progression

i. updates:

editorial: we've finally locked the edit! actually we did last week, but i wanted to let it sit for awhile before making the announcement. it's nice to watch the film and not see sections where you feel "oh, need to tighten that up" or "hmm, that doesn't really work."

so the next steps are sound, color and vfx.

sound: yesterday, via a recommendation from ed turner (our on-set sound recordist), kimberly and i met up with kilyoung baek who will be taking care of all our post-sound production needs. kilyoung's a really nice guy and seems eminently qualified (he was in the process of mixing a recording of 'the messiah' he had done at a local church with a full orchestra).

his first process will be a two-week pass to replace all the production sound (in terms of foley and sound fx we basically captured nothing on set - just dialog). then we'll meet with him to go over what he's done, spend the next week fine-tuning and another week for final mixdown.

so four weeks from when i deliver the sound files to him, assuming i can coordinate color and vfx, we could be done with the film! only two months after the promised december delivery date. hmm, need to revise that teaser...

ii. analysis:

it's very cool to find people who are good at what they do who will contribute to your film and handle an entire process for you. this is not a process im familiar with but it's one i wanted to experience and practice on this film (as i expect to do more of it in the future). working with aaron was that way - we gave him our raw files and two weeks later had a very nice rough cut to work with. im expecting the same from kilyoung and hoping for the same with color and visual fx.

film is in many ways a collaborative medium - which is not to say it's a made-by-committee process. there's endless discussion of the 'auteur' theories and who actually makes a film, but it's a mix of both contributions from various contributors and the vision of one particular individual. very few films get made by a homogeneous group. it's like architecture. sure it takes a ton of very talented and hard-working people to construct a bridge or skyscraper, but there's a vision that precludes that process. without that vision there's no stated goal, no reason d'etre, no grand idea.

so for me, making films has been a process of learning to utilize the talents of others. it's tricky because there are many different levels of control and perception to navigate. i have very clear ideas (much of the time), about what i want and balancing that with new ideas introduced by collaborators can be a challenge.

deciding when someone has something better - not just different, can test your belief in yourself. ultimately you have to be happy with the contribution - there's no point in making a concession if you don't personally believe it improves your film.

that's why i believe in the one vision version of filmmaking. i want to know what a particular person has to say with a piece of art or entertainment - i want a point of view. that has to come from an individual or a few individuals with a very tightly shared vision. as much as im a filmmaker myself, i don't want to contribute to the making of a film that isn't mine. i want to sit back and enjoy the fruit of someone else's imagination and hard-work.

but the relief of burden, the additional shaping and crafting, and the diversity that can result from the contributions of others who are both skilled at what they do and legitimately interested in assisting your vision, is invaluable.

it's been said that the richness of your life can be counted by the quality and quantity of your friends. that doesn't resonate with me, but if in the end i can be proud of the quality of my collaborators and the result of our combined efforts, i'll consider myself very wealthy indeed.

the problem with film sites

#2 in my apparently continuing series of rants...

due to aaron's comment on my art as historical fact post, and because i'm always looking for new sources of quality short films, i spent half an hour on the ifc media lab site.

wow. what a disappointment.

in thirty minutes of searching i found one film that was o.k. (one of the november winners, 'missing pieces'). this has got to be the most limiting factor of short film sites. if you can't immediately find good content, you're not going to bother to stick around or come back.

the reason for youtube's success isn't that you can just go to the site and easily find something good to watch. it's very hit or miss with that approach. youtube's popularity has come from being linked to. i almost only go to youtube because i'm either following a link or looking for something specific. heck, most of the time what i watch from youtube is embedded on someone's site. either way the pre-selection process has already been done.

but short film sites like ifilm or ifc media lab don't have that kind of publicity and word-of-mouth driven traffic. they're sites you'd go to because you want to see a good short film. of course, a good site would be one that has a high bar for submission, or at least some application process. better yet would be a site that actively searches for and acquires good content.

the biggest problem with short film sites is that it's next to impossible to do any kind of qualitative searching. everyone sorts by either views (as if how many people have watched something means anything), or by rank, which is useless unless you tie it to a minimum amount of views (and weigh in favor of those with more rankings). when i tried to search by ranking on the ifc site, only one of the first ten results (those ranked with a full complement of 5-stars), had ten votes. all the others had less. that's an effectively meaningless ranking.

it's really not that difficult - you need to be able to search by the most popular and best ranked - and that ranking has to mean something. make a film's rank not count until it's had at least 50 rankings. the more rankings a film has, the more impact it's rank has. then when i sort by rankings, the films with 5 stars come up first ranked in order of most rankings to least. the top ones would have say, 100 5-star rankings and the last would have 50 (since that's the minimum). simple. that way i know it's not just the friends of the director who've pushed the ranking up. and if a film gets a 1000 rankings, but they average 1.5 stars, i'll never see it.

but instead these sites are squandering the interest of folks looking for short films. it's no wonder short films have such a bad rap when all people find are lame attempts at humor and jackass stunts. it makes me hesitant to post my film up on any of these sites.

and the lame thing is - im potentially their best customer! im a short film lover who's interested in finding short films. im web-savvy and motivated and i eagerly want to support good short films. if you're creating an experience that doesn't make me want to return to your site, you've got a serious problem.

and just so im not being a complete scrooge, i'll leave you with a little love:

[since blogger beta is currently being contentious here's the youtube link while i figure out how to embed this $&##!!&#$ thing!]



[from the youtube description] Sometimes, a hug is all what we need. 'Free hugs' is the real life controversial story of Juan Mann, a man who's sole mission was to reach out and hug a stranger to brighten up their lives. In this age of social disconnectivity and lack of human contact, the effect of the Free Hugs campaign became phenomenal.

As this symbol of human hope spread accross the city, police and officials ordered the Free Hugs campaign BANNED. What we then witness is the true spirit of humanity come together in what can only be described as awe inspiring.

screenwriter blues

a week ago i read a la weekly article about how shitty screenwriters are treated. friday the times had an article about the fiasco of the screenplay process for 'sahara'.

and i have to say in response to the la weekly article - who gives a fuck?

i mean really. im so damn disgusted. who of us making real-world money cares at all what these poor millionaires (or close to it), are going to do with the rest of their lives if they can't convince hollywood to pay them to write again? i haven't even heard of most of the writers in the list that worked on 'sahara.' they may be good people (josh is definitely funny), but $500,000 for rewrite work? what the hell?

people need some goddamn perspective.

im 39 years old. i've only made over thirty-thousand a year maybe 6 of the last 10 years of my employment. before that i'd never made more than twenty-five grand a year. i've never made a hundred thousand in one year, let alone for a single script.

and im rich.

i don't hesitate if i want to buy a cd. i go out to eat all the time. i see all the movies i want. i have a car, a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood, plenty of clothes and i buy my organic groceries at whole foods.

so if you've ever been paid that kind of money for a screenplay, go fuck yourself if you think i care if you EVER work for hire in hollywood again. thousands of us are paying to do this. we pour our own hard earned money into writing and making films in our free time. im not against you working again, but im not going to worry about it if you don't. maybe you can give back to society and become a teacher.

how about this: if you've ever been paid money like that to write a film, go make one with your proceeds and put your money where your fat complacent ass is.

art is only a historical form of creativity

for years i've had long conversations with my friends about talent. as artists who aren't (yet) making a living at what we want to do, we romanticize the idea that like ourselves, there are diamonds in the rough working in obscurity on projects that will one day burst upon the world in an explosion of brilliance and recognition.

except i've always argued that those creatives aren't out there. sure there are some talented people not yet making a living following their muse - myself included of course ;) - but the majority of people trying to make it haven't for good reason.

they suck.

barry diller recently caused a tempest in a teapot by saying that there isn't an undiscovered country of talent out there, and i agree with him. look at the top videos on the web - although some are interesting tidbits of captured life, practically none show any talent on the part of the person doing the filming or editing. sure, the indian girl roller-skating under 50 cars or the quick-change artists is fascinating to watch - but it's not dramatic story-telling. apart from the gimmick of lonelygirl15, what narrative has risen from the masses? so far not much. youtube is simply the world version of 'america's funniest home videos.'

as technologies have brought production possibilities to the proletariat, this conversation has come to the fore again with the popularity of viral videos, youtube, discussion of user-created content and the long tail. however, the answer is still the same.

here's where the pundits go awry: so far all our innovation and advancement has been in the tools for production - not the act of creation. they're tools of quantity, not quality. video cameras, desktop publishing, non-linear editing, digital media and online distribution are all quantity tools; they allow an idea to be more easily created and disseminated.

but none of those tools helps you come up with or create better ideas.

that's not to say we can't create tools that will. but it will take focus. until there's better creative idea tools, changes in education, and greater emphasis on innovative and creative processes, the tools of the new media age will no more create filmmakers than the wide-spread availability of paper and pencil has artists and authors.


[1] francis ford coppola in 'hearts of darkness: a filmmaker's apocalypse'
[2] constant nieuwenhuis in this interview
[3] jean cocteau