John Q. Phats Entertainment

The search for a mascot continues.  Current discussions focused around what exactly the mascot would mean and why I was doing this.  We also discussed squirrels and mice as possible mascots.  Wow, that all sounds so official.  I suppose this is part of me taking a break after finishing filming for Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I usually do that.  I wish I didn’t have to, but it does make everything more exciting when I start on my next project.  I have been writing here and there, but I haven’t really worked on anything major.  I really want to shoot in HD next.  I keep telling myself that once I get an HD camera that shoots 24 FPS I’ll be good from then on.  I know that’s not the case though.  As I have said in previous posts, I’ll always be chasing some new billion dollar thing that does something better then my current equipment.  I like to consider myself a budget friendly film maker.  I usually make what I have work.  That doesn’t really come out of ingenuity though, it’s more of a necessity.  Like when we built the jib arm for Red Hood.  I could have rented one for $2500, but I didn’t have that kind of budget.  So, I built one for just over $100.  It worked and now I have a jib arm.  Building stuff is always a cheap way out.  Plus, it’s kind of interesting to see what Gabe can come up with.  Or some random guy who posts blue prints on the Internet.  We built a steady cam off of the Internet.  We called it the Raminator.  It worked pretty good.  It’s kind of heavy and weird, but that’s kind of the point.  It’s supposed to add weight to the camera at a lower point to help stabilize it.  It worked for what we wanted to use it for.  Back to my original point, the mascot.  The mascot has to do with changing the name of the company.  Also, I want something kind of fun to put at the end of the credits that people will remember.  That’s pretty much it.  I really thought that there was more to it then that, but I guess not. 
Gabe tells me that the color correction for Do Nice Guys Finish Last is tedious, but he’s making progress.  Once the color correction is done the transitions will be a snap.  The credits are all ready to go.  So, we’re not too far off.  There’s not that much color correction to be done.  For a lot of the scenes, Gabe stuck with one camera.  It just flowed better that way. 
I watched a bunch more of the first season of True Blood last night.  Awesome series, but I stand by my belief that vampires are dicks.  I also got Dexter Season 3 on DVD earlier this week.  I’ve only watched the first episode, but holy shit that show is awesome.  I can’t stand watching shows on TV, I have to wait for them on DVD.  I think it’s the cliff hangers that really aggravate me.  There have been a couple times in True Blood, where if I wasn’t able to go to the next episode immediately, I would have lost my freaking mind.  Same with Dexter, although Dexter usually has a pretty good ending to each episode that leaves you satisfied.  Heroes plays the cliff hanger game a lot.  The worst by though is Lost.  I watched season 1 on DVD and decided to watch season 2 on television.  Every single episode I watched ended with me yelling “Jesus Christ!  What the fuck?!”  I only watched like 4 of them before I finally gave up and just waited for the DVD’s.  The thing with Lost is, is that they show you a preview the week before and you’re excited to see this one thing in the preview, then you watch it, and of course, that one thing is at the end of the episode.  But then that’s all it is.  There’s no explanation of it.  It just sort of happens.  Then you have to wait for an entire week to see every ones reaction to that one thing, which is what you wanted to see last week.  Season 5 comes out in December and I’ve been keeping up with it.  I love that show, I think it’s great, but screw those writers.

We’re done cutting Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Now it’s on to working out all of the little kinks.  Color correction, audio adjustments, and transitions.  It feel like an accomplishment to have cut it.  It’s come a long way.  From 18 minutes to just under 15.  Me and Chris talked about it this weekend and we’re not expecting it to get in to any festivals.  I think we established that from the beginning though.  It doesn’t make it a bad short film.  I think it’s a great short film.  I should say, it’s going to be a great short film.  There’s still a lot to work on.  I still am very surprised by how much you can get away with in the mockumentary format.  You don’t need a tripod, it doesn’t matter if there are mistakes here and there, and actors can stumble over their lines and get away with it.  It’s a fun format, but I think I’m going to be moving on to the next thing now.  I don’t see another mockumentary in my near future.  Although, it has changed my opinion on hand held camera work.  Even though we didn’t use a tripod we still got some really nice cinematography.  Maybe I’ll open up and use it in my next short film.  My main problem with it was that in short films it became a “style.”  I’ve heard film makers asked why they went hand held on their entire short film and they would say “That’s just my style.”  No, that isn’t you’re style.  %90 of the time it’s because they were either too lazy or low on cash to use a tripod.  I’m totally cool with both of those excuses.  But to cover it up with this rouse of “That’s just my style” is pretty lame.  Call it what it is.  I know low budget films don’t have access to fancy dollies or equipment.  But there are ways around that.  I feel like I’ve put cameras on everything.  Wheel chairs, roller blades, office chairs, at least 3 different home made dollys, carts, ect…  Whatever works.  Am I total hypocrite for shooting Do Nice Guys Finish Last all in hand held?  Probably, but that was my style, so piss off.  In actuality, I wanted to shoot all in hand held, I chose to shoot all in hand held, and I left my very awesome tripod at home on purpose.  Do Nice Guys Finish Last is a mockumentary, which means that it’s essentially a fake documentary.  In this case, I felt like hand held was necessary.  I really tried to think of how an amateur documentary film maker would film something like this and that’s why I chose to go all hand held.  Basically, I was trying to mimic the style of someone who didn’t know what they were doing.  Which actually was a lot of fun.  Kind of like when we built the murder chair for Red Hood.  That was a blast.  We built the entire thing out of wooden pallets.  What was awesome about it was that we got to put our selves in the place of how the main character would build something like this.  It was a total hack and slash job.  When something wasn’t holding we either attached another piece of wood to it with about 6 screws or we just tore it off and started again.  We figured the main character wasn’t a carpenter and she didn’t need it to look pretty.  It was purely functional.  I actually have a picture of it:

It’s not pretty, but it’s functional.  You can sit in it, it will support your weight, but it’s absolutely not comfortable.  This was a chair that the main character used to torture people in, so none of that really mattered.
I kind of strayed from my original point, but whatever.  My point is that sometimes bad camera work or shady craftsmanship is called for in a film.  As long as the audience knows it’s intentional.  With hand held, it’s very difficult to make it look like it was necessary and very easy to make it look like you as a film maker were just lazy.  That’s not to say that I haven’t seen films that were well done all in hand held.  I just feel like that “style” is extremely over used because it’s an easy out.
I saw two movies this week.  District 9 and Ponyo.  I’ll start off with Ponyo.  Ponyo is an anime movie by Studio Ghibli.  A guy named Hayao Miyazaki did Ponyo and he has somewhat of a cult following.  In fact Studio Ghibli itself has somewhat of a cult following.  I went in to the theater not knowing anything about the movie.  All I knew is that my girlfriend really wanted to see it.  I’ve only seen one other anime by Hayao Miyazaki and that was My Neighbor Totoro.  My Neighbor Totoro was an acid trip.  Much like Ponyo, only Ponyo seemed to be catered more for children.  I suppose My Neighbor Totoro was for kids too, but for some reason it seemed darker.  I’m not even going to begin to try and explain the story line to Ponyo.  You probably wouldn’t believe me anyway, if I did.  It’s just one of those things you have to see.  I thought it was great.  If I was a parent, I would roll up a joint, smoke it in the mini van on the way to the theater, buy three packages of milk duds in the lobby, and go away to the land of Ponyo for 4+ hours.  The movie is only 2 hours long but I would be sitting in the theater after the credits rolled either asleep or absolutely out of my freaking mind based on what I had just seen.  It’s probably a good thing I’m not a parent.  Awesome visuals in Ponyo and a story line that made me say out loud “Who the hell thinks of that?”  It’s incredibly imaginative and unique.  But you don’t need to be high to enjoy it.  I enjoyed it and I wasn’t high at all.  If I was high though it probably would have been a life changing experience.  Just know what you’re getting in to.  It’s an anime catered towards children, that’s an acid trip.
District 9 was absolutely awesome.  I loved that freaking movie.  I am totally going to see that in theaters again.  I’m a sucker for the horror sci fi genre, so maybe I can’t give the same opinion as the everyday movie watcher, but I thought it was great.  I was entertained throughout that entire movie.  The actors were all phenomenal in it, the cinematography was great, the special effects were awesome, the story line had me hooked from the very beginning, and the characters development throughout the story was amazing.  If you’re in to this sort of movie, go see it, it’s awesome.