After a few months back home in Colorado, I have once again returned to Minneapolis—not to school this time, but rather as the first (read: only) AC for the feature film Last Breath, a sort of post-apocalyptic road movie written and directed by Ian Hansing. Production starts tomorrow. By industry standards it’s a tiny production, but it’s still far bigger than pretty much any film I’ve ever worked on, and all the department heads are really incredibly on top of things.
It’s a little intimidating being in charge of the camera department (read: being the camera department) for a real feature with a sizable crew and truckloads of equipment rentals and all that jazz, particularly given that I haven’t AC’d anything in several months, but I’ve been getting my mojo back; labeling cases, buying a 100′ tape measure (finally), and getting down and dirty learning the film community’s own convoluted phonetic alphabet used for slating takes (similar to but not the same as the NATO phonetic alphabet, it begins with ‘apple’ instead of ‘alfa’ and ends with ‘zebra’ instead of ‘zulu’).
I’ll be reporting directly to cinematographer Matt Kane, who you might remember as the übermensch who shot Discouraging Words, and I’ll get a chance to hang with a few legends of the Minneapolis film world, so I’m pretty excited even though I have to wake up around 3:30 tomorrow for the long drive out to the location in time for the 5:30 crew call.
So expect to hear more about all this. In a day or two, if I can summon the energy, I may give you all a peek inside those cases. For now, let’s suffice it to say that we’re shooting digital and I’ve got lots of toys to play with.
You may have heard of The Yes Men. If you haven’t, think of them as superhero media hoaxers, trotting the globe and deceiving the media in an unending crusade for justice.
Back in 2009 The Yes Men made a documentary calledThe Yes Men Fix the World. They are now being sued by the United States Chamber of Commerce—an anti-environmental, anti-regulatory, anti-government, anti-people corporate lobbying concern—who are seeking to have every copy of the movie impounded and destroyed.
Here’s where you come in.
As a countermeasure, The Yes Men, in cooperation with the fascinating new film distribution outlet Vodo, have released the film for free as a BitTorrent download. Get it here. Download it, watch it, and seed that baby like there’s no tomorrow. If you’ve got some spare cash to chuck their way (I don’t), swing by their store to make a donation.
The Yes Men Fix the World is a deadly-serious film disguised as a fun-loving romp. Watch the movie if you want to see the remarkable story of how The Yes Men fooled the BBC into believing that they were representatives of Dow Chemical, and what that meant for residents of Bhopal, India. Or if you prefer, hold on until the bitter end to see how they tricked mayor Ray Nagin and the governor of Louisiana into welcoming them as representatives of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Somewhere in there is a cameo from Reggie Watts (Google him), and of course their Chamber of Commerce shenanigans.
BitTorrent is not just a way to watch leaked workprints of X-Men, it is an instrument of justice. By seeding this file as much as possible to as many peers as possible, you are helping to ensure that these surreal media crusaders will not be silenced. Won’t you please help?
[if you need a good (free) BitTorrent client, I recommend Transmission (Mac) or µTorrent (Windows)]
Back in May I was interviewed about Discouraging Words for the cable access show Filmmaker’s Studio. Not my best or most coherent interview, but in my defense I hadn’t slept more than about twenty hours in the week preceding the interview.
Who is the Ultimate Badass? There’s got to be someone—one person—out there who personifies the meaning of that phrase, right? Who is that person? I was discussing this recently with Matt and we arrived at a potential answer to this question. We may be biased because the name we arrived at was that of a film director, but try as we might we couldn’t come up with anyone who even comes close to the bad-assitute exhibited by Werner Herzog (maybe Zeus, but we’re talking recent history here).
Below are a few true facts about Herzog. Chuck Norris has got nothing on this guy:
In 1982, he hauled a 340-ton steam ship over a Peruvian mountain because he didn’t like special effects.
Klaus Kinski fired a gun at him (three times), but missed.
He promised his cast that if they all survived production on Even Dwarfs Started Small, he would leap into a cactus. He did. And not some half-assed cactus either; one with long, sharp spines (one of which remains embedded in the cartilage of his knee).
He told Errol Morris that if Morris ever made a film, he would eat his shoe. Morris made Gates of Heaven, and Herzog boiled and ate his shoe in front of a live audience at the UC Theater in Berkeley. (See the fantastic Les Blanc documentary short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, excerpted below)
He saved Joaquin Phoenix’s life by literally pulling him from the wreckage of an overturned car, then vanished without explanation.
He has made a film on every continent (yes, even Antarctica).
He was shot in the stomach by a sniper with an air rifle during a TV interview in 2006 and didn’t even stop talking (“It is not a significant bullet,” said he).
He once walked from Munich to Paris (not on the roads; in a straight line through fields and forests).
He once stopped an international flight from leaving the airport in Lima, Peru by stepping out in front of the plane, resulting in a stand-off with police.
He never uses storyboards (they encourage mental laziness).
On location for Aguirre, the Wrath of God he was swarmed by fire ants and stung approximately 150 times. The day’s production was not halted.
In 1982, he rode a 340-ton steam ship through raging rapids in the Amazon jungle because he didn’t like special effects.
Discouraging Words had its first western-states screening on Saturday as part of the Cheyenne International Film Festival. I want to thank festival organizers Alan O’Hashi and Michael Conti, as well as all the good people who came out to the program. I was particularly amused to hear from a number of people who are intimately involved in the Wyoming political scene who told me that we got the characters exactly right.
Some people at the festival have expressed interest in purchasing DVDs. Check back here in exactly two months—that’s July 24th—for more information about how to get your hands on your very own copy of the movie. If you would like to receive an email when the DVD becomes available, just leave a comment on this post and I’ll be in touch.
There will be screenings in Colorado this summer, although nothing is set in stone yet. If you would like to arrange your own private screening for friends, family, neighbors, passing strangers on the street… please send an email to screeners@discouragingwords.com.
Post-production on Discouraging Words is getting crazy (in a good way?) because I need to have a screener done by the seventh of May. Here’s where I withdraw into my hole and become an antisocial hermit until the movie is finished, so if you send me an e-mail or Facebook message or the like, don’t expect to necessarily get a reply. Ever. Fair warning—that’s just the way I roll.
Anyway, here are two things that you might find interesting. First, a frame from some news graphics I’m currently rendering out:
Exploding Goldfish Films, LLC is a production company out of Fort Collins, Colorado and Minneapolis, Minnesota run by Andrew Gingerich, Ethan Holbrook and Parker Cagle-Smith. Since 2003, Exploding Goldfish has produced two feature films and a number of award-winning shorts.
This blog exists to provide information on current Exploding Goldfish projects and other pertinent tidbits.
It’s a little intimidating being in charge of the camera department (read: being the camera department) for a real feature with a sizable crew and truckloads of equipment rentals and all that jazz, particularly given that I haven’t AC’d anything in several months, but I’ve been getting my mojo back; labeling cases, buying a 100′ tape measure (finally), and getting down and dirty learning the film community’s own convoluted phonetic alphabet used for slating takes (similar to but not the same as the NATO phonetic alphabet, it begins with ‘apple’ instead of ‘alfa’ and ends with ‘zebra’ instead of ‘zulu’).
