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.

So, I got an e-mail from the Action on Film Film Festival going over all of the nominations for the various awards they are giving out.  I swear to God, there has got to be like 50 awards.  Each award has 5 nominations.  I have no clue how many short films they are showing, but I guess it’s a lot.  So, I’m looking for Censored on one of these lists and don’t see it.  Not one.  I did feel better though when I realized that it’s mainly like 10 or 15 short films listed 5 times for each award.  I suppose that makes sense when you really think about it.  If a short film is nominated for best picture, I imagine it did a lot of things right, so I suppose it’s not weird to see it listed as a best actress nomination and best cinematography.  It makes sense.  If there was a category for “Best Short Film with a Censorship Bar” I would have nailed that shit.  That must have been a nightmare figuring all of that out.  I’ve come to the realization that Censored isn’t an award winner.  I came to this realization when it played at the LA United Film Festival.  It had a couple parts that got a good laugh out of the audience but I know I can do better then that.  There’s a lot that could have been improved.  The lighting could have been better and I was still trying to figure out the boom mic when I shot it.  So the sound quality isn’t really all that great.  At one point, I thought Censored was brilliant.  I still think the concept is strong, but I probably could have executed it a little better.  O well, on to bigger and better things.  Maybe Nice Guys Finish Last will be an award winning film.  If not Nice Guys Finish Last, then maybe the next one.