John Q. Phats Entertainment

You may remember that Censored was selected to screen at the SoCal Film Festival.  This morning they released the festivals schedule.  You can view the entire schedule here:
SoCal Film Festival Schedule
Censored is playing on 9/18/2009 in the 7:20PM block.  First of all, that’s a Friday, which is awesome.  I don’t know if it’s luck or what but Censored almost always gets put in the most awesome time slot.  It’s either on a weekend or later on in the night on a weekday.  For this festival you buy tickets for programs.  Each program has a different block of films.  Censored is playing in Program 10.  So if you want to go, be sure to buy tickets for Program 10.  I’m playing with:
9mm Brush
Couched
How to Train Your Pet
Jimmy String bean vs the Rock God of the Cosmos
Love Bombing
Make Art, Save World
Piper & Tupper – Hands Free Born to be Wild
Special Delivery
The Amazing Esca-ciser
The Family
Twirl
I know nothing about any of these, but they all sound amazing.  I’m probably going to be attending this festival quite a bit.  Mainly because it’s so close to me.  I’m kind of curious about what other people are up to in short film making. 
In other news, I reviewed the 5th draft of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  There are still some minor cuts here and there.  It’s kind of frustrating being this close to the finish line, but what are you gonna do?  We’ll be done soon enough.  I definitely have to make notes on the new draft tonight.  I think this might it.  Watching it, there’s really not much else I can change or things that I’m really displeased with.  I think it has a nice pace, it’s funny when it’s supposed to be, and all the fat is cut.  It’s very to the point and moves along quickly.  I think that’s exactly how this short film should be.

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.

First off, I would like to apologize in advance for this one.  I went on sort of a Harry Potter binge this weekend and watched all five movies over the course of two days and my brain is a little scrambled.  I can’t believe that after five movies, Ron still hasn’t made a move on that Herminy (did I spell that right?  Don’t really care.) chick.  Christ man, what do you need, a written invitation?!  Also, there’s clearly not enough drug use for this to be a movie about a bunch of kids.  Although, I’m convinced that, the divination teacher has got to be on something.  I wonder if there’s a deleted scene where she’s smoking out Dumbledore?  In all seriousness though, for what they are, those movies are amazing.  They are all really well done.  Pretty much every aspect of those movies is at the very least, great.  Anyway, sorry again.
In my last post I talked about an old short film that I did titled The Wake Up.  It really got me thinking about my first short film, Firework De La Muerte.  What a pile of crap that short film was.  It was roughly an eight page script with the same joke told four times.  Really, the joke wasn’t funny the first time and it sure wasn’t funny the 4th time.  For that one we shot in a department store which shall remain nameless, without asking anyone.  We just sort of got somebody with a red shirt and went with it.  That was gorilla film making to the extreme.  To be honest, nobody really cared.  If I was an employee making minimum wage, I don’t think I would really care either.  I think the worst part about Firework De La Muerte is that when it was done, I thought it was great.  But then when other people watched it, they didn’t laugh.  At first I was in denial.  Like there was something wrong with everyone else.  Finally, I realized that it really did just suck something awful.  It was kind of a slap to the face.  But it was necessary.  I remember the first time I watched it, without my head up my ass.  I just sat there watching it in absolute shock at how bad it really was.  After watching it, I actually said out loud.
“O my God……  That sucked.”
There is no place to see Firework De La Muearte, nobody will ever see it.  It belongs in the depths of a hard drive, where nobody will ever find it.  I think I might of actually deleted it off of my external hard drive.  I do still have the prop firework though, made of cardboard, that egg crate stuff you put on a mattress, and duct tape.  The prop was actually kind of glorious, I have to say.  It was a giant somewhat rocket shape covered in duct tape.
While Firework De La Muearte is an awful short film, it really was something that I needed to do, to get where I am.  Now, Censored is playing in festivals all over the place, I’m close to finishing Do Nice Guys Finish Last, and I have a lot of big and exciting projects on the horizon.  This sort of leads in to my next topic.  I finished up fancy new laurels for Censored:
      

Technically, the SoCal Film festival hasn’t happened yet, but we have been selected.

I’ve been seeing a steady increase in traffic on my site.  That’s kind of exciting.  I was thinking about trying to get some interviews with directors, producers, and possibly an actor.  It really is true that sometimes all you have to do is ask.  Worst they can say is “Fuck off cock lick.”  Wow, that’s pretty harsh.  That actually kind of stings.  There it goes, it just passed, see, I’m fine.  In reality, I would probably get some sort of legal jargon back that translated in to “No, you’re stupid, stop bothering me.”  I think if I can handle a rejection letter from a film festival, I can handle a rejection letter from a famous person.
Have you ever been in a situation where you’re in some sort of a contest and everyone around you is winning awards except for you?  And your thinking (or saying) “What the hell is wrong with these people?!  My stuff is way better then this!”  Then something truly crappy wins and you’re completely outraged?  Hate to tell you, but it’s not because everyone else is crazy, it’s because whatever you entered in to the contest sucked.  I am actually totally guilty of this.  I entered a 24 hour film festival a while back that chose not to show my short in the final screening.  Me and the three people involved were totally outraged.  Looking back at it now though, it wasn’t because the judges were biased, or because the other teams cheated, or because I knocked up one of the judges daughters, it was because my short film sucked.  It was shot on a shitty little standard def camera with no boom mic.  It had two actors in it that had never acted before (myself being one of them).  The third actor was good, but really, how good can you be when you have all of that bad working against you?  When I finally owned up to the fact that my short film sucked, I could learn from it.  I could sit back and figure out what I had done wrong.  Which was far more valuable and got me much further in my development as a film maker.  Best advice I can give you is to go out there and fail.  Fail and learn from it.

I need money to make my new short film.  Plain and simple.  In the past I’ve resorted to selling my personal belongings.  I sold a couple old cameras, video games, furniture, computers, really whatever I could get my hands on.  I think I can make my new project for roughly $2000.  Things I haven’t tried yet are selling sperm and blood.  I should try to sell some blood, I have O-, which everyone can take.  Obviously, God wanted me to sell blood, so I can make this short film.  I’ll have to look in to that.  I’m not sure how I feel about donating sperm.  I would feel really sorry for the woman who gets that sperm.  It would almost be like playing a really cruel joke on someone.  I think one of me is enough.
I’ve been reading this new book called How Not to Make a Short Film by Roberta Marie Munroe.  She’s done just about everything on a short film and used to be a programmer for Sundance.  Needless to say, her advice is valuable.  She’s already listed a couple things that I’m guilty of.  For one, when submitting your short film to festivals, don’t put your companies logo in the front of it.  Nobody has heard of your company and furthermore, nobody cares what the name of it is.  I’m totally guilty of this.  There are a couple things in the book that I don’t agree with though.  In one section there are different budget brackets.  The first bracket is $11,000.  That’s the first bracket.  They slowly ascend to $75,000.  Basically what that tells me is that according to this book, you can’t make a decent short film for under $11,000.  It lists all of the equipment and crew you need.  I totally and completely disagree with that.  $11,000 for a short film is bloated to me to say the least.  Robert Rodriguez shot El Mariachi for $7000 and most of that budget was spent on the camera.  And that was an 80+ minute long movie.  The example the book uses is a 15 page short film.  And it’s using the time frame of a 2 day weekend shoot.  Maybe I missed something in the interpretation, but that’s what I’m getting out of it.  Later on in the chapter there is an interview with a film maker who made a successfull short film for roughly $4500.  One of the things listed in the $11,000 budget is a continental breakfast for a 35 person crew.  Go to the supermarket, buy some fruit, get some yogurt, granola,  some bread to toast, little orange juice, some bagels, put someone who will work for free on food prep duty, and there’s your continental breakfast.  Better yet, go to Togo’s and order a sand which platter, they’re like $40, I do it all the time.  Also, 35 person crew?!  Are you serious?  That seems bloated to say the least.  I shot Censored with an 8 person crew and I had no clue what I was doing and that seemed bloated and that’s been accepted to festivals.  I shot Nice Guys Finish Last most of the time with a 4 person crew.  I shot Say Something with a 5 person crew and it cost me like $100, if even that.  That was an 8 minute long short film that all of my teachers(who were industry professionals) thought was great.  Maybe I’m just not at the level she’s at yet, but Jesus Christ.  If Robert Rodriguez can make a good movie for $7000, I can make a 15 minute short film for way under $11,000.  I think, anyone can shoot anything they want for free, they just have to know the right people and make the right moves.  Don’t get me wrong, Roberta Marie Munroe is a smart lady and she wrote a great book.  I would recommend How Not To Make a Short Film to anyone.  It’s got some good stuff in it, I just can’t agree with that one point.
On to my next order of business.  Is anyone in the market for blood and/or sperm?  I’m selling.

I entered Censored in to a film festival that makes it IMDB appropriate.  I didn’t realize that I didn’t have to actually be accepted in to the festival, I just had to submit my short film.  So, I get the E-Mail that tells me I can fill out the form to create an IMDB page.  I go to IMDB and start the process of filling this thing out.  It was the most unnecessarily complicated thing in the history of unnecessarily complicated things I’ve ever seen.  First off, every section (even the title) has it’s own guidelines page that’s roughly a page long.  Really IMDB?  Seriously?  We need an entire page explaining how to type in the title?  Are they explaining this from the point of your computer being off or what?
“OK, there should be a big power button on your computer, push it and wait for your computer to load.  Once it’s loaded, open up Internet Explorer, or Firefox, perhaps Opera, any Internet browser will do.  If you’re accessing this site on a cell phone, there may not be a big power button on the front of it.  That’s ok, just load up the browser.”
That’s what I pictured when I first saw it.  I found it hilarious, because if you were reading that, clearly your computer was already on and the browser was already open.  You see what I did there?  Jesus, I’m such a clever bastard.  Anyway, it’s actually rules and regulations behind each section.  It’s somewhat mind numbing.  By the end of it your like
“What the fuck?!  Am I disarming a nuke?!  I just wanted to type in the title!”
It makes you question everything about what you are doing.
“Did I type in the title correctly?  Does it meet all the guidelines?  It looks good.  Can I move on?  Is everything ok?  Where am I?!  What the fuck is going on?!  Who am I?!”
It makes you kind of afraid of the next section.  And when you get something wrong it like highlights it in red.  Which is just as effective as having a person stand there yelling
“You got that wrong you stupid asshole!”
So, after you fill everything out, it gets sent to a representative at IMDB to check over.  So I’ll probably get an E-Mail in 2 weeks regarding all the crap I filled out wrong. 
Currently, I’m waiting for responses from The Action On Film International Film Festival and Woodstock Film Festival.

So, I’ve decided to submit short films to 5 festivals a month.  I sent off 2 copies of Censored this morning.  One of the festivals would add Censored and everyone in it to IMDB.  Which would be pretty cool.  I’ve set up a form where I enter all of the information in to Excel as I send them out.  I couldn’t deal with just sending them out blindly.  As for my success rate?  So far, I’m 1 for 2.  I’ve been rejected from 1 and accepted to another.  I’m absolutely expecting rejection letters and E-Mails.  That just seems to be the nature of the beast.  When I finish editing Nice Guys Finish Last, I’ll start sending that one out.  That one is a tough sell though.  It’s probably going to run about 15 minutes and a short film that long is harder to get in to film festivals.  O well.  When I’m finished with Nice Guys Finish Last, I’ll probably concentrate on sending that out and see how it goes for a month or so.  If it doesn’t work out, I’ll start sending Censored out again.
The only thing that sucks about film festivals is the fees.  I mean, it makes sense, it just kind of sucks that your fee is kept regardless of weather you show at the festival or not.  Couldn’t they at least send me a poster or something?  Maybe a key chain that says “Rejected” on it?  Or a T-Shirt that says “I paid $35 to submit to Blah Blah Film Festival and all I got was this shitty t-shirt?”  I would rock that shit.

So, The Los Angeles United Film Festival showed my short film, Censored last night along with another short film and a feature length documentary.  Censored was on first and it got a respectable amount of laughs and applause at the end.  Still, I couldn’t help but think “I can do better then this.”  The laughs were there and everyone seemed entertained but I want something funny to a point where it’s unforgettable.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of Censored and I think it’s a great short film.  But I’ll probably never make something that I think is absolutely perfect.
Now, on to the other two films Censored was showing with..  The other short film was funny.  It was animated.  I really do wonder how many other shorts and features played that weren’t either animated or documentaries.  Am I missing something here?  Are all independent films becoming documentaries or animated?  Maybe it’s just cheaper and easier to do things that way.  I mean if it’s animated, you don’t need lights, or boom mics, or blocking really.  You can do most of it on a PC or Mac.  Anyway, the one that played with my short film had some big laughs in it.  It was funny.  The documentary we saw was an interesting subject.  Masturbation, which I can relate to.  It was a test screening so they still have some editing and tweaking to do.  But I really do think they have something there.  It was interesting.  I could really see it showing on Showtime or HBO.  And honestly, if I was flipping through the channels and happened to see it, I would probably watch it.  Maybe I’m an idiot for this, but I thought the title was Unfinished Documentary on Masturbation.  I thought it was a clever title.  I laughed when I first heard it.  I was kind of disappointed to find out that it wasn’t.  Maybe I’m a retard for that, but whatever.
You know what I did notice at the film festival?  Nobody bashes anyones film.  You’ll hear constructive criticism, but never a “that sucked.”  It’s the good kind of criticism.  While we are all in direct competition with each other at times, this industry and craft is tough enough as it is without the pissing or dick measuring contest that sometimes ensues in a competitive atmosphere.
My final take on all of it?  Well, the film festival was awesome.  Being given the opportunity to have so many people view my short films at once was an amazing experience.  So, I think I need to submit to more film festivals.  Why not, right?