John Q. Phats Entertainment

I’m currently writing a horror type film titled Red Hood. So, I’ve been watching things that help inspire me. I rented Paranormal Activity last night and watched it alone in the dark. I’m hardcore like that. I know I’m about a year too late, but it didn’t really interest me when I saw the previews. There was a lot of hype when Blaire Witch came out and I didn’t really care for Blaire Witch. It was different, I’ll give it that. The only problem I can see with mixing the mocumentary and horror genre is at some point someone in the audience is probably going to ask “Why the hell are you still filming you fucking moron?” People tend to get pulled out of a scene if the characters do things that don’t seem real. Especially in a movie that’s trying to look as real as possible. Paranormal Activity had a little bit of that, but it wasn’t to guilty of it too often. It does suffer from the horrible fate that most horror movies suffer from. One of the characters is a complete moron. This character usually inflates his/her chest and then proceeds to have a dick measuring contest with all of the other more rational characters in the movie. This character does not react like real people would. Instead they do the exact opposite of what real people would do.
Most of the time, I’m somewhat satisfied when this character dies. Mainly because they pretty much deserve it. I actually really enjoyed Paranormal Activity though. The character, Mica is that annoying character. You spend most of the movie wondering we he’s such an asshat. A horror movie should put you on the edge of your seat and Paranormal Activity did that pretty well. The dead camera in the room was pretty genius. The fact that the camera doesn’t move just adds to the tension. On top of that, the time lapses were great. Time would speed up and then slow down. When the time slowed down, the audience knew something was going to happen. They had no idea what, but they knew it was going to be something. It was sort of a form of psychological conditioning. After the first scene like that the audience knew that time slowing down to normal speed meant something scary was going to happen. I really liked how time would slow down 10 – 15 seconds before anything actually happened. That just made it all the more suspenseful.
Paranormal Activity did a really good job of inspiring me. I cranked out about 5 pages last night in under an hour. That’s a pretty good pace for me. I find that the deeper I get in to this project the easier it’s getting. Caine is helping me write it. I’m not making things very easy on him though. I have a pretty specific vision in mind and I think it’s tough for him to match that. It would be tough for anybody.

You know you’re done editing when you feel like if you watch your short film one more time, you might have a mental break down.  It’s mainly just frustrating because we are so close to being done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I made my notes on the 5th cut last night and I was seriously considering telling Gabe to just start on color correction when he was done making the edits.  But, I can’t do that.  You know why?  Because when it’s done, there will be one tiny thing that irritates me that could have been fixed in 2 seconds if I had known it was there.  However if I do look at the draft before we get in to color correction, nothing will be wrong with it and it will be fine.  That’s just how it goes. 
So, about a week ago, a friend of mine is telling me about her good friend that shot a documentary on 5 of these cameras.  She didn’t know what they were called, but she told me they were the newest and best digital cameras out there.  So I said
“Ask you’re friend if I can borrow it for like a week or so.”
She laughed and I laughed but then I said
“I’m serious.”
So, she did and from what she told me he laughed, said no, but admired me for asking.  Works for me.  It was worth a shot, right?  Imagine if he had said yes?  I would have had access to a really awesome camera.  For free.  It never hurts to ask.  You would be surprised at what you could get for free by just asking.  Not that I’m a greedy beggar or anything, but when you’re making films anything you can get for free, you probably should. 
District 9 comes out tomorrow.  I’ve really wanted to see this movie ever since I saw the previews.  It looks a little bit like Cloverfield, which I thought was pretty good.  District 9 looks awesome.  I love these sort of creepy sci fi pictures.  I’m not sure what really draws me to them.  I’m not a sci fi or horror film buff, but for some reason this sort of combination is usually something I really enjoy.  I’m probably going to check it out this Sunday.  I’ll let you guys know how it is.
In a totally unrelated topic, Tropic Thunder was an awesome movie.  I have been quoting that movie all week and laughing just thinking about it.  Tom Cruise was hands down the most entertaining I have ever seen him in any movie he’s ever done.  Every single time his character was on screen I laughed my ass off.
“Now I want you to take a step back… and literally FUCK YOUR OWN FACE!”
Robert Downey Jr. kills it in that movie too.  The
“I’m a lead farmer mother fucker!”
line always cracks me up.  Maybe because it’s just so damn cliche action movie.

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.