Caine Crockett will now be posting here. I’ve pretty much given him the freedom to talk about whatever he wants to. You may have seen him in some of the shorts on the website (Censored, Not Walter, Bad Girlfriend, etc…). He’s mostly an actor. So, it should be interesting to get experiences from an actors perspective on shoots.
Sometimes, as a little treat to myself, I enjoy wallowing in the pits of human existence. Where would I go to do that? YouTube of course. YouTube in this case is sort of like the dealer and sometimes, I need a fix badly. So, I start my search for street fights in the basement of human civilization. Once you wade through the crap where middle schoolers are just trying to get views by staging an obvious fake fight, you get to the good stuff.
“Hmmmm, Skater vs Rollerblader? OK. Punk vs Gangster? Yes please. Two Drunk Girls Fighting?! Hello subscribe button!”
I’m not really looking to see someone get hurt. Well, maybe a little, but really what I’m looking for is awkward situations that I can laugh at. During one of my kicks I came across this gem:
I’m not sure if this is staged or not, I pray that it’s not, because I would really like to believe that life really is this awesome. I don’t know what’s funnier, the fact that a fight breaks out right in the middle of a wedding or the fact that all of the other wedding guests just stand around watching as the bride gets what appears to be sexually assaulted. Of course, I can’t blame them. The only thing I would probably be able to do was lean to the person closest to me and say “Holy shit! This is awesome!” I love how the groom just kind of stands there with a not so bright look on his face as this biker chick just grabs his bride and pulls her off stage to kick the crap out of her. Then there’s the photographer snapping pictures in the background. Because that’s something you would want to remember on your wedding day.
“Hey honey, you remember when that butch chick dragged me off stage and beat the shit out of me in the middle of the ceremony?”
“No, I don’t remember that. Was that our wedding?”
“Yeah, hold on, let me pull out the wedding book, I’ll show you. Better yet, go get your lap top, fire up YouTube.”
Absolutely amazing.
Sorry for not posting for awhile, I’ve had a busy week. I was on vacation in Minnesota. I’m back now and there’s a lot to talk about. We’ll start off with the light stuff. Me and my girlfriend have been watching a lot of the second season of True Blood. That show is absolutely awesome. I hate to say this, because it seems like after Twilight, everyone is jumping on the vampire band wagon, but it makes me want to write a vampire short. It seems like the hardest part of doing something like that is making it not look cheesy. Why? Because not making it look cheesy is either going to cost you money or time. Possibly both. I’ve done one suspense based short film and I wasn’t too happy with it. That’s all right, it was a good learning experience.
Programming for the festival is going nicely. My biggest issue with short films is time. People try and tell a story in 10 minutes that could easily be told in 5. The longer a short film is, the more obvious it is. First off, let me tell you, if you’re making a 20+ minute short film it had better be brilliant. It’s an immediate flag to see a short film that runs over 20 minutes. The first thought is “This could be really bad.” Mainly because I would rather sit through a bad 5 minute long short film then a bad 20 minute long short film. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, so I’ll just move on.
NHL 10 comes out soon. The only reason I mention this is because NHL 09 already consumes a large portion of my life. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen when NHL 10 comes out. I may lose a lot of sleep, which means I might miss a lot of work, which means I might get fired, which means I can’t pay my cable bill, which means they would turn off my Internet, which means I wouldn’t be able to post here anymore. This is the reality of the situation. Don’t judge me, it’s not my fault, I have an addiction. If they had a ten step program, I would probably be a prime candidate. By the way, that reminds me of one of my movie quirks. I absolutely hate it when you have people playing a video game in a movie and they are button mashing like crazy on the controllers. Why not just have them play the game with the audio off? Then record the audio of the game some other time and then insert that audio in editing. You would think that would be something that directors catch, but I see it all the time. I’ve shot a couple things with people playing video games and every time I’ve been able to work with the audio and make it look like the actor/actress is actually playing the game. Or you just record them playing the game with the audio on from the angle you’ll be cutting to that actually shows the game and then use that audio. It’s really not that difficult.
Moving on, we should be done with the audio for Do Nice Guys Finish Last possibly tonight. We’ll see, I may not be able to tonight. It would be nice to finish it up. Vacation kind of put a stop to everything. I really want that done by the end of next week. As soon as it’s done, I’m going to send it away to 6 festivals. Might get rejected, might not. Either way, I’ll keep you guys all updated on what’s going on with that.
There are big things happening with JQP Entertainment itself. We may have a new name soon. Which means we would have a new web address. I would actually probably keep this same design and everything, the only thing that would change would be the web address and logo in the upper left corner. Actually this web address would probably link to the other one, so really there wouldn’t be that much of a change. We are changing the way we do things and we all agreed that a new name is necessary.
I’ll probably be mentioning this every post from now until then, but the SoCal Film Festival is very close. I’ll more then likely be attending every night, either with someone or alone. It’s so close to me, it seems like a waste not to. It kicks off Monday, 9/14/2009 but Censored isn’t playing until Friday. Again, you can buy tickets here: http://www.socalfilmfest.com/tickets.aspx
There’s just a lot going on with JQP Entertainment right now. Way more then I can probably mention in this post. I’ll let you guys know as new things come up.
So, a couple things are happening. First of all the name of the company, John Q. Phats Entertainment is changing to JQP Entertainment. I might shorten it even more to JQP Ent. The main reason for this, is that John Q. Phats Entertainment is too hard for people to remember. People ask me what the name of my film making company is, I tell them, and they say “…..What? How do you spell that? What does that mean?” I imagine 5 seconds after they walk away from me, they completely forget the name of the company. Where as JQP Entertainment, is easy enough to remember. All you have to remember is three letters and then “Entertainment.” JQPEntertainment is also the web address. So that works out better for us too. With our new name comes a new logo. Looking at other film making companies, they all have these insanely complex logos. MGM for example. It’s an actual picture of a lion. Or the View Askew logo. It’s an animated drawing of Jay and Silent Bob. Even Universal has a pretty intense logo for their opening credits. It’s a rather detailed world. So, I want something like that. Something cool and sort of like a mascot. At first I had thought of a lion. I have sort of a fetish for simplistic logos, so I came up with this:
I think that lion has a big nose and I thought I needed to step away from that simplistic thing. Besides that, it’s looks very stupid. So, I had Chris draw me a lion. Here’s what he came up with:
His is much better then mine. Chris can draw. I’m completely useless at drawing without a computer. That’s beside the point. Now we’re thinking that a lion is probably a bad idea because a lot of other companies already use lions. I don’t know, what do you guys think? Here were some of the animals I thought might work:
lion, beaver (tee hee), penguin, badger, racoon, giraffe, or gopher. Any other ideas, anyone?
It’s true, it has nothing to do with the name of the company, but what the hell does a lion have to do with MGM? Who knows, maybe we’ll come up with something else. Chris says he has some ideas. I like the idea of the mascot having a head that’s way too big for it’s body. My animals are all kind of fluffy. Maybe we need something tougher. Like a wolf or a polar bear or something. I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. This was all brought on by Do Nice Guys Finish Last. I want to do the Press Kit, but I need a new logo to put on the front of it to represent JQP Entertainment. I’ll keep you guys updated.
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.
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.
So, the way this whole film festival thing works is that you sign up and pay the entry fee online. They give you a confirmation number. Then you ship them a copy of your short film on DVD or other format that they accept. Printed on the DVD is the confirmation number that they gave you when you paid. I have another DVD of Censored sitting around. Should I send it to one more festival? I’m still waiting to hear back from three others. I was kind of hoping to spend money on Do Nice Guys Finish Last. By the way Do Nice Guys Finish Last is going to be a pain in the ass to send out to festivals. I was looking at some festivals the other day and for some reason I kept finding ones that had notes that said stuff like “We usually only accept films that would be considered PG-13.” Do Nice Guys Finish Last is totally not PG-13. I would say it’s probably R, if it’s anything. It’s actually not that bad, there’s just a ton of bad language. Really, there’s not that much bad language either. There are a few f bombs here and there and one c bomb. Censored I would say is PG-13. It’s censored, that’s the whole point of it. It looks like Do Nice Guys Finish Last might prove to be more difficult then I originally thought. It’s an R rating and it’s going to run about 15 minutes long. I’m sure I’ll find something though. I’ll at least get it on IMDB.
I’m still really excited about the SoCal Film Festival. There’s so much going on around it. Apparently they are doing a few movie showings at the Huntington Beach Pier which is like 10 minutes from my house. The fact that the festival is so close to me makes things much easier. In the mean time though, I need to get to work on Project X.
So, apparently I can see in to the future. In my last post I talked about how great it would be to get in to the SoCal Film Festival. Later that day, I got an acceptance E-Mail from the SoCal Film Festival. I have freak luck like that sometimes. Before shooting Nice Guys Finish Last, I needed a light kit. The kit I wanted cost about $900. As sort of a joke to my room mate I said
“I’m going to make $1100 today.”
before I left the house. So, I’m walking to the bank. I decided to walk, for some reason. I forget why. I think because parking in my complex sucks and I already had a good spot. So, I’m going to cross the street and the little blinky guy tells me it’s time to walk. So I step in to the street and BAM it hits me! Not an idea of how I’m going to make $1100, but a truck making a right turn. I wasn’t really hurt, I was just shocked. I was walking and then all of a sudden I was on the ground. It sort of knocked me back and I fell back on to the sidewalk. As I’m getting up, a guy is getting out of the truck with an “O shit” look on his face. He comes running over to me and says
“O my God! I’m sorry! I’m Sorry! I’m sorry! Are you ok?! O fuck! I didn’t see you! I’m so sorry!”
The guy was like physically shaking. So I stand up and I’m a little confused. I’m thinking to myself “What the hell just happened? Who the hell is this guy? What’s going on?” Finally, I put two and two together and realize what happened. I tell the guy I’m ok and he’s still freaking out. He looks back at his truck and back at me and says
“I’m so sorry! You’re not going to call the cops are you?! I can’t deal with the cops, my license is suspended because of a DUI! Please don’t call the cops!”
I’m still a bit dazed, so I’m just kind of standing there confused. Then he says
“Look, I get these settlement checks every month from a job injury I got 3 months ago. I’ll sign the settlement check and give it to you. Then we can both just walk away. OK, sound good?”
Before I could say anything he was handing me the check and shaking my hand. In all honesty, I probably wouldn’t have taken it if he had let me speak. I had no injuries, it was a mistake, no big deal. I checked later and there was literally, not a scratch on me.
I look down at the check as he drives off and it’s for $2253.43. I figured somehow, the universe conspired to help me, so I donated $1153.43 to my sister for my niece, for a college fund or something.
Weird, huh? That’s sort of how I felt about The SoCal Film Festival post yesterday. Maybe I should try that more often.
Man! It sure would be great if Kevin Smith, David Fincher, Peter Jackson, Sam Rami, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, or Guillermo del Toro E-Mailed me and offered me a sweet ass paid internship! Or if I got invied to help out on Dexter, my favorite show of all time! You know what, I would settle for an E-Mail interview with Michael C. Hall or really anyone on that cast.
I think part of my success with film festivals has to do with how easy I make it for them. First of all Censored is 3:30 seconds long. I note that on the DVD I send out, along with the title, my name, what region DVD it is, what film festival it’s for, and the tracking number they give me when I pay online. I also put another sticker on the back of the case with the title, my name, my phone number, and the tracking number again. And I use very stylish Simpons stamps. My goal is for them to take one look at the DVD and not have to do anything extra. I want them to open the envelope, take one look at it, pop it in to the DVD player, and go. No looking up information and no wondering what the DVD is, who made it, and why they have to watch it. No extra steps. Festivals can sometimes get thousands of DVD’s, why would you make it any more difficult for them? You’re only asking for a rejection letter if you do.
Wow, I went way off course. I originally started this post to talk about the SoCal Film Festival. I just mailed my screener copy to them. According to my records, the festival takes place from 9/14/2009 – 9/23/2009. I haven’t gotten the exact schedule or location yet, but I will be sure to let you guys know when I do. I have a lot of friends in this area who couldn’t make it to the LA shows. Which is totally understandable. I’m one of the few insane OCers that thinks that LA “Isn’t that far.” It will be nice to be so close to a festival for a change. I’m really looking forward to it.
Here is the link to the festivals website and I hope some of you can make it: SoCal Film Festival
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.
Censored played at the Action on Film Festival on Sunday (7/26/2009). It was a lot of fun. I got a goody bag filled with stuff. They invited film makers to come up for a Q and A after the screening. I went up and said
“If anyone has anything negative to say, I’m totally open to hear it. Hearing what’s wrong with it is the only way I’m going to make a better film. So, hit me.”
Too negative? I didn’t get any negative comments, they were all very nice. How did you think of that? What did you shoot it on? Will the DVD release be uncensored? I enjoyed it a lot. It kind of made me feel like a big shot. I don’t know why, but sometimes, when I’m in the right mood, I love talking in front of a crowd. I wasn’t nervous at all.
During the showing, there wasn’t much laughter. At first I started to feel badly about it, but everyone in the end clapped and one of the other film makers even told me it was great. Maybe I misjudged Censored. I really did think it was a laugh out loud comedy. perhaps it’s not. Maybe it’s one of those things that’s just kind of clever and entertaining. I’m totally fine with that. As long as people enjoy it. It got a good applause at the end and like I said, nobody told me it was a God awful piece of crap or anything. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, but I almost want someone to stand up one day and say
“That was the biggest pile of crap I have ever seen in my entire life. You should die.”
My response would probably be a raise of my eyebrows and a
“Wow, ok, thank you….I guess.”
Overall, I felt a little outclassed to be honest. One of the film makers said that the budget for their film was $5000. Censored cost me like $50 to make. I have to say, the other shorts that showed, looked amazing. Wilcox Sex Therapy had some nice lighting and cinematography and it was hysterical. The actor (David Brainard) who played the sex therapist nailed it. I actually went up to the director of Wilcox Sex Therapy, Daniel Gruen and told him that it was a great film. It was very well done. There was another film called The Condom Killer, that was stylized like a 1950’s detective story. I thought it was awesome that they pulled it off. It looked really good. Despite feeling outclassed a bit by the other films, I had a great time. I’m really glad they did a Q and A at the end. That was really nice.
As for Nice Guys Finish Last, I’m really looking forward to seeing it with the new scene we shot last Thursday. Once I get my hard drive back from Gabe, I’ll see about posting some of the out takes.
In a totally unrelated note, according to my home phones caller ID, The Staples Center called at random times in the night and left me 9 messages of a fax machine beeping. The last one I answered this morning at like 6AM. I know I’m a Ducks fan, but Jesus Staples Center, what the hell is your problem?
