So, either we have just 2 years left before the planet destroys itself or like the Y2K hoax nothing is going to happen and life will go on. Either way, there’s nothing I can do about either of those so it’s time to have some fun and get down to business. Unless of course John Cusack picks me up in a limo. Then we can outrun earthquakes and lava. That scene was absolutely ridicules and I loved every God damned second of it. Just turn off your brain for movies like that, you’ll love them. I liked that movie as a mindless action flick. I got exactly what I expected.
With Do Nice Guys Finish Last all set and making its attempt at a festival run, I’m ready for my next project. I plan to start 2010 right. My resolution was to write a script whenever I get an idea. I had way too many ideas last year that I’ve now forgotten because I never wrote them. Sometimes they are entire long short films, other times they are just quick scenes. I actually do really enjoy writing, but the hardest part is getting started. So, no matter how bad or small the idea is, I am going to stop what I’m doing and write a script for it immediately. We’ll see how that goes as I seem to get groups of ideas. Hopefully I can keep up with myself.
Ellen Sandler is doing a seminar on January 23rd in Los Angeles at The Writers Store. I’m seriously considering going. I really like her book. Only thing holding me back is that it’s $150. I could be spending that cash on my next short film. Who knows though, this class might push me in another direction entirely. For $150 I suppose I could find out. I’ll keep you guys updated. It could be a fun Saturday.
Happy 2010 everyone. Hopefully you all have a good year.
Still plugging away at the festivals. I’ve sent it out to five so far. The last one was sent to Australia. I thought that was kind of exciting. I sent it to something called The Sexy International Film Festival. A festival that focuses around sex and relationships. I swear to God, they have a festival for every thing. I’ve seen festivals focused around dogs, cats, homosexuality, ethnicity, religion, the environment, racism, sexism, and many other isms. At least a sex theme festival is something that’s generally loved by the public. Who doesn’t like sex of some sort? Since DNGFL had to make a long trek to Australia, that required a visit to the local US Post Office. Could there be a worse run organization without it just completely collapsing on itself? There was this lady there who said they were holding a package for her. Apparently they keep all of the packages in a giant disorganized pile in the back room. Brilliant idea during the holidays by the way. So, the attendant had to go to the back like 4 times to look through everything. Each time she came back she told the lady “It’s not back there.” After the fourth time, she found it and gave it to her, so the line could move forward. I laughed out loud when I saw this. Here’s the scary part about this though. These are all government employees. Essentially these are the same brand of people that RUN OUR COUNTRY. You know how when you walk up to a postal worker behind that little window and they look like they should have committed suicide like a week ago? Just how miserable they are and how much they don’t give shit if you get what you want or not? It’s kind of funny if you really think about it. Despite all of that DNGFL is on it’s way to Australia. The reason I bring this up is that while in the post office I started thinking of a comedy revolving around the Post Office, but it quickly turned in to a drama involving suicide and drug abuse. I bet I could turn that in to a comedy. Overdosing can be funny if you shoot it right. The movie Dear God has kind of an up beat theme to it, but after my experience yesterday I can assure you that it was %100 fiction. It’s about a con man turned postal worker that decides to try and scam people that have written letters to God. He inadvertently ends up helping them and when the other postal employees catch wind of this, they decide they want to help people too. Hilarity ensues from this point on. It’s kind of indication that the post office sucks based on the fact that they need the power of almighty God, just to turn it in to a feel good environment.
All of that aside, this Saturday me, Caine, and possibly Chris are going to get together this weekend to shoot something. So, I might just have some new short films up. Nothing super fancy, but they might be funny. Caine is funny, that’s pretty much all I have working for me right now. Neither of us has written a script or thought anything out at all really. All we know is that we’re going to have a camera, it’s going to be day time, and we are going to shoot something. I’m stealing an idea from Six Finger Fist here, but what ever. If anyone wants to give us a title for this new short film, leave it in the comments, and we’ll base our short film off of that title. Why not, right?
I’ve started submitting Do Nice Guys Finish Last to festivals. Maybe it’s just me, but the price of festival submissions has sky rocketed. When I was submitting Censored I would come across an occasional $50 submission fee. Most of them were in the $10-$35 range. After submitting to three festivals it seems like $50 is the new $35. I’ve found a couple that were upwards of $90+. My first question is “Why?” My second question is “What the fuck?!” $90. Do you know what that gets me? Just a marginal chance to screen at a film festival. Actually, I suppose that depends on how good your film is. I do believe that Do Nice Guys Finish Last is at the very least a decent film. It’s just that it’s over 15 minutes long. I’m not very confident that it will screen anywhere. Not because it’s a bad film but it just goes very against the grain. The run time is a big factor and there’s enough cursing in it to make a sailor blush. It’s got a C-Bomb in it. That makes it kind of historical. I believe this is the first film we have completed that has a C-Bomb in it. Great job everyone, really great work. I applaud us. There really aren’t enough C-Bombs in film festivals. It’s found it’s way in to popular cinema though.
“Can I get any of you c***s a drink?”
- Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead
“Your mother’s c*** stinks like carpet cleaner.”
-Mickey Rourke in Barfly
“Shut that c*** mouth or I’ll come over there and fuck start her head.”
-Ryan Phillippe in The Way of the Gun
“Respect the cock…and tame the c***. Tame it.”
-Tom Cruise in Magnolia
So, I’m not that off base here. If anyone calls me on it, my first response will be “But Tom Cruise said it!”
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 new DNGFL last week. So, I take it to my house, import the .MOV in to Premier, carefully add my credits to the end of it, and then I export it. Then I check the new, exported .MOV. I watch it all the way through, even though my computer struggles through it because it’s like a 23 gig file. It looks good. I’m satisfied. I burn it to a DVD and just for shits and giggles I throw it in to my DVD player. It looks great, I’m happy, I’m talking to my girlfriend on the phone about how awesome it looks. She’s happy, I’m happy, everything is great. Then I yell out “Mother fucker!” because the credits come on screen and look all distorted and screwed up. I sit in shock and disbelief. tell my girlfriend I have to go. I contemplate throwing my DVD player out the window. Then I realize that it’s not the DVD players fault. Then I contemplate throwing my computer out the window. I realize that it’s not my computers fault. No, this is the fault of this fucking short film. Then I realize that I can’t throw it out the window because technically, it doesn’t have a physical presence. My frustration grows stronger. I guess I’ll just keep trudging on. I’ve burned tons of short films and never had a problem with the credits screwing up like that. Why now? Why this short film? Because this project is the devil, that’s why.
Stupid short film refuses to be finished. Yes, we are still working on it. No, I haven’t dropped off of the planet and I’m not dead. We’ve been working on a new name for the company and a new logo. It’s still in the early stages, but I think it looks pretty sharp. No, I’m not just saying that because of our little argument over e-mail, Chris, you bastard. I really do like the way it looks.
I really need to write something. I want to rent an HD camera and experiment with it. Even if I shoot something kind of lame, it would be fun to play with HD. I’ll get right on that. I’m also searching for a huge couch. The biggest one I’ve found so far was 11.5 feet long. That’s a huge fucking couch. What the hell would you even use that for? Seriously, think about that. If you were on one side and another person was on the other, there would be roughly 9 feet between the two of you. You could play a legitimate game of frisbee at that distance. That’s about the size that I need though. How do I get myself in to this shit? How did I get to the point where I NEED an 11.5 foot couch? O well, this is what keeps me going. Keeps my imagination going. I’m reading A TV Writers Workbook again. Don’t get me wrong, that book is awesome, but sometimes it makes writing seem like such an intimidating task. It usually explains its way out of it, but right in the middle of a chapter sometimes I’ll be thinking to myself “Shit! I have no clue what I’m doing!” I suppose that’s why you would read the book though. So you know what to do to write a script.
Quick list of what’s going on:
1. Still finishing Do Nice Guys Finish Last.
2. Looking for a giant couch. Anyone know where I can find one?
3. Trying not to go insane.
P.S. I’ve decided to curse on my blog now. If Kevin Smith can get away with talking about selling tickets in an alley to pork his wife on Twitter, I can fucking curse.
I’ve been holding out posting till I was done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last. But I’ve come to the realization that it’s never going to be done. It’s just going to be that unfinished project that eats away at my brain and will one day be one of the factors that drives me to go absolutely insane. I’m probably going to be crazy when I’m older. My grandfather on my Dad’s side is pretty crazy, but he’s one of those indestructible bastards that will live to be like 140. Despite the fact that his diet is terrible and he falls down every hour or so. My Dad is probably going to be crazy when he’s older and I’ll be the one chasing after him making sure he doesn’t steal batteries from Radio Shack or try to carry left over soup home from a restaurant in a napkin.
In all seriousness, DNGFL will be done eventually, it’s just that we are dealing with a lot of set backs right now. If it’s not one issue it’s another. Right now we are dealing with frame rate issues. Our final came out jumpy, which means that something went wrong in exporting, which means that Gabe has to do the color correction again. O well, I should be getting the somewhat final from him either today or tomorrow. I still have to add the transitions and all that, but that’s no big deal. That shouldn’t take me that long. Either way, I’ll keep plugging away. Maybe I’ll be done by the end of this week. That’s a big maybe though.
Today should be the day that Gabe brings me Do Nice Guys Finish Last. Then, I just have to make a couple changes to the credits and we are all set. I didn’t realize it, but I’ve filled up my schedule with recent projects. I’m doing editing for that guy that guy that does video game videos. By the way, my After Effects endeavor last night was a total failure. That’s ok, I’ll try again tonight. I’m doing programming for that film festival. I’m trying to finish up Do Nice Guys Finish Last. I’m trying to write something else to shoot. I should probably cut NHL10 out for about a week to catch up on everything. Damn it, I really like that game.
Last nights episode of Dexter contained probably the best fight/kill scene of the entire series. That’s saying a lot, because they are all really well done. You know when you see something really good and for some reason your initial reaction is to let out a sort of nervous laugh? Why is that? Anyway, I got that when the fight scene started in Dexter. That was followed by a “Holy shit.”
I saw Where the Wild Things Are on Saturday. The more I think about it, the more I like it. It was really nicely shot and it was pretty well thought out and deep. I liked the book as a kid, but the story line in it was really vague. I think they filled in the gaps nicely with this movie. Anyway, it was great, go see it. I still haven’t seen Zombie Land. I want to see that so bad. Maybe I’ll check it out sometime this week and let you guys know what I thought.
I’m pretty sure we are done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last. Not really though. All I have to do is get the final from Gabe and add the credits. I think what Gabe has to do is just put everything together. It’s kind of hard to explain. Right now, the color correction and transitions are on two different files. I have no clue how he puts the two together, but apparently it will only take him like 5 minutes. I’ve already finished the credits.
The other day I heard that a friend of a friend absolutely hated Do Nice Guys Finish Last. She thought it was offensive and depicted women as shallow. I’m not going to lie, that’s a possibility. I personally thought that the men were depicted just as shallow as the women. If not more so. Caine’s character is the absolute epitome of a sex crazed male idiot. I more thought of it as a “what a stupid world” type of a statement. Still, I’m always curious what other people think. The other day someone told me that they liked Censored, but they didn’t consider it a comedy at all. They considered it a bold statement on how censorship can strip everything human away from us. How, if you censor us, there’s nothing left. I thought that was really interesting. She was absolutely shocked that I didn’t make that statement on purpose. It was kind of an after thought, but when I sat down to write Censored, I wasn’t thinking that at all. I told her friend to e-mail me. I’m really curious what she thinks. Everyone interprets things differently and I think I should take all those interpretations in to consideration.
So, I’ve finally started messing around with Adobe After Effects. That is possibly the coolest program I’ve ever worked with. I’m going to throw this link up here again because I absolutely love this web site:
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/
I have no clue why this guy posts all these tutorials for free, but holy hell does this guy know his stuff. On top of that, he’s great at walking you through step by step and explaining things. I’ve started doing some work for a guy who does video game videos and I made this intro using one of the tutorials on Video Copilot. Check it out:
http://www.vimeo.com/7013250
I thought about posting something like that here, but I don’t really think it would fit in the shorts section.