John Q. Phats Entertainment

I went on a bit of a writing binge last night.  For some reason a script I had an idea for has been popping in to my head a lot.  So, I sat down and started writing it last night.  The whole entire thing has sort of a smart ass tone to it.  I meant for it to be a series, but it’s kind of shaping up in to a movie.  It’s called Dead Girl and it’s kind of fun to write because I haven’t planned anything.  I just sort of sit down and write what ever comes to mind.  I’m not putting any pressure on myself to make it spectacular.  I’m just writing it.  It would be nice to have a full on movie script.  If I were a script writer, I would submit scripts to festivals like crazy.  Printing a script out costs you maybe a dollar.  In fact, I think a lot of festivals will accept an E-Mailed PDF.  Which is no shipping cost, no printing cost, and more importantly no production cost.  Plus, I can’t think of a better way to get a script out there.  If I finish Dead Girl, I’ll send it out to every script writing competition I can find.  Why not, right?
Censored was rejected from the Gangrene Film Festival yesterday.  This is only it’s 2nd rejection and it really only brought me down for roughly 20 seconds.  Mainly because there are about a million festivals out there and if I really wanted to, I could probably get in to another 4 by next month.  However, my focus is on Do Nice Guys Finish Last right now, which honestly, will probably have a much higher rejection rate then Censored.  So, it’s probably a good thing to be developing this tough skin at this stage.  The first rejection letter I got, really got to me.  I was upset about it for like a week.  This time it was 20 seconds.  Maybe next time, I won’t feel a thing.  It’s not that I don’t think Do Nice Guys Finish Last is going to be great when it’s done, it’s just that it’s sort of fighting an uphill battle.  It’s 15 minutes long and very offensive.  That’s pretty long for a short film and I’m guessing that film festivals want to appeal to a wider audience, so they kind of attempt to stay in the PG-13 area.  It doesn’t really matter to me though.  We made the film that we set out to make.  Worst case scenario?  I have a short film that I’m proud of to post on my web site.  Plus, I still have the SoCal Film Festival to look forward to.
By the way, Gabe just threw (literally) me edit six of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I think this might be our final cut.  We’ll see.  I’ll have to check it out tonight.  I really want it to be our final cut.  The last edit had very minor changes in it.  So, I’m pretty sure it’s almost there.

You know you’re done editing when you feel like if you watch your short film one more time, you might have a mental break down.  It’s mainly just frustrating because we are so close to being done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I made my notes on the 5th cut last night and I was seriously considering telling Gabe to just start on color correction when he was done making the edits.  But, I can’t do that.  You know why?  Because when it’s done, there will be one tiny thing that irritates me that could have been fixed in 2 seconds if I had known it was there.  However if I do look at the draft before we get in to color correction, nothing will be wrong with it and it will be fine.  That’s just how it goes. 
So, about a week ago, a friend of mine is telling me about her good friend that shot a documentary on 5 of these cameras.  She didn’t know what they were called, but she told me they were the newest and best digital cameras out there.  So I said
“Ask you’re friend if I can borrow it for like a week or so.”
She laughed and I laughed but then I said
“I’m serious.”
So, she did and from what she told me he laughed, said no, but admired me for asking.  Works for me.  It was worth a shot, right?  Imagine if he had said yes?  I would have had access to a really awesome camera.  For free.  It never hurts to ask.  You would be surprised at what you could get for free by just asking.  Not that I’m a greedy beggar or anything, but when you’re making films anything you can get for free, you probably should. 
District 9 comes out tomorrow.  I’ve really wanted to see this movie ever since I saw the previews.  It looks a little bit like Cloverfield, which I thought was pretty good.  District 9 looks awesome.  I love these sort of creepy sci fi pictures.  I’m not sure what really draws me to them.  I’m not a sci fi or horror film buff, but for some reason this sort of combination is usually something I really enjoy.  I’m probably going to check it out this Sunday.  I’ll let you guys know how it is.
In a totally unrelated topic, Tropic Thunder was an awesome movie.  I have been quoting that movie all week and laughing just thinking about it.  Tom Cruise was hands down the most entertaining I have ever seen him in any movie he’s ever done.  Every single time his character was on screen I laughed my ass off.
“Now I want you to take a step back… and literally FUCK YOUR OWN FACE!”
Robert Downey Jr. kills it in that movie too.  The
“I’m a lead farmer mother fucker!”
line always cracks me up.  Maybe because it’s just so damn cliche action movie.

Watching some of my old short films last night I’ve realized how far everyone involved in all of this has come.  Acting has gotten better, camera work has gotten better, lighting has gotten way better, editing has gotten better, and sound has definitely gotten much better.  I’m not really sure how we all got here.  I think we were all just committed to making a better product.  It was pretty much a process of refining.  We would try something else and if that didn’t work out, we would figure out a different way of doing.  For example, in The Train Wreck, the sound is horrible.  That’s because it was our first time using the boom mic.  We thought we would be smart and hold the boom mic low and aim it up rather then high and aim it down.  What we didn’t realize is that the boom mic would pick up EVERYTHING that went on with the actors feet.  You can hear every single footstep the actors took in that short film.  It’s really annoying.  The next innovation in sound actually happened on Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  In the last short film that we did Gabe complained that it had the sound quality of a porno.  So, we looked up some information on the Internet regarding sound for short films and found some pretty good stuff.  We spent probably about 15 minutes before each scene finding not only the right position for the boom mic but the right settings for the camera to match that.  I have to say that Do Nice Guys Finish Last is probably the best sounding thing we’ve done so far.  Which may be sad, but whatever, we’re getting there.  I guess my point is, is that…  I’m not really sure what my point is.  I guess I’m just writing.
I just got the new cut of Do Nice Guys Finish Last from Gabe.  I can’t wait to see it.  I think we are extremely close to a final cut.  Probably just a few changes here and there and we’ll be done.  Then, we can start doing color correction.  Which in all honestly, sucks.  Color correction is one of those things that you have to do, but really don’t want to.  Like returning your ex girlfriends DVD’s or going to a funeral.  It’s just lame.  Can’t modern technology take care of this for us yet?  Can’t you have two shots and click on a box that says “I want these two thingies to look like they are the same color”?  I mean, do we really have to spend hours fidgeting with some stupid little knobs to get it to do that?  We have satellites that can read a license plate from space, but we can’t do that?  Really?  It’s total bullshit, it really is.  I’m actually just trying to be funny.  Color correction really isn’t that bad.  It’s just kind of tedious.  For some reason, Gabe is actually excited about it.  Maybe he’s just tired of my nit picky editing notes.  The last one was pretty bad.  I think there was a portion where I cut like .5 of a second off of a shot.  I’m pretty sure when I’m coming up with stuff like that, we are pretty damn close to a final cut.

Sorry for the lack of posting this weekend.  The Internet at my house went down again.  I should be getting draft number 5 of Do Nice Guys Finish Last from Gabe tomorrow.  I’m really looking forward to being done with it.  I want to start sending it to festivals already.  I have several friends and family members who bug me about seeing it almost every day.  I’m still not going to rush it though.  We’ll be done with it when me and Gabe both agree that it’s done.  In the mean time, we have been working our asses off on it.  I really believe in getting what I want out of a short film.  Just never saying “it’s good enough.”  If something doesn’t look or sound how I want it to, I’ll re shoot it.  I believe that if you’re a film maker, you should always make the film that you want to make.  Screw what the critics say, screw what other people say, you’re making this short film, make it however you want.  If you do that, it doesn’t matter if other people like it or not.  You made the film that you wanted to make and that’s that.  Of course, other people liking it is a nice added bonus.  I always wanted Do Nice Guys Finish Last to be something that’s funny because it’s true.  That’s part of the reason I made it a mockumentary, to sort of bring people back to the fact that it’s based on a realistic principal.  Plus it was a damn good time filming it.  It’s kind of cool, there’s so much you can get away with in a mockumentary.  A boom mic enters the shot?  O well, that happens in documentaries all the time.  An actor stumbles over their lines?  O well, people stumble over their words sometimes in reality, it happens.  The scene is too dark?  O well, sometimes rooms are dark.  It’s not that it’s an easy out, it’s just that there’s so much room to play.  All of this in Do Nice Guys Finish Last if it does make it in is intentional.  We wanted portions to have a little bit of boom mic in them just to cement the fact that the characters know that there are cameras and everything there.  It’s kind of weird placing these imperfections here and there, but it’s kind of fun at the same time.
I’ll keep you guys updated on the progress of it.  Right now, it’s looking pretty good.  We’ll probably have a final cut around next week.  Then we get in to the exciting world of color correction….. Yay.

The Internet at my house is back up.  I’m not sure how it broke, or what was wrong with it, but the Internet company had to send a signal through to fix it.  When you’re someone like me, losing Internet is one of the worst things that can happen.  Seriously, it was really bad yesterday.  Last night, I’m sitting there messing with it and a couple times in the middle of it I thought to myself “I can fix this, I just need to look it up on the inter-  …..O yeah.”
I have a lot to talk about today.  Mainly, I want to talk about the new cut of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  The way me and Gabe have been working on this is that he gives me the cut, I make notes on it, then hand them back to him to make the changes or corrections.  We are currently on draft number 4, soon to be on 5.  I have the 4th cut with notes on it all ready for him.  Once we have a final cut, we’ll do some color correction, and then transitions.  Transitioning from 1 scene to another is a big deal for this short film.  There are some scenes that make huge jumps in time in the same setting.  The only way to show that jump of time is through a transition.  It if goes from a straight cut, people are left sitting there thinking “What the hell just happened?”  I’m going to be doing some research on transitions later on this week.  I showed Do Nice Guys Finish Last to someone besides me and Gabe yesterday.  I was very happy to see that she laughed at all the right times.  She actually made a comment that really just pin pointed what I was going for.  She said “It was really funny, but it’s kind of true.”  That is exactly what I was looking for with this short film.  I wanted people to watch it and not only laugh because it was funny, but laugh because it was true.  Almost like a George Carlin stand up act.  What he says is hysterical, but the main reason it’s so hysterical is because it’s sort of true.  That’s what I was looking for.  I think maybe Do Nice Guys Finish Last is going to be better then I originally thought.  The audio and lighting are already all a step above everything else we’ve done.  I’m really looking forward to this being done and I can’t wait to start sending it to festivals.
On to the Project X news.  I got a script from the script writer last night.  I haven’t read it yet.  Something went wrong with the file format so I can’t exactly open it just yet.  But it’s awesome that I got it.  I should be getting another copy of it sometime today or tonight.  If this works out, this will be the first time I’ve directed something that someone else has written.  Actually, that’s not true.  I’ve directed one other thing that someone else wrote, but nothing really came of it.  So, it doesn’t really count. 
I’m still waiting to hear back from 3 other festivals.  I’m getting a little nervous.  The screening dates for those are pretty close already.  I figured I would have gotten some sort of rejection or acceptance letter by now.  I suppose if the film festival happens and my short film doesn’t play there, then it was rejected.

Last night, on the way home, 3 ideas for short films came to me.  I told myself that I would write them out after I was done working out.  I finished working out and out of habit I turned on NHL 09 for Playstation3.  Midway through it’s start up, I realized that I wasn’t supposed to be playing NHL 09 and that I was supposed to be writing out some scripts.  I convinced myself to play just one game, which usually turns in to roughly 5 games.  I am so addicted to NHL 09, it’s not even funny.  Seriously, I’ve been playing that game for a year and I can’t stop.  NHL 10 comes out in 2 months and then it will all start all over again.  So, I start to play and I’m playing goalie mode and I’m not joking you, the computer scored like 4 goals on me in the time span of 1 real life minute.  Which is like 20 seconds in game time.  If you were in my kitchen at the time you would have heard:
“damn it………son of a bitch………SHIT!……….MOTHER FU- Screw this!”
 With that, I turned off the system and went upstairs and started writing.
I got a lot more out of writing those scripts then I would have gotten from playing NHL 09 for 4 hours.  I immediately sent one script to Chris and he really liked it.  It seriously is, the perfect short film for festivals.  It would run about a minute long, it’s funny, it’s quick, it’s clever, and it’s PG-13.  The best part is, is that I could probably shoot it in one day and edit it the next.  It’s a really simplistic and clever concept.  Maybe it will be something that I can pull off in between Do Nice Guys Finish Last and Project X.  I got the ball rolling on Project X.  Which needed to be done.  I looked at all of the information I had and just put it all together and sort of wrote out an outline.  Then I E-Mailed that to the script writer.  I’m excited to see how it comes out.  Also, I just got the new cut from Gabe, of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Needless to say, I’m glad that I suck at NHL 09 and that the computer saw it fit to destroy me.

Today, I give the third edit of Nice Guys Finish Last with notes added to Gabe.  The way we’ve been doing it, is he gives me the edit, I add notes to it, and give it back to him.  Then he makes the corrections to it and gives it back to me.  Then I make more notes on that one and the process starts all over.  My goal was always to make Nice Guys Finish Last under 15 minutes.  It started out at over 18.  We cut it down to 15 and some change and I think with these new edits we might just get it under 15.  The point wasn’t just because I wanted to make it a 15 minute long short film.  Really, when you’re watching a short film that long, what’s another 2-3 minutes?  The reason I want it to be under 15 minutes is because it’s a 16 page script with some fat in it.  Things can be cut.  I want to cut it down, because it doesn’t need to be over 15 minutes long.  We can tell the story in under 15 minutes.  In fact if we really wanted to, we could probably tell the story in 12 minutes.  When first looking at the 18 minute cut, almost everyone told me
“You’re crazy, there’s no way you’ll get it under 15 minutes.” 
We cut it down to 15 and some change without taking out a single scene.  We trimmed some scenes here and there, but that was about it.  With these new notes, I’m suggesting to Gabe that we cut an entire segment out of a scene.  Not because I want to get it under 15 minutes but because that portion of the scene is kind of boring and unnecessary.  I always keep the goal in mind of wanting it to be funny.  I want people to watch it and laugh.  If a scene is pushing me over 15 minutes but it’s hilarious, I’ll keep it in there.  Hell, if we had enough footage to make people laugh for 2 hours straight, I would make it a feature length movie.  But that’s not the case.  The reality is, is that we shot enough footage and wrote a script for an entertaining 13-15 minute long short film.  
I have a lot to do for Project X this weekend, I’ll be busy.  Aside from a BBQ, I’ll pretty much be sitting in my room planning things out.  A BBQ for my friends lasts roughly 15-20 hours though.  The first time I took my girlfriend to one of these BBQ’s, when leaving she said
“I didn’t even know BBQ’s could go that long!”
I just responded with
“Yeah, they rock it till the wheels fall off.”
My friends have actually inspired me quite a bit in terms of short films.  So, I consider it really awesome research.

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 Pick up shots are done.  It was actually pretty painless.  We had a very small crew and we knew what we were doing.  I went with a little bit of a different workflow this time.  Rather then just having the actors memorize the script and then shooting, I went through the dialogue with them a bunch and made the adjustments I wanted before I pressed record.  So, they memorized the dialogue and knew how to act it out.  It worked out very well.  I also really tried to avoid saying things like “I need you to be angrier.” I’m usually pretty good about that, but sometimes I slip up.  Instead, I tried to direct through situations that the character would be put in.  For example with Caine, I needed him to be more upset so I said
“OK Caine, so this sort of thing always happens to you.  Chris always gets the girl and you don’t understand it.  He has the girl of your dreams practically throwing herself at him and he’s complaining to you that she’s not the right one.  You haven’t been laid in God knows how long.”
Instead of just saying
“I need you to be more angry.”
 It worked out really well.  Not only was it more of a collaboration between me and the actors, but we both got what we wanted out of it.  We actually had a lot of fun doing this.  I’m thinking about posting one of the out takes where everyone was just kind of goofing around.  What do you guys think?  Would that be something you want to see?  The only comment I’ll get, is probably an ad for Viagra, but that’s ok, I’ll take that as a cue to post it.