John Q. Phats Entertainment

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.

So, we are still waiting on the judging for Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Again, we gave 2 versions of the short film to 5 people and told them to pick which one they liked best.  We are still waiting on their final word.  Maybe we will have it by the end of today.  Then, we will be done and I will send it off to film festivals.  It’s nerve racking having other people look at your short film for the first time.  O well, that’s why we make them, right?
I’m reading A TV Writers Workbook by Ellen Sandler still.  This book is unbelievable.  I’m loving it so far.  It really does put writing in to a process that’s not so daunting and intimidating.  Plus she’s a writer at heart, so she knows how to put an entertaining twist on everything she says.  I remember a long time ago, I read a book on short film making.  I forgot what it was called or who wrote it.  It had loads of great information in it, but my God was it boring to read.  It was like reading VCR instructions.  I’m actually kind of excited whenever I read A TV Writers Workbook.  I want to know what she has to say.  I’m taking my time with it and actually doing the exercises in the book as I go.  Sometimes I read chapters over again, just to put the information to memory.  Even if you don’t want to get involved in writing for TV, I would recommend it.  It’s a great writers guide and the techniques can be applied anywhere.
Now on to a random fact that I discovered last night.  I’m really trying to get my girlfriend addicted to Dexter.  So, I’ve started watching season 1 with her.  My girlfriend loves True Blood.  She can’t get enough of it.  We’ve stayed up till like midnight watching episode after episode of True Blood.  Which for me is early, but for her is insanely late.  Anyway, we are watching Dexter and she says “Hey, that guys is on True Blood.  He plays Sam Merlotte.”  Low and behold there he was, Sam Trammell, the actor who plays Sam Merlotte.  He was on the second show of the first season and he was one of Dexter’s victims.  He was an alcoholic that would go from city to city drinking and driving.  Every single time he would get too drunk and hit someone he would just pack up and move to another city.  So, if anyone ever asks you “what True Blood character had an appearance on Dexter in the first season?”  You can say Sam Trammell.  Not that anyone will ever ask you that.  I suppose calling it a useless fact was quite justified.

Here’s what we did for Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I did a version with transitions and Gabe did a version with transitions.  We are then going to let 3 people watch them both and give us their opinion.  Why?  We both had very different ideas of how the transitions should look.  This isn’t really about who’s right and who’s wrong, it’s about what works better.  Were we tempted to just say screw it and pick one?  Yes.  But we both decided that we are so close to the end that it would be stupid to just blindly pick one.  We’ve spent a lot of time and energy making this look how we want it to.  Why should we half ass it at the end?  Once this is done, we are done.  I’m going to start sending it out.  I’m kind of nervous and excited all at the same time. 
Anyone catch last nights episode of Dexter?  How is it possible that a show gets better and better with each season?  I don’t think I’ve ever had a show hold my absolute attention as long as this one.  I mean, I’ve been watching The Simpsons since I was like 9.  But I don’t think I’ve ever been anticipating a new season of that show at all really.  It’s The Simpsons, if it’s on, you watch it.  If it’s an episode you haven’t seen already, cool.  I’m trying to get my girlfriend in to Dexter, but it’s not really working out so well.  I watched the first episode of the show yesterday with her and she said she didn’t know how she felt about it.  She said she was kind of disturbed.  It’s kind of a disturbing show.  But that’s why I like it.  She’s the first person I’ve met that hasn’t been instantly addicted to this show.  We’ve got like a small cult following of the show at work and we all talk about it.  I realized something about the first season that I didn’t really notice before.  The cinematography in that show took a lot more risks then season 2, 3, and so far 4.  It just seemed to get a lot more standard after season 1.  Season 1 used close ups, weird angles, and really dark lighting.  I wonder if it’s success caused that?  I just wonder what changed.  The first episode was especially thought out.  The first time you see him kill someone and he’s questioning the victim, they hid his face in the dark.  The rest of him is visible, but his face is hidden.  I think it’s because they wanted to show that side of him as sort of something to fear.  Like a monster without a face.  We always fear something that we can’t see.  They also seemed to go with a dark lighting scheme whenever the scene revolved around him either planning or on his way to kill someone.  I thought it was a nice choice.  The show is still lit darkly at times, but I felt it was much more edgy in the first season.  I like the show either way.
I saw Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs yesterday.  I was interested in that new technology that they used for it.  They hooked a camera up in a room with sensors in it.  When the camera man looked through the lens he saw what was in the 3d animated world.  They could then play scenes or sequences from the movie and have an actual camera man capture it.  They could record all of the camera mans movements and incorporate that in to the scene.  I thought it was awesome that they could do that and a good idea.  That movie was great.  What makes a great kids movie is a movie that parents can take their kids to that the parents can enjoy too.  You know once the kid gets that movie on DVD, he/she is going to watch it at least a million times.  It has to be enjoyable to both the kids watching it and the parents.  I think Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs can be for everyone.  I thought it was really entertaining, I liked it.  It was an great story and some of the visuals were amazing.
I’ll keep you guys updated on Do Nice Guys Finish Last.

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 think we are done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Finally, right?  I say “think” because we may still have a little bit more work to do on it.  I’m still not sure though.  I tried to stick with that amateur film maker style and make the transitions simplistic.  They were simplistic, yet thought out.  I really liked it.  That short film has sort of grown on me.  I wasn’t really all that crazy about it when we had the first couple of edits, but I think it’s a funny short film.  I think I can get it in at least 1 festival. 
I’m reading a new book, A TV Writer’s Workbook by Ellen Sandler.  I haven’t really read that much of it, but I have to say, it’s extremely entertaining thus far.  I probably shouldn’t have expected anything less from an experienced writer.  She has all these great stories about her experience in the industry.  I’m going to do the exercises in the book.  I have a really hard time writing sometimes.  Plus I haven’t read a single book on it, so this works. 
I watched the first episode of Dexter, season 4 last night.  I wish I could have caught it on Sunday when it first aired.  That first episode was awesome.  That part where they altered the intro was great.  
Censored will be available in the Shorts section for viewing soon.  I figure it’s done with its festival run, so we can post it now.

Dexter, season 4 starts on Sunday.  Rather then buy the DVD’s (Which I will probably do anyway) I think I’ll just watch the show this season like a normal person.  See, most people like the waiting and being left on a cliff hanger.  I absolutely hate it.  That’s why I usually wait for the DVD’s.  It just works out better for me.  That way, when an episode ends on a cliffhanger, I can just hit “Next Episode” on the DVD menu and be fine.  I’m very tempted to read the Dexter books, but I love that show way too much.  I’m afraid it might give something away.  I’ll read them when the show is over.  I’ve said this before, but Jennifer Carpenter is amazing on that show.  There’s an actress that has what seems to be an unlimited amount of potential.  The only movie I’ve seen with her has been The Exorcism of Emily Rose.  She was amazing in that.  I’ll probably watch her other stuff one of these days.  Apparently she has a movie coming out in 2011 called The Factory that takes place in Buffalo New York.  That’s kind of awesome.  I have somewhat of a connection to Buffalo New York.  First off the Buffalo Sabres are from there and my Dad grew up there.  While I’m a Ducks fan at heart, I certainly wouldn’t mind the Sabres winning the cup.  My Dad is a die hard Sabres fan.  If it ever came down to the Sabres vs the Ducks for the Stanley Cup, it would be a brutal couple of weeks for my family.  We would have to go to the games of course.  Which would mean traveling between Buffalo and Anaheim.  The games would be very tense.  We have gone to two regular season games where it’s been Buffalo vs Anaheim, once in Buffalo and once in Anaheim.  Both times the Ducks slaughtered the Sabres.  I was a little torn honestly.  On one hand my Dad was being somewhat destroyed, but on the other, the Ducks were winning.  The first goal, I did my usual stand up and cheer.  At around the third it just started to get sad, so I reserved myself to just clapping from my seat, shrugging, and saying “Sorry Dad.”  There were a couple smart ass comments from my Dad.  But they were all in good fun.  “So when are they going to do the flying v?” was something that was all in good fun.  I don’t want to know what would be said if we were in the Stanley Cup Final.  The Emilio Estevez cracks and The Mighty Ducks movie comments would probably turn in to “You’re a fucking disgrace to this family and you were adopted!”  I wouldn’t be surprised if a fist fight broke out.  I’ve got a slight reach advantage, so I could probably keep him at bay with some quick jabs, but my Dad was in the Coast Guard.  I bet he could probably grind me out till the later rounds and then move in for the kill.  You know, that isn’t a bad idea for a script.  A father and son have to deal with their respective teams going to the Stanley Cup.  I should look in to that.  There really aren’t enough hockey movies out there.  What the hell was I talking about?  Jennifer Carpenter?  How did I get on a fist fight with my Dad and hockey?  Anyway, Dexter season 4 is going to be awesome, Jennifer Carpenter is awesome, Ducks are awesome, and The Sabres are awesome. 
I should be doing the transitions with Gabe on Do Nice Guys Finish Last this weekend.  Probably Sunday.

Sorry about not posting yesterday, I was in a Benadryl induced haze.  It’s actually kind of fun being in that state of mind at work, makes the day fly by.  Some stuff to talk about, not much but a little.  The whole healing of my leg thing isn’t really going so great.  I thought I would be able to make it to the SoCal Film Festival last night, but my leg was killing me, so I decided to stay home.  I’ll probably have to stay home tonight too.  Sorry for everyone that looked for me on Tuesday.  As punishment, I’ll tell you the story of how I actually injured my leg.  It really does a good job of highlighting my stupidity.  On Saturday, I decided for the first time in over two years to drink.  This wasn’t really a planned out endeavor.  They were playing beer pong and it looked like fun.  So, I lost at beer pong.  Since I haven’t drank in over 2 years, I had the tolerance of an 11 year old girl.  I ended up getting trashed.  Apparently I stepped on my friends girlfriends face and somehow ended up on the roof of the house I was drinking at.  I wouldn’t have believed them if they hadn’t shown me pictures of both.  I also left a message that a lot of people laughed at on a co workers cell phone.  I actually found that kind if hilarious myself.  At one point, I get the brilliant idea to give a friend of mine a piggy back ride. 
“I’m drunk!  I can do anything! :flex:”
So, he gets on my back, he’s much bigger then me, which isn’t saying much, I weigh like 155.  So, then I get the idea that I’m going to run with him on my back.  I get up to a good speed and then I’m laying on the ground.  That’s how I hurt my leg.  I tore a muscle in my hip region so now I look really funny when I walk.  This wouldn’t suck so much if every 5 seconds someone at work didn’t say “O my God!  What happened to your leg?!”
I’ve been just saying “It’s a long story.  I hurt my leg.”  
They keep bugging me for details.  Maybe I should just make something up that makes them uncomfortable so they won’t ask for details.  Maybe:
“Vibrator malfunction”
would work.  It’s simple, could work.  Anyway, on with the show.
Do Nice Guys Finish Last is so close to being done.  The file is huge.  It’s like 25 gigs.  After Effects really added all of that.  I think it’s all the filters and effects we used for color correction.  Either way, we can deal with it.  We are so close to being done.  All we need is transitions and that’s it.  I already finished the credits.  Everything is all set.  It’s frustrating to be this close.  I still want to submit to Sundance. 
Every once in awhile YouTube has something of value to offer.  Not always, in fact almost never.  Most of it is some emo kid sitting in front of a web cam talking about Kanye West or Brittney Spears.  I found this great channel that has all sort so of film making tips and tricks.
http://www.youtube.com/user/videomaker
I’m actually kind of amazed that these are free.  Seriously, if these were available on DVD, I would probably buy them.  No bullshit, just straight up “You want to do this?  Here’s how you do it.”
I also found:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Mr360Games
Nothing really film maker wise, but I’m impressed with the video quality of his stuff.  For video game footage, that’s awesome.  Most of the time, especially on YouTube, it’s just a camcorder propped up in front of a television.  Lame.  This is actually high quality stuff.
I’ve also never mentioned this before, but being such a hockey fan this is probably my favorite web site:
http://www.battleofcali.com/
All those writers are hilarious.  They should write a hockey based script.  Seriously, they really seem to have a good grip on hockey culture.  I could see them writting something like the original Slapshot.  Vulgar as hell, but entertaining and awesome.

I worked on the audio of Do Nice Guys Finish Last last night.  Audio editing has always been sort of intimidating to me, but really, it’s not that bad.  I learned a cool little trick last night that Gabe taught me that made it much easier.  Whenever you want to raise the levels of a certain segment of audio, rather then actually adjusting it’s volume, just duplicate the portion of audio you want louder and match it up with its counterpart on another track.  If you have two tracks with the same audio, it’s twice as loud as it would be with only one track and it doesn’t distort.  I never would have thought of that.  That’s what I did last night.  I went through the audio and just made sure that it was all at a some what consistent level.  I was able to finish it all up.  I’ll probably go through it again to make some slight adjustments here and there though.
Up next is putting in the transitions.  I’m still not sure what direction I want to go with that.  I’m going to read up on transitions this weekend.  There are definitely things that need to be thought about when it comes to transitions in Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  There is one scene where the camera angle stays consistent, but there’s a cut and a lot of time passes in the story.  We need to have a transition that illustrates that.  Me and Gabe will be looking in to it. 
When I got home I played NHL 09 and absolutely got my ass kicked online.  Sometimes, people are just better then you at stuff.  You know, it’s easy to get a big head when playing against the computer for 3 months straight.  It did give me an idea for a short.  Mainly because it was comical how badly I was getting beaten and Caine is itching to do something.  It’s not that I don’t want to shoot anything, it’s just that I’ve been busy with other projects.  I also, really want to shoot in HD.  Maybe I’ll rent a camera next weekend or something just to play around with it. 
Again, I’m going to mention this:
The SoCal Film Festival is next week.  Censored is playing next Friday.  This will probably finish up it’s festival run.  I want to start sending out Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I’m not sure if it will get accepted, but I hope that I’m underestimating it.  Gabe said he watched it again the other night and after giving it a rest said he actually thought it was really good.  When editing something, you watch it at least 100 times, it’s very easy to get bored of it.  I really think we are close to being done with it though.  Anyway, you can buy tickets to the Censored screening here:
http://www.socalfilmfest.com/tickets.aspx
Censored is playing in Program 10.  Be sure to buy a ticket for that program if you want to go.