John Q. Phats Entertainment

You may have noticed that the web site was down for a bit.  Sorry about that.  When I realized that the site was displaying a bunch of code I immediately called my web designer, Alyssa.  Then I asked Jed to see if he could fix it, because he knows everything.  I’m pretty sure my hosting company spilled a cup of coffee on a server or something, because we didn’t do shit.  Alyssa figured it out, and we’re back up and running now.  Yay!  We’ve been working on Nice Guys Finish Last a lot.  The aftermath of the film festival is settling in.  Where am I after the film festival?  Right back where I was before the film festival.  Like I figured.  So, right back to it I suppose.  After Nice Guys Finish Last, I’ll be writing a series called Dead Girl.  I’ll still stay active with posting, but you won’t hear much about me working on short films.  We might shoot a pilot for the series, but one thing that I need is focus.  This weekend we should be shooting some stuff for Nice Guys Finish Last.  Not the big bad ass restaurant scene, but some other scenes.

So, last Sunday, I got caught unprepared.  Seriously, that’s what happened, I fucked up.  I wanted to shoot a scene in a restuarant.  Let me tell you the mess that ensued.  We were going to shoot one of the restaurant scenes for Nice Guys Finish Last.  So, I had a small crew together and no extras but for whatever the reason, I didn’t care.  Well, crew bailed on me.  Turns out the ride for most the crew ended up getting drunk in Corona.  Regardless, I wasn’t ready at all.  I hadn’t tested shit.  So I figured “hey, I can make this my test day.”  So, I’m setting up the lights to test them out and realize that I left the god damned power chords at my house.  That’s alright, I can test the boom mic and my new shock mount.  Not so fast, remember, I’m what some people refer to as “legally retarded.”  I left the boom mic (XLR) chord at my house too.  If I were another person, I would have punched myself square in the balls.  Believe it or not this all turned out to be a good thing.  It really made me think to myself “What the hell am I doing here?”  This restaurant scene is pretty hard core and requires a lot of prep work.  I think I got caught up in the excitement of Censored’s appearance at the film festival…..  Which is tomorrow.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still insanely excited about it, but these past 3 days have been a frantic mess of me trying to get my shit together for Nice Guys Finish Last.  I’m starting to get a handle on everything though.  We are actually shooting a few small scenes tomorrow night.  Which, I’m totally prepared for.  I’m through dicking around, Sunday was a wake up call.  Yes it’s exciting that Censored is playing at a film festival, but after the festival, I’m back to square one.  So, I have to start taking this thing seriously.
P.S. One last plug for my short film playing in the Los Angeles United Film Festival.  It’s $10.00 to get in and we are playing with a movie called Unfinished Documentary on Masturbation.  I hope to see you guys there.  You can buy tickets here:
Lot Angeles United Film Festival- Tickets

Alright, so this was the week of prep.  I’ve been letting everyone know that Censored will be showing at the Los Angeles United Film Festival and working on Nice Guys Finish Last.  I’ve made some calls and it’s looking like if I can pull my head out of my ass I can probably organize a shoot next Sunday.  The fact that Censored got selected for a film festival is a huge distraction for me.  I’ve been kind of fixated on it. 
There’s some other interesting stuff playing at the festival.  Me and my room mate are going to see Super High Me.  This comedian did an experiment where he smoked pot for 30 days and then didn’t smoke pot for 30 days.  I’m not a pot head or anything, but this sounds amazingly funny and interesting.
Apparently the big deal of the festival is The Shark is Still Working.  It’s a documentary about how the movie Jaws has helped to shape common elements of pop culture.  They sold out the first night so they arranged to have like 3 more nights of that same movie.  I’m not really that interested in it, but it does look kind of phenomenal.  
Fagbug is another movie that caught my eye.  It’s a documentary about a girl that was a victim of a hate crime.  The title makes me giggle.
Seriously, there are like 20 movies playing at this film festival.  I’m a little overloaded, I’m not sure what to do.  Do I go to all of them or just the ones that really interest me?  I am kind of curious about the number of documentaries being screened.  Is this like an independent film thing?  Is it just cheap and easy (like a whore) to do a documentary or something?  I’ve never really had an urge to shoot a documentary about anything.  Nice Guys Finish Last is a mockumentary.  That’s about as close as I’ve come though. 
P.S. Sorry about the somewhat shitty post.  I’m not really sure what to say today.

Gabe was able to work on Stuck a little bit and make it better.  I’m starting to get the ball rolling on Nice Guys Finish Last.  I’m going to try and get together with Chris and Caine sometime this week to film something for you guys.  But no more of this split screen shit.  Seriously, I’m tired of editing like that, I’m also tired of Chris moving the God damned beer right before the last freaking shot.
Gabe says that my audio sounds like a porno.  I’m glad he sees the direction I’m going with this.  When it comes to audio, I have absolutely no clue what the hell I’m doing.  I put the thingy on the end of the thingy, plug it in to the thingy, and then hang the thingy over the scene and pray that it works.  The main problem is, is that I’m picking up more then the audio from the actor or actors on screen.  I’m getting a lot of background noise.  I think I record with the levels to high. 
“Yeah, fuck it, red bars means it’s working……Right?”
Anyway, it needs some work.  I’ll probably film some tests this weekend.

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’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.

So, I’ve always had a difficult time getting music for short films.  Red Hood is no different.  I feel like all I’m missing is a music composer.  I know that’s a tall order, but whatever.  Music is a total mystery to me still, but I think I’m starting to come around.  After spending a couple days listening to soundtracks I’m starting to get a grasp for what I like.  I think I know a guy that knows a guy that does music.  That’s the way this sort of works though.  It’s cool to meet people like that.  I think I want to get involved in an acting class or something to meet some more actors.  Plus as a director I think it would give me a lot of insight on how actors work.
Gabe showed me some of the footage that he’s working on.  It’s insanely awesome looking.

Gabe showed me a bad ass intro that he made for Red Hood today.  I’ll post it soon.  It wasn’t exactly what he wanted though.  So, we are going to get some more footage and work on it some more.  Really, there’s no reason for us to settle.  I don’t want things to be just “good enough” anymore.  I want to get past that.  I want to do a short film where everything is absolutely how I wanted it.  So far, Red Hood is shaping up to be just that.   
Ever since I dumped that big chunk of footage off for Gabe I haven’t even looked at Red Hood.  There’s only one more small scene to work on.  Last night me and my room mate were talking about that big scene that I dropped off for Gabe, my room mate jokingly said “I bet you could recite that entire scene word for word.”  It’s a huge chunk of dialogue and I did it like it was no problem.  That’s kind of scary, but I guess that’s what happens. 
Nice Guys Finish Last is still there.  I’m just having trouble juggling Red Hood, the web site, and Nice Guys Finish Last.  One thing at a time I suppose.  Although, my work flow works in a very weird way.  Most of the time, I’m working on three or four things at a time.  When writing my last post, I was working on Red Hood, writing an E-Mail, and writing the web entry all at the same time.  I had Premier Pro, Internet Explorer, & Outlook all running at the same time and I was cycling between the three of them.  I would write one or two things in the E-Mail, go back to editing, think of something to say and switch back to the web site, which would remind me of something to say in the e-mail, so I would go back to the e-mail.  Then I would switch back to Premier and that’s how it went for 2-3 hours.  Why I choose to do things that way is beyond me.  I would think that I would end up confusing myself at some point, but nope, that’s how it always goes.  This time, I decided to focus on one thing at a time.  Although, I am keeping the hockey game in the corner of my eye while I write this.  Speaking of hockey I heard they are working on a remake of Slap Shot.  One of the greatest hockey movies of all times.  I don’t know why they chose to try and perfect perfection, but I’m still interested to see what they come up with.  The scene where one of the Hanson brothers jumps in to the stands and starts a riot in the stands is one of my favorite scenes of all time.  I’m not one of those people that worries if the remake is going to suck.  If it sucks, it sucks.  I’ll still have the original.

So, apparently Gabe is working out something amazing for the title effects of Red Hood.  I’m not sure what yet, but all I know is that I need to get some shots of black blood on a white background for him this weekend.  Sometimes, I don’t really understand what I’m doing, but I just do it.  After showing my most recent Red Hood cut to a friend, she made a slight suggestion.  I’m content with this cut, in fact I kind of like this cut, but she brought up a good point.  So I’m going to make 3 different cuts of the scene and let Gabe pick one and then go from there.  I know me.  I’ll fall in love with all three of them and then if one of them isn’t as good as the other two I’ll start thinking about how I can make it better.  There’s still a lot of work to be done on it, but it’s getting there.
Soon Censored will be up on the site.  Censored is the short film that will not die.  Well, it’s partially my fault.  It’s sort of like the ex girlfriend that calls you at 3AM on a Thursday to “talk” every once in awhile.  The problem is, I think it’s an amazing concept.  As I get better at film making, I want to make it better.  I’ve shot it twice and edited this most recent one twice.  Not like, I had two cuts, no.  Like, I said “fuck it”, deleted everything, and started over.  It’s a long story, but basically, the files got all messed up and misplaced.  One day I spent like 2 hours trying to fix it and couldn’t.  So that was that.  So, will I shoot censored a third time?  Probably, not, but lets just say that I sleep with my phone right next to my bed every night.    
Caine said something that was God damned brilliant today.  We were talking about dating women you work with and I said my usual line of “don’t shit where you eat.”  Caine responded with “I know, but I’m really hungry.”  It was his delivery that made it.  He just had this “I’m going to rape you” glare in his eyes when he said it.  I could write an entire movie on that response alone.  Hell, I could probably squeeze 3-4 sequels out of it.  I saw a porno title the other day called Butt Motor 8.  I’m not really sure what could be so special about a butt motor, but apparently it takes 8 movies to figure that out.

So, tonight in my eyes was a big night.  I’ll tell you why.  Editing a short film involves me watching it at least 100 times and making corrections based off of what I like or don’t like.  Around the 100th time, it becomes a bit abstract just because I’ve watched it so much.  Sort of like if you say 1 word a lot of times in a row.  It just becomes moving colors and sounds.  So, editing it this morning when I started to hit that point, a friend of mine came over and got a fresh set of eyes on it.  I didn’t really watch the short film, I just watched her reaction.  I seem to have gotten the reaction that I wanted.  So I went out for a bit and when I came back I watched it again.  For the first time in editing, I thought to myself “I really like this.”  On top of that, Casey, the sound guy told me about how he would love to do some audio work on it.  His enthusiasm really put a smile on my face.  I can see Gabe getting a bit antsy to mess with the effects.  It seems like every day he asks me “Are you done editing it yet?”  I’m absolutely thrilled that so many people are as excited about this project as I am.  I can’t wait to show everyone the final product.
On another note.  I may have gotten a Producer for my next short film titled “Do Nice Guys Finish Last?”  She read the script and said she thought it was hysterical and seems very excited about it.  I mean a real producer too.  Not just a friend who’s name I put in the credits to create a false sense of competence on my part.  Mostly it’s been like “Hey you, you want to be producer?”  One of the locations is a restaurant.  Not an easy thing to shoot in if you have a budget of, you know, nothing.  But, I’ve made shit like this work before and I’ll find a way to make it work again.  Bottom line is I’ll either find a restaurant that will be nice enough to let me shoot for free, or I’ll raise enough money to pay a restaurant to be able to shoot there.