It's been three weeks since the last time this was posed... well overdue for a new one, it would seem.

So...

What have you done recently, that relates to film? It doesn't have to be earth-shatteringly huge.

Found a good film-book to read? Discovered what white-balancing is? Got hired by Spielberg to DP his next film? Made some progress on your short/feature that your life revolves around?

Here's your chance to plug it, or at least share something you may have learned in the past few weeks.

Or maybe even just say "Hi!" if you've joined the board but haven't had a chance to post yet.

_______

I'll start with...

It's been a quiet week. The good Florian Linckus (http://www.FlorianLinckus.com) is working on the score for my latest disasterpiece "Of Consequence". The segments I have heard so far sound fantastic. Not much else I can do 'til it's complete. :cool:

I've been asked to come up with a script for a one-minute horror film... just brainstorming right now. It's hard to crunch complete stories down to 60 seconds or less!

_______

Soooo, the question begs...

What have you been up to, recently?

1) This week I got hired to do a promotional film by a group of eleven year old filmmakers. (I'm not joking)

The interview was one of the strangest experiences of my life and I'm convinced that I got the job because I was wearing my blue Converse's that day and the interview panel thought they were cool. I'm really looking forward to the job though as I get to work with my wife for two weeks.

2) In the middle of major rewrites on two feature scripts and really enjoying the process, mainly because of an ongoing e-mail conversation I'm having with Filmjumper about structure.

3) Decided this week that despite everything I'm going to Ghana in the autumn to set up my next feature project. I should have gone this spring but I got sidetracked by a money problems. I'm very excited about this project and now can't wait to start looking at locations and the practicalities of shooting a film in Africa.

4) Strange, I almost forgot this one. I pitched a show to UK network TV for their daytime schedule and have been promised a response in six to eight weeks. It's a strong pitch and would really put my company on a firm financial footing.

I feel like such a slug compared with Zen and Clive.

Didn't do anything film related this week. Probably my biggest accomplishments were repairing an ailing clothes dryer, replacing the headlights on my Fiero, and logging a lot of miles on the motorcycle.

I did, however, download and review some cool tutorials for Macromedia Flash. This isn't a commercial endorsement - I just think they're interesting, you can check them out at www.CartoonSmart.com (and no, I don't get a commission for referring people.)

Vector graphics are interesting to work with. I toyed with logo creation (from one of the lessons) and watched a couple of animation tutorials with fascination.

Lemme see... completed the press kit for Macbeth 3000. If you want you can view a low-res version at www.superguncinema.com in the press section. A critique would be nice, but I'm sending them to the freebie papers and radio stations today so I'd just have to keep it in mind for next time.
Hmm.. got to see 3 scenes with final scoring. It sounds amazing. Really hyped for the premiere.
This whole week, I've been walking around the city with posters, making sure the ones that got torn down go back up, the ones that have been pasted over ours get torn down and cursed at, and handing out little card-stock flyers. 850 seats to fill people!!

Did a calculation. If we do 7 sold out screenings at the Bloor cinema for $7 a ticket we'd make $100,000. Holy crap. If we sell out the first night, we can fund a second screening.

Been trying to familiarize myself with legal aspects of film. Also reading Rebel without a Crew. And Filmmaking for Dummies.

Learning photoshop while designing stuff....

Neglecting my girlfriend. (poor Amanda!)

BAH!

I...

a) ...discovered two weekends ago that the location where my next short - "The Stream, The Cave, Jim, and Dave" - was to be shot is overgrown with weeds and has a family of coyotes living there. It was nearly inaccessable for me, I don't want to even try to get an entire crew back in there. I have another possible location that I need to scout, but with some of the other things I'll mention shortly going on, I haven't had time to take a drive out there.

b) ...have been giving myself a crash course in After Effects. My wife's sister and my brother are getting married (not to each other) in subsequent weeks, and I volunteered to do photo collages for their respective rehearsal dinners. I've got the hang of it now, and it's going smoothly, but I am having problems exporting with sound...plus, it's a very time consuming process.

c) ...have been planning an internet based sketch show, called "The Poke Show" with members of Creative Name Filmgroup. We are planning on having five episodes, ten minutes in length for the inaugural season. Tentatively scheduled to Premiere on December 15, 2005.

d) ...am trying to devote one night a week during this busy time to work on a script that another member of IT has asked me to put my spin on.

Other than that...not much has happened.

Poke

Well, as for me, i've been preparing a whole biz plan and other stuff for a film submission to Fonds Sud for one of my features, hope it will work!
I've an e-mail conversation with a very nice lady from a big French production and distribution company about my other project, but i'm still running after the actress and the DP I want for this film .
Also, i've been writing my first really"commercial" movie, hope this one will make money that i'll be able to put on other projects.

Take care.

This week...

1.] Attened a local industry mixer at which we were supposed to show our trailer and make some contacts. It turned our to be quite lame and nothing was ever screened. Hooray for alchohol. It saved the night.

2.] Skipped over to the lake for a little wakeboarding. Managed to get aabout 5 mins in before I tool a hard fall the the board hit me in the face. Game over.

3.] Enjoyed a lazy day in which I sat around and watched movies all day. Donnie Brasco, Monsters Ball, Cast Away and Donnie Darko. Nothing better than a lazy movie day.

4.] Slept in........

Went to work at my day job for 40 hours, did father duty for three nights and...
created the final 15 or so photoshop images for my focumentary, pan and scanned them, output and input audio tracks, lined up music, burned rough cut for preview, printed press kit items, designed 1-sheet, started to worry about promoting while worrying about final editing, spent roughly 40 hours of the three day weekend in a chair editing, thought very briefly about the after-party of the premire and decided I can't worry about it, joined a local (Virgina) film group, got feedback on rough cut, picked up some lines from our narrator and star, and worried worried worried that we've either got something too long and self-indulgent or too short with tons of hilarity on the cutting room floor.

At work, I've sent emails to cast and crew, submitted the film to IMDB and read and posted some things here when, really, that's not exactly what I'm paid to do. I also took one nap.

Oh, I forgot - had my car break down 2 blocks from my house on Saturday night (wouldn't start) left it parked and had our camera man/exec producer fix it. I don't know jack about cars, it was just coroded battery connectors, I felt bad because he likes to watch the editing process and is a great guy, I pretty much said "The best way you can help the film is to see what's wrong with my car so I can finish this." Then the writer/co-producer drove it back to my place. When people are truly dedicated to getting a project done, they will do whatever it takes, even playing mechanic to the director.

God bless Indie filmaking!

Eventful week for me:

1) Found out my wife was pregnant with our first kid. Awesomely sweet...and weird...and surreal.

2) Got hired to write and direct a TV pilot for an indie producer.

3) Signed on to produce and develop a TV pilot for a major studio.

4) Finished up a scene for an animated feature I'm currently in production on.

1) i started pre-production on a music video i'm directing in a few months.

2) began working on new short script

3) posted video for review on this site....:-)

Congrats Beeblebrox!!! New life!!

1) Found out my wife was pregnant with our first kid. Awesomely sweet...and weird...and surreal.



Congrats, fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

I have two and I can honestly say they are the best things I have ever produced though, frankly, they don't take direction very well.

1) Found out my wife was pregnant with our first kid. Awesomely sweet...and weird...and surreal.
...I know I'm late saying so but HAPPY BABY! :woohoo:

--spinner :cool:

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words about the pending bun in my wife's oven.

Also, I wanted to announce that we've developed that TV pilot with the indie producer into a 4 episode mini series, which I'm really excited about since we get to tell a complete story, ala Battlestar Galactica, that could become either a TV series (the primary goal) or a movie.

...good for you! I like hearing when something good happens for people. Hope to see your show on the SciFi channel!

...so are you ready to become a dad? :)

--spinner :cool:

...good for you! I like hearing when something good happens for people. Hope to see your show on the SciFi channel!

It's not a sci-fi show; I was just using BG as an example. I'm hoping we can go to either VH1 or MTV, since I had a show on VH1 last spring and this new show would really fit well with either one.

Other than that, can't talk about it. I'll let you guys know if and when we get that far.

...so are you ready to become a dad? :)

Emotionally, yes.

Emotionally, yes.
...well, they say nobody is ever entirely ready, but if you want to, you can be. Money is always tight anyway...(well, at least it is for me and I don't have kids :yes:)

...besides, you don't have to worry about the right schools or tennis shoes or boy/girl friends for a long time yet... :D

--spinner :cool:

Just get your kid a tiny vivdeo camera to carry around with them.
Forget the toys and dolls, give the some tapestock.

Just get your kid a tiny vivdeo camera to carry around with them.
Forget the toys and dolls, give the some tapestock.

Now that's a good idea. I'll just have to hope I raise the next Steven Spielberg instead of the next Paris Hilton. ;)

Thats somewhat of a roll fo the dice. :)

This week i have mostly been...

Finalising a documentary pitch for a doc on third generation multiculturalism and sourcing interviewees,
Rewatching Cedric Khan's L'Ennui and falling in love with it all over again.
Trying not to get too far up my colon whilst helping out a sound designer and artist with ideas for his Klein like colour/matter/depth installation.
Thinking i might be developing narcolepsy.
Yelling at the stupid fuckers at the repair shop who tried to tell me the laptop was crashing everytime i tried to save anything in PhotoShop because i had 4 shortcuts on my desktop. Wankers.

Remarkably productive week all in all. :yes:

Chloe

rewriting my script like crazy

This has been a good week for Futile Effort Films. I shot and edited a short called "sleepy". Its a 90 second montage designed to cure insomnia. I made if for my dad because we have an ongoing joke about how people in my family can fall asleep anywhere, anytime. My dad is the king of napping. I think its funny. I set it to Screamin' Jay Hawkin's "I put a spell on you" so I can't post it until I replace the music. I'd hate to break copywrite laws. My husband wrote a song for it to replace the screamin Jay so we can share it with the world. I hope to get that recorded and added to the short this weekend.

I also did my very first shift as a registered nurse this week....Yeah!! I know what your thinking "what does that have to do with filmmaking?", right? Everything! Soon I'll have paychecks to fund our extremely low budget films, including new camera and computer upgrades.

Thanks all for the great information. I've had a ton of my questions answered just reading through some of the discussions.

Great news about the kiddo, soon-to-be Dad.

This week I wrote the first 4 pages of a new Treament: A crime/thriller set in Big D. Looks to be a cool flick. Kind of a Moragn Freeman/Ashley Judd type pairing. So far, some pretty good plot twists.

WC

To Beeblebrox -- your news about the baby tops them all. Congrats!!!

As for my recent events--this week I got a new job (finally, after being laid off for four months) AND moved our family into our first "home" (instead of apartment).

I didn't do much with our movie projects, but I did record a song (with Charles' help) to be included on our upcoming soundtrack CD. Also worked on some art/packaging design for said soundtrack CD. The CD should be available for sale in August.

We talked about submitting our first movie FINGER to film festival...might do that next week.