And Now for Movie #2

While I may know nothing about social networking it just so happens that I know some cool people, and because cool people always seem to know about cool things, I have an avenue for social networking through my association with coolness. One such cool person, who also happens to be a young person in her twenties (making her even cooler), has decided to act as Production Assistant on our next movie. Within two hours of our first casting call for said movie Katie, for that is her name, had established a Twitter account for our new film venture. As I'm sure you are burning with curiosity as to how exactly small, no-budget, films are made, you can now follow the tribulations and triumphs at:

http://twitter.com/marketstmovie

And, if all that wasn't enough for you PDX cinephiles, I'm pleased to relate that our previous venture, Fine Arts, now boasts its own IMDB page complete with a preview video. The very cool Director of Fine Arts believes that the video quality of our IMDB page might be linked to its relative popularity so, in other words, a movie that has thousands of interested fans will get a picture perfect streaming video of their preview while those of us with no real fans have to use whatever bandwidth might be left over to stream (or trickle) our little preview. Sounds plausible to me.

So don't wait! Tell three thousand of your closest friends to visit IMDB and watch our utterly silent and mostly still little segment of movie goodness. It will make you cooler than you already are, and allow me to feel more cool too.

Announcing Fine Arts the Film

Jonathan Ashley Hall as Sam in Fine Arts

Photo: Jeffrey T. Baker

Fine Arts, the 30-minute short film that serves as The Company's first (legitimate) attempt to join the cinematic milieu, is finished. Completely finished. With credits.

Now comes the relatively difficult part— getting people to watch it. Festival submission fees await; and we are ready to shovel our hard earned lucre into the burning promise of a national audience. Grab your hats people because the deadlines, rejections, and kudos are just about to begin!

Fine Arts Rough!

Jonathan Ashley Hall as Sam in Fine Arts

I interrupt this incessant stream of posts related to life in 2005 to bring you a current event.

The Company sat down last night to screen the first rough of our short film Fine Arts. With the exception of Brandon, who has sat in front of the computer editing the footage for three months, we had not seen hide nor hair of our little production since filming wrapped up in October last year. 

I want to be self-effacing, maybe even modest, but I feel it would be disingenuous to not state the obvious: this short film is far better than it should be. For a film with a tiny budget (so tiny as to be safely dubbed a "no budget" film in the parlance of the film industry), a skeleton crew of novices, and a shooting schedule so frighteningly quick that it often seemed we were packing up only minutes after we'd pulled everything out of the van, it seems improbable that both the narrative and aesthetics could coalesce into 28 minutes of intriguing cinema.*

A good portion of the kudos should be given to the cast, who were unfailingly professional and accommodating. They were thrown plenty of curve balls as Brandon and I readjusted shots to take advantage of various lighting conditions and locations. All of them were also exceedingly careful with Amy's script, which went a long way to maintaining the emotional cohesion of the story. Apparently, the script is often the first victim to the group-think engendered by movie making, as everyone (except the screenwriter) puts in their two cents about what the screenwriter really intended for this or that scene. I won't say that none of that happened, but in the cut we saw last night, I feel like many of the core ideas within the script were preserved and honored.

Brandon's skill as director and editor also deserve considerable praise. Despite having a number of takes for each scene, we were often exceedingly limited in how many different ways we could get a take. Most shots were subject to the limitations of available light and space. All of the shots were hand held; robbing every scene of the sameness that cranes, dollies, and tripods can offer. In the end, Brandon had a motley assortment of takes that were similar but hardly the same. As if editing wasn't hard enough already. . .

By no means should you believe that we are finished: Fine Arts still has a bit of post production work ahead. But in all likelihood, we should see the end in the next month or so, and then a new challenge will present itself— finding a venue larger than a couch to hold an audience larger than The Company. 

In the meantime I'm being told that blogging isn't nearly as important as writing my two proposed screenplays. I suppose that means I'll have to start shortening my posts. . .

What? What are you. . .? Wait . . . stop cheering! That's not nice!

*Intriguing cinema means that there's probably an appreciative audience somewhere, but I have no intention of misleading you— this is not a blockbuster. The only thing it has in common with a blockbuster is that it should be projected, and it is created through the efforts of more than one person. That's were the similarities end.