John Q. Phats Entertainment

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.

Gabe gave me the Do Nice Guys Finish Last color correction version.  It looked really good.  It’s weird to see it in a somewhat polished state.  Next we are going to work on the audio.  I’m still debating how much I want to do to the audio.  Part of me wants to clean it up completely and another part of me wants it to stay sort of rough.  Some aspects of Do Nice Guys Finish Last are polished and other aspects are left rough on purpose.  For example, the camera work was left rough on purpose.  The lighting was set up and polished though.  Mainly because we could do that and get away with it.  It’s one of those things that we can slip past the audience that would make it look a little bit better.  Audio is a big part of this.  I really do want the audience to feel like they are watching a documentary done by a bunch of amateurs.  But how far is too far?  Is keeping the audio somewhat rough forgivable here?  I’m going to have to figure that out tonight.  After the audio, we’ll probably do the transitions and then we’ll be done.  I already put the credits together so all I have to do is tack those on the end when the transitions are done and call it a day.  With credits, Do Nice Guys Finish Last will wind up being just under 16 minutes.  I can live with that.  I think for a 16 minute film, it’s pretty fat free.  I’ve seen short films that are 20 minutes that could have easily been cut down to 10.  I don’t think this is the case with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I think it’s 15 minutes, because it needs to be 15 minutes.  We cut a lot out that was in the original script.  Not just to get it under 15 minutes, but because the parts we cut out weren’t necessary.  If you can get the point across in 1 scene, then why show 2?  Or if you can get the point across in a scene that’s 30 seconds long, why would you show a scene that’s 2 minutes long?  Of course, I think this all changes when shooting a movie.  For a short film there is a totally different set of rules.  With a movie, you have time for a set up and you can take your time here and there.  With a short film there almost shouldn’t be a setup.  The characters should already be past the setup and on to the point of the short film by the time it starts.  For example, there’s a scene where Chris calls one of the girls and nervously asks her for a date.  We could have shown him pacing back and fourth nervously while biting his finger nails and starring at his phone, but why?  He makes it blatantly obvious by the tone in his voice that he’s nervous.  It would be taking twice as long to illustrate the same exact point.  As an audience member, I think it’s a little insulting actually.  If we had shown the pacing scene it would sort of be like:
“He’s nervous….  You see how nervous he is?  He’s really nervous.  Look at how he’s pacing, he’s nervous.  Man is he nervous.”
Kind of annoying, isn’t it?  I think, a lot of short films fall in to this trap.  The audience is smarter then you think.  They can figure it out.

For those of you that went to the movie thing last night in Huntington, you may have not seen me.  I had a bit of an emergency that I had to deal with so I couldn’t make it.  Sorry if you showed up to say hello and I wasn’t there. 
Last night in being a programmer I got to the good stuff.  These are the films that make me look at my work and think to myself “What the hell am I doing?”  Two especially absolutely amazed me.  There is some great stuff out there.  I already knew that, but I always welcome a good reminder.
I’ve been working on my resume to look for work on a film crew.  Of course, me being a graphic designer I have to make it incredibly complicated and fancy.  What actually started as a work project has evolved in to part of my resume.  I’ll post it when I’m done with it for you guys to check out.  It should be quite glorious.  I’ve also been hard at work on the press kit for Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  It’s kind of fun.  Right now I’m just trying to get the information down, when I’m done with that, I’ll make it fancy.  I’m very tempted to design it like it’s a bunch of scrap paper Chris (main character) scribbled his ideas on.  Why not, right?  I think it would work.
The deadline for Sundance is coming up.  I’m probably going to enter Censored.  Will it get in?  Probably not, but what the hell, right?  If I can get Do Nice Guys Finished Last done on time, I’ll enter that as well.  My hopes are, that Do Nice Guys Finish Last is much better then I think it is.  Not that I think it’s bad.  In fact, I love that short film, I just don’t think it’s all that festival appropriate.  Hopefully, I’m wrong, festivals love it, and audiences laugh so hard, their stomachs hurt.  As I’ve figured out though, it’s very easy to become delusional about how funny something you and your friends think something is vs what the public thinks is funny.  Often times, something you and your friends think is funny, isn’t really all that funny to other people.  Many groups of people I’ve met have told me that I could just put a camera on their friends and have comedic gold.  Have you ever told a really funny story, only to have the person you’re telling it to stare at you with a blank stare?  It usually ends with you saying “Well, I guess you had to be there.”  It’s kind of like that.   
I still haven’t seen Inglorious Bastards.  I want to see that movie so badly.  Maybe I’ll check it out tonight.  Right now, I’m going through all of the movies that I should have seen already, but haven’t for some stupid reason.  For example, I just watched The Shining last week.  Jack Nicholson was a creepy looking bastard.  Even in the beginning, when he’s acting all normal, he’s freaky looking.  With age, I think he became less creepy.  In As Good As it Gets he wasn’t all that menacing.  His character was kind of a prick and he sort of looked the part.  Maybe he’s just that amazing of an actor.  His actual demeanor alters his appearance.  Or does he just pick roles that fit his look at the time?  It’s tough to say.  Either way, the guy is an amazing actor and often times, I’ll watch a movie just because he’s in it.  I always thought Keanu Reeves was good at picking his parts.  He’s not an amazing actor, but the roles he picks fit him so well, he can almost pull it off.  For example, The Matrix.  Could you think of anyone, who could have played Neo better then him?  I think he was absolutely perfect for that role and it’s hard to believe that he wasn’t the first choice to play that character.  Think about it?  Lonely computer hacker, limited social skills, finds comfort with computers, not sure of anything really.  He pulled it off.  Same with The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Devils Advocate.  Again, not really an amazing actor, but all of those roles fit him very well.  It works for me. 
I went off on a bit of a tangent there.  I tend to do that.  I could probably spend days talking about movies and once I get going it’s tough to shut me up.  Anyway, sorry again for not showing up at the SoCal Film Fest Movies by the pier thing, I’ll be sure to make it out to the next one.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Do Nice Guys Finish Last is a mockumentary.  We really wanted it to have that documentary feel.  Thus why there is no tripod in any of these shots.  I usually hate it when short films don’t use a tripod, but in this case, I think it calls for it.  These are some out takes from a scene we had to re shoot.  We had so much fun on this shoot.  We all have a laugh when someone messes up.  There’s also just some messing around.  When we have the shots we want sometimes I’ll just tell the actors to do whatever and have a good time.  This is the result.

So, the Pick up shots are done.  It was actually pretty painless.  We had a very small crew and we knew what we were doing.  I went with a little bit of a different workflow this time.  Rather then just having the actors memorize the script and then shooting, I went through the dialogue with them a bunch and made the adjustments I wanted before I pressed record.  So, they memorized the dialogue and knew how to act it out.  It worked out very well.  I also really tried to avoid saying things like “I need you to be angrier.” I’m usually pretty good about that, but sometimes I slip up.  Instead, I tried to direct through situations that the character would be put in.  For example with Caine, I needed him to be more upset so I said
“OK Caine, so this sort of thing always happens to you.  Chris always gets the girl and you don’t understand it.  He has the girl of your dreams practically throwing herself at him and he’s complaining to you that she’s not the right one.  You haven’t been laid in God knows how long.”
Instead of just saying
“I need you to be more angry.”
 It worked out really well.  Not only was it more of a collaboration between me and the actors, but we both got what we wanted out of it.  We actually had a lot of fun doing this.  I’m thinking about posting one of the out takes where everyone was just kind of goofing around.  What do you guys think?  Would that be something you want to see?  The only comment I’ll get, is probably an ad for Viagra, but that’s ok, I’ll take that as a cue to post it.

Today is the day for the pick up shots.  I’m hoping for a small crew of just me and a boom mic operator.  Why?  Because, nobody likes pick up shots, I’m doing everyone a favor by keeping it minimal.  Plus I think it will make things go faster.  It’s not that difficult of a scene really.  I’ll head over there after work, go over the new dialogue with the actors, set up the lights, and then shoot.  Shouldn’t be too difficult.  I think I’ve gone over how much I hate pick up shots, so that’s established.  I still don’t think words could ever describe my true hatred for pick up shots.
Gabe got me the 2nd cut of Do Nice Guys Finish Last today.  I’m looking forward to checking it out.  Watching a short film over and over again has always been kind of tough for me.  In the book I’m reading (How Not to Make a Short Film), it’s outlined perfectly.  When you first look at all of your footage there are times you want to shoot yourself and times you want to celebrate.  Not per project, no, this all happens in one project.  I was actually very comforted to read that this is all normal.  The truth is, that nobody is closer to your project then you are.  If you see a flaw, it’s going to scream out at you every time you watch it.  That’s the first thing you’re going to see in fact when that flaw comes on screen.  Here’s what I do.  Upon first seeing all those flaws jump out at me, I let my brain freak out for thirty seconds.  This is usually just my brain saying “God damn it” over and over again.  Then I take a deep breath and try to think about ways to fix them.  If I can’t find a way to fix one, I show the scene to an impartial third party.  Sometimes I’ll even ask “Did you see anything wrong with that scene?”  If the impartial third party notices the flaw, then I have a potential problem and I possibly have to re shoot something or figure something out.  %95 percent of the time though, they don’t even notice it.  Sometimes I will run it by 4-5 people and %95 of the time, they all don’t notice it.  If they don’t see it, I’m making way too big a deal out of it and it’s passable.  Some times I’ll even add “Did you see that X was wrong with it?”  Most of the time, the answer is “I didn’t even notice that.”  That flaw will always jump out at me when watching the short film but at that point, I can live with it.  I never talk about the flaw again.  It’s over, it’s there, I’ve dealt with it, and %99 of the population probably isn’t ever going to notice it or care if they do.
Has anyone ever seen Science of the Movies?  It’s on the Science Channel every Thursday night.  It’s an amazing show.  I’ve started DVRing it.  The host of the show is named Nar Williams.  I want that guys job so badly.  All he does is goes to these different companies that offer different technologies in film making and asks them questions about how the technology works and then sees them in action and most of the time he gets to participate.  All of that aside for an aspiring film maker it’s an amazing look at new technologies in the industry.