Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Link and Filmmaking Stuff
This is amazing. I can't get it out of my head now: The Chronic-What?
I realized I haven't updated in a while about filmmaking things. Might as well do it now, especially since I need to have some sort of written plan for the next few months.
As I posted a few weeks ago, Deej finished shooting The Act. However, he still hasn't sent the tapes to Canada to be edited, though they'll be in the mail as soon as he gets a chance. I'd be worried, except there's been a change in the festival schedule.
The films in this studio festival were due to premiere online in approximately 2-3 weeks. That is no longer what's going to happen. Many of the teams were having trouble finishing directing, let alone editing, due to the holidays and busy schedules. So the final deadline for all films to be submitted is now March 1.
Personally, this annoys me. If it was February 1, I wouldn't have much of a problem. I can understand delaying it a week or two. But March is crazy. That's 6 whole weeks. If there's one thing I can't stand about these online festivals, it's that the deadlines are always put back. Chad goes on and on about how these are serious festivals, says the deadlines are non-negotiable, and then ends up putting them back. It seems kinda hypocritical.
Out of the approximately 10 teams this time, only 2 or 3 have managed to work hard and stay true to the deadlines, including mine. And sure, I can understand wanting to have more than 3 entries. But six weeks of extra time seems like way too much to me. It's unfair. Here Deej and I have worked our butts off getting this thing done...and now there's an extra 6 weeks we could have had? Deej has told me that the footage turned out pretty good. But I got the impression it's not fantastic, and certainly not his best, simply because it was all shot in a single weekend - he was rushed. Six extra weeks would have been like a gift from heaven for him. He could have prepared more, worked out a better time for his actors to come down (they flew in from different states), and maybe even gotten into that surprise location he had mentioned to me earlier (it was Disneyland by the way, but in the end he didn't have time to get in there).
I don't know. I just wish for once all the entries would truly remain consistent in terms of how much time each team was allowed to make them. What's really going to be annoying is if the films of the teams that finished on time end up being the worst of the ten. No doubt if that happens my competitive side will take over and get angry. But I guess I should look on the bright side. Six extra weeks means that Andrew Cranford has around two whole months to edit this thing and get it perfect. Maybe that extra time will help compensate for Deej's rushed shooting, and in the end it'll all balance out.
Speaking of my dear editor and friend, he has asked me to help him out with a project. He wants to direct a series of Christian short films, 8 in total, 2 series of 4 each. He's asked me to write him up a detailed outline of the first episode, and if it's any good there's a chance I'll be allowed to help him out with the actual scripts and take on a bigger role in the project. I've got some decent ideas floating around as to where it could go, I just need to make time to sit down and really write out the details. I've been telling him I'll get around to it for weeks and weeks, so it's time I finally kept my word and did it. I'm excited. This will allow me to really explore some cool serious spiritual themes and I think I can do some interesting things with it. So I'll probably be working on that within the next few weeks. I'll most likely end up writing down general ideas for all the episodes in the series, and then really focusing on the first one. Should be interesting. His goal is to start filming the first series of 4 in April and have it finished by July, so it's possible I'll be spending a whole lot of my spare time working on that.
Also...I'm thinking that I'd really like to direct something this semester. It's been around a year since Stuffed Fantasies, and I need to do something new. I've got scripts I've started but haven't come close to finishing, but those are all larger projects I'm not ready to direct yet. I'm thinking about doing another romantic comedy. I don't know what it is that I always end up doing something related to romance and comedy, but I've got an idea that would most likely fall in the romcom genre that I'd like to do. It would probably be more of a straight-up comedy than Stuffed Fantasies, but it will definitely have romance as a key element of the plot.
So I've also got to get working on that. Right now it's just a what if. Stuffed Fantasies started with the question: "What if someone fell in love with an inanimate object?" Everything involving the stuffed animal, therapy, etc. developed from there. Right now I've got another what if, and I have no idea where it's going to go. I'm not sure if I want to go for something with an actual "message" or just go the fun, campy entertainment route. Given the themes associated with the idea, I'll probably be forced to work in a message, whatever that may be. I just have to make sure I handle it much better than I handled the central idea of Stuffed Fantasies, which really could have benefitted from a few more drafts. Having a character spend 2 minutes explaining what the point is is not good writing. Message aside, I'm also going to have to figure out how to handle certain elements of the subject matter, since I don't want to offend anyone. One thing's for certain: I'm going to have to go through plenty of drafts before I even begin to think about how I want to shoot it.
Anyways...that's what I've got planned in respects to movie making. We'll see how things work out.
I realized I haven't updated in a while about filmmaking things. Might as well do it now, especially since I need to have some sort of written plan for the next few months.
As I posted a few weeks ago, Deej finished shooting The Act. However, he still hasn't sent the tapes to Canada to be edited, though they'll be in the mail as soon as he gets a chance. I'd be worried, except there's been a change in the festival schedule.
The films in this studio festival were due to premiere online in approximately 2-3 weeks. That is no longer what's going to happen. Many of the teams were having trouble finishing directing, let alone editing, due to the holidays and busy schedules. So the final deadline for all films to be submitted is now March 1.
Personally, this annoys me. If it was February 1, I wouldn't have much of a problem. I can understand delaying it a week or two. But March is crazy. That's 6 whole weeks. If there's one thing I can't stand about these online festivals, it's that the deadlines are always put back. Chad goes on and on about how these are serious festivals, says the deadlines are non-negotiable, and then ends up putting them back. It seems kinda hypocritical.
Out of the approximately 10 teams this time, only 2 or 3 have managed to work hard and stay true to the deadlines, including mine. And sure, I can understand wanting to have more than 3 entries. But six weeks of extra time seems like way too much to me. It's unfair. Here Deej and I have worked our butts off getting this thing done...and now there's an extra 6 weeks we could have had? Deej has told me that the footage turned out pretty good. But I got the impression it's not fantastic, and certainly not his best, simply because it was all shot in a single weekend - he was rushed. Six extra weeks would have been like a gift from heaven for him. He could have prepared more, worked out a better time for his actors to come down (they flew in from different states), and maybe even gotten into that surprise location he had mentioned to me earlier (it was Disneyland by the way, but in the end he didn't have time to get in there).
I don't know. I just wish for once all the entries would truly remain consistent in terms of how much time each team was allowed to make them. What's really going to be annoying is if the films of the teams that finished on time end up being the worst of the ten. No doubt if that happens my competitive side will take over and get angry. But I guess I should look on the bright side. Six extra weeks means that Andrew Cranford has around two whole months to edit this thing and get it perfect. Maybe that extra time will help compensate for Deej's rushed shooting, and in the end it'll all balance out.
Speaking of my dear editor and friend, he has asked me to help him out with a project. He wants to direct a series of Christian short films, 8 in total, 2 series of 4 each. He's asked me to write him up a detailed outline of the first episode, and if it's any good there's a chance I'll be allowed to help him out with the actual scripts and take on a bigger role in the project. I've got some decent ideas floating around as to where it could go, I just need to make time to sit down and really write out the details. I've been telling him I'll get around to it for weeks and weeks, so it's time I finally kept my word and did it. I'm excited. This will allow me to really explore some cool serious spiritual themes and I think I can do some interesting things with it. So I'll probably be working on that within the next few weeks. I'll most likely end up writing down general ideas for all the episodes in the series, and then really focusing on the first one. Should be interesting. His goal is to start filming the first series of 4 in April and have it finished by July, so it's possible I'll be spending a whole lot of my spare time working on that.
Also...I'm thinking that I'd really like to direct something this semester. It's been around a year since Stuffed Fantasies, and I need to do something new. I've got scripts I've started but haven't come close to finishing, but those are all larger projects I'm not ready to direct yet. I'm thinking about doing another romantic comedy. I don't know what it is that I always end up doing something related to romance and comedy, but I've got an idea that would most likely fall in the romcom genre that I'd like to do. It would probably be more of a straight-up comedy than Stuffed Fantasies, but it will definitely have romance as a key element of the plot.
So I've also got to get working on that. Right now it's just a what if. Stuffed Fantasies started with the question: "What if someone fell in love with an inanimate object?" Everything involving the stuffed animal, therapy, etc. developed from there. Right now I've got another what if, and I have no idea where it's going to go. I'm not sure if I want to go for something with an actual "message" or just go the fun, campy entertainment route. Given the themes associated with the idea, I'll probably be forced to work in a message, whatever that may be. I just have to make sure I handle it much better than I handled the central idea of Stuffed Fantasies, which really could have benefitted from a few more drafts. Having a character spend 2 minutes explaining what the point is is not good writing. Message aside, I'm also going to have to figure out how to handle certain elements of the subject matter, since I don't want to offend anyone. One thing's for certain: I'm going to have to go through plenty of drafts before I even begin to think about how I want to shoot it.
Anyways...that's what I've got planned in respects to movie making. We'll see how things work out.
# posted by Andrew Johnson : 12/27/2005 01:53:00 AM 
