!" As teenagers we didn't get to spend as much time together. After Brant got married it was even harder to make time to hang out. But when we were together we were always talking about movies. I'm not sure who had the idea for MovieSocks first, but Brant approached me with the youtube concept. I had considered how fun it would be and how great we would be at it, but Brant made the concept a reality! When he told me his idea I said,"I had the same idea!" I give Brant the credit. But I came up with the name! I think.

We've had so much fun and have loved having an excuse to get together! I think Brant likes the camera more than spending time with me, but whatever. We laugh so hard while we watch our reviews and whether or not we make it big we both agree it's been one of the greatest experiences of our lives!

I just love turning on the camera and watching Brant improv! It's so funny to go back and see what just came out. We never plan ahead I think my favorite example of this is on our Twilight video! You'll just have to watch it.

We hope you enjoy our reviews! I think the blog will be a great way to get to know the story behind MovieSocks and stay updated on upcoming movies!

Brindy
MovieSocks