John Q. Phats Entertainment

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.

I went on a bit of a writing binge last night.  For some reason a script I had an idea for has been popping in to my head a lot.  So, I sat down and started writing it last night.  The whole entire thing has sort of a smart ass tone to it.  I meant for it to be a series, but it’s kind of shaping up in to a movie.  It’s called Dead Girl and it’s kind of fun to write because I haven’t planned anything.  I just sort of sit down and write what ever comes to mind.  I’m not putting any pressure on myself to make it spectacular.  I’m just writing it.  It would be nice to have a full on movie script.  If I were a script writer, I would submit scripts to festivals like crazy.  Printing a script out costs you maybe a dollar.  In fact, I think a lot of festivals will accept an E-Mailed PDF.  Which is no shipping cost, no printing cost, and more importantly no production cost.  Plus, I can’t think of a better way to get a script out there.  If I finish Dead Girl, I’ll send it out to every script writing competition I can find.  Why not, right?
Censored was rejected from the Gangrene Film Festival yesterday.  This is only it’s 2nd rejection and it really only brought me down for roughly 20 seconds.  Mainly because there are about a million festivals out there and if I really wanted to, I could probably get in to another 4 by next month.  However, my focus is on Do Nice Guys Finish Last right now, which honestly, will probably have a much higher rejection rate then Censored.  So, it’s probably a good thing to be developing this tough skin at this stage.  The first rejection letter I got, really got to me.  I was upset about it for like a week.  This time it was 20 seconds.  Maybe next time, I won’t feel a thing.  It’s not that I don’t think Do Nice Guys Finish Last is going to be great when it’s done, it’s just that it’s sort of fighting an uphill battle.  It’s 15 minutes long and very offensive.  That’s pretty long for a short film and I’m guessing that film festivals want to appeal to a wider audience, so they kind of attempt to stay in the PG-13 area.  It doesn’t really matter to me though.  We made the film that we set out to make.  Worst case scenario?  I have a short film that I’m proud of to post on my web site.  Plus, I still have the SoCal Film Festival to look forward to.
By the way, Gabe just threw (literally) me edit six of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I think this might be our final cut.  We’ll see.  I’ll have to check it out tonight.  I really want it to be our final cut.  The last edit had very minor changes in it.  So, I’m pretty sure it’s almost there.

First off, I would like to apologize in advance for this one.  I went on sort of a Harry Potter binge this weekend and watched all five movies over the course of two days and my brain is a little scrambled.  I can’t believe that after five movies, Ron still hasn’t made a move on that Herminy (did I spell that right?  Don’t really care.) chick.  Christ man, what do you need, a written invitation?!  Also, there’s clearly not enough drug use for this to be a movie about a bunch of kids.  Although, I’m convinced that, the divination teacher has got to be on something.  I wonder if there’s a deleted scene where she’s smoking out Dumbledore?  In all seriousness though, for what they are, those movies are amazing.  They are all really well done.  Pretty much every aspect of those movies is at the very least, great.  Anyway, sorry again.
In my last post I talked about an old short film that I did titled The Wake Up.  It really got me thinking about my first short film, Firework De La Muerte.  What a pile of crap that short film was.  It was roughly an eight page script with the same joke told four times.  Really, the joke wasn’t funny the first time and it sure wasn’t funny the 4th time.  For that one we shot in a department store which shall remain nameless, without asking anyone.  We just sort of got somebody with a red shirt and went with it.  That was gorilla film making to the extreme.  To be honest, nobody really cared.  If I was an employee making minimum wage, I don’t think I would really care either.  I think the worst part about Firework De La Muerte is that when it was done, I thought it was great.  But then when other people watched it, they didn’t laugh.  At first I was in denial.  Like there was something wrong with everyone else.  Finally, I realized that it really did just suck something awful.  It was kind of a slap to the face.  But it was necessary.  I remember the first time I watched it, without my head up my ass.  I just sat there watching it in absolute shock at how bad it really was.  After watching it, I actually said out loud.
“O my God……  That sucked.”
There is no place to see Firework De La Muearte, nobody will ever see it.  It belongs in the depths of a hard drive, where nobody will ever find it.  I think I might of actually deleted it off of my external hard drive.  I do still have the prop firework though, made of cardboard, that egg crate stuff you put on a mattress, and duct tape.  The prop was actually kind of glorious, I have to say.  It was a giant somewhat rocket shape covered in duct tape.
While Firework De La Muearte is an awful short film, it really was something that I needed to do, to get where I am.  Now, Censored is playing in festivals all over the place, I’m close to finishing Do Nice Guys Finish Last, and I have a lot of big and exciting projects on the horizon.  This sort of leads in to my next topic.  I finished up fancy new laurels for Censored:
      

Technically, the SoCal Film festival hasn’t happened yet, but we have been selected.

I watched 2 episodes of Science of the Movies last night.  That show is a big reminder of what I don’t have access to.  One episode was all about different moveable camera mounts.  There was this gigantic camera mount that had 12 points of axis that you could program to do motions over and over again.  It’s basically so you can layer two shots on top of each other.  Since the motion of two shots match perfectly, the two shots together look seamless.  I honestly had no clue that’s how it was done.  All of my split screen shorts were pretty much that, minus the motion.  I didn’t realize it, but I kind of stumbled on the early meathod of special effects.  That’s kind of cool.  I find that I do that a lot actually.  It’s kind of weird.  I don’t know if I hear about it somewhere else and subconsciously make myself feel like I thought of it, or if I really do come up with concepts that just happen to match what’s already out there. 
I am meeting with a script writer today to discuss Project X.  By spreading the word through my contacts, I’ve actually got some people interested.  Now all I need is a roughly $5000, an HD Camera, locations, equipment, skill, and food.  Huh.  Anyway, yeah, I’m going to be focusing on that.  It’s tough to juggle everything though.  Nice Guys Finish Last is almost done.  That’s going to need to go out to festivals and Censored is still going.  By the way, I submitted to something a while back called the SoCal Film Festival.  I really hope I get accepted to that.  That would be awesome.  Mainly because they would be holding it right near my house.  I could probably go to every night of that if I wanted to.  It’s literally a 10 minute drive vs an hour+ drive to the festivals Censored has been accepted to.  I would really like Censored to screen somewhere outside of California.  Don’t ask me why, I just think it would be cool.   Every time you get accepted to a festival they send you these little acceptance things:

Like that guy right there.  I suppose can put those on the DVD’s that I send out to other festivals as sort of a selling point.  Imagine if I get selected for all 4 of the other festivals I entered?  That will be 7 total.  That will look kind of insane.  You also get one if you’ve been nominated for or win an award at a festival.  Strictly Background had like a bajillion acceptance ones and 6 Best Documentary Award winners.  These things are actually called Laurels.  Every festival does them.  At least as far as I can tell, every festival does one.  I think they are kind of official and regal looking.  It’s kind of neat to have these.  Sort of like a digital trophy.  Hopefully when Nice Guys Finish Last is done it gets it’s own collection of them.

EDIT(7/29/2009- 3:32PM) – I just got an acceptance E-mail from the SoCal Film Festival.  That kicks so much ass.  I’ll give you guys all the details in tomorrows post.

So, I got an e-mail from the Action on Film Film Festival going over all of the nominations for the various awards they are giving out.  I swear to God, there has got to be like 50 awards.  Each award has 5 nominations.  I have no clue how many short films they are showing, but I guess it’s a lot.  So, I’m looking for Censored on one of these lists and don’t see it.  Not one.  I did feel better though when I realized that it’s mainly like 10 or 15 short films listed 5 times for each award.  I suppose that makes sense when you really think about it.  If a short film is nominated for best picture, I imagine it did a lot of things right, so I suppose it’s not weird to see it listed as a best actress nomination and best cinematography.  It makes sense.  If there was a category for “Best Short Film with a Censorship Bar” I would have nailed that shit.  That must have been a nightmare figuring all of that out.  I’ve come to the realization that Censored isn’t an award winner.  I came to this realization when it played at the LA United Film Festival.  It had a couple parts that got a good laugh out of the audience but I know I can do better then that.  There’s a lot that could have been improved.  The lighting could have been better and I was still trying to figure out the boom mic when I shot it.  So the sound quality isn’t really all that great.  At one point, I thought Censored was brilliant.  I still think the concept is strong, but I probably could have executed it a little better.  O well, on to bigger and better things.  Maybe Nice Guys Finish Last will be an award winning film.  If not Nice Guys Finish Last, then maybe the next one.

So, The Los Angeles United Film Festival showed my short film, Censored last night along with another short film and a feature length documentary.  Censored was on first and it got a respectable amount of laughs and applause at the end.  Still, I couldn’t help but think “I can do better then this.”  The laughs were there and everyone seemed entertained but I want something funny to a point where it’s unforgettable.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of Censored and I think it’s a great short film.  But I’ll probably never make something that I think is absolutely perfect.
Now, on to the other two films Censored was showing with..  The other short film was funny.  It was animated.  I really do wonder how many other shorts and features played that weren’t either animated or documentaries.  Am I missing something here?  Are all independent films becoming documentaries or animated?  Maybe it’s just cheaper and easier to do things that way.  I mean if it’s animated, you don’t need lights, or boom mics, or blocking really.  You can do most of it on a PC or Mac.  Anyway, the one that played with my short film had some big laughs in it.  It was funny.  The documentary we saw was an interesting subject.  Masturbation, which I can relate to.  It was a test screening so they still have some editing and tweaking to do.  But I really do think they have something there.  It was interesting.  I could really see it showing on Showtime or HBO.  And honestly, if I was flipping through the channels and happened to see it, I would probably watch it.  Maybe I’m an idiot for this, but I thought the title was Unfinished Documentary on Masturbation.  I thought it was a clever title.  I laughed when I first heard it.  I was kind of disappointed to find out that it wasn’t.  Maybe I’m a retard for that, but whatever.
You know what I did notice at the film festival?  Nobody bashes anyones film.  You’ll hear constructive criticism, but never a “that sucked.”  It’s the good kind of criticism.  While we are all in direct competition with each other at times, this industry and craft is tough enough as it is without the pissing or dick measuring contest that sometimes ensues in a competitive atmosphere.
My final take on all of it?  Well, the film festival was awesome.  Being given the opportunity to have so many people view my short films at once was an amazing experience.  So, I think I need to submit to more film festivals.  Why not, right?

So, last Sunday, I got caught unprepared.  Seriously, that’s what happened, I fucked up.  I wanted to shoot a scene in a restuarant.  Let me tell you the mess that ensued.  We were going to shoot one of the restaurant scenes for Nice Guys Finish Last.  So, I had a small crew together and no extras but for whatever the reason, I didn’t care.  Well, crew bailed on me.  Turns out the ride for most the crew ended up getting drunk in Corona.  Regardless, I wasn’t ready at all.  I hadn’t tested shit.  So I figured “hey, I can make this my test day.”  So, I’m setting up the lights to test them out and realize that I left the god damned power chords at my house.  That’s alright, I can test the boom mic and my new shock mount.  Not so fast, remember, I’m what some people refer to as “legally retarded.”  I left the boom mic (XLR) chord at my house too.  If I were another person, I would have punched myself square in the balls.  Believe it or not this all turned out to be a good thing.  It really made me think to myself “What the hell am I doing here?”  This restaurant scene is pretty hard core and requires a lot of prep work.  I think I got caught up in the excitement of Censored’s appearance at the film festival…..  Which is tomorrow.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still insanely excited about it, but these past 3 days have been a frantic mess of me trying to get my shit together for Nice Guys Finish Last.  I’m starting to get a handle on everything though.  We are actually shooting a few small scenes tomorrow night.  Which, I’m totally prepared for.  I’m through dicking around, Sunday was a wake up call.  Yes it’s exciting that Censored is playing at a film festival, but after the festival, I’m back to square one.  So, I have to start taking this thing seriously.
P.S. One last plug for my short film playing in the Los Angeles United Film Festival.  It’s $10.00 to get in and we are playing with a movie called Unfinished Documentary on Masturbation.  I hope to see you guys there.  You can buy tickets here:
Lot Angeles United Film Festival- Tickets

Alright, so this was the week of prep.  I’ve been letting everyone know that Censored will be showing at the Los Angeles United Film Festival and working on Nice Guys Finish Last.  I’ve made some calls and it’s looking like if I can pull my head out of my ass I can probably organize a shoot next Sunday.  The fact that Censored got selected for a film festival is a huge distraction for me.  I’ve been kind of fixated on it. 
There’s some other interesting stuff playing at the festival.  Me and my room mate are going to see Super High Me.  This comedian did an experiment where he smoked pot for 30 days and then didn’t smoke pot for 30 days.  I’m not a pot head or anything, but this sounds amazingly funny and interesting.
Apparently the big deal of the festival is The Shark is Still Working.  It’s a documentary about how the movie Jaws has helped to shape common elements of pop culture.  They sold out the first night so they arranged to have like 3 more nights of that same movie.  I’m not really that interested in it, but it does look kind of phenomenal.  
Fagbug is another movie that caught my eye.  It’s a documentary about a girl that was a victim of a hate crime.  The title makes me giggle.
Seriously, there are like 20 movies playing at this film festival.  I’m a little overloaded, I’m not sure what to do.  Do I go to all of them or just the ones that really interest me?  I am kind of curious about the number of documentaries being screened.  Is this like an independent film thing?  Is it just cheap and easy (like a whore) to do a documentary or something?  I’ve never really had an urge to shoot a documentary about anything.  Nice Guys Finish Last is a mockumentary.  That’s about as close as I’ve come though. 
P.S. Sorry about the somewhat shitty post.  I’m not really sure what to say today.

For those of you that want to attend, I thought I would provide a couple links for the May 6th screening of Censored at the Los Angeles United Film Festival.  Here’s the link to the tickets page:
Los Angeles United Film Festival Tickets Page
You should see Censored near the bottom under the May 6th day and under Unfinished Documentary On Masturbation.  That’s the film it’s playing with.
It says that it’s also a workshop.  Hopefully, they don’t show Censored and say “See that?  That’s what not to do.”

So, I got an E-Mail this morning.  Censored is going to screen at the Los Angeles United Film Festival.  Which is why you can’t view it.  I’ve read that most film festivals won’t show short films that people can view on the Internet.  You can buy tickets to the event by following the link above.  Censored is playing with a film called “Unfinished Documentary On Masturbation” on May 6th at 9:30 PM.  I can’t tell if that’s the title of a comedy or not, but I’m sure it’s awesome either way because I love masturbation.  It has an appearance by Larry Flynt in it.  The festival sent me an E-Mail saying that they encourage me to come so that I can do a Q & A after the screening.  Holy shit, I do Q & A’s now?  That’s awesome!
Now, let me get this out of my system:
OMG!!!!!1!  CENSORED IS GOING TO BE SHOWN AT A FILM FESTIVAL!!!!!!!11!!  FUCK YEAH!!@!!!1!
I feel much better now.  Thank you for putting up with that.  This weekend has probably been the most amazing weekend of my life.  I went to Universal Studios on Saturday and it reminded me of how badly I want to go back to school.  So, I’ll be looking in to that and keep you guys updated.  I’ll bring you guys more updates on the film festival and everything soon.