I just wanted to give an update on my film for March (yes, I realize it’s now officially April). I’m in the process of editing it and it may still take a couple days to finish. I got slammed with work over the last few days and didn’t get a chance to do much editing on the film. I’m making some progress now, but there’s still a good amount to do. I’ll keep posting updates on the progress here and in the twitter feed. Stay tuned, new film soon!
I just want to thank everyone for all the great suggestions for sports this month. I seriously was tempted to try to use as many as possible and tell the story of a former frisbee golf-loving horseshoe champion, disgraced because of an unfortunate stationary bicycle accident involving a marching band, who struggles to reclaim his glory by competing in a dangerous tournament involving thumb wrestling, pencil fighting, pogs, badminton, and bocce ball against the worlds greatest hurling player and curling enthusiast…. How’s that for a pitch? However, now that I think about it…perhaps a later film. Although, I’m not sure I can do a more entertaining thumb wrestling video then these guys.
But seriously, for anyone actually wondering which direction I decided to go with the film: I went with a play on the Rock Paper Scissors tournament. We’re shooting it today and I’m excited for it. I’ll post some pictures in the next day or two.
When I was a kid, the first game I bought for my Nintendo Entertainment System was Donkey Kong. It’s the classic arcade game that put Nintendo on the map and it’s the driving force behind the recent documentary, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
The story revolves around two people: Billy Mitchell, the Donkey Kong world record-holder and Steve Wiebe, the challenger. As the story begins, Billy’s record in Donkey Kong (which is considered the toughest of the classic games) has gone unbeaten for over 20 years. He’s a record-holder in several other classic arcade games and comes across as cunning, devious, and obsessed with winning. Steve is a middle school science teacher who always seems to get the short end of the stick. He discovers a natural ability for Donkey Kong and decides to take a run at the record.
What follows is an engaging, entertaining, funny film that really finds its heart in the strange and endearing cast of characters. And the characters are really what carries this film beyond its premise (I mean let’s face it, a documentary about people playing video games can really only go so far if the people doing the playing are dull). Steve becomes the kind of underdog challenger that you can’t help but root for; especially as Billy pulls out the stops to keep his place on top. The other characters that populate the film’s world of competitive classic gaming are also wonderfully interesting and fascinating to watch.
As I spend this month working on a underdog, against-all-odds sports film, this unlikely story put me in the right mindset as I’m framing the script. The film even has a sequence set to the song, “You’re the Best” from The Karate Kid soundtrack. How can you go wrong with that?
I definitely recommend checking it out. In case you’re interested, here’s the trailer:
Ok, so in the spirit of strange and wonderful organized sports I give you two official organized sports organizations:
First of all, I can only imagine what was going through the heads of the originators of Unicycle Hockey…
“Hey guys, you wanna play some hockey?”
“But we don’t have any ice-skates!”
“No problem, we’ve got unicycles!”
“Of course!”
Genius!
Second, I give you the official USA Rock Paper Scissors League. Here’s the thrilling $50,000 2007 Championship bout:
(ht to Carrie via email)
It’s March and it’s time to make another short film. In thinking about a genre for this month I’m becoming partial to the idea of playing on “March Madness” and doing a sports film. Because really, who doesn’t love a good inspirational, underdog-against-all-odds sports story, right? I mean, you’ve got great films like Rudy, The Natural, Remember the Titans, Rocky, etc. But I’m trying to land on a sport to feature in the film. Any suggestions?
Every year, the TED conference brings together all sorts of brilliant thinkers and practitioners to share and discuss “ideas worth spreading” (primarily about Technology, Entertainment, and Design). In fact, it just happened last week in Monterey, CA.
This is a talk given last year by J.J. Abrams, the producer, writer, and director behind Alias, Lost, Cloverfield, and the upcoming Star Trek movie (ok, so I’m not a Trekkie by any means, but the teaser trailer for Star Trek is pretty cool. Check it out here). I’m a huge fan of Lost, so I was naturally intrigued to hear what he had to say; and it’s good stuff. The talk is called, “Mystery in a Box” and yes, it was an influence on the writing of my January film.
He talks about a “Magic Mystery Box” that he purchased a magic store years ago, has never opened, and will never open because the mystery of what’s inside the box is more interesting than anything that might actually be in the box. He talks about the beginnings of his love for mystery, making Lost, stories in films as mystery boxes, and what films are really about in terms of investment in characters (as opposed to the action or effects they get promoted for).
Link to the talk.
Here’s film #2 of the 12 Films in 12 Months. It’s my film for February, “Click Click”. Enjoy.
I just finished recording the soundtrack. My friend Robert came over with guitars in hand and wrote a great score for the short. We dropped a cut of the film into Garageband, plugged him in, and put it all together over a couple hours. I had never used Garageband to record live music or even to mix music for a video. It worked remarkably well and it just blows me away that it’s one of the stock applications that come with any Mac.
Anyway, I’m mixing the audio right now and still need to finish up the titles and end credits. Stay tuned, it will be up soon…
Seriously, this film almost didn’t happen this month. I’ve been over-busy with work (which is a major reason why there’s only been one post since the month began) and a lot of it got pulled together at the last minute. I don’t think I could have done it without my wife, Christina. She helped me brainstorm the story, write the script, pick the location; and she put together a fantastic lunch for everyone during the shoot. With all that being said, the shoot went great on Monday. The film stars my friends Allison and Jay; and also features Christina and I in a small roles. They all did a fantastic job!
We got together around 11:30am, ate lunch and they read over the script. Then we packed up and went over to my parents’ house. I was going for an outdoor cafe kind of feel and their back patio ended up working well for the scene. We set up, went through a couple of dry runs and then got right to shooting. Jay and Christina traded off holding a bounce-board (that would be a fancy word for a piece of 3′ x 4′ white foam core) to bounce the light onto the person on camera. Whoever wasn’t in the scene was holding the foam core. The lighting was a little tricky but it turned out pretty good on camera.
Sound was a whole other matter. Unlike my last film, this one contains a lot of dialogue. In fact, it’s primarily dialogue, so I wanted to be sure to get a good clean recording. The nearby crows and constant airplane traffic overhead did their best to keep me from that clean recording. Jay did his best to get rid of the crows with small rocks and an old tennis ball. The airplanes just had to be tolerated. I only had one lavaliere mic, so I would use it on one person at a time. For instance, I shot all of Allison’s scenes and shots while she wore it and then I had her give it to Jay and then run through all of their lines again, this time with the camera (and sound) focused on him. It seemed to work pretty well.
I’ve already captured all of the footage and put together my first cut. It’s looking good and the sound is decent. Tomorrow is going to be all about figuring out a musical score and mixing the sound.
I also uploaded some production photos we took on Monday (as well as a few from “Mystery Box”. You can find them on Flickr here.
Last month, Variety reported that this year, “AFI’s 100 Years” installment is going to focus on genres. They’re going to count down their picks for the top 10 films in 10 different genres, creating AFI’s 10 Top 10. The 10 genres they’re picking focusing on are animation, fantasy, science fiction, gangster, western, sports, romantic comedy, courtroom drama, mystery and epics.
I got excited to see their list when it’s completed because one of the ways I’ve been thinking of approaching and focusing the films I’m making this year is through genre and the list of films they create could be a great jumping off point to studying each genre. I think it would be fun and challenging to pick a different genre each month and attempt to make a short film in that style. I’m not going to do every genre on their list and I’ll probably do some that aren’t. In fact, I chose specifically to make my January film with as little to no dialogue as possible; wanting to make a silent film as the beginning to this project.
Well now it’s February and I feel it’s only fitting that I try to make a romantic comedy. I’m really struggling in trying to land on a story for this one; maybe I need to just spend a day watching romantic comedies with my wife (I’m sure she won’t mind that). AFI lists “It Happened One Night” as one of their potential choices. Anyone have any other suggestions?