John Q. Phats Entertainment

Well, Alyssa made the new shorts section live yesterday.  Like I said in the previous post, you might not be able to tell the difference, but it makes it so that I can post videos whenever I want.  Rather then having to bug Alyssa, I can do it all on my own now. 
With the new shorts section came two new short films.  Censored & A John Q. Phats Introduction.  Coming soon, should be something I’ve code named Dimensions and possibly the Red Hood short.  I’m not sure if I want to post Red Hood or not.  I’ll probably argue with myself for a bit about it and then end up posting it anyway.  Might as well I suppose.  I don’t know, we’ll see.

Big things happening with the web site this Monday.  While it won’t be noticeable, the Shorts section is getting an overhaul.  From now on, I’ll be able to add short films to the web site whenever I want.  Rather then having to bug Alyssa, burn her a CD, and then have her add it, I can just upload it to Vimeo, hack the Gibson, and post the video to my web site.    With the updated page will come two new short films and hopefully a steady flow of stuff from here on out.  I’ll keep you all updated.

So, we are reshooting the split screen stuff that I screwed in the face.  In order for this method to work, everything has to stay the same.  The props can’t move and the camera can’t move.  So, we are getting ready for the LAST shot and Chris casually sits down, grabs the beer on the table that he’s not supposed to move and just sort of holds it just for the hell of it.  I see what he’s doing and yell “Chis!  You’re not supposed to move that beer!”  He realizes what he’s done, looks at it, and then quickly puts it back.  Only at that point it was too late. 
Caine went in to denial:
“No!  That won’t matter!  It’s fine!”
Chris tried to fix it:
“We can look at the old footage and line it up!  It’s fine!”
I just put my face in to my hands and said the one thing that is appropriate for every screw up on the planet:
“Fuck!  God damn it Chris!”
Then they all accepted it. 
Caine said:
“No…..we…….can………Shit.”
Chris Said:
“I swear to God we can fix it!  We just have to line it up!  We can………..Shit.”
Then I said:
“…….Alright, lets do the first scene…….  Again……..  Thanks to Chris!”
All in all though it actually worked to our advantage.  I had gone through the adjustments and everything by that point and everyone knew what they were supposed to do.  So we pretty much shot the entire thing all over again in roughly 30 minutes.  Pretty much every shot was done in one take.  Plus now I have something to hold over Chris’s head for the rest of his God damned life.  Even though, I think the takes after the fuck up were better then the other ones, it’s still something I can get on his case about.

So, yeah, I totally screwed one of my short films in the face.  We are experimenting a lot with split screen stuff trying to make 2 shots seem like one.  It works great, the only thing is, you can’t move the camera an inch between shots.  If you do, the two shots don’t line up.  Not sure how it happened, but somehow the camera got moved between shots.  I honestly hate being camera man and director all at the same time.  It’s way too much work.  What I need is a midget and a step ladder so the midget can reach the camera.  That will be my next purchase. 
I got my light kit!  It’s small, but really decent.  They don’t look like much, but when you turn them on it’s like a bookakalypse of sunlight.  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this or not, but my camera is named Div.  My nick name for it because part of it’s model number is “DVX.”  Not sure how I got Div out of that, but whatever.  My boom mic is named Awd.  Short for “Audio.”  So, I needed a name for my light kit.  Caine came up with Rah.  Named after the sun God.  I name all of my equipment.  Yes, I even have a name for THAT equipment.  It’s named Carl’s Jr.  You’ll find that the slogan “If it doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t belong in your face” works quite nicely with it.
Getting back on track though, I need a room mate that has no social life that knows how to work a camera.  That would be perfect. 

P.S. Can you believe “bookakalypse” wasn’t in Words spelling dictionary?!  Bastards!  I should write them a letter!

So, I was able to raise some money and will be buying a light kit soon.  Probably sometime next week.  Lately, what’s been holding me up on some projects is that the shooting schedules are all over the place.  To rent lights for that many individual days would be insane.  I could probably buy a set of lights for the amount that it would cost to rent them for that many days.  The way it works is, you could pick up a rental on a Friday, then keep them for the entire weekend, and only get charged for a one day rental (roughly $200).  (more…)

So, I’m sort of waiting to buy a light kit.  Renting it for shoots has become too much of a pain in the ass.  Especially for really long scripts where scenes are spaced out.  I’m waiting for my tax return to come and I’m also looking in to starting up an LLC.  That way I could formulate a business plan and write equipment off on my taxes.  Which I have to say, would sort of rule.  In the mean time, I’m going to looking in to shooting some simplistic stuff just to keep myself busy and give everyone (all three of you) that frequents this site something new to look at.  I have to say, regardless of how busy or not busy this site gets, I still love it.  I should be shooting something this weekend, even if it’s incredibly stupid.

No, that’s not a new short film I’m working on.  Vimeo is a video hosting sight that’s better than Youtube (in my opinion).  The embed looks better and the full screen looks better.  You can see its use right now on Bad Girlfriend and Not Walter in the Shorts section.  Alyssa finished the web site and it looked great but the difficult side of said “I want them to be able to go full screen.”  So, she found a solution.  Vimeo.  I actually kind of despise Youtube and have taken all the videos on my web site off of my Youtube account.  Vimeo is great so far.  The only probelm is, is that Vimeo gives you a certain amount of space that you’re allowed to use per week.  It resets every Sunday at midnight to 500 MB.  So, I haven’t been able to add all of my videos just yet.  I’m working on it though.  It will probably be another week or so.  Once I get them all up, all the videos should be able to go full screen. 
Have I mentioned that I love this web site?  I’m not sure if anyone reads it, but screw that, I get my two cents in.
I saw The Watchmen yesterday and I’ll probably see it again at some point.  It was amazing.  I think my favorite thing about a Zack Snyder movie is that he’s not afraid to go a little nuts with the stylization.  Like in 300 it’s the same for The Watchmen.  Crazy stylization.  I love it.  It’s something different.

So, I just finished writing the first draft of Dead Girl.  It’s 13 pages long.  The thing is, there’s really no closure to it.  I could really see it becoming a series though.  In fact I ended it thinking just that.  I’ll be honest, when I first started writing this I had no clue about the characters.  I just had a vision of the first shot.  But through the script they really started to develop.  I had to keep going back and rewriting segments to fit the development of the characters, but it worked.  Now I have two very interesting characters that bounce off each other.  And they already have such a good connection to each other.  I’m kind of surprised actually.  Those 13 pages came like nothing.  It was kind of weird.  I looked up and all of a sudden had 10 with no sign of stopping.  It’s ambitious, but screw it, since when did that stop me?  I’ll keep you guys updated.  This may be my next thing after Nice Guys Finish Last.