Here’s film #4 of the 12 Films in 12 Months. It’s my film for April, “April Fools Day”. Enjoy.
Film #4: “April Fools Day”
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Favorite Videos of the Week
Over the last week, I’ve posted a video each day on my Twitter feed as my “Favorite Video” of the day. My plan is to post a new one every weekday. Of course, in the back of my mind I wonder if I’ll come up against a time when I can’t find anything I want to post; but for now I’m not too worried as, let’s face it, there’s a lot of fun videos being produced and shared online. There’s no specific formula as to which videos I’m picking. Mostly I’m just picking videos that I find to be entertaining, challenging, interesting, beautiful, remarkable, inspiring, or just plain funny. Some weeks may have themes, others may be completely random; it just depends on what I manage to come across. I’ll be posting roundups of the week’s videos each Friday, but if you want your daily fix, you can follow me on Twitter here.
Here’s a roundup of this week’s videos:
Burst – A remarkably beautiful ad full of slow-motion water balloons
Awareness Test – How did you do on it?
Karate Slow Motion – I cringed, but could not look away. So fascinating.
Penguins – BBC – So fantastic.
Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace – The is a seriously awesome series that was apparently on the BBC a couple years back. If you get sucked in and need more, there’s several more episodes on YouTube.
Film #4: Coming by Sunday
So, chances are that if you’re visiting this site today, you’ve come to see if my fourth short film of the year has been posted. And upon seeing that it has not, you might find yourself thinking, “I wonder if Ian slacked off for the second month in a row and doesn’t have his April film done by the end of April. That would be a shame.” And indeed, I have and it is.
The last few days ended up busier then I had anticipated and sadly, I haven’t been able to give enough time to editing to the film since we shot this last Sunday. But I am determined to get it done as quickly as I can and I’m planning on having it online by this upcoming Sunday, May 4. In the meantime enjoy some of the photos from the shoot as well as some of the random videos I’ve been posting all week in my Twitter feed.
Perhaps now I might have to consider changing my site’s subtitle, as Brian suggested I do last month (although I don’t quite know if I’ll use his suggestion line-for-line). Thanks for being patient everyone.
Film #4: The Shoot
This last Sunday was the shoot for my fourth short film of the year and it all came together really well. We managed to stay mostly on schedule and get everything shot by the end of the day. While this film didn’t have as many individual shots as the last one, it had it’s own challenges including longer shots, a lot more camera movement, and the fact that it was shot primarily hand-held. The film stars Tom Pollard and Courtney Clevenger who both did a great job in their respective roles. They also both filled in as crew alongside my friend Chris and my dad, Bruce.
We got together at around 1:30pm to get started with the shoot. The first series of shots were the most time-consuming by far because they required the most equipment and setup. We set up everything in my apartment to shoot some interview scenes with both Tom and Courtney and as I’ve mentioned before, my apartment doesn’t always fill with a lot of natural light. Fortunately, Tom had some lights that he was able to bring along with him for this setup; and so we set about completely rearranging all of the furniture in my living room, double-checking the fuse box, and getting everything set up for the interviews.
One of the more ridiculous things is that my Great Dane, Darby, not wanting to be left out of the excitement, spent the majority of the shoot laying in the middle of the room just out of camera range. I posted some pictures to Flickr from the day and you can see her next to the tripod in a couple of the shots. I don’t know if she just wanted to be warmed by the lights or felt the need to not be left out of whatever was happening, but fortunately she mostly managed to stay out of the way. But speaking of the warm lights, my apartment was roasting. I don’t know if you heard, but it was hot in San Diego this last weekend. Add that to hot lights, closed windows, and turning the AC off and it got very hot in my little apartment.
After we were finished shooting in the apartment, we shot a number of scenes driving around in a car. We all piled into my wife’s Jetta and drove around my neighborhood while Tom and Courtney ran through their lines. Again , it was really hot with closed windows and no AC but Tom and Courtney did a fantastic job. And Chris did a great job keeping me organized and slating the shots from the back seat behind me. Once we finished in the car, we shot a couple exteriors at a sandwich shop and parking lot; and then finished up the day shooting a few scenes on the front porch of my parents’ house. All in all, it was a good day and I’m excited about some of the shots. Thanks again to everyone who was part of it.
Sundance Global Shorts
A little while back, the Sundance Institute asked six influential independent filmmakers to each produce an original short film intended to be viewed on the small screen of a mobile phone. They’ve put them on their website and you can watch them all here.
My favorite is A Slip In Time by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (who directed Little Miss Sunshine). It’s an amazing slow-motion study of slapstick comedy. They take a lot of the classic silent-era movie slapstick gags like getting hit in the face with a pie, slipping on a banana peel, etc. and shoot them with a high-speed camera. The results are beautiful and whimsical.
Altogether, I think my order of favorite to least favorite of the five films is:
- A Slip In Time
- La Revolucion de Iguodala
- Reno
- Learning to Skateboard
- Los Viajes de King Tiny
So if you get a chance, swing by the Sundance site and check out the shorts.
…and I’m back!
Sorry about the blog silence over the last couple of weeks. I realize I haven’t posted much recently, but film #4 is underway and on-track. Although it will be cutting it a little tight, I’m going to be shooting the film this Sunday afternoon and then editing like crazy during the first half of next week to get it done by the end of the month.
For anyone curious, this month I’m producing the film in the style of a documentary with a story that centers on a professional April Fools Day prankster (’tis the month after all). It should be a lot of fun.
Film #3: Extended Sven Interview
The people have spoken! A couple of you commented that you wanted more Sven, so I give to you: more Sven. Here’s a deleted portion of his interview from the beginning of the film. Fox Clark did a great job as Sven and ad libbed this entire piece. Enjoy.
Film #3: “Paper Covers Rock”
At long last, here’s film #3 of the 12 Films in 12 Months. It’s my film for March, “Paper Covers Rock”. Enjoy.
Film #3: Quick Update 3
I have the picture edit finished, the music score finished, and I’m working on mixing all of the sound right now. I’ll hopefully have the film finished within a couple of hours. Of course, even though I will soon have Film #3 done, I don’t have much time to slow down. I’m now a week into April and I need to seriously get moving on Film #4.
But for now, one thing at a time: Film #3 first.
Film #3: The Shoot
The shoot for the third film last week went great. I felt more prepared for this one then I had for either of the prior two films. I had a production schedule, a full storyboard for the whole film, and a shot-list; which all proved to be invaluable as I had more then 100 shots to get over 6 locations during the course of one day. But, thanks to some semblance of organization as well as a great cast and crew, we were able to make the schedule and get the entire film shot in a day.
The film stars Allison Welch, Fox Clark, Todd Tolson, Tom Clement, and Derek Emery. Derek also doubled as crew along with my friend Chris to slate each shot and help me stay on top of the shot-list and storyboard. My wife Christina and I filled in as extras in the crowd scenes.
We got started at 9:30am, shooting a dinner scene between Allison and Derek at my apartment. Fox showed up around the time we finished up that scene and we headed over to Journey Community Church (where Christina works) to shoot the rest of the film. We primarily shot in the middle school room, using the stage and some side rooms to create the different locations. We spent most of the rest of the day in that room shooting the majority of the film. We finished up in there around 6:00pm and went to a back parking lot to shoot the training sequence with Allison and Tom. The shoot was finished and wrapped by 7:30pm. It was a long day, but good!
I posted a few photos from the day on Flickr here. Be sure to check out the one of Fox as “Sven” posing with our Great Dane, Darby. Classic.