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Last week I wrote here about the new short film that I was making to submit to the upcoming Fox show On The Lot. The reason I hadn't been very active in the past several days on here is 'cuz I was furiously trying to get the movie done and submitted, because applications (which includes a copy of the movie on either VHS or DVD) have to be postmarked by February 16th. To give you an idea about how much I've worked on this, I was up at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning and didn't stop laboring on it until 6 p.m. that night. It's been that way for the past several days now.
For the most part the movie was finished on Monday morning, but there were still a few things that bothered me about it that kept me from submitting just then. I went to the school board meeting later that night (which was the first time I'd gone outside for something other than film-related business in over a week), felt a little refreshed when I got home from it, spent the next few hours fixing 2 or 3 things, and went to bed. Yesterday morning I tried a couple more things to it but decided those weren't working. I then uploaded a copy to a server I have access to and let some friends take a look at it. They all thought it was good, in spite of a couple of rough edges.
There comes a point where you have to let go and let God take control of things. I could do no more to it. It was time to turn it loose and let come what may.
So late yesterday afternoon, I uploaded it to the On The Lot website with my account there. Then I had a quick dinner with Lisa and right after that headed out the door in the pouring rain toward Greensboro, to get my application and DVD FedEx-ed off. On the way I stopped by my parents' place and showed it to them: they thought it was really good, even though Dad admitted he didn't understand "that cat thing". But they both thought it was a nice piece of work.
Well, I got to the Kinko's on Battleground Avenue in Greensboro and I discovered something last night: FedEx doesn't deliver to P.O. boxes! The guy behind the counter suggested the post office at Four Seasons Town Centre. This was at 8:25 p.m., with the office closing along with the mall at 9. I high-tailed it to Four Seasons and managed to get to the post office fifteen minutes later. I was one of the last to get served before they closed for the night. So it's postmarked and on its way, with 3 days to spare. I got home at 10 (after going by the Borders bookstore further down High Point Road) and promptly crashed. Didn't wake up 'til 10:30 this morning, I was so drained from the past several days of working on this.
I don't know if it'll get hosted by the On The Lot website yet though. If it does, I'll post the link here so that you can watch it. If not, I'll probably have it on YouTube at some point in the next few months. Better not say anything more than that just yet: I'd rather this be a surprise :-)
This is hands-down one of the most hilarious and downright brilliant short films that I've ever watched. Make sure you've seen Ron Howard's excellent movie Apollo 13 before taking a look at this. Remember Gene Kranz, the mission controller played by Ed Harris in the movie? Well, what would Thanksgiving at his house be like? Here is Thanksgiving With The Kranzes:
On January 25th I posted that I was going to be taking a break from blogging for awhile. It wasn't anything like my Lenten abstinence from blogging last year (although that's not too bad a thing to consider doing again this time either). It was because a number of things had come up in my life that demanded attention and I needed to focus on them before the blogging. There's been a few posts I've been able to squeeze in when time allowed (I just had to do something for the 10th anniversary of Star Wars Special Edition, incidentally the A New Hope one is running on HBO on the TV behind me) but otherwise, it's been nothing like my usual publishing frequency.
Well, as of last night I can finally get back in the saddle again and ride hard.
Thanks to a lot of people who helped out during this period, from coming so far to help with a project to something as simple as offering up some thoughts and prayers. In so many ways, I doubt that I could have gotten through the past month without them.
Okay well, now y'all know that I'm back working The Knight Shift. Expect stuff to start shipping out of the factory starting now...
Lisa and I watched this week's Lost episode, "Not in Portland", last night off the DVR. That's twice I've seen this episode so far, but I've lost count at how many times I've watched this scene. It's so... weird, even for Lost. And that's saying something!
Well if you want to see it again or if you've never seen the show and are wondering what some people are talking about, here is the scene in Room 23, where Kate and Sawyer and Alex go to find Karl:
Both stories are sad and tragic in their own ways.
But we do not need wall-to-wall coverage of these stories.
There are things going wrong in this world that demand our attention. Instead we continue to be captivated by the cult of the celebrity... to the detriment of ourselves and our children. Because I can think of literally dozens of news stories that in a sane world would warrant this kind of coverage. Instead it gets wasted on, pardon me for saying this, a hard-living woman who not too surprisingly died too young and another woman who drove 900 miles wearing a diaper to attempt to kill a rival.
Meanwhile the government continues to take away basic liberties, we are being taxed and spent out the wazoo, we are drowning in debt, part of our land is becoming a third-world nation because the borders are being overrun, people are dying every day in a war that only the most deluded seem able to find a rationale for...
We don't need any more Anna Nicole Smith coverage. We don't need any more Lisa Nowak coverage. Just like we didn't need 24 nonstop O.J. coverage over a decade ago. Let due process in both run their course. There's no need to make these two incidents more a spectacle than each already is.
John Williams, perhaps the most well-known composers of the modern age, the mind who did the music for the Star Wars movies and Indiana Jones and Jaws and Jurassic Park and the first few Harry Potter flicks and Schindler's List and Lord only knows how many other movies (and TV shows, and themes for Olympic games, etc.) is 75 years old today.
Here's saluting a great man on reaching an epic milestone. And here's to looking forward to many more wonderful film scores (I still believe he's going to do the music for Star Wars Episodes 7-9 someday). Thanks to Darth Larry for posting word about today's wonderful occasion!
...was one of the best hours of television I've seen in a heap many moon.
I'm still wigged-out by that weird room that Alex's boyfriend was strapped down in: it was like the Lodovico Treatment from A Clockwork Orange on crack cocaine. Who is "Jacob"? On the screen it flashed something like "God loves you just as he loves Jacob": that's the second episode in a row that "Jacob" has been mentioned.
Just had a thought: was this "the room" that Mrs. Klugh threatened Walt with in the episode "Three Minutes"?
I'm gonna watch this one again tomorrow sometime. In the meantime, g'nite!
One of the first episodes of the original Star Trek that I saw (the very first was "The Enemy Within") was "The Doomsday Machine". I think that one easily ranks among my top three all-time favorite episodes of anything Star Trek. In case you've never seen it, "The Doomsday Machine" is basically Moby Dick in space: the Enterprise comes across another Starfleet vessel that barely survived an encounter with an ancient sentient war machine. The commander of this other Starfleet ship is obsessed to the point of madness with destroying the machine.
For the past few months the guys in charge of Star Trek (is that still Berman and Bragga?) have been broadcasting the original Star Trek series with the "special editions" treatment: remastered and with upgraded special effects. Well, this week "The Doomsday Machine" gets the treatment. What does it look like?
Here's a shot from the original version of the episode, showing the Enterprise and the doomsday machine...
And here is a shot from the remastered episode, showing the 2007 rendition of the doomsday machine...I've never seen classic Star Trek look this good. This is definitely one I'll be looking to record on the DVR! For more pics from this episode aim your phasers here.
In the final moments of the last episode of Lost, Jack had agreed to do the surgery on Ben. In the middle of the operation he turned the tables on his captors: Jack made an incision in Ben's kidney. He then demanded a radio to talk to Kate and then laid it all down: if the kidney doesn't get sewn up in one hour, Ben dies. Either Kate (and presumably Sawyer) get away to safety and radio that back to Jack, or the Others are going to have to find themselves another leader (which maybe Juliet wants anyway...).
I've been so wrapped-up in finishing my film that I totally forgot until while just talking to Mom on the phone that Lost returns tonight: the first episode since November 8th. It comes on at 10 p.m. EST (one hour later than usual, to give the American Idol juggernaut some leeway). I'll probably file a report here later, giving my reaction to the show.
About a month ago my friend Chad did a review of a movie called Facing the Giants. It just came out on DVD this past week and a couple days ago it arrived at our place via Netflix. Well, I'm still busy putting my own movie together, but Monday night Lisa and I watched a good part of it and we finished up last night. So what did I think about Facing the Giants?
One word: "Wow!"
Yes! At last! To say that I am astounded would be undercutting it. And not just because this movie is the production of a Baptist church in Georgia but absolutely looks as if it had a multi-million dollar budget poured into it (I think they only spent about $100,000 on this)...
...No, what really impresses me about Facing the Giants is that this movie "gets it" so far as Christian filmmaking goes. Yes, it is very much a Christian movie. But it does something that is very rarely - actually I don't know if it's ever been done this successfully before - done with Christian cinema: Facing the Giants is entertaining in addition to its message, instead of trying to be entertaining because of its message.
That's probably going to rub some folks as being blasphemy: like I'm saying that Facing the Giants is putting worldly approval before righteousness before God. But there are two things that I would like to point out about Christian filmmaking in general. First, full-length features are supposed to be entertaining. Or if not "entertaining", at least still make you feel as if the time watching it was well spent. Too many Christians in the film industry try to make "the message" the whole reason why people should want to see their movies... when it doesn't work that way at all. And so we wind up getting turkeys like Left Behind (hilariously discussed in Rod Dreher's classic article for National Review called "Do Fake Boobs Go to Heaven?"). This is one medium where noble intent alone does not a good movie make. As it is, we get situations where the producers of a Christian movie have to practically beg people to come see their movies...
...Ummmm, guys: if you just make the story engaging and fun, people will want to come see it on their own anyway. Facing the Giants made more than $10 million when it came out in theaters (to limited distribution and with little promotion, I might add). That's a hundred-fold return on Sherwood Baptist's investment.
Second, as Christians we should feel compelled to give everything that we do our best effort. Or rather as Grant Taylor (played by Alex Kendrick) in Facing the Giants comes to realize: do your best so that you can give glory to God, not to yourself. And sometimes you have to push yourself and even go through some pain in order to do that. Striving for the goal that God has set for us is never supposed to be easy: God puts these things in our lives to build us up, not to win some prize. Winning is a secondary thing... but we are still supposed to run the race to win all the same, as the apostle Paul taught us to do.
What does that mean when it comes to Christian filmmaking? It means doing your darndest to make a good movie, and that means having something more than less-than-stellar production values. Yes, I know that most Christian filmmakers are faced with limited funds compared to the resources of a big studio, but if there's any way at all to squeeze in just a little more quality into a project, then the filmmaker should do so. But a lot of these Christian movies look as if they are products of the Ed Wood School of Filmmaking: fast and cheap and without care. Again, with these movies people are supposed to want to see it because of "the message", according to their producers. It's almost like those TV commercials for personal computers back in the early 80s: almost always the spokesperson would talk about all the productive things that a computer could do and then maybe, just maybe, they might be used for a little fun. Most Christian films are all business and no pleasure, and the producers will spend 90% of the budget on the serious and hardly anything on making the thing look good. Quite honestly, I think that's lazy filmmaking. Worse: it reflects horribly on Christians who are trying to do things for God's glory. If we can't give it our best for Him, what is the rest of the world - that we are trying to witness to - going to take away from that?
A third point I could also make, even though it has nothing to do with Christian filmmaking per se, is this: Facing the Giants was shot on location in Georgia, with an almost entirely local crew and cast of actors. And it proves something I've been thinking for awhile now: that if you want to produce a top-quality movie, you don't have to go to Hollywood to get it made. The acting in Facing the Giants is as good as any coming out of Tinseltown... and the fact that these are ordinary people makes Facing the Giants all the more honest and convincing. You wanna make a film? Do your community a favor: put your friends and neighbors in it. Acting is easy, and the behind the scenes stuff isn't too hard either: give everyone a shot at being in the movies.
Well, I gotta get back to working on my own movie. But I just had to take a break long enough to recommend Facing the Giants and call attention to how this is one movie that is hitting on all the right cylinders. Many other Christian filmmakers would do well to learn from its example.
And, it's just a heckuva good movie. I'll probably be buying it for my own DVD collection soon.
Brian Hodges - AKA Darth Larry - is not only a bigger Star Wars geek than me (is that possible?) but he's also an accomplished cello player. Here's a video of him rehearsing - along with his wife Betsi on piano - something called "Rachmaninoff Sonata" for a recital he gave a couple months ago...
I like posting stuff like this, not only because it demonstrates the talents of good friends but also because it makes me look good when others see that I got the hookup with high-class cultured folks :-)
For almost two weeks I've had to refrain from posting at my routine frequency. Some real-life things have been happening that demanded a lot of personal attention. It'll be at least another week or so before I'm probably going to be back at full posting strength, but for the first time I'm ready to "tip my hand" a bit on something that I've been working on.
It all started almost three weeks ago, during the season premiere of American Idol. During the first commercial break we saw a promo for the upcoming Fox show On The Lot. It's something like American Idol for filmmakers: everyone is invited to make a 5-minute short film and submit it. From all those thousands of entries, sixteen will be selected to compete on television. Those chosen will have to make one new film a week, with the viewing audience voting on who to keep returning in the ensuing weeks. The person who wins receives a $1 million filmmaking contract. The executive producers of this lil' venture are reality TV legend Mark Burnett and some guy named Spielberg...
We saw the promo and the first words out of Lisa's mouth were "Chris, you should try out for this."
Then the next day at least a half-dozen other people told me that I should take a stab at On The Lot, including the girl who worked on Lisa's teeth at the dentist office and my mother-in-law.
I'd actually heard of On The Lot last summer and had thought of trying to put something together for an entry, but then the school board race happened and everything that I would have liked to occupy myself with went straight out the window for more than three months. The deadline to submit a film is February 16th: just a month to conceive a story, write a script, do casting, find locations, shoot the thing, and then everything involved in post-production. Definitely a tall order even in the best of circumstances. But with all these people encouraging me to go for it, I've taken it as a sign that I should at least make the attempt, even if it doesn't get any further than the "auditioning" stage.
I spent the day after first seeing the promo trying to think of story ideas. Two of them kept coming to mind. The one that I thought was the more challenging to attempt is what I opted to use. By 4:30 the next morning the first draft of the script was finished. A few days after that I posted a casting call on Tarheelfilms.com (a terrific resource for North Carolina-based filmmaking and casting). I said in the ad that this was for an On The Lot entry. Before the next four days were out about 350 people had responded!
Well, I went through all of them, and it wasn't easy. Casting went on almost right up 'til principle photography. In the meantime I worked on a lot of other things involving production. Friday before last I did the first bit of filming at Cafe 99 in Reidsville. I then spent the next week lining everything up for principle photography the following Saturday.
That happened this past weekend. There are two very quick scenes that still need to be filmed but otherwise, we got all our shots in.
I can't begin to say how much fun we had! One of the most exciting aspects about filmmaking for me is meeting wonderful new people and getting to know them as we work together. Well, Saturday our little production family welcomed three new members: Selassie Amana, Chris Otto, and Dawn Swartz. My longtime friend and collaborator "Weird" Ed Woody, his wife Olivia (both members of the cast in this project) and their son Tristan arrived at our place Saturday morning. Then Doug Smith - a guy I used to work with - arrived. It wasn't long afterward that Selassie, Chris and Dawn got here (Chris also brought his girlfriend/secretary Abby, and my own lovely lil' "spousal overunit" Lisa was there too 'course :-) That was ten people in our living room total... and four of them (Chris, Abby, Dawn, and Lisa) were all graduates of University of Georgia! So the Uga wallpaper on our computer's desktop was naturally a big hit with the crowd.
We had a round of introductions and then "got down to business". I got up and told everyone a little about what KWerky Productions (the lil' outfit founded by Ed and me) is, what we've done before, what makes us unique, how we love to have fun, and how we work with only the best people that we can find. The newcomers were told how they were now joining a family... like the Mafia. And just as the Mafia, if they really wanted to be part of us then they should understand what it was that they were possibly getting into. At that point I told them that there was a video that they needed to see and that if they wanted to leave after that point, they could: "Nothing will be said," I told them. Without further ado I hit "play" on the DVD player and everyone watched the following...
Amazingly enough, nobody abandoned us after that. So I handed out the legal contracts to everyone that had been drawn up for this production (I might share the text of that at some point 'cuz more than one person described it as being "different"). I showed the thus-far completed footage, and then we had a few readings of the script. And after that, from about 11:20 a.m. until last night a little past 7, we spent the rest of the day filming.
Well, I could say more, but I'll let the pictures speak a little about what happened throughout the day on Saturday...
Dawn Swartz and Chris Otto on the set at Cafe 99 in Reidsville, North Carolina
Part of the set during filming at the Reidsville Family YMCA
Looking down the hallway on the set at Reidsville Family YMCA
The "class photo" Front row: Tristan Stamper Second row: Dawn Swartz, Selassie Amana, Chris Knight Third row: Chris Otto, Tyler Richardson, Doug Smith, Olivia Woody, Ed Woody
After the film has been finished, I'm going to put together a reel containing the bloopers and some of the other things that happened during production. In the meantime, the submission deadline is next Friday (the 16th) and there's still two tiny scenes to shoot, plus everything that comes with post-production. But as much as wound up getting done in the past three weeks, I'm pretty confident that it will all be wrapped up in the next few days. Until then, expect me to still not be able to chime in on this blog as much as I usually do... but now y'all know more about what's up.
There'll be a more full report on this page in the next day or so, but I just wanted to go ahead and say that since yesterday morning this has been an awesome experience. Everything went well yesterday and a lot of new friendships were made. Especially thanks to Selassie, Chris, and Dawn, who I got to meet in person for the first time yesterday, and I pray it's sooner rather than later that we get to work together again.
There's gonna be more to come, including pictures and a video, coming real soon. In the meantime I'm sort of spending tonight both relaxing a bit and working some with what we got in yesterday (I'm rooting for the Colts in the Super Bowl but since there's gonna be only two movie commercials during the game - which is what I always like to watch for - I'm not really interested in watching much).
