A second Brazilian publisher gave Paulo Coelho and The Alchemist another shot.Īs Coelho would later write, the fate of the book proved the book’s recurring theme of “when you want something, the whole universe conspires to help you.” Another local publishing house agreed to back the book. Why? Because it was me in there, all of me, heart and soul. But I never lost faith in the book or ever wavered in my vision. In a new foreword written in 2014, Coelho explained his situation after his publisher dropped The Alchemist: “I was 41 and desperate. Paulo Coelho kept faith that The Alchemist would be successful. Coelho later wrote that his publisher told him, “This title will never sell more than 900 copies.” After that tiny first run, the book went out of print, and Coelho got to keep the rights to the novel. When a small Brazilian publisher took a chance on The Alchemist in 1988, it hedged its bets by only printing 900 copies. The book’s journey to becoming a commercial juggernaut almost reads like its own Coelho story.
The writing may have been fast, but success came very slowly. The Alchemist was not an instant success. In 2009 the author explained to The Guardian’s Hannah Pool that he was able to write The Alchemist so quickly because, as he put it, “The book was already written in my soul.” 2. Paulo Coelho only needed to weeks to write The Alchemist. Here are a few things you may not know about the literary blockbuster. I run the images through a batch encoder with Irfanview to get rid of black borders on the image, rename the files, and conform them to jpg.Ħ.Brazilian author Paulo Coelho’s allegorical novel of a Spanish shepherd has inspired millions of readers to set out searching for their own personal treasures. and bring down the number of stills to my 60-65 golden number.ĥ. I go through the folder again (immediately)looking at the frames on large preview and try and remove frames that replicate a certain lighting style or framing. I’m then left with usually around 80-100 really interesting frames. I view all the frames as a slideshow and I remove any frame that there are doubles of (someone might be blinking in first frame and normal in second) or remove any that seem less interesting this time around.Ĥ.
So the next step is to edit, usually there might be a week or 2 between the first grab and this edit stage. This usually leaves me with around 200-250 frames per film. Depending on mood I could spend a few hours just doing the grabbingģ. I watch through the movies on VLC, usually between 3x and 4x speed while listening to podcasts, grabbing any frame that interests me.
i try to keep a mix of styles.genres/directors and DP’s so I dont get bored while working.Ģ. Make a to do pile, its a combination of recommendations, stuff Ive been enjoying myself, stuff I want to rewatch…. Hi Arturo, Ive considered having a donate button, but I feel bad for asking for money, maybe I’ll post an amazon wishlist so people can contribute in that way sending me movies I want to feature on the site.ġ.