Ahh, there. I scratched it. What a relief that was.
Anyway, to the point: I (Andrew) am in Fort Collins (Colorado) for the summer (May-August). Anyone who is surprised by this shocking development in the properties of my geolocation should listen very carefully to the following instructions:
Pick up your phone.
Dial my phone number.
When I answer, scream loudly, then cry, then hang up.
So, remember that film we did? No? Well we made a film in 24-hours (again), and it got into the competition’s Top Ten. Now we need your help! To vote for it! Please? You can even watch it first! Promise. Just follow this link:
Ours is: 11:32 PM by Team Broken Shutters. Thanks! Just vote for the best one if you can’t remember which is which. Because ours is the best, you see. Ha.
So remember how Greg started that attempt to write a collaborative political comedy screenplay? And then Ethan and Vvinni started working on it too? And then everyone except for me stopped working on it? And then I hijacked the concept and used it as my advanced screenwriting project?
Well, my advanced screenwriting project is done and the first 40 pages of my version are now written. Here they are, in PDF.
I’m loving this story and I want to make it into a feature. Moreover, I want to shoot that feature in the summer of 2009 as my senior thesis project.
Anyway, towards that goal, I’m making the script collaborative again. My current revision isn’t in the Celtx file yet, but it’ll be there once the semester is over, if not sooner. I really like the collaborative writing process, and I think it has great potential to make a wonderful script.
I’ll be doing a lot of work on the script this summer because I’d like to have the script finished well before the fall semester begins. Every single one of you is urged to contribute to the script as much or as little as you are willing and able to do.
I’m crunching to finish 40 pages of script for class tomorrow morning so I don’t have time to do much work with it yet, but this afternoon I went and picked up my video transfers from Delden, and let me tell you, they are gorgeous!
I’ll have a cut to show in a week, but until then, here’s the unedited master wide of the mass suicide scene in all its glory:
That is a question I’ve been thinking a lot about this semester, since I’m in a production class that shoots 16mm film exclusively.
First, a little background: Ever since the late 1990s, there’s been a move away from film and into digital video for film production (especially student work, because although for a very long time video wasn’t really up to snuff compared to film, it was dirt cheap). In recent years, however, as viable high-definition and super-high-definition cameras have emerged, many real, budgeted feature films have begun originating on video. At NAB this month RED announced a model of camera known as the EPIC, which shoots uncompressed footage five thousand pixels wide. That is, pardon my lack of appreciation for new technology, excessive. But there are still a bunch of holdouts (myself included) who prefer film. Why is that? Well, I’ve compiled a list of all the reasons people choose to shoot film instead of video, some of them good, some of them bad:
Film is established/legitimate (Stanley Kubrick shot on film and I wanna be like Stanley Kubrick!) – This is a bad reason. The acquisition format of the movie, as long as it’s viable and people can actually watch it, has nothing to do with legitimacy, except to the extent that poor people can’t afford to shoot on film. What are you, an elitist?
Film will make my movie look good – No. Just… no.
Film is art. Video isn’t. – Here’s another bad reason. Incidentally, the world of photography went through this phase a couple years ago. The argument is that for some reason when light hardens a bunch of chemicals smeared on a piece of plastic, that’s art, but when light triggers a bunch of little circuits on a piece of silicon, that isn’t art. What the fuck?
Film is expensive – This may seem counterintuitive, but this is one of the reasons why I love shooting film. It’s not that I love spending money (or that I have any money to spend), but when everyone on set knows that every minute of film that runs through the camera is costing you $25, there is a great impetus to do a kick-ass job on every single take, even the first one.
Film is tactile and archival – When you get the film back from the lab, it is as a real, physical object. You can (but shouldn’t unless you want to get the negative all dusty) unspool it and look at each individual frame. It’s an immensely rewarding experience to be able to hold your entire movie in your hands, and it changes the way you approach making films. Also, film lasts forever. Most magnetic and solid-state media are rated with an archival life of 20-30 years, and even that isn’t a sure thing because the tapes of, for instance, the moon landing in 1969 are now nothing but chalky dust in a NASA vault. Film, on the other hand, we know from experience can easily last 150 years before showing any signs of aging. As one motion picture archivist says, “put it on silver or let it rust.”
Reliable equipment – Film cameras were built to last. Has anyone out there ever held an Arri SB? It’s solid metal! You could kill somebody with that thing and not even dent it! MCAD’s arsenal of film cameras is made up primarily of Arriflexes that were built in the early 1960s and still run like a dream. Where is your precious HVX200 going to be in 40 years? Probably inside a whale, or something equally lame.
Film is the technically superior medium – This is the main reason why I cling to film. It’s easier to shoot, is more reliable, and produces higher-quality images than digital. TECHNICAL JARGON TIME: The transfer guy at Delden Film Lab showed me an example of what a good film-to-video transfer is capable of accomplishing. He had a test roll of color negative film that had the same shot on it, once exposed correctly and then over- and under-exposed by several stops in each direction. While transferring the footage, the colorist is able to compensate for different film densities, so that the balance of lights and darks is correct. While the underexposed footage looks quite grainy when corrected, the overexposed footage looks just great! He ran the film all the way to the end, where it was five stops overexposed (that’s thirty-two times as much light as it should have been exposed to for a technically correct exposure), and it looked beautiful. No loss of detail anywhere in the frame. In fact, it is very common practice for cinematographers to “rate down” their film (intentionally overexpose it) by a stop or more in order to “tighten up” the grain. Try that on a RED ONE, I dare you.
So why would anyone shoot video? Well, it’s cheap. And it’s… cheap. And that, granted, can be a very good thing. I wouldn’t dream of shooting a feature on film at this point in my life because I just wouldn’t be able to afford it. Digital gives me an opportunity to try my hand at something that otherwise would be impossible for me.
Sometimes, video is the look you want. I, for one, am in love with the look of analog video, and I recently eBayed myself one of those big old VHS camcorders (it was ‘C’ camera in Higher Source—see this teaser for an example). It’s a creative decision, that’s all, and also a practical monetary one. Still, I love film and I’m going to keep shooting it as often as I can. And please, PLEASE spare me the sermon on how film is going the way of the dinosaur, because I will unload on your ass about dynamic range and how many freakin’ lines per millimeter contemporary camera negative stock is rated at until you get dizzy and fall down.
As you may already know, but maybe you don’t, I entered a competition a couple weeks ago called the SCREENWRITER’S CHALLENGE! It’s hosted by some people in New York, I think. It’s a multiple-round competition, and it’s currently in the judging phase.
In each heat, there is a different genre and subject assignment for the screenplay. I was placed in heat 3, and asked to write a comedy about “coffee.” This was obviously very inspiring, yes? Yes. Wait, no.
Anyways, it had to be 15 pages or less, and I had to have a logline on the title page. AND NOW YOU CAN READ IT. Do you want to read it? You can, if you want. You just have to click HERE and you can download a .pdf of it. And then read it, if you want.
It’s called “Gary Gets Burned,” and it’s one of the more ludicrous things I’ve written, at least in a while.
Mom, Dad, I swear I’m not this gross in real life, but I couldn’t resist using the phrase “menacing spectre of oversized dildos,” in a logline (thanks Andrew).
But hey you guys, seriously. If you take the time to read it, thank you very much. And if you leave me feedback, there might be some HUGS in it for you. Or at least gratitude. In other words, I would appreciate feedback. Thanks!
There is a certain kind of film out there that is just plain captivating, in a way that I’m not sure I can accurately describe (although not for lack of trying). They are completely unexpected, explosively energetic, and occasionally just plain insane.
What makes a movie Crazy Cool? Jesus, I wish I knew. The only common uniting trait among the films I list here is that they are amazing in unexpected ways. These are not necessarily my absolute favorite movies, but they all have that certain je ne sais quoi (French for “really awesome movie”) that sets them apart from other films and makes them into almost an entirely different breed of cinema. Here are all the Crazy Cool movies I can think of, in no particular order:
Keep in mind that this is a different list from movies that are “too cool for school,” which are a less intense, more self-assured, but equally impressive shade of cool. The movies that spring to mind are outlined below:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (semi-frightening aside: last night I was in the studio helping Parker out with a photo shoot and I picked up a dime, flipped it into the air, and caught it. Heads. I thought, “Heh, I’m gonna keep saying ‘heads’ and see if anyone gets the reference.” So I continued flipping the coin and I kept getting heads. I didn’t start out counting them, but I got somewhere between 9 and 12 in a row, and really freaked myself out. Am I dead?)
The Godfather (For whatever reason, I just wasn’t that taken with this film. But it most definitely is the epitome of a movie that is too cool for school.)
It is interesting to note that in my experience, Crazy Cool movies are the rarer of these two categories. The “too cool for school” list is by no means exhaustive and could very easily include everything Wes Anderson has ever made, a bunch of films by Altman and Lynch and undoubtedly non-Americans like Fellini and Kurosawa (although I don’t have much knowledge of their work). Conversely, the list of Crazy Cool movies above is quite honestly every film I can think of that I would describe in those (vague) terms. Am I missing any?
Exploding Goldfish Films is a Fort Collins, Colorado-based production group founded by Andrew Gingerich, a student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
