filmmaking

Chris Knight's avatar

So Lisa and I watched On The Lot, now about four months after we saw that promo back in January and her telling me that I should have a go at it. So with only a month before deadline I went and made Schrodinger’s Bedroom. Obviously the entry round was as far as I got (nope, not so much as a callback for an interview), but it was a fun lil’ film to make and I’m glad for the opportunity.

Now, as for what we finally saw on television last night…

Where this show is weak is that it, like most other “reality television” series, already seems to be built around combativeness among the contestants. In that regard I have to wonder how much of a “talent” competition this really is. I do believe that where my own entry failed was the 45-second intro: I definitely wanted to ...

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On The Lot, the new reality show from Mark Burnett (Survivor and a few other programs) and Steven Spielberg (some movie guy) premieres on Fox tonight at 9 p.m. EST, right after American Idol. This is that “American Idol for filmmakers” show, where aspiring filmmakers have to make one movie a week and in Idol fashion, they get judged by a celebrity panel of judges before going to the American public to be voted on. The last one standing at the end of the summer gets a $1 million contract to work at DreamWorks.

Here are the 50 semi-finalists that came out of a field of over 12,000 entrants. I will not be one of those on the show tonight, although my entry Schrodinger’s Bedroom seems to have been enjoyed by quite a lot of people (it had over ten thousand views before a website snafu ...

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Jae Solina is a student at Randolph High School. Each senior there has to do a project as a graduation requirement. Well, Jae decided that he had to do things a little different and that he was going to shoot the works for his project. He opted to make a short film. So far as I know, this is the very first film he’s ever worked on. Jae needed a “professional” mentor to help him with it and sign off on the requirements, so I’ve been helping him a bit for the past few months.

You’re going to see “KWerky Productions” flash briefly during this. Well, this film is all Jae’s doing. He deserves all the credit for it. Because he does stuff in this very first time out that outshines work I’ve seen from a lot of veteran filmmakers. Jae did some things that I haven’t even attempted in ...

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A sobering read from Variety, especially for folks like me who are into digital filmmaking: the problem of archiving digital footage. Think that tape and recordable DVDs can store the products of our work forever? Nah-uh! The problem is two-fold: life expectancy of storage media, and current methods of storage being unable to be read by future technology. The current best solution is to “migrate” older material to new media every so often, but for the time being there is no reliable long-term storage.

What this is going to inevitably mean is that the work of a lot of people is going to be lost forever, eventually. Especially for the “indie” filmmakers and other artists. Which is especially horrifying to me because I’ve always thought that every person’s creative work has merit. Whether we actually like it or not is a whole ‘nother thing, but we should at least ...

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I had no idea this was in today’s edition of goTriad (which will be available throughout the area for all this coming week) until Kate from the Murphy in the Morning Show on 107.5 FM called a few minutes ago to ask if I would be up for an interview tomorrow morning, so I’ll be on the air at 7:20 or so tomorrow morning talking about Schrodinger’s Bedroom.

Here’s the link to the story on goTriad.com. Sue Edelberg did a really great job with this write-up. And my friend Johnny Yow will no doubt enjoy how many times he’s mentioned in this story 😛...

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From what I’m hearing, the calls to those who made it to the second tier of the On The Lot competition have already gone out. I won’t be going any further with this season’s contest, ‘cuz The Call(tm) hasn’t come here. But it was fun to have at least tried… and to have put together a movie like this so fast.

Anyway, the News & Record, which is the big newspaper around here, ran a story about my entry Schrodinger’s Bedroom in the Rockingham section of the paper. It’s not up on their website so I transcribed it here:

A couple, a room, a hopeful director

– Chris Knight hopes his short film gets him chosen to be on a reality TV show.

BY GERALD WITT
Staff Writer

REIDSVILLE – Dead cats, quantum physics and newlyweds thread into a short film that was shot, written and directed here as ...

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KWerky Productions

presents

A CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT FILM

Chad Austin

and

Melody Hallman Daniel

starring in

Some said it couldn’t be done. Others said it shouldn’t have been done. But… we did it! A parody of Misery, the Rob Reiner film based on the Stephen King novel. Only in this version it’s George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars saga, who crashes in a blizzard just after finishing the script for Episode III, then gets “rescued” by his “number-one fan”. “Nice job!” is what “Weird Al” Yankovic told us after he watched it. Plenty of sly in-jokes and references for keen-eyed fans of both George Lucas and Stephen King to find. Actually there’s a little something in this for everyone. And don’t worry, we made this to be a good, clean movie that anyone in the family can enjoy. If you like comedy in the vein of “Weird Al”...
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