Caine Crockett will now be posting here. I’ve pretty much given him the freedom to talk about whatever he wants to. You may have seen him in some of the shorts on the website (Censored, Not Walter, Bad Girlfriend, etc…). He’s mostly an actor. So, it should be interesting to get experiences from an actors perspective on shoots.
Sometimes, as a little treat to myself, I enjoy wallowing in the pits of human existence. Where would I go to do that? YouTube of course. YouTube in this case is sort of like the dealer and sometimes, I need a fix badly. So, I start my search for street fights in the basement of human civilization. Once you wade through the crap where middle schoolers are just trying to get views by staging an obvious fake fight, you get to the good stuff.
“Hmmmm, Skater vs Rollerblader? OK. Punk vs Gangster? Yes please. Two Drunk Girls Fighting?! Hello subscribe button!”
I’m not really looking to see someone get hurt. Well, maybe a little, but really what I’m looking for is awkward situations that I can laugh at. During one of my kicks I came across this gem:
I’m not sure if this is staged or not, I pray that it’s not, because I would really like to believe that life really is this awesome. I don’t know what’s funnier, the fact that a fight breaks out right in the middle of a wedding or the fact that all of the other wedding guests just stand around watching as the bride gets what appears to be sexually assaulted. Of course, I can’t blame them. The only thing I would probably be able to do was lean to the person closest to me and say “Holy shit! This is awesome!” I love how the groom just kind of stands there with a not so bright look on his face as this biker chick just grabs his bride and pulls her off stage to kick the crap out of her. Then there’s the photographer snapping pictures in the background. Because that’s something you would want to remember on your wedding day.
“Hey honey, you remember when that butch chick dragged me off stage and beat the shit out of me in the middle of the ceremony?”
“No, I don’t remember that. Was that our wedding?”
“Yeah, hold on, let me pull out the wedding book, I’ll show you. Better yet, go get your lap top, fire up YouTube.”
Absolutely amazing.
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.