John Q. Phats Entertainment

So, I’m putting together the credits for Nice Guys Finish Last.  Holy Jesus, there were a lot of people involved in this thing.  The credits are like 45 seconds long.  Normally, my credits are like 10 seconds long, if even that.  I hate to say it, but I may need to cut them out for the festival cut.  I’m not sure if that’s going to be way too long to add to an already pushing it short film.  Getting a 15+ minute long short film in to a festival isn’t going to be easy.  Maybe I’ll send the judges a version without the credits and when I send them my screener, I’ll send them a version with credits.  That’s pretty shady though.  Maybe I just won’t count the credits as part of the film.  Of course, I could be wrong on the time estimation and the short could turn out to be 9 minutes long.  In which case, I wouldn’t mind adding another minute of credits to it.  Or I could be wrong in the opposite direction and it could turn out to be 19 minutes long and I would be screwed.  That actually happened to a guy in my film school.  Our finals were supposed to be around 10 minutes, his was like 22 without credits.  He wrote us an E-Mail 1 night before it was due at like 2AM that said “I’ve cut my short down as much as possible and it’s still 22 minutes long…….Fuck me.”  Film school was awesome, I made some pretty good friends there and produced Say Something while attending.  Which I consider to be a very polished piece.  I think Nice Guys Finish Last may surpass Say Something in the polish and overall wow sector.  Nice Guys Finish Last has some good production value.  We have a lot of different locations and one of them is a restaurant with extras and all.  I’m kind of an idiot to have sat on NGFL for this long.  I could have been submitting it to festivals months ago.  Apparently, that’s what I do now, I shoot short films and just forget about them.  That’s how I role.
You know, I seem to jump back and forth when it comes to genre.  After I shot Red Hood (horror), I shot Say Something (Romantic Comedy).  Then I went back to Red Hood again and now I’m doing Nice Guys Finish Last, which is a comedy, but I would not in a million years call it romantic.  It’s actually kind of the opposite of romantic.  You know what I’m missing?  Some raunchy comedy.  I haven’t done raunchy in awhile, it might be a bit of an overload.  The last time I did raunchy, was The Train Wreck, which was quite awhile ago.  That might be dangerous actually, it’s probably pretty backed up.  It would all come gushing out in a display of hysterical horribleness.

My trip to NYFA was nice.  The tour is a lot like the Universal Studios tour only without the shark popping out of the water and all of that.  But, they literally drive on the same road as the Universal Studios tram does.  It’s free and at the end you get a free New York Film Academy t-shirt.  NYFA is impressive to say the least.  They are hooked up with Universal, so they get pretty special treatment.  They get access to the Edith Head wardrobe and prop department which is basically Universals wardrobe and prop department.  They get to shoot on some of the Universal back lots for student projects and they have all the standard camera equipment that you would find at an actual studio free for students to check out.  I got my first look at the infamous Red camera.  It doesn’t really look all that impressive without the lenses and everything attached to it, but it’s probably the closest digital has come to film.  Their library has the entire Criteron Collection available for professors only.  They also have somewhere around 1,200 DVD’s and screen plays that students can check out for free whenever they want.  Seriously, New York Film Academy is on top of their shit.  It seems like a great school and tuition is very reasonable.  I actually took a 12 week course there and the instructors were all awesome as well.
Only thing is, I don’t know what it will get me.  The guy who runs the masters program told me that it would get my foot in the door.  Are there any other ways of getting my foot in the door?  Probably.  Don’t get me wrong, New York Film Academy sounds amazing, but I think I’m going to explore other options first.  I’m going to keep trying this rogue film making thing for another year.  Only I’m going to try and get my name out there more.  I’ll enter more film festivals.  If I’m nowhere after that, I’ll apply for the masters program at New York Film Academy.