As mentioned in the previous post, I was on two panels at the Lone Star International Film Festival and they both went well.
The first one was quite small, but very interesting. Turns out it was the first panel of the event and they had the address wrong. Plus, it was at 11am on Friday at a first year festival. So, only a few people in room besides us panelist, but again, it was very informitive. This was the New Media panel.
The second one was called Directing Your First Feature and it was much better attended. The room was pretty much full. This was the panel Fred Durst was supposed to be on, but he no showed. Very rock n' roll of him I suppose. However, much to my surprise the other panelist were actually a couple of the guys from Broken Lizard (Jay Chandrasekhar and Paul Soter). The comedy troupe behind such films as "Super Troopers", "Club Dread", "Beerfest", etc. and Jay also individually directed the "Dukes of Hazzard" movie. And Paul has just directed his first feature film "Watching The Detectives". Very nice guys and cool to hear their perspective on making films in the studio system versus indie world.
Here are two pictures of me and the Broken Lizard guys:
The top picture of Paul and I is slightly out of focus (thanks Cliff). :)
-Blake
Just saw today that PINK has been featured on YouTube. Not sure when this happened or how, but it happened in the last day or so I think.
THANK YOU very much to the editors at YouTube for noticing and featuring the show.
And since we've been featured we've had over 20,000 views on Webisode 01. Pretty cool!
I'm actually in LA this week for several meetings regarding the future of "Pink". Hopefuly more cool news coming soon. :)
-Blake
"Pink" is now on iTunes, which is excellent news - BUT even better - Apple contacted me directly (they really dig the show) and have put it on their main store page under Podcast New Releases. It's right there on the front page for the whole world to see. Pretty cool. I hope we get some viewers from this excellent promotion.
I really need to thank my new friend Tim Street for this iTunes introduction. He's the creator of the web show "French Maid TV" and has been consulting with me, and opened the door to Apple. Great guy and his show is definitely funny and worth checking out (hint, hint - go check it out!).
I also need to thank my contact at Apple (his name withheld to protect the innocent) for helping me get my RSS feed straightened out and get all the proper metadata onto iTunes. He was a big help!
If you have a video iPod or an iPhone you can simply subscribe to the show (for FREE) and when a new episode is released iTunes will automatically download it to your computer - then you simply sync your device and watch it whenever you like. If you don't have an iPod or iPhone, you still can/should subscribe via iTunes because you can just simply watch it on your computer (within iTunes).
And if you prefer to watch the show now, well, here you go!
Here are four frame grabs from my Avid timeline from "PINK". These are flashback shots of "young Nate". Used a warm wash, slightly contrasty look to depict a past era in time. These were all shot on my Canon XH-A1 in HDV at 1/48 shutter using the Letus35 FE 35mm adapter. Nikon lenses were used - 24mm, 50mm and 85mm. Color correction was done in Avid using three-way corrector, Magic Bullet Colorista, and Boris Continuum.
I think they have a very filmic quality. Remember, the show premieres online Tuesday September 4th!!!
www.myspace.com/pinktheseries
-Blake
Tim Burton attended a film festival in Guanajato, Mexico and Jason (my step-brother's cousin who is a professional trumpet player) played at a private party for him. Pretty cool.
-Blake
Things are moving ahead nicely on the new web-based TV show I'm producing/directing in late July (still tentative shooting dates). I'll be posting extensively about the actual show in the near future, but for now I just want to comment on working with the actor's union AFTRA (American Federation of Television & Radio Artists).
On my last feature film, "Killing Down", I worked with SAG (Screen Actors Guild). The experience was okay. But SAG is not that easy to work with, well the people are fine, it's all the paperwork and rules, rules, rules you have to deal with. Not that AFTRA doesn't have paperwork and rules - they do - but not like with my SAG experience, and that is very nice.
I understand and appreciate SAG for what they do for their actor members. Heck, a lot of my closest friends are actors and they use SAG for their insurance, etc. The thing that gets me is how MUCH power they have over a given production, and this coming from a union with 96% unemployment! Again, SAG is good and the actors they represent are even better (typically speaking), but they can definitely be a headache.
With the new web series I considered SAG at first, but then talked to a few fellow filmmakers and learned that most "web shows" are going with an AFTRA contract. I found this intriguing so I investigated. Turns out they were right. A lot of big companies like Disney, etc. are turning to AFTRA for their web content dealing with actors.
Funny thing is neither AFTRA or SAG has an agreement yet for the Internet! I really couldn't believe it. I know web TV shows (or shows SPECIFICALLY created for the web) are a fairly new thing, but the IDEA for them has been around for a while. So I was just really surprised that no contracts exist yet for this - so what happened? Well, we got to create our own "custom" contract which worked out very well.
Another filmmaker friend of mine did this on a web show he produced - but he went with SAG - and they created a custom contract for that too. So it can be done with either union, but I must say that SO FAR my experience with AFTRA has been MUCH, MUCH EASIER (than working with SAG). Of course we still have to do all the production paperwork, and then post-production paperwork, etc. (similar to SAG) - but the upfront work has been pretty much a breeze.
Have to give thanks to the local Dallas AFTRA rep T.J. Jones for being very helpful and working things out with me. She's been great, even if at the beginning she really didn't understand what kind of show I was producing. I kept using the word "pilot" and that made her and the AFTRA national reps nervous. I guess they hear that word and think NETWORK TV PILOT and lots of money. So, we dropped that word from the conversation and things went a lot smoother. :)
I'll let folks know how everything ends up after the shoot. But for now I would highly recommend considering AFTRA for web-based TV shows and the like (they're indie friendly too).
-Blake
These shots are with and without the Letus35 Flip Enhanced adaptor on my Canon XH-A1 HDV camera. Subject was standing 6 feet in front of camera. Everything was shot at 1080p 24fps at 1/48 shutter.
There are notations on the bottom right corner of the pictures as to what lens was used and if the adapter was on or not. Overall I'm impressed with the results. BTW, these stills are directly from the raw footage - no color correction or color grading has been done whatsoever...
You can really see the shallow depth-of-field (DOF) in the shots with the adapter. This give the footage a much more cinematic feel. We found that with the adapter and SLR lens on it is rated at approximately 50 ASA - very slow (2 1/2 stops of light loss). And with the adapter off it was rated around 300 ASA.
I will be posting more information and video from this test soon.
-Blake
These shots are from the set of "In The Electric Mist" from Julio Cedillo. Pictured from top to bottom are the DP (with the camera), John Goodman and Julio (second b&w shot), and then Tommy Lee Jones with the director and producer of the film...
-Blake
I pulled this article fromt the LA Times. A good read re: Web TV Series...
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Eisner wants 90 seconds from you
The former Disney chief's super-short format soap 'Prom Queen' gets the hits.
By Margaret Wappler, Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2007 
"PROM QUEEN," a flashy teen-aimed soap opera, wouldn't be out of place on the CW or MTV. Tribes of teens trade quips and barbs at their lockers. Snatches of rock or hip-hop underscore most of the drama, and there's a blink-of-an-eye edit about every three seconds.
But "Prom Queen" is an Internet show that according to Media Week has gotten nearly 3.7 million views on MySpace, the show's leading distributor. With 80 episodes, each clocking in at a lean 90 seconds, and a new episode airing every day until the show's finale June 14, "Prom Queen" shrinks and shellacs high-concept drama for the text-messaging-while-driving-and-eating-a-burger attention span. Episodes can also be downloaded to a video player or watched at Veoh, sponsor ElleGirl and old reliable YouTube.
What separates "Prom Queen" from scores of similar click-hungry projects is, of course, its financing, which comes courtesy of Michael Eisner's Internet production company, Vuguru.
Eisner was burned by Web-based entertainment during his tenure as chief executive at Disney — the company's disastrous Go Network was shut down in 2001 after losing millions — but those were different days. Speaking on a cellphone from a Manhattan sidewalk between meetings, the 65-year-old executive, who started his investment firm Tornante Co. in 2005, said that for the first year or so, the rewards would "be more in education than economic." The money, he hopes, will come later.
Eisner waved away any distinctions between Old Hollywood and New Media. "Old Hollywood at one point meant motion pictures, and then Old Hollywood had Jack Warner and Leonard Goldstein to make the first deal for Old Hollywood to make broadcast television. Old Hollywood and New Hollywood became one.
"It's simply new ways of doing things…. Old media, new media, it's just labels put on older people and young people. I don't think it really means there's a fine division."
Big Fantastic, the Santa Monica-based Internet video collective behind "Prom Queen," first caught Eisner's attention with their self-funded video podcast "Sam Has 7 Friends," the flagship vehicle for their 80-episode, 90-second format. The Valley-based murder mystery about a struggling actress finished with a strategically open-ended resolution in December.
"Like a lot of things in my life, I was attracted to the content," Eisner said. Internet entertainment, he finds, "is not that different than the beginnings of the Movie of the Week that Barry Diller and I were toying with in the '60s…. We were dealing with a new form in an old platform. Here's a new form in a new platform."
As technological hurdles are cleared, Eisner thinks the Internet will become a primary platform.
"Actors realize they can get discovered here," he said. "Is it better to do off-Broadway theater in New York or an Internet show based in L.A. that gets 8, 12 million views and opens the eyes of agents and TV producers?"
Although the financing for "Prom Queen" is fancy, you wouldn't know it from visiting the set at Valencia's College of the Canyons. On a Saturday in April, the shoot buzzed with the scrappy, hustler energy of a low-budget student movie. Production designer Helen Harwell's appropriately cheesed-out prom set with silver drapes, balloons and a disco ball was cobbled together from loans from vendors Harwell knows in the industry, she said. The nonunion actors, palpably giddy about being on a set — any set — joked around in tuxes and strappy dresses.
Big Fantastic's four director-writer-editor hybrids, Chris Hampel, Chris McCaleb, Ryan Wise and Douglas Cheney, all in their late 20s and early 30s, were multitasking to the extreme. Wise and his assistant director lighted the next scene, the crowning of the prom queen. Hampel and McCaleb, former assistant editors for "Miami Vice" director Michael Mann, were outside shooting video for one of the character's MySpace blogs. Cheney, tucked away in a classroom piled with clothes and makeup, was editing an episode on his Mac using Final Cut Pro.
Working with a 10-person skeleton crew, "Prom Queen" is all about running fast. The shoot knocked out four episodes in 12 hours. Filming from a 1 1/2 -page script per episode (whittled from a whopping three to four pages), they often take an episode from script to screen in five to six days, Hampel said. Each of the Big Fantastic members, who met at Washington State University, write and direct 20 episodes and maintain several MySpace pages for the characters.
"We want messages left from character to character on MySpace. We want to hit that viral energy," Hampel said. "It's about what we like to see on the Internet…. YouTube is filled with images like skateboards to the face, girls jumping on their beds. We want things to pop to the camera."
"Prom Queen" is loaded with of-the-minute high school behavior gleaned from Hampel's recordings of his teen brothers and their friends. Plots are heavy on texting, instant-messaging, updating MySpace pages, and recording video diaries with a hand-held recorder.
As an artistic experience, "Prom Queen" doesn't break many rules. The dialogue runs from smartly glib to perfunctory. The displayed rebellion is safe enough for Hot Topic. But to the show's credit, "Prom Queen" doesn't run from teen sex, though it's mostly rendered in soapy, steamy overtones.
BUT for all the tech savvy, mall-princess mentality and backseat relations, "Prom Queen" is still concerned with story continuity and character development. And perhaps surprisingly, it decently hangs together as a feature, bound by its dedication to the cliffhanger-a-minute style.
"You have to get people to watch more than one episode, so it's important that it works as a whole," Eisner said. "You start to understand the characters with the accumulation."
Hampel won't divulge how much Eisner invested in "Prom Queen," but he'll play ballpark: " 'Sam' was done for a little less than $50,000. We got more than that, but not much more."
"These guys are the most fiscally responsible people I've ever worked with," Eisner said. "We're going to make at least one or two more shows with them."
Eisner's support of Big Fantastic officially qualifies as a big break, but so far, Hampel said, "no one's upgraded their lives. We're just paying our rent."
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The show I'm developing we're looking at roughly 3 min. webisodes. 90 seconds almost seems TOO fast. Of course I realize that length is really for cell phone users since Verizon is a sponsor of the show.
And if Verizon wants to sponsor my show I'll make 90 second webisodes too. :)
-Blake
Found this cool little company called Cinetactics. They make very affordable matte boxes and LCD screen hoods for video cameras (mainly the medium to smaller sized ones).
I bought a screen hood from them and it's pretty impressive. I will likely be buying a matte box too.
Great stuff for the budget minded indie filmmakers out there...
Check them out!
www.cinetactics.com
-Blake
This is a slighly off topic, but not really...
Spinal Tap is REUNITING for the Live Earth concert in London on July 7th. That's right, all the original members too... Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls. All together once again.
And, with a new song for the event - "Warmer Than Hell".
"This is Spinal Tap" is one of my favorite all time movies. And the director Rob Reiner will also be at the reuninon show in London. AND, the coolest part, he's directed a new short film about the band and what they've been up to recently. The film is actually going to premiere next week at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Al Gore (of course, who else?) will be hosting the opening night events at Tribeca.
Read the full story at Yahoo!
I hope the new film goes to 11. ;)
-Blake
I just got back from NAB and will soon post some commentary on the RED camera and also the Apple announcements. All very cool things for indie filmmakers!
-Blake
Seems the Canon HV20 camera I bought is already starting to get some buzz.
Check out this link at DVInfo...
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=657950
A DP out in LA rigged the camera with a Redrock M2 lens adaptor. He has some stills posted of the footage he shot in 1080p24.
I just can't overstate how impressive this is for an $1100 camera!
-Blake
I recently bought a new "consumer" HD camcorder. I put consumer in quotes because while yes, it is a one-chip camera, and no, it doesn't have XLR audio inputs or an HD-SDI connection - but the features it does have and the images it produces are up there with cameras many more times expensive than it - so I'd call it a "prosumer" camera for a "consumer" price.
The camera is the brand new Canon HV20. Click here for a link to the Canon website.
The main thing (for me anyway) that sets the camera apart from anything else remotely close to it is the 24p capabilities. This is the first camera in this price range offering TRUE 1080p24. This is not some "cinemode" or frame blending technique. This is real 24 frames per second. And I must say, it looks really, really good.
The camera also offers a myriad of other "pro" features like manual white balance, manual focus, manual audio adjustment, and manual exposure.
In the 24p mode (or even in the interlaced mode) you can switch between several different gamma settings to achieve a more "filmic" look. This again is very nice and has never been available on this level of camera. The 1080i video looks great too. Especially in bright sunshine.
Earlier I mentioned the camera only has one-chip. And this is true. But, don't think that means bad image quality. The chip is CMOS instead of a CCD. I won't get into the technical mumbo jumbo here, but I will say that all the major high-end HD cameras like the Viper use ONE-CHIP CMOS setups. The Viper was used most recently to shoot David Fincher's "Zodiac". Now I'm not saying my HV20 can produce those kinds of images. Not at all. What I am saying though is that one-chip cameras are a lot different than they used to be.
A few weeks ago I was in Mexico on a corporate shoot and our crew was shooting at the Pyramids at Tulum (near Playa Del Carmen). We had a JVC HD100 HDV camcorder and couldn't take that in (too big), so we had a second, smaller camera - a Sony VX2100. The officials at Tulum let us bring that in (for a $35 fee), but as we were shooting a security guard approached and said the camera was "too professional" (we had put a wireless mic on it) and they confiscated the tape. We fought it, but as of this writing it has not been returned (even though it was supposed to have been).
So why am I telling you this story? Well, obviously I wish I'd had my new Canon HV20. There were many tourist there with small palm sized cameras and NO ONE said a word to them. EVEN THOUGH the HDV ones will shoot a better image than most of the mid-sized SD cameras.
I personally own a JVC DV500 camera. I bought it in 2000. It has been a GREAT camera for corporate style work (and I shot my second feature on it too). The camera has three 1/2" chips. So it produces nice images. But I gotta tell you, I shot some test footage with the HV20 and I think it looks better. Of course it's HDV and not standard def DV, but the clarity, etc. was just plain better.
The JVC costs me roughly $6500 and the new Canon cost only $1100. Crazy.
Of course understand that I'm not planning on using this new Canon for my main camera on my pro gigs. I mainly bought it for scouting locations, shooting behind-the-scenes footage, and for cast/crew interviews for DVD extras, etc. I also might use it as a "B Camera" on a shoot or two to match in with my main camera.
I'm attending NAB next week looking for a new primary HD camera. I plan on taking the HV20 along to shoot some footage in Las Vegas. Maybe I'll shoot some HD video of my new HD camera? Isn't technology great? :)
-Blake
Finally saw "Borat" last night on DVD. Funny movie for sure, but I also think it's a tad too mean spirited for my taste. Now, some of you who know me might think this an odd statement coming from my smartass mouth, but I did find some of the situations hard to watch (knowing the people he was interviewing weren't in on the joke). I much prefer mockumentaries like "This Is Spinal Tap" or even my film "Hit" where the main characters make fun of themselves - NOT other people.
But, all-in-all it was a very funny movie.
One really interesting thing to me as a filmmaker was the fact that the "film" was shot on HD video using the Panasonic Varicam. The HD was then transferred to film and I thought it looked great (we shot "Killing Down" on the Varicam). You could really see the difference when they'd cut to some of their "B" camera angles that were shot on smaller, consumer grade interlaced cameras and also when they showed the actual news cast footage that was also shot on interlaced video.
Panasonic didn't really promote the fact that the movie was shot on their camera I think partly due to the controversy surrounding it. Again, I thought it looked great and no one would know it didn't originate on film.
Check it out if you haven't seen it - and the DVD extras are good too - A LOT of deleted scenes that didn't make the final cut of the film.
-Blake
I'm in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico on a corporate editing gig. It's tough work, but someone's got to do it... :) See my edit setup below...
My laptop Avid is near the balcony so I can see view of ocean, etc.
A wide screen LCD TV was in room, so I'm using it as an edit monitor (nice!). 
And just in case my back gets sore I'm 3 feet away from a jumbo jacuzzi spa.
I'll be back in the States next week and focusing on my movies, but for now I'll enjoy Mexico and this "tough" editing gig. :)
-Blake
Is this Iraq? Nope. It's Dallas. We had a major dust storm a few days ago. Eerie, eerie shots...
-Blake
Filmmaker Magazine has a good article in their "Industry Beat" section about the status of no-budget filmmaking...
