John Q. Phats Entertainment

I watched 2 episodes of Science of the Movies last night.  That show is a big reminder of what I don’t have access to.  One episode was all about different moveable camera mounts.  There was this gigantic camera mount that had 12 points of axis that you could program to do motions over and over again.  It’s basically so you can layer two shots on top of each other.  Since the motion of two shots match perfectly, the two shots together look seamless.  I honestly had no clue that’s how it was done.  All of my split screen shorts were pretty much that, minus the motion.  I didn’t realize it, but I kind of stumbled on the early meathod of special effects.  That’s kind of cool.  I find that I do that a lot actually.  It’s kind of weird.  I don’t know if I hear about it somewhere else and subconsciously make myself feel like I thought of it, or if I really do come up with concepts that just happen to match what’s already out there. 
I am meeting with a script writer today to discuss Project X.  By spreading the word through my contacts, I’ve actually got some people interested.  Now all I need is a roughly $5000, an HD Camera, locations, equipment, skill, and food.  Huh.  Anyway, yeah, I’m going to be focusing on that.  It’s tough to juggle everything though.  Nice Guys Finish Last is almost done.  That’s going to need to go out to festivals and Censored is still going.  By the way, I submitted to something a while back called the SoCal Film Festival.  I really hope I get accepted to that.  That would be awesome.  Mainly because they would be holding it right near my house.  I could probably go to every night of that if I wanted to.  It’s literally a 10 minute drive vs an hour+ drive to the festivals Censored has been accepted to.  I would really like Censored to screen somewhere outside of California.  Don’t ask me why, I just think it would be cool.   Every time you get accepted to a festival they send you these little acceptance things:

Like that guy right there.  I suppose can put those on the DVD’s that I send out to other festivals as sort of a selling point.  Imagine if I get selected for all 4 of the other festivals I entered?  That will be 7 total.  That will look kind of insane.  You also get one if you’ve been nominated for or win an award at a festival.  Strictly Background had like a bajillion acceptance ones and 6 Best Documentary Award winners.  These things are actually called Laurels.  Every festival does them.  At least as far as I can tell, every festival does one.  I think they are kind of official and regal looking.  It’s kind of neat to have these.  Sort of like a digital trophy.  Hopefully when Nice Guys Finish Last is done it gets it’s own collection of them.

EDIT(7/29/2009- 3:32PM) – I just got an acceptance E-mail from the SoCal Film Festival.  That kicks so much ass.  I’ll give you guys all the details in tomorrows post.

Is anyone planning on going to the AOF ?  I think I’m going to check it out tonight.  I’m not sure what I’m going to see, but I’ll see something.  The first night I went we got a huge bag of SWAG.  Everyone loves SWAG.  Lets face it, if it’s free, someone will take it.  There’s a sign near my house advertising free dirt.  Anyway, the SWAG was mainly postcards of other short films.  There was a ton of them.  In the mix was also a DVD for a movie called Long Pig: Unrated Extreme Edition.  I’m going to take a guess here and say that it’s probably amazingly gory.  An independent film that’s unrated.  O yeah, there’s going to be some crazy gore in it.  I’ve seen some pretty intense stuff.  I really feel like, if I can watch Irreversible, I can probably make it through anything.  It’s not that Irreversible was gory, it was just hard to watch because of the context of it.  That movie was unrelentingly brutal.  I’m reading reviews of Long Pigs now.  Apparently, there’s an “anus scene.”  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  Revolted and curious at the same time I suppose.  I’m not much of a horror buff, but maybe I’ll check it out.  Or I’ll give it to my neighbor to check out.  He loves gory films. 
Gabe should be bringing my hard drive tonight with the scene we shot last Thursday for Nice Guys Finish Last added.  I really wanted Nice Guys Finish Last to be under 15 minutes.  I bet it’s probably going to run a little over 16 minutes.  Which isn’t bad.  If there’s no fat and every scene progresses the story line, I have no problem with that.  I suppose it is what it is.
I’m looking in to renting a theater to show Nice Guys Finish Last.  I thought it would be cool to have a sort of theater showing and get some feedback before I send it off to festivals.  I found one for $650 for one night.  If I charged $10 per person, I would have to have at least 65 people show up to break even.  I know, that I know that many people but weather they would be available or not is a whole different story.  I found another one that rents by the week and that was $1000 for 4 shows.  So, I would need to get 100 people there from Thursday- Sunday.  That’s actually not that bad.  I bet I could pull that off.  O wait, that’s just for a stage, not a screen and all that other crap.  Damn.  I bet I could get a projector though and rig something up.  In fact, I know a guy that has a projector and Gabe is in a band.  Bands have speakers and stuff, right?  I’ll have to get back to you on this one.  Or maybe I can have the actors act it out in real time on stage.  Wow, that’s a terrible idea.

So, the Action on Film Festival is happening this Sunday in Pasadena.  Where my film is being shown?  No clue.  The schedule says Academy 2 but I have no clue what that means.  They really aren’t making this easy.  Clicking on the schedule link on the web site leads you to a page with links for 2006 and 2007 schedules.  The 2009 schedule is available in PDF format here:
Action on Film Schedule
As you can see Censored is playing in the 4PM block.  What that means, I have no idea.  I guess it’s playing sometime around 4PM.  I have no clue what’s playing with my short film.  You can buy tickets here:
Action on Film Festival Tickets- Single Program Pass
Near the bottom of that page it says
“When you make your purchase be sure to write the name of the film you are coming to see in the memo portion of the confirmation form.”
So, I guess write “Censored” in the memo portion of the confirmation form.  I have to be honest, the web site looks kind of shady and doesn’t really seem like it’s working as it should.  E-Mail me if you want to attend and I’ll do my best to walk you through it.
I think by Academy 2 they mean The Regency Academy Theaters.  Just a guess though.