John Q. Phats Entertainment

Today on YouTube’s front page they featured some shorts from the Sundance Film Festival.  Seeing as how Sundance is supposed to be one of the biggest and best film festivals out there I was kind of curious and half expecting something brilliant.  I would think that the only real advantage to showing these is that it would be sort of a marketing tool.  Like “look at these great films.  Come check out the festival next year, to see more just like it.”  This is just my opinion but after looking at these videos, I would not pay to go to Sundance next year.  I kind of expected them to put their best foot forward.  If this is the best they’ve got, I’m not interested.  Sundance shorts I’ve seen in the past have been deep and thought provoking, these are beyond shallow.  The one redeeming short out of the four on the main page is a documentary named Mr. Okra.  It’s a great story and it’s really nicely shot.  I was looking for more of something like that, rather then “look how stupid we are!” comedy.  By all means check them out though, this is just my opinion.  Sundance has a channel on YouTube.  I haven’t checked out some of the other videos yet, but these aren’t much of an incentive to do that.  I’m still not sure if this is now the norm of Sundance or if this is an extreme misrepresentation of the short films at Sundance on the part of YouTube.  Perhaps I’ve just lost touch with what’s good.
There are some short films out there that are so unbelievable they make me look at what I do and think “I have no clue what I am doing.”  That’s what I expect to see when I watch a Sundance short film.  That’s not what I got.
Here’s the link to Mr. Okra and here’s the link to the Sundance YouTube page.

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.

So, I’m doing programming for a film festival.  I’ve only watched like 5 films or so and I’m already getting another perspective on this process.  First off, I now completely understand  why every book I read said to make things as simple as possible for the programmers.  You want them to be able to see your tracking number on the DVD.  You want them to be able to put the DVD in a DVD player and boom, the film plays without them having to take any extra action.  They don’t give a crap that you have a fancy DVD menu and they don’t care about the name of your production company.  If they have to take any particular extra effort to see your short film, you’ve already put a bad taste in their mouth about your film and they are more likely to recommend a rejection.  I’ve read all about this, but now it’s even more apparent.  Of course, I’m pretty obsessive, before I sent Censored to any film festivals; I read about 4 books on how to do it. 
Speaking of books, I just finished How Not to Make a Short Film by Robert Marie Munroe.  It’s a very slick and handy little book.  Especially the end which has a pretty extensive list of film maker resources.  Some of her favorites film festivals, production websites, and even a section for film making blogs.  It pretty much has it all covered.  It was a good read.  I’m kind of wondering what I should read next.  Probably a book about either sound design or cinematography.  I’ve read a couple books on cinematography, but it’s an interesting topic.  I really should probably tinker with my camera more.  Just to see what kind of interesting shots I can get. 
So, I have a new goal.  I want to enter Do Nice Guys Finish Last in Sundance.  Will it get in?  Probably not, but who knows, I could get lucky.  Worse thing they can do is send me a rejection letter.  Most rejection letters are pretty soft.  Like:
“We regret to inform you that your film was not selected for our festival.  But we encourage you to enter it in other festivals and keep making films because everything is relative and blah blah blah.”
It’s actually kind of nice.  What if you got one that was really harsh one day?  Like:
“I could sit here and drone on about how you should enter this in to other film festivals, but I won’t.  I’m actually the programmer and I’m writing you this specially to tell you to please not make any more short films.  This was so bad, I seriously considered shooting myself 2 minutes in, so I wouldn’t have to live through another waking moment of this boring and horrible excuse for a short film.  I’m serious, I loaded the gun.  If I pounded on a keyboard with my forehead for 20 minutes straight, the jargon that followed probably would have produced a better script then this bile.  What I have just watched was by far the stupidest thing I have ever seen.  I am now dumber after watching your short film.  If this world were just, you would be killed in some sort of horrific camera accident.  I used to like film, I really did, but your film was so bad, I’m afraid I’ll have flash backs and tremors if I ever watch another film again.  Like shell shock from soldiers coming back from Vietnam.  I hate you.  Please kill yourself.”
That would probably never happen.  If it did, I might cry.  That makes me really glad that they do the things the way that they do. 
Tonight, I’ll be down near the Huntington Beach Pier for the SoCal Film Festival Movies by the Pier event.  If you’re in the area, stop by and say hello.