Month: October 2003

Ten Years of My Life
Web link of note: Ten Years of My Life
(At http://tenyearsofmylife.com/)

Web link of note: CA Microsoft Settlement
(At http://www.microsoftcalsettlement.com)

15 of the 22 films qualified for contest entry… all 22 groups turned something in!

Group A

• nemesis of the mind ( I think?) was the Noir, and pretty good- the first 20 seconds were exactly like a hard-boiled detective noir. It sort of slid a little from there… also the festival dorks accidentally chopped the ending!


• Wax Romantix was really damn funny. The Latina girlfriend was amazing, her delivery (and I’m assuming improvisation) was hysterical. I need to send her fan mail.
• The musical (damn what was it called?) was great and shot really well. It was a little long for me though…

Group B reviews below.

• Strong Hand– how was this even a Western? It had a gypsy fortune teller in it. Maybe that’s how they were disqualified? It was very pretty though, I think they must have boosted the color in post production. Directed by Angel Vasquez of Single Frame Alliance.
• Face the Music was this group’s Noir- it was basically nonsensical and sadistic, with the main character (a sax player) tying up the smoky mystery woman while she sobbed. Lame. (D.V.I.)
• Waiting with Shuhorne was the Romance offering from Bad Squirrel, and I have to say it was one of the best directed of all the entries (including mine!). It was three people waiting in a video dating waiting room- the dorky misfit Ronld Shuhorne (not a typo!), the incredibly bitchy loft-woman played by the director, and the wigger Hugh Simon, Bouncer.
• Donuts are Forever was a close second on this batch- a Spy movie exactly like 007. All his weapons are donuts, and he fights Dofeld, a evil genius who strokes a pet donut. One of Dofeld’s minions decapitates someone with a vinyl record thrown like a frisbee, or a hat say.
• The Best Plastic in the World had to be the most half-assed, but it was suprisingly good. It was in the Fantasy genre, and consisted mainly of this woman showing off her giant Tupperware collection. Then, in the last 30 seconds, they tossed in all the required elements without even tying them into the movie. Some of her pieces are totally insane, including a cup caddy, and at one point she crams a vinyl record in one of the larger bowls. Towards the end she imagines herself in bed with all her Tupperware. Done by Zip-pow Films.
• Flight of the Icarus (Club Waller) was a mockumentary which integrated the Red Bull Flügtag. They seemed to have their own plane ready. So my question is, what would they have done if they didn’t pick Mockumentary? Or did they really build it in the 48 hours? They never show the plane going into the ocean in the actual event, so maybe it wasn’t really entered!
• Fancy Coffee Drink (God Called and He Wants His Talent Back) was a Comedy about a New Jersey man trying to act like a SF native. It had a musical number and a romantic theme, which is VERY suspicious to me- like they wrote it in advance.

How fricken crazy would this be?
The Extreme Filmmaker 48 hour thing is coming up:

Well, the Summer Screening may be over, but it’s not too early to start thinking about your next film! The next festival is scheduled for February 28, 2004, with a submission deadline of February 6.

Just the thought of it makes me want to go to sleep.

Whenever I hear that phrase I think of 12 Monkeys.

But I’m not talking about releasing zoo animals or destroying human civilization. I’m talking about the 48 Hour Film Project and our entry, “Xtremely Xtreme,” showing tonight at 7pm and 9:30 at the Roxie Theater in SF, and again at 7pm on Wednesday.

The rules for the 48 Hour Film Project in summary:

• Your finished movie has to be 5-10 minutes in length
• you have to write, shoot, and edit in the 48 hour time period
• you have to include the required elements in your short: in the 2003 San Francisco we had:
  • a vinyl record
  • the character Hugh Simon, Bouncer
  • the line “I was lied to, and very much deceived“
• You have to match the genre you pull out of a hat on Friday. Our group got “Mockumentary” and my friend Sam got “Horror.” Personally I was scared to death of “Musical” but as it turns out they merged it with “Western” so you could do either.

Soooo…. we did it. Ben Hardie, my brother Kirby and I developed the story we came up with (based on our required elements) on Friday night. Hardie and I had a finished script around 11 pm, and wrote our schedule for the next day.

We started shooting at around 8 am on Saturday, and shot until about 1 am Sunday. I took a nap-break and then at 6 am I started editing… by this time I was basically a zombie, but enough infrastructure was in place that let me be on autopilot. At around 10 am Kirby, Matt, Ben Scott, and Hardie came over to shoot coverage shots, and Tom to finish the music and integrate it into the rough cut. Dy was slaving away on the credits (easy) and the reality show titles (not so easy).

I’ll log more later… it’s still too close to remember half of what we did. Shac is totally sick now, and I am barely awake as I go in to work. Our premiere is tonight! Woooo!

SAM: so we made the competition
SAM: i mean
SAM: the exhibition
SAM: but not the competition
SAM: pinnacle sucks ass
SAM: we lost the entire edit at 5 PM
SAM: so we had to recut
SAM: it came out nice htough
BRIAN: oh my god that sucks so hard
SAM: yes
SAM: yes it does

…

SHAC: holy crap!
BRIAN: yeah!
SHAC: thats like… monitor-punching level frustration

Continuing on my
observations from the shoot/edit:

• we need a slate. It speeds up editing a LOT.
• If we had both a slate and
  a PA writing down the tape counter readings for
  all the takes, and a check next to the ones the director said were “good,”
  we could have someone loading the clips onto the editing machine while the production is still going. About a third of the time I spent editing this one was getting the clips from the tape onto the machine. This process would give us the DV equivalent of “dailies,” and we would know if there are bad takes while we were still running around shooting. So notice that process actually needs three additional crew- one to note the counter times at the shoot, one to get the samples into the machine, and another to run the tapes back and forth. Ideally you’d have a fourt person doing the slate, but I’m thinking that could be a member of the cast.
• More than one unit (camera, lights, sound and associated crew). I’m a little undecided on this one… it would have been very helpful to get people doing the individual interviews in parallel, but then I don’t have a control over the look of the shot. Maybe if I explicitly storyboarded the shot in extreme shot detail?

Something that’s really interesting: we shot this thing yesterday, all day- it felt like it was 3 am when it was only 8 pm. After a while I wasn’t really paying attention to the script… So much so that reviewing the footage now, I realise we completely missed a very crucial line… thank goodness for “covereage!”

Since we had one male character actor and three female, and the male was the central character, all the girls needed better parts. But to do that, we made them all pretty unpleasant- and all based on really cartoony people I’ve actually known. I’m hoping the effect is not too misogynistic.

• having a camera operator makes it easier for the director to line up the shot and monitor the take
• You need a crew member for every major man-sized piece of equipment- 2 lights, a tripod and a sound boom = 4 crew
• Having someone on “continuity” would be nice- a crew whose sole job is to write down the tape counter at the beginning of each take, marking if the director thought it was “good.” After the shoot at a given location, this continuity person would review the footage for that shot (about 3 min?) to make sure every line was covered.
• Actors: read the line. Think of what it means, what you would think if someone said this to you. Now think about why it makes you think this. Remember the facts of the line. NOW say the line, as the character.

The Mirror Project. People photographing themselves in mirrors. Kind of asinine.
Web link of note: The Mirror Project
(At http://mirrorproject.com/)