John Q. Phats Entertainment

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.

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.