John Q. Phats Entertainment

I’ve been writing a lot lately.  I’ve written 47 pages in roughly 5 days.  I had an idea and I just started writing it.  I didn’t do an outline or anything like that.  Which I’m sure is a mortal sin in the world of script writing, but whatever.  I’m really enjoying this so far.  It’s kind of fun to lay out the story this way.  It’s almost like reading a book.  Especially because I’m not sure how this script is going to end yet.  Writing an outline seemed to be very detrimental to me in the past.  It just made me over think everything.  Maybe this is what will work for me.  Just writing and then going through to revise later.  I wonder if any other writers use that same process.  I’m not letting anything stop me either.  I always just go with my gut, weather I think it’s bad or not.  I figure when I’m done, I’ll go through it a million times and revise it every time.  Right now it’s sort of a sci fi action comedy.  By the end of my revisions it will probably be a tragedy about pie.  Whatever, I like what I’ve written so far.  I’ve been telling people the story as I develop it and they seem to genuinely be interested.  They’ve been asking me “have you written any more of your script yet?  What happened?”  I think that’s a good sign.  Weather it’s good or not, I’m having a really good time writing it.  At first I was averaging about 2 pages a night.  Then I started averaging 5 pages a night.  Now I’m doing between 8-10 pages a night.  If this trend continues, I’ll probably hit about 15 pages a night before I’m done.  An average movie script (according to a Google search) is 95 – 125 pages.  If my script were going to be 95 pages I’m half a page shy of being half way done.  A movie script in less than 10 days isn’t too shabby.  Granted, it will be a shitty movie script that needs revision, but still.  I think that’s kind of an accomplishment.  Not really though.  I’m sure anyone could write a shitty script in 10 days.  When I finish it, I’m going to enter it in to as many script writing festivals as I can find.  Seriously, those are so freaking easy.  You sign up, pay the $15 entry fee and then E-Mail them a PDF.  I could enter 10 festivals in like 20 minutes.  I’ve never entered a script writing festival, only short film festivals.  Film festivals are kind of a pain in the ass.  You have to sign up online, pay online, and then get the tracking number.  Print out a DVD label with the tracking number on it, affix it to the DVD.  Then you have to print out a label and put it on the case that the DVD is in.  Then you have to print out another label to ship it.  I suppose you don’t have to print it, but when I was a programmer, nothing made me more skeptical about a short like a hand written DVD cover that I could barely read.  I didn’t even mention the part about burning the DVD and making sure that it’s the right region and that it actually plays correctly.  Then there’s the worry that the festival will have a picky DVD player and it won’t even play.  Even if I have to ship a script out, it’s already 10 times easier then shipping out a short film.  It’s paper, you read it.  Not much can go wrong with that.  Unless someone spills a cup of coffee on it or something, but that’s hardly my fault.

I said there would be some new footage by now.  As you can see there isn’t any.  I lie a lot.  I did write something though that I’m pretty pleased with.
I just got done watching the finale of Dexter.  Ho-ly shit.  Words cannot describe how good it was.  I’m going to bring this up, because I love Jennifer Carpenter, but that scene with her and Michael C. Hall where they are talking was one of many absolutely amazing scenes.  I know I seem to kiss her ass a lot on this blog, but she is fucking phenomenal.  I read a tweet by SHO_Dexter that they should just give John Lithgow the Emmy right now.  They really should.  Everyone who’s seen that show would probably be absolutely fine with that.  OK, I’m going to stop.  I hate the fact that I have to wait so long for a new season.  That ending was an absolute shock.  OK, I’m stopping.  While I could write a whole page just on Jennifer Carpenter, I think this is enough.
It’s tough for me to concentrate after that show but I’ll do my best.  My new script still needs to be revised, but I like it so far.  I’m going to try and commit some time to it every day.  I hold on to projects for way too long.  Or I lose interest or something and start working on something else.  See, I’m OCD and ADD at the same time.  I’m OCD about film making and stuff and I’m obsessed with it.  But my ADD makes it so I constantly get really excited about the next idea.  Only I’m not done with the first idea, so it doesn’t really work.  I need to focus on one project from now on.  Or maybe I just need to write constantly to keep up with myself.  I suppose that couldn’t be a bad thing. 
In other news, Do Nice Guys Finish Last got a fully operational IMDB page:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1561452/
They listed me as a stunt coordinator.  OK, whatever, sure, I’m a stunt coordinator.  It’s also listed as being in Post production.  Nope, it’s done.  Chris is on there and so is Caine.  If you go to my IMDB page, I now have two films listed there.  I’ve hit the big time now people.  It’s all smooth sailing from here.  In all seriousness, it’s kind of cool, but that’s about it.  It does sort of add to my legitimacy though.  I’ve had conversations like this before:
“So, you do short films?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of short films?”
“Mostly comedies.”
“really?”
“Yeah, I’m on IMDB and everything.”
“O my God!  Really?!”
I don’t know why, but that’s sort of how it is.  Almost like they thought I lied to them or something.  I’m not a liar, it’s bullshit. 
Note: See title of blog.

Still plugging away at the festivals.  I’ve sent it out to five so far.  The last one was sent to Australia.  I thought that was kind of exciting.  I sent it to something called The Sexy International Film Festival.  A festival that focuses around sex and relationships.  I swear to God, they have a festival for every thing.  I’ve seen festivals focused around dogs, cats, homosexuality, ethnicity, religion, the environment, racism, sexism, and many other isms.  At least a sex theme festival is something that’s generally loved by the public.  Who doesn’t like sex of some sort?  Since DNGFL had to make a long trek to Australia, that required a visit to the local US Post Office.  Could there be a worse run organization without it just completely collapsing on itself?  There was this lady there who said they were holding a package for her.  Apparently they keep all of the packages in a giant disorganized pile in the back room.  Brilliant idea during the holidays by the way.  So, the attendant had to go to the back like 4 times to look through everything.  Each time she came back she told the lady “It’s not back there.”  After the fourth time, she found it and gave it to her, so the line could move forward.  I laughed out loud when I saw this.   Here’s the scary part about this though.  These are all government employees.  Essentially these are the same brand of people that RUN OUR COUNTRY.  You know how when you walk up to a postal worker behind that little window and they look like they should have committed suicide like a week ago?  Just how miserable they are and how much they don’t give shit if you get what you want or not?  It’s kind of funny if you really think about it.  Despite all of that DNGFL is on it’s way to Australia.  The reason I bring this up is that while in the post office I started thinking of a comedy revolving around the Post Office, but it quickly turned in to a drama involving suicide and drug abuse.  I bet I could turn that in to a comedy.  Overdosing can be funny if you shoot it right.  The movie Dear God has kind of an up beat theme to it, but after my experience yesterday I can assure you that it was %100 fiction.  It’s about a con man turned postal worker that decides to try and scam people that have written letters to God.  He inadvertently ends up helping them and when the other postal employees catch wind of this, they decide they want to help people too.  Hilarity ensues from this point on.  It’s kind of indication that the post office sucks based on the fact that they need the power of almighty God, just to turn it in to a feel good environment. 
All of that aside, this Saturday me, Caine, and possibly Chris are going to get together this weekend to shoot something.  So, I might just have some new short films up.  Nothing super fancy, but they might be funny.  Caine is funny, that’s pretty much all I have working for me right now.  Neither of us has written a script or thought anything out at all really.  All we know is that we’re going to have a camera, it’s going to be day time, and we are going to shoot something.  I’m stealing an idea from Six Finger Fist here, but what ever.  If anyone wants to give us a title for this new short film, leave it in the comments, and we’ll base our short film off of that title.  Why not, right?

I’ve started submitting Do Nice Guys Finish Last to festivals.  Maybe it’s just me, but the price of festival submissions has sky rocketed.  When I was submitting Censored I would come across an occasional $50 submission fee.  Most of them were in the $10-$35 range.  After submitting to three festivals it seems like $50 is the new $35.  I’ve found a couple that were upwards of $90+.  My first question is “Why?”  My second question is “What the fuck?!”  $90.  Do you know what that gets me?  Just a marginal chance to screen at a film festival.  Actually, I suppose that depends on how good your film is.  I do believe that Do Nice Guys Finish Last is at the very least a decent film.  It’s just that it’s over 15 minutes long.  I’m not very confident that it will screen anywhere.  Not because it’s a bad film but it just goes very against the grain.  The run time is a big factor and there’s enough cursing in it to make a sailor blush.  It’s got a C-Bomb in it.  That makes it kind of historical.  I believe this is the first film we have completed that has a C-Bomb in it.  Great job everyone, really great work.  I applaud us.  There really aren’t enough C-Bombs in film festivals.  It’s found it’s way in to popular cinema though. 
“Can I get any of you c***s a drink?”
- Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead
“Your mother’s c*** stinks like carpet cleaner.”
-Mickey Rourke in Barfly
“Shut that c*** mouth or I’ll come over there and fuck start her head.”
-Ryan Phillippe in The Way of the Gun
“Respect the cock…and tame the c***. Tame it.”
-Tom Cruise in Magnolia

So, I’m not that off base here.  If anyone calls me on it, my first response will be “But Tom Cruise said it!”

Yesterday, I sent Do Nice Guys Finish Last for it’s first festival submission.  It’s done.  It’s almost kind of hard to believe.  I’ve been working on this thing for so long and there have been so many mishaps.  Including one final one.  When Gabe burned it on to a DVD and I watched it, the credit music was missing.  When I told him the music was missing, he decided to add it right there and re export it.  I had emailed him the music about a week ago but I guess he hadn’t listened to it.  So, he decides to give it a listen before bringing it in to Premier.  Twenty minutes after he listened to it, he was still laughing at what a horrible selection I had made music wise.  He even brought over a friend of ours to laugh with him.  I couldn’t help but laugh myself.  He said the music reminded him of that song from the Legend of Zelda.  Yeah, I picked some shitty music for the credits.  It was royalty free though.  Here’s the thing, I am completely tone deaf.  I can’t tell the difference between a tuned guitar and my dick.  Seriously, it’s that bad.  Once when I was younger, I thought it would be a good idea to tighten all the little knobs on the end of my Dad’s guitar.  He laughed hysterically at how bad it sounded and I seriously, couldn’t tell the difference.  The five copies I have right now don’t have any music to go with the credits.  It’s probably better that way.  I should just stay away from musical selection all together.  The festival I sent it out to makes it IMDB appropriate.  I’m looking forward to that.  Now I’ll have two films under my filmography on IMDB.  I’ve thought about making like 10 short films, entering them all in IMDB qualifying festivals, and just submitting all of them.  That way, I can trick people in to thinking I’m a big shot.  Those short films would be incredibly stupid, but whatever.  I would probably get lazy really early and the titles would look something like this:
The Living Room
Dogs and Pillows
Walls
Chris Punches Himself in the Face
Chris Punches Himself in the Face II
Chris Punches Himself in the Face III
Chris Punches Himself in the Face IV
Chris Punches Himself in the Face V
Chris Punches Himself in the Face VI
Chris Punches Himself in the Face VII
You get the idea.  Anyway, DNGFL is DONE!  Thank God.  If it absolutely fails on the festival attempts I’ll be posting it here very soon.  I’ll let you guys know how it’s doing.

Stupid short film refuses to be finished.  Yes, we are still working on it.  No, I haven’t dropped off of the planet and I’m not dead.  We’ve been working on a new name for the company and a new logo.  It’s still in the early stages, but I think it looks pretty sharp.  No, I’m not just saying that because of our little argument over e-mail, Chris, you bastard.  I really do like the way it looks.
I really need to write something.  I want to rent an HD camera and experiment with it.  Even if I shoot something kind of lame, it would be fun to play with HD.  I’ll get right on that.  I’m also searching for a huge couch.  The biggest one I’ve found so far was 11.5 feet long.  That’s a huge fucking couch.  What the hell would you even use that for?  Seriously, think about that.  If you were on one side and another person was on the other, there would be roughly 9 feet between the two of you.  You could play a legitimate game of frisbee at that distance.  That’s about the size that I need though.  How do I get myself in to this shit?  How did I get to the point where I NEED an 11.5 foot couch?  O well, this is what keeps me going.  Keeps my imagination going.  I’m reading A TV Writers Workbook again.  Don’t get me wrong, that book is awesome, but sometimes it makes writing seem like such an intimidating task.  It usually explains its way out of it, but right in the middle of a chapter sometimes I’ll be thinking to myself “Shit!  I have no clue what I’m doing!”  I suppose that’s why you would read the book though.  So you know what to do to write a script. 
Quick list of what’s going on:
1. Still finishing Do Nice Guys Finish Last.
2. Looking for a giant couch.  Anyone know where I can find one?
3. Trying not to go insane.  

P.S. I’ve decided to curse on my blog now.  If Kevin Smith can get away with talking about selling tickets in an alley to pork his wife on Twitter, I can fucking curse.

I’m pretty sure we are done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Not really though.  All I have to do is get the final from Gabe and add the credits.  I think what Gabe has to do is just put everything together.  It’s kind of hard to explain.  Right now, the color correction and transitions are on two different files.  I have no clue how he puts the two together, but apparently it will only take him like 5 minutes.  I’ve already finished the credits. 
The other day I heard that a friend of a friend absolutely hated Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  She thought it was offensive and depicted women as shallow.  I’m not going to lie, that’s a possibility.  I personally thought that the men were depicted just as shallow as the women.  If not more so.  Caine’s character is the absolute epitome of a sex crazed male idiot.  I more thought of it as a “what a stupid world” type of a statement.  Still, I’m always curious what other people think.  The other day someone told me that they liked Censored, but they didn’t consider it a comedy at all.  They considered it a bold statement on how censorship can strip everything human away from us.  How, if you censor us, there’s nothing left.  I thought that was really interesting.  She was absolutely shocked that I didn’t make that statement on purpose.  It was kind of an after thought, but when I sat down to write Censored, I wasn’t thinking that at all.  I told her friend to e-mail me.  I’m really curious what she thinks.  Everyone interprets things differently and I think I should take all those interpretations  in to consideration. 
So, I’ve finally started messing around with Adobe After Effects.  That is possibly the coolest program I’ve ever worked with.  I’m going to throw this link up here again because I absolutely love this web site:
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/
I have no clue why this guy posts all these tutorials for free, but holy hell does this guy know his stuff.  On top of that, he’s great at walking you through step by step and explaining things.  I’ve started doing some work for a guy who does video game videos and I made this intro using one of the tutorials on Video Copilot.  Check it out:
http://www.vimeo.com/7013250
I thought about posting something like that here, but I don’t really think it would fit in the shorts section.

Here’s what we did for Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I did a version with transitions and Gabe did a version with transitions.  We are then going to let 3 people watch them both and give us their opinion.  Why?  We both had very different ideas of how the transitions should look.  This isn’t really about who’s right and who’s wrong, it’s about what works better.  Were we tempted to just say screw it and pick one?  Yes.  But we both decided that we are so close to the end that it would be stupid to just blindly pick one.  We’ve spent a lot of time and energy making this look how we want it to.  Why should we half ass it at the end?  Once this is done, we are done.  I’m going to start sending it out.  I’m kind of nervous and excited all at the same time. 
Anyone catch last nights episode of Dexter?  How is it possible that a show gets better and better with each season?  I don’t think I’ve ever had a show hold my absolute attention as long as this one.  I mean, I’ve been watching The Simpsons since I was like 9.  But I don’t think I’ve ever been anticipating a new season of that show at all really.  It’s The Simpsons, if it’s on, you watch it.  If it’s an episode you haven’t seen already, cool.  I’m trying to get my girlfriend in to Dexter, but it’s not really working out so well.  I watched the first episode of the show yesterday with her and she said she didn’t know how she felt about it.  She said she was kind of disturbed.  It’s kind of a disturbing show.  But that’s why I like it.  She’s the first person I’ve met that hasn’t been instantly addicted to this show.  We’ve got like a small cult following of the show at work and we all talk about it.  I realized something about the first season that I didn’t really notice before.  The cinematography in that show took a lot more risks then season 2, 3, and so far 4.  It just seemed to get a lot more standard after season 1.  Season 1 used close ups, weird angles, and really dark lighting.  I wonder if it’s success caused that?  I just wonder what changed.  The first episode was especially thought out.  The first time you see him kill someone and he’s questioning the victim, they hid his face in the dark.  The rest of him is visible, but his face is hidden.  I think it’s because they wanted to show that side of him as sort of something to fear.  Like a monster without a face.  We always fear something that we can’t see.  They also seemed to go with a dark lighting scheme whenever the scene revolved around him either planning or on his way to kill someone.  I thought it was a nice choice.  The show is still lit darkly at times, but I felt it was much more edgy in the first season.  I like the show either way.
I saw Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs yesterday.  I was interested in that new technology that they used for it.  They hooked a camera up in a room with sensors in it.  When the camera man looked through the lens he saw what was in the 3d animated world.  They could then play scenes or sequences from the movie and have an actual camera man capture it.  They could record all of the camera mans movements and incorporate that in to the scene.  I thought it was awesome that they could do that and a good idea.  That movie was great.  What makes a great kids movie is a movie that parents can take their kids to that the parents can enjoy too.  You know once the kid gets that movie on DVD, he/she is going to watch it at least a million times.  It has to be enjoyable to both the kids watching it and the parents.  I think Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs can be for everyone.  I thought it was really entertaining, I liked it.  It was an great story and some of the visuals were amazing.
I’ll keep you guys updated on Do Nice Guys Finish Last.

Censored is back up in the shorts section.  Along with its fancy new laurels.  I think the Censored festival run is over.  It had a good run.  I would have really liked for it to screen out of the country.  Of course, I didn’t really submit to any festivals in other countries.  But I at least would have like to get it out of state.  That’s all right.  Maybe Do Nice Guys Finish Last will break the California borders.  We’ll see.
Being a programmer for a film festival, I have a whole new outlook on how to submit.  When submitting Censored I made one mistake, which actually is forgivable.  I showed the name of my company before the film started.  The blunt truth is that when watching short films as a programmer, I don’t really care what the name of the company who made it is.  I’ve never heard of this company and there’s a 99.999999% chance that I’m going to forget it 3 seconds in to the film.  I read a lot of books on how to submit to a film festival and I was happy to realize that I got everything else right.  My festival ID # was always clearly displayed on the both the DVD and the DVD case.  Along with the run time of the short film, the DVD region, the name of the film, and my name.  Also, my film didn’t have a DVD menu with only one option.  You put it in to the DVD player and it starts.  After programming I can also see why I got some rejection letters.  It’s good to see the other side of everything and it gives me an opportunity to correct some of the mistakes I’ve made.  After all this programming, it’s become even more apparent that it’s all about the story.  If the story sucks, the short film sucks.  You can have Oscar winning actors and jaw dropping cinematography, but if the story is some rehash of an idea that’s been done a million times or it’s just a shitty story, I’m unimpressed and so are other people.  This next bit is a little random.  Please, for the love of God, don’t start your horror short film with the killer or crazy person or whatever making a montage of pictures they’ve taken of their next victim or their victims.  In fact, avoid the making of the picture montage scene all together.  It’s been done about a gajillion times and it’s sort of lost it’s shock value at this point.  I’m sure you can come up with something much better anyway.