On August 29th the 2008 CineSol 36 Hour Film Race will begin and Orange Media will be competing once again. Last year I edited the ten minute horror short film Gibby directed called The End. This time, however, with Edward at the helm, they’ve asked me to serve as Director of Photography. It will be my responsibility to give whatever story we wind up creating its look and feel; its mood. I’ve asked the producers if we could get permission from the TV station where we work to borrow the big, heavy Panasonic P2 ENG cameras instead of the prosumer camcorders we’ve used before. The reason is I find the 2/3″ cameras have lower noise, better light sensitivity, more efficient control layout, truer colors and a higher dynamic range over the prosumer 1/3″ camcorders. Also, because of their greater weight and size, the big ENG cameras are sturdier and not as prone to inadvertent shake. Besides, bystanders don’t take you seriously when your camera can be held comfortably in one hand.
I’m not going to know which genre we are to work in until the 29th. The producers want premade storylines for each of the probable genres so we already have something thought out. I don’t know how well this will work out since it pretty much didn’t last year. Too much thought, too much development and too much arguement gave us the weak entry we submitted last year. The infighting has already begun as our producer/writers can’t seem to come up with anything they all like.
Too many cooks in the kitchen.
I think all this deliberation is unnecessary: I proved earlier in the week that one can come up with a fun and doable story given a set of random required variables in about five minutes, plus a rewrite.
While at lunch I asked Mariano to come up with a set of variables like the ones we might receive from the film race, where each item must be included in the film at least once. He came up with this:
Genre: romance
Location: hardware store
Prop: fishing net
Character: lawyer
Dialogue: “I’m getting too old for this.”
What can you come up with?
I immediately pondered the story of Lucas Able: a regular guy enjoying his weekend when his wife Jill tasks him with fixing the kitchen counter. Not having a simple hammer he visits the local HARDWARE STORE and buys the most amazing hammer he’s ever seen. In fact, after using the hammer to fix the counter, Lucas falls in love with it.
Jill grows suspicious of her generally lazy husband as he proceeds to “fix” everything in the house, obsessed with his new found affair. Jealous, Jill calls her friend Cathy, a LAWYER, seeking legal advice: Jill wants to know if it is against the law to murder a tool. Cathy assures her that you cannot kill a stupid innanimate object and the law does not recognize tooltricide as being unlawful. After hanging up, Cathy mutters “I’M GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS” and comforts her stapler, admitting that she “didn’t mean you.”
The ROMANCE between Lucas and his hammer is made all too clear as Jill walks in on the couple’s secret romantic dinner together. In a rage, Jill kidnaps the hammer and a car chase ensues. Jill arrives with the hammer at an ocean jetty littered with fisherman, having every intent of releasing it to a watery grave when Lucas arrives and attempts to reason with her. Jill just wants to work things out with her estranged husband but in an act of weakness throws the hammer toward the ocean. Acting quickly, Lucas grabs a nearby FISHING NET and uses it to rescue his hammer as Jill trips and also begins to fall but then grabs onto the hammer as Lucas pulls them both to safety, collapsing into each other. “We can work this out,” assures Lucas.
That night, with candles and empty glasses of wine about the room, Lucas and Jill lay in bed together smiling. “See, honey? I told you we could work this out” says Lucas as both he and Jill begin to caress each other…and the hammer snuggling between them.
The end.
I came up with that in five minutes while munching on a Sonic burger. You need three actors, the items listed, two cars, a house (where a room can double as the lawyer’s office or home) and there’s an ocean jetty not an hour away from my location. Completely doable, fun and mildly entertaining with some funny action and a gentle twist at the end.
I like it so much I’ll probably want to make it after the film race is over.
All I’m saying is that this over planning and over thinking is a waste of creative energy that should be focused on the day of the event and is what killed us last year. They’re trying so hard to be perfect that they can’t have fun with the project and the result will likely be as soulless as The End was last year.
Because of this I am taking no part in the writers meetings, only contributing to the technical and artistic discussions of the coming film. Personally, I don’t care what story we wind up doing. I just want the director to tell me what the point of the story is and what mood he wants to convey and I will take it from there…hopefully knocking it out of the park, so to speak.
Joss Whedon, creator of Firefly, Buffy, Angel and the new Dollhouse on FOX has been working on a little project called Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a musical starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. It’s an epic little story told on a shoestring budget, written and directed by Whedon himself. It’s an incredible bit of indie filmmaking and oozes with raw talent out of every silly orifice. You can stream all three of the current acts live at the show’s website through the rest of July. When you fall in love, do the world of indie filmmakers a favor and buy the episodes at iTunes.
Robert Rozak of Juiced Link just sent me some information on his low-noise preamplifier for field audio acquisition for video production. Rozak claims his product records less hiss than the industry standard Sound Devices MixPre or even the popular BeachTek DXA models. He also claims that his Juiced Link product works well with the Canon HV20, a popular alternative to independent filmmakers needing to make the High Definition switch inexpensively, a claim which is apparently supported by users.
I do not personally use any indie filmmaking gear yet as I am still extremely focused on my photography. But when I do take the plunge, I will seriously consider Juiced Link for connecting XLR audio equipment to my HV20 or 30; the product looks solid and it’s also inexpensive. It also doesn’t weigh a lot so it should help ballast the tiny camera atop a Steadicam Merlin.
Check it out and tell Robert I sent ya.
I am considering the Canon HV20 as a “consumer” priced entrance to serious independent filmmaking. After much research, I have created the following list of items I believe to be exceptional components to a professional, yet affordable gear set. Here are the tools I wish to purchase within the next several months:
Canon HV20 — $710
RNG35 35mm EF mount adapter — $325
Adorama 43-55mm step-up adapter ring — $7
Adorama 55-72mm step-up adapter ring — $7
Cavision RS-152M200 Rod Support System — $163
Cavision R15-LS25SET Lens Bracket Support — $65
Cinevate 4×4 Matte Box — $509
Total $1,786
Other Stuff
Ikan V8000HD LCD field monitor — $749
VariZoom VZ-AR5K — $120
Beachtek DXA-2S — $180
Steadicam Merlin — $800
Total $1,849
Post Stuff
Apple iMac — $2,299
Apple Final Cut Studio 2 — $1,299
Total $3,598
Grand Total $7,233
Not bad. An entire production suite for under $10k. And if you want to add audio boom equipment, that’s another $500 or so…still not bad at all. Now, all I need is to work for 6 straight months without spending a penny and I’ll make that. Grr…
Brotha’s gotta eat.
I had quite an eventful weekend. Went to South Padre Island and shot some night photos with fellow photographer and Flickr friend Emily Ann on Friday, went back to Edinburg to shoot a set with Marla and her sister Julia from Model Mayhem Saturday afternoon, went to a church service in Mexico Sunday morning with Erika and scoped out a gym that they want to use for a church event later in the month, then I hit the highway back to the Island to participate in the awards ceremony for our short film “The End” at the 36 Hour Film Race where our guy Eric Salazar won Best Actor.
We then spent all of Sunday afternoon, night and into Monday morning celebrating our win. We (Me, Gibby, Eric, Adriana, Jesse, Amber, Jay, Rom, Ed, Lupita and Edgar) went to Amberjack’s at about 7pm and ate, drank and sang karaoke. At 11pm the remaining group (Me, Gibby, Eric, Adriana, Jesse and Amber) grabbed the karaoke girl Melissa and took off to another establishment for some more karaoke, more drinking and some dancing. After some more of us left, it was closing time and the rest of us (Me, Gibby, Eric, Adriana, Jesse and Melissa) went back to the hotel, changed into swimming attire and went to the beach where we chilled, drank some more, swam in the moonlight and staggered around a whole bunch. Jesse, Melissa and myself were the only ones who didn’t drink that much, if at all and by the end of the night (about 4am) we were pretty much crashed. So it was back to the hotel, get showered up, say goodnight to Melissa (”night, Melissa!”), and pass out. I fell asleep, exhausted, but sober, at about 5am.
I awoke on the floor atop a small towel with my shirt I’d worn for two days draped over me as a blanket. My shoes, socks, belt and shirt were off but my pants were on. I hadn’t counted on staying so late but there I was, with no change of clothing (I borrowed a pair of Jesse’s trunks and wore a shirt I happened to have in the back of my car when we hit the beach), no hygiene gear…so I winged it all, bushing my teeth with borrowed toothpaste with my right index finger. Eric had shuffled out in the middle of the night and Edgar had shuffled in (they also accidentally exchanged shirts during the night somehow — long story; not gonna get into it) and Jesse decided to take off without us, so then we (Me, Gibby, Adriana and Edgar) had breakfast at Chili’s in Port Isabel.
This was Monday. After breakfast we went back home; Edgar sped off in his truck, Adriana drove Gibby in his car and I passed them in mine. I then went home and crashed. But that wasn’t all: at 6pm I met Adriana and her mom in Edinburg for a photoshoot. I got some pizza, headed home, watched this video and promptly passed out. I had a dream about not going in to work the next day, but I woke up and did anyway. Now I’m writing this. Cool, huh?
This weekend was amazing. After being sick for two days with a stomach virus, I was completely, absolutely involved with the CineSol Film Festival’s 36 Hour Film Race. Our group, Orange Media, was tasked with completing a complete ten minute short film, from start to finish, in one and a half days.
We were told to create a horror movie which consisted of a cheerleader character, had a meat market as a location and used the dialogue “I’ll have another.” We are competing against several other teams from across south Texas with the same parameters that we were given.
We decided to create a zombie-horror-survivalist movie starring Eric, Adriana, Edgar, Amber and Sergio. Directing was Gibby, Edward was DP, Erick was producer and our AD was Jessie. Jay and Rom with sound design and myself as film editor and foley artist. I also made an on-screen appearance as a dead body that is pulled from a truck; a scene in which I performed my own stunt fall.
Gibby asked me to write and perform the part of the Emergency Radio Announcer where I decided to give background to the short film and also gave the film an answer for the zombie infestation albeit a depressing one. I had written the script in my Google Mail account as I was finishing editorial at Ed’s house. Then I drove to the studio where ADR, music and foley was being recorded. I stood at the microphone holding Erick’s Apple Book and read the scripts I emailed to myself. After a second take of the first monologue which needed to be timed to fit before the first bit of dialogue, I delivered the next two monologues on the first takes. I then performed foley noises with Jessie and Erick assisting and performed the vocal effects for the zombies.
This little short film, I think, is some of my best work from an editing point of view. The film is tight; it MOVES quickly and covers a lot of territory story-wise. There are no less than nine locations. One scene involves quite a lot of dialogue that actually wound up requiring a re-shoot because it was too damned long. Once it was done, the movie had a running time of 9 minutes and 32 seconds. The end credits (which needed to run no longer than a minute outside the duration of the movie proper) were about 45 seconds in length. The film was titled “The End” whose title appears at the very end of the movie. Sort of like a reverse on “28 Days Later” whose card appears at the end of the precursor scene as both a title and an explanation for the proceeding scene.
The title was my idea. Gibby would have liked “Decay” as the title but didn’t make a decision so the title was picked by lottery. Everyone put their idea for a title onto a piece of paper which was then mixed in a hat. The winning title was drawn from the hat and Gibby had to live with it. He wants to call the film “Decay” when we do the director’s cut. I don’t think there will ever be a director’s cut unless several scenes are completely re-shot. I found most of the original scenes to be absolutely underexposed. As a result, many of the scenes show unfixable video artifacting. I know that the guys like their movies dark and moody, but that doesn’t mean you shoot them that way. If anything, you shoot them very well lit and make them darked in post using telecine conversion and color correction processes.
No matter, the next film we make as Orange Media will have me directing the photography. It’s going to be yet another horror-gore-thriller, independent movie which I really don’t want to be pigeonholed to. But whatever, making movies with the guys is fun. They’re all a bunch of creative fellows and we have some great talent such as Eric, Adriana, Edgar, Amber and Sergio.
Interestingly enough, Sergio was supposed to be just the continuity guy, but wound up being a zombie in full makeup and prosthetics. I think we used tripas (cow intestine) for Amber’s Victim #1, masterfully handled by Jay. And Sergio was an extremely capable actor. The dude surprised me, actually. I work with the guy almost every day at the office in master control and he’s real quiet. Loves “24″ though.
“The End” was shot using a Panasonic JX-2000P in 16×9 at 24p. Edited using Final Cut Pro on a Quad Core Apple Macintosh PowerMac. The film was completely produced between 11pm Friday, August 24 and 7:30am Sunday, August 26, 2007. The judging and awards ceremony for the 36 Hour Film Race competition will be held during the CineSol Film Festival at the South Padre Island Convention Center at 3pm Sunday, September 2, 2007.
Check out the production stills.
So I’m shooting production stills for a movie being shot here in the Valley called The Battle and they must have run out of extras because one of the wranglers asked me if I would play The Drunk. I said “sure” and they whisked me over to the makeup/wardrobe trailer. I was given a shirt to change into, they fussed up my hair and gave me plenty of circles around my eyes.
My scene involved standing next to the hero about to get into his first underground street fight with a big, masked French dude called Eiffel Tower. His Yoda and best friend are standing there too. I’m the drunk dude who stumbles around with a glass of tequila wrapped in a big paper bag and is pretty much in favor of anything exciting. I had three lines. When they mention Eiffel Tower I say “he’s undefeated!” Later, the hero grabs the paper bag from my hand and I say “hey!” And as the hero, wearing the paper bag as a mask for himself, calls himself Tequila Power, I say “yeah! Tequila Power!” I then take a big, long chug of tea in a “Jac Dani” bottle (the filmmakers blacked out certain letters from the logo) and right as I’m beginning to enjoy it, I pretend to pass out, taking a heavy backward spill into a safety mat.
We did two takes. On the second, I bit my tongue, but everyone was laughing. The actors and crew people were excited at how funny it was. In particular was Eiffel Tower. Through his thick accent he was telling me how good I looked as a drunk and the fall I took was great. I told him about the bleeding tongue and he was like “yeah, I know how that is”. Overall, the night was pretty sweet. I guess now I have an excuse to buy the movie when it comes out. Look for it. The movie is tentatively called The Battle and is being distributed by Laguna Productions. The director is Paul Miller.
In the jungles of Vietnam, this man is alone.
Announcing LRP, a computer animated short film based upon a story written by J. Michael Guerra. The film takes place in Vietnam and follows a lone sniper en route to his extraction point after a bloody mission.
James and I are writing the screenplay based off of his short story. LRP will be our first truly collaborative effort in the world of film and will also mark my animation directorial debut. I will have more information on this exciting new project soon.
Apparently the folks at id Software are not willing to support a fan-base who wish to delve into short fan films ala George Lucas’ Star Wars property. Because I was proceeding hesitantly anyway, at the slightest rumor that there was going to be negative vibes from the prestigious software giant, I would destroy all work created thus far. Well, a rumor has just now made itself known and I am terminating the project with no further haste.
I do not at all deny I was working on this project, however I say again that it was to be a non-profit fan film to be freely released over the internet (like the above mentioned Star Wars fan films). Because I had seen another animation created with actual artwork and sounds from the game, I thought that there wouldn’t be a problem if one were to re-create these images from scratch in a Final Fantasy-like 3d rendered fan film. My thinking on the matter was wrong.
This of course is nothing against id Software as a whole, as I will still buy their quality games now and in the future, but I will not continue to be a supporter in the fan-film capacity.
So, the DOOM: Phobos Assault fan film is hereby terminated with no further mention of it ever again. I appreciate the community’s confidence and support of the project, but it was unfortunately not to be. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. And my apologies also to id Software (given the rumors are true), it will not happen again.
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