movie making on my own

Figured I’d write a brief update. We finished two projects and turned them into the Li’l Film Fest. Carl ended up doing a different short called “Until Death Do We Part”. “Heavenly Family” fell through due to a severe case of Murphy’s law. Just to give you an idea (this is among many mishaps), we went to call one of our main actresses to see if she got the script and her voice message was “Hi, I’m in the hospital for the next four weeks. I can’t have a cell phone here but I can take vistors”. In a really happy voice too.

We might try to make “Heavenly Family” another time. It needed to be longer than five minutes anyway. The original script was 11 pages. It was severly maimed in order to get it into the five minute time constraints. So a chance to make the unmained version might be a good thing.

We’re doing auditions agian. I’m always happier when there’s something to work on. And I can actually use the word ‘we’ and not be meaning ‘I’ lol. Carl, from the last project (The Legend of Milton Blocker), is helping me this time. We’re doing two projects for Li’l Film Fest 10. His, entitled “Heavenly Family”, is a comedy dream sequence of a guy in Heaven taking to Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Alec Guinness.

Mine, called “Some People’s Families” is a dark fantasy in which a demon convinces a child to murder her sister. You can read a draft of the screenplay here It still needs a little tweaking.

Simplyscript.com just released another one-week challenge.
Good luck to anyone entering.

If you want info go here to the simplyscripts webpage

I might enter this. My brain is still thinking. I’m also working on illustrating a book for a friend and trying to shock my brain into actually writing this gangster webseries I’ve been kicking around. So we’ll see. There’s just so much time to procrasinate and make excuses to do nothing, haha. However I like family themes because I’m completely obsessed with the mafia genre. The theme for the challange this time is “A secret revealed at a family picnic”. Something like: “By the way kids, your dad’s a hitman”. This makes me think of the Iceman (mafia guy).

I wonder if it’s family month or something. The li’l film fest just released it’s 10th festival theme, which is simply Family.

Just a quick something.

I found this article while preusing the web that lists some free software on it. It has celtx on the list, so I assume from this it’s a good list. I like celtx a lot.

The list

cinematrix looks good but when I tried to look it up it seems they decided not to release a free version after all. Can’t find it if they did.

I downloaded the Audacity program and played with it a little. It reminds me of Soundforge, though it’s been a long while since I played with soundforge last, and it’s not nearly as extensive.

OMG, I made front page of Desoto Appeal :SQUEE: I take back anything bad I ever said about newspapers or Desoto County—not that I ever said much bad about them.

As to the purpose of this blog post: Unless you live near NYC or LA where no one cares about your short film, it’s a good idea to contact the local branch of your newspaper. Especially if the film is being shown somewhere, anywhere. The worst that’ll happen is they’ll ignore you. The best is that you’ll have a kick ass front-page photo of yourself to frame; and also to teach you that you need to learn better posture…and sit with your good side to the photographer.

To contact your paper look them up online. The Desoto Appeal lists a fax number for reporting a news tip. Since I utterly despise the phone, I decided to fax them instead of calling. In the case that your paper doesn’t have a website, contact information is usually listed on the paper itself. It’s a pretty simple procedure getting yourself in the paper (at least the local one).

It’s also a lot easier than most people think, or at least than I ever thought. You make contact. You say “I’ve done such and such”. A reporter either calls you or makes a meeting time to speak with you. That’s about all there is to it. Oh, and make sure you sit with good posture when you speak to the reporter or else everyone in your city will see what crappy posture you have.

Desoto Appeal has an online version: Here’s the story.

scan of newspaper:

My brother is pretty heavy into Poetry. This was one of his. If you are wondering about the funny noise in the background, it’s because he decided to record himself next to our mother’s air machine :eyeroll: And yeah, that’s him in the picture.

Trailer time:

Makeup for this movie, by the way, owes a good thanks to Duane P. Craig. He sent me lots of tutorials on how to do the makeup for the dead people. He’s cool and down with the zombie knowledge.

Sorry, need to go off topic one more time.

[edit: U.S. department of state blog, has some really interesting discussion of things to implement in order to help darfur out]

I got an e-mail the other day from savedarfur.org. They’d asked us to text Clinton about Darfur. She was doing some special thing taking texts to collect questions the public wanted addressed. In the e-mail savedarfur relayed this reply to the subject of darfur:

“What actions will the U.S. take to resolve the crisis in Darfur and bring President Bashir to justice?

In the last few weeks we have seen the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of President Bashir; the expulsion of aid organizations that serve the people in the internally displaced persons camps; and harassment of citizens of European countries as well as the United States. The ICC was created to amass evidence and reach conclusions as to culpability and bring indictments where appropriate, which it has done concerning President Bashir and his role in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur and other government-sponsored activities that have created misery in Sudan. To avoid such misery from getting worse in Darfur in particular, we need to see a return of those aid organizations that have been prevented from continuing their life-saving work in that region.

But we know that this is just the first step. I had a long conversation with the Belgian Foreign Minister on my recent trip to Brussels about Sudan and other conflict areas in Africa and what can be done. This is a matter of real personal concern to me and I know to President Obama as well.

Our hope is that we will come up with new ways of supporting and encouraging positive changes in Africa for the betterment of the people there. But it is going to be a challenging time.”

So, after five years of violence, death and mayhem we’ve made such progress as to have had a nice long talk with Belgium. It’s not very encouraging and that’s all I’m going to say.

—
udate on a more positive note:
After two posts of what were essentially rants on darfur, just wanted to post a piece of better news…well hopefully better news. There’s been an envoy appointed to the Darfur Issue.

Here’s an article with more indepth information

More reading online popped up that Bush had an envoy to Sudan back in 2006. So Envoys to darfur aren’t a new thing. It’s a step in the right direction. However, we are still awaiting a shove, a leap, a running bolt, more so than a step.

I was clever for once. I faxed a letter about “The Legend of Milton Blocker” showing at the Li’l Film Fest to the Desoto Appeal (local newspaper). A reporter called back and I have an interview Tues at 10am. I don’t expect too much out of it. I had contacted them before about an art exhibition of mine at the library. They had contacted back about that one too. What resulted was a small article on page five. It was surrounded by so many ads I would have glanced over it if I’d not been specifically looking for it. So, the same thing might result here.

Don’t get me wrong, newspaper articles about my work don’t hurt my feelings. I can always cut it out and pretend it wasn’t shoved between 8million ads in an attempt to hide it.

A slightly off topic post for today. Subject: Darfur. In regards to the situation over there, WTF? Apparently the international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Bashir. His response? To throw out several of the human aid organizations in Sudan. What a way to prove to the world that you’re an asshole. This whole thing just really boggles my mind.

I could go on for awhile but I’ll keep this brief since it’s so totally left field for this blog. Here’s a link that discusses the current situation in Darfur. For those interested Michelle has several blog posts about this. I’ve found it hard in the past to find current information on Darfur. Just doing a search of “Darfur” brings up articles from 2006. It’s a little different over there since then, however the amount of death doesn’t seem to have changed.

Anyone have any ideas as how to “save Darfur”, as they say? Apparently talking to politicians doesn’t really do much as we’ve been talking to them for the past five years.