John Q. Phats Entertainment

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.

You may remember that Censored was selected to screen at the SoCal Film Festival.  This morning they released the festivals schedule.  You can view the entire schedule here:
SoCal Film Festival Schedule
Censored is playing on 9/18/2009 in the 7:20PM block.  First of all, that’s a Friday, which is awesome.  I don’t know if it’s luck or what but Censored almost always gets put in the most awesome time slot.  It’s either on a weekend or later on in the night on a weekday.  For this festival you buy tickets for programs.  Each program has a different block of films.  Censored is playing in Program 10.  So if you want to go, be sure to buy tickets for Program 10.  I’m playing with:
9mm Brush
Couched
How to Train Your Pet
Jimmy String bean vs the Rock God of the Cosmos
Love Bombing
Make Art, Save World
Piper & Tupper – Hands Free Born to be Wild
Special Delivery
The Amazing Esca-ciser
The Family
Twirl
I know nothing about any of these, but they all sound amazing.  I’m probably going to be attending this festival quite a bit.  Mainly because it’s so close to me.  I’m kind of curious about what other people are up to in short film making. 
In other news, I reviewed the 5th draft of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  There are still some minor cuts here and there.  It’s kind of frustrating being this close to the finish line, but what are you gonna do?  We’ll be done soon enough.  I definitely have to make notes on the new draft tonight.  I think this might it.  Watching it, there’s really not much else I can change or things that I’m really displeased with.  I think it has a nice pace, it’s funny when it’s supposed to be, and all the fat is cut.  It’s very to the point and moves along quickly.  I think that’s exactly how this short film should be.

Watching some of my old short films last night I’ve realized how far everyone involved in all of this has come.  Acting has gotten better, camera work has gotten better, lighting has gotten way better, editing has gotten better, and sound has definitely gotten much better.  I’m not really sure how we all got here.  I think we were all just committed to making a better product.  It was pretty much a process of refining.  We would try something else and if that didn’t work out, we would figure out a different way of doing.  For example, in The Train Wreck, the sound is horrible.  That’s because it was our first time using the boom mic.  We thought we would be smart and hold the boom mic low and aim it up rather then high and aim it down.  What we didn’t realize is that the boom mic would pick up EVERYTHING that went on with the actors feet.  You can hear every single footstep the actors took in that short film.  It’s really annoying.  The next innovation in sound actually happened on Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  In the last short film that we did Gabe complained that it had the sound quality of a porno.  So, we looked up some information on the Internet regarding sound for short films and found some pretty good stuff.  We spent probably about 15 minutes before each scene finding not only the right position for the boom mic but the right settings for the camera to match that.  I have to say that Do Nice Guys Finish Last is probably the best sounding thing we’ve done so far.  Which may be sad, but whatever, we’re getting there.  I guess my point is, is that…  I’m not really sure what my point is.  I guess I’m just writing.
I just got the new cut of Do Nice Guys Finish Last from Gabe.  I can’t wait to see it.  I think we are extremely close to a final cut.  Probably just a few changes here and there and we’ll be done.  Then, we can start doing color correction.  Which in all honestly, sucks.  Color correction is one of those things that you have to do, but really don’t want to.  Like returning your ex girlfriends DVD’s or going to a funeral.  It’s just lame.  Can’t modern technology take care of this for us yet?  Can’t you have two shots and click on a box that says “I want these two thingies to look like they are the same color”?  I mean, do we really have to spend hours fidgeting with some stupid little knobs to get it to do that?  We have satellites that can read a license plate from space, but we can’t do that?  Really?  It’s total bullshit, it really is.  I’m actually just trying to be funny.  Color correction really isn’t that bad.  It’s just kind of tedious.  For some reason, Gabe is actually excited about it.  Maybe he’s just tired of my nit picky editing notes.  The last one was pretty bad.  I think there was a portion where I cut like .5 of a second off of a shot.  I’m pretty sure when I’m coming up with stuff like that, we are pretty damn close to a final cut.

Sorry for the lack of posting this weekend.  The Internet at my house went down again.  I should be getting draft number 5 of Do Nice Guys Finish Last from Gabe tomorrow.  I’m really looking forward to being done with it.  I want to start sending it to festivals already.  I have several friends and family members who bug me about seeing it almost every day.  I’m still not going to rush it though.  We’ll be done with it when me and Gabe both agree that it’s done.  In the mean time, we have been working our asses off on it.  I really believe in getting what I want out of a short film.  Just never saying “it’s good enough.”  If something doesn’t look or sound how I want it to, I’ll re shoot it.  I believe that if you’re a film maker, you should always make the film that you want to make.  Screw what the critics say, screw what other people say, you’re making this short film, make it however you want.  If you do that, it doesn’t matter if other people like it or not.  You made the film that you wanted to make and that’s that.  Of course, other people liking it is a nice added bonus.  I always wanted Do Nice Guys Finish Last to be something that’s funny because it’s true.  That’s part of the reason I made it a mockumentary, to sort of bring people back to the fact that it’s based on a realistic principal.  Plus it was a damn good time filming it.  It’s kind of cool, there’s so much you can get away with in a mockumentary.  A boom mic enters the shot?  O well, that happens in documentaries all the time.  An actor stumbles over their lines?  O well, people stumble over their words sometimes in reality, it happens.  The scene is too dark?  O well, sometimes rooms are dark.  It’s not that it’s an easy out, it’s just that there’s so much room to play.  All of this in Do Nice Guys Finish Last if it does make it in is intentional.  We wanted portions to have a little bit of boom mic in them just to cement the fact that the characters know that there are cameras and everything there.  It’s kind of weird placing these imperfections here and there, but it’s kind of fun at the same time.
I’ll keep you guys updated on the progress of it.  Right now, it’s looking pretty good.  We’ll probably have a final cut around next week.  Then we get in to the exciting world of color correction….. Yay.

The Internet at my house is back up.  I’m not sure how it broke, or what was wrong with it, but the Internet company had to send a signal through to fix it.  When you’re someone like me, losing Internet is one of the worst things that can happen.  Seriously, it was really bad yesterday.  Last night, I’m sitting there messing with it and a couple times in the middle of it I thought to myself “I can fix this, I just need to look it up on the inter-  …..O yeah.”
I have a lot to talk about today.  Mainly, I want to talk about the new cut of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  The way me and Gabe have been working on this is that he gives me the cut, I make notes on it, then hand them back to him to make the changes or corrections.  We are currently on draft number 4, soon to be on 5.  I have the 4th cut with notes on it all ready for him.  Once we have a final cut, we’ll do some color correction, and then transitions.  Transitioning from 1 scene to another is a big deal for this short film.  There are some scenes that make huge jumps in time in the same setting.  The only way to show that jump of time is through a transition.  It if goes from a straight cut, people are left sitting there thinking “What the hell just happened?”  I’m going to be doing some research on transitions later on this week.  I showed Do Nice Guys Finish Last to someone besides me and Gabe yesterday.  I was very happy to see that she laughed at all the right times.  She actually made a comment that really just pin pointed what I was going for.  She said “It was really funny, but it’s kind of true.”  That is exactly what I was looking for with this short film.  I wanted people to watch it and not only laugh because it was funny, but laugh because it was true.  Almost like a George Carlin stand up act.  What he says is hysterical, but the main reason it’s so hysterical is because it’s sort of true.  That’s what I was looking for.  I think maybe Do Nice Guys Finish Last is going to be better then I originally thought.  The audio and lighting are already all a step above everything else we’ve done.  I’m really looking forward to this being done and I can’t wait to start sending it to festivals.
On to the Project X news.  I got a script from the script writer last night.  I haven’t read it yet.  Something went wrong with the file format so I can’t exactly open it just yet.  But it’s awesome that I got it.  I should be getting another copy of it sometime today or tonight.  If this works out, this will be the first time I’ve directed something that someone else has written.  Actually, that’s not true.  I’ve directed one other thing that someone else wrote, but nothing really came of it.  So, it doesn’t really count. 
I’m still waiting to hear back from 3 other festivals.  I’m getting a little nervous.  The screening dates for those are pretty close already.  I figured I would have gotten some sort of rejection or acceptance letter by now.  I suppose if the film festival happens and my short film doesn’t play there, then it was rejected.

Last night, on the way home, 3 ideas for short films came to me.  I told myself that I would write them out after I was done working out.  I finished working out and out of habit I turned on NHL 09 for Playstation3.  Midway through it’s start up, I realized that I wasn’t supposed to be playing NHL 09 and that I was supposed to be writing out some scripts.  I convinced myself to play just one game, which usually turns in to roughly 5 games.  I am so addicted to NHL 09, it’s not even funny.  Seriously, I’ve been playing that game for a year and I can’t stop.  NHL 10 comes out in 2 months and then it will all start all over again.  So, I start to play and I’m playing goalie mode and I’m not joking you, the computer scored like 4 goals on me in the time span of 1 real life minute.  Which is like 20 seconds in game time.  If you were in my kitchen at the time you would have heard:
“damn it………son of a bitch………SHIT!……….MOTHER FU- Screw this!”
 With that, I turned off the system and went upstairs and started writing.
I got a lot more out of writing those scripts then I would have gotten from playing NHL 09 for 4 hours.  I immediately sent one script to Chris and he really liked it.  It seriously is, the perfect short film for festivals.  It would run about a minute long, it’s funny, it’s quick, it’s clever, and it’s PG-13.  The best part is, is that I could probably shoot it in one day and edit it the next.  It’s a really simplistic and clever concept.  Maybe it will be something that I can pull off in between Do Nice Guys Finish Last and Project X.  I got the ball rolling on Project X.  Which needed to be done.  I looked at all of the information I had and just put it all together and sort of wrote out an outline.  Then I E-Mailed that to the script writer.  I’m excited to see how it comes out.  Also, I just got the new cut from Gabe, of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Needless to say, I’m glad that I suck at NHL 09 and that the computer saw it fit to destroy me.

So, the way this whole film festival thing works is that you sign up and pay the entry fee online.  They give you a confirmation number.  Then you ship them a copy of your short film on DVD or other format that they accept.  Printed on the DVD is the confirmation number that they gave you when you paid.  I have another DVD of Censored sitting around.  Should I send it to one more festival?  I’m still waiting to hear back from three others.  I was kind of hoping to spend money on Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  By the way Do Nice Guys Finish Last is going to be a pain in the ass to send out to festivals.  I was looking at some festivals the other day and for some reason I kept finding ones that had notes that said stuff like “We usually only accept films that would be considered PG-13.”  Do Nice Guys Finish Last is totally not PG-13.  I would say it’s probably R, if it’s anything.  It’s actually not that bad, there’s just a ton of bad language.  Really, there’s not that much bad language either.  There are a few f bombs here and there and one c bomb.  Censored I would say is PG-13.  It’s censored, that’s the whole point of it.  It looks like Do Nice Guys Finish Last might prove to be more difficult then I originally thought.  It’s an R rating and it’s going to run about 15 minutes long.  I’m sure I’ll find something though.  I’ll at least get it on IMDB.
I’m still really excited about the SoCal Film Festival.  There’s so much going on around it.  Apparently they are doing a few movie showings at the Huntington Beach Pier which is like 10 minutes from my house.  The fact that the festival is so close to me makes things much easier.  In the mean time though, I need to get to work on Project X.

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.

You may have noticed by now, but I posted some out takes from the re shoot on Do Nice Guys Finish Last in the Shorts sections.  The Shorts section has now sort of become the Videos section.  Whatever works.  Really, who doesn’t like out takes?  One of my favorites ever is from a short film I did a long time ago called The Wake Up.  It was about two women who wake up in bed together.  One is straight and one is gay and they are both naked.  Of course I don’t show anything, but it’s implied.  Anyway, at one point both of the characters say “I’ve got a handcuff key in my bag” at the same time.  So, Kristen says it but the other actress, Jessica missed her line and didn’t say it.  Kristen without missing a beat says
“I’ve got a handcuff key in my bag and you didn’t say it, you God damned bitch!  I know you got one!”
I still have that footage somewhere.
The Wake Up isn’t posted here.  It’s not that I don’t like it.  It’s just that it was a very early short film in my film making “career.”  It was shot on a shitty little camcorder that I got on the Internet for like $200, the lighting, and color balance in each shot changes.  My directing skills weren’t quite there yet.  This was a really tough film for me.  I was a straight male writing about gay women.  I didn’t want to be offensive at all.  I wanted to tell a funny, kind of weird story.  Plus, finding actresses was tough.  It was a tough sell.
“Hey, I need you to appear to be naked, kiss another girl and fondle her a little bit.  Then I’m going to film it on a crappy little camcorder and possibly post it on the Internet.  O yeah, and I can’t pay you.”
After I did The Wake Up though, I realized that I could pull people together for anything.  The Wake Up has a lot of negatives, but there are some positives as well.  I think the beginning sequence is fantastic, some of the acting is great (I messed up directing wise a couple of times), and I actually really did like some of the cinematography.  I also think the story is pretty decent.  If I had written some better dialogue I think it would have been great.  This was only my second short film, so I think all is forgiven.  Here is the short film if you want to check out some of my early work.  You’ll also get a look at my very crappy 1st logo:
The Wake Up
Watching it again, I’ve actually changed quite a bit.  I wasn’t so biased about hand held camera work at the time and I actually kind of like it.  Maybe it will change my mind on how I feel about handheld stuff in the future.
 I started off talking about the out takes of Do Nice Guys Finish Last and ended up on a totally different topic all together.  That’s pretty typical for me.  Check out the Shorts section if you want to see the Do Nice Guys Finish Last out takes.

Today, I give the third edit of Nice Guys Finish Last with notes added to Gabe.  The way we’ve been doing it, is he gives me the edit, I add notes to it, and give it back to him.  Then he makes the corrections to it and gives it back to me.  Then I make more notes on that one and the process starts all over.  My goal was always to make Nice Guys Finish Last under 15 minutes.  It started out at over 18.  We cut it down to 15 and some change and I think with these new edits we might just get it under 15.  The point wasn’t just because I wanted to make it a 15 minute long short film.  Really, when you’re watching a short film that long, what’s another 2-3 minutes?  The reason I want it to be under 15 minutes is because it’s a 16 page script with some fat in it.  Things can be cut.  I want to cut it down, because it doesn’t need to be over 15 minutes long.  We can tell the story in under 15 minutes.  In fact if we really wanted to, we could probably tell the story in 12 minutes.  When first looking at the 18 minute cut, almost everyone told me
“You’re crazy, there’s no way you’ll get it under 15 minutes.” 
We cut it down to 15 and some change without taking out a single scene.  We trimmed some scenes here and there, but that was about it.  With these new notes, I’m suggesting to Gabe that we cut an entire segment out of a scene.  Not because I want to get it under 15 minutes but because that portion of the scene is kind of boring and unnecessary.  I always keep the goal in mind of wanting it to be funny.  I want people to watch it and laugh.  If a scene is pushing me over 15 minutes but it’s hilarious, I’ll keep it in there.  Hell, if we had enough footage to make people laugh for 2 hours straight, I would make it a feature length movie.  But that’s not the case.  The reality is, is that we shot enough footage and wrote a script for an entertaining 13-15 minute long short film.  
I have a lot to do for Project X this weekend, I’ll be busy.  Aside from a BBQ, I’ll pretty much be sitting in my room planning things out.  A BBQ for my friends lasts roughly 15-20 hours though.  The first time I took my girlfriend to one of these BBQ’s, when leaving she said
“I didn’t even know BBQ’s could go that long!”
I just responded with
“Yeah, they rock it till the wheels fall off.”
My friends have actually inspired me quite a bit in terms of short films.  So, I consider it really awesome research.