MY CAPS LOCK IS ON

I’ve been talking with a couple filmmaking friends of mine about this bailout crap. OK, cutting through the mumbo-jumbo and what it means for your money, what does it mean for your future potential financier’s money? More to the point, if you’re looking for financing how is the disaster at Wall Street gonna affect your chances of finding it?

Well, let’s try and lay it out. If you know or knew investors personally then you’re going to have the best chance of convincing them to part with their hard-earned dollars. This was the case before the collapse of Wall Street and it’ll be the same long after this hullabaloo is over. The most difficult piece of the puzzle has always been finding the investors - those people with enough money to drop into your production and not bankrupt themselves if they lost it all. If you know a person like this, now’s the time to talk to them about diversifying their portfolio with non-stock market investments.

If you don’t know a person like this, now’s probably not the best time to approach an individual who may be wealthy but also may be undergoing cash flow problems due to the economy. They are looking for safe options and probably can’t or won’t take a chance on someone they don’t know who can’t (legally) guarantee them any return on their investment. Most financiers have their money tied up in the very things that are tanking right now. Many of these things are not insured due to their speculative nature. Even real estate is taking a hit. It won’t be as easy for folks to draw out their assets or borrow against them.

So what do you do? My suggestion? Brush off those scripts you had that you know you could make for say $100k or less. Scripts with budgets that are modest enough that you could feasibly find a few accredited investors who have maybe $10-15k in liquid assets that can come together to finance the project.

But better yet, make videos for the ‘net. Production values aren’t as important, but story is. Hone your craft, focus on telling a good story and make it memorable. This will build your audience and help you find future investors down the road when the economy is back on its feet.

While the “rescue” (don’t you dare call it a bailout!!) plan is very, very, very far from perfect, there are some aspects that are beneficial to filmmakers. Richard Verrier at the LA Times had a story on those pieces. To whit:

Specifically, the legislation would allow filmmakers who shoot in the U.S. to qualify for a tax deduction granted in 2004 to domestic manufacturers that capped the top tax rate at 32% instead of 35%. Additionally, the tax package lifts the budget cap on the existing tax deduction, which was limited to movies that cost less than $15 million to make — in effect excluding most studio films, which cost a lot more.

Now producers would be able to immediately deduct all production costs up to $15 million, regardless of the movie’s total budget. The change also extends the existing credit, which was due to expire this year, to December 2009.

Don’t get excited yet, friends. The bill still has to pass the House who shut it down last time it came through. It’s tough to support such a dastardly bill simply because it offers support for us filmmakers, but it is good to know there is some consideration being taken (although this has more to do with major studios than Jane Filmmaker).

What do you think?

Hey folks. I can’t stress the importance of registering to vote and then actually voting. So to help you out I’ve collected a couple links.

In California the deadline to register is October 20th, 2008 to vote in the next election!! You can find out how to register here.

In Washington the deadline to register is 30 days before an election… in this case, October 4th! You can go here to get information on how and when to register.

Now, how about a video? I didn’t make this, but I wish I had.

I’m kind of surprised I didn’t have a post about this show before. Maybe I’m searching for the wrong thing. Anyway, wow. Talk about a show that had promise. Way back when Season One premiered I watched every episode. I wouldn’t say I loved it. I thought it went through a lot of first season nerves, like many great shows. I thought they’d catch their stride eventually, especially with so much positive reaction from fans and the full support of the network. Well, season one ended on kind of a whimper. Meh, I thought, season two should be better now that we’ve got all this crap outta the way!

Season Two turned out to be even worse. Poor plotting, bad acting and that annoying soundtrack. I’m not sure what was up with the costume and make-up depts. but whoever approved the look of EVERYONE needs to be shot. These are beautiful people and somehow they look awful. I watched about four episodes of the second season which was mercifully cut short by the writer’s strike. Tim Kring, the executive producer on the show, sent out a press release telling the fans how sorry he was the second season sucked so hard. They’d do better. Meh, I thought, season three should finally get us back on track!

Now Season Three began last night and I can safely say that no… it really is that bad. Let’s examine the technical aspects.

Pacing - laborious. It took two episodes (a two-hour event!) to muck through all the characters and re-introduce them. And we’re told there are going to be even more new characters throughout the season. Wheee!

Photography - hi-def and ultra bland. Colors are gorgeous, but there’s no soul behind the camerawork. It moves for no reason. Characters move into the light like it’s going to be a clever subtext reveal but either they missed their mark or it was just bad lighting.

Make-up - people still look bad, though not as bad as the last two seasons. Ali Larter, beautiful woman, looks awful. As a side-note: Her reveal in the episode elicited almost no response from me… just a roll of the eyes. It was like “Hey! This governor dude you don’t know? He’s important. Hmm? Who’s that? Oh… it’s uh… Ali Larter. Do you guys even remember her? You do?! Huh. If we thought you were paying attention we would’ve done a better reveal for such a major character!” Anyway, back to how people look. It’s like they took folks who had no idea about comic book history and set them in a room to determine how people should look. “Let’s make the speedster wear red and have ratty hair!” “Four years in the future clothes should be so radically different that it won’t make any sense for characters to wear them!”

Soundtrack - can it be like, muted or something?

Writing - showing a complete inability to properly present an homage (e.g. the Fly, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, and the myriad of other superhero origin stories Heroes has ripped off) and an utter lack of comic history (do these writers even READ X-Men?), it’s like there is no goal for any of the characters other than to stay out of each other’s way. We want to see these people fight TOGETHER. Why the eff would Noah refuse to bring Claire along - knowing she’s indestructible and not even Sylar can kill her? Especially when she says the stuff about willing to shoot and saving the world and all that. She’s battle tested and a formidable weapon. And Sylar… Sylar, Sylar, Sylar. Such a weak-ass supervillain. His writing is cliché ridden, not the fault of the actor, but his delivery is unable to make anything more of it. He’s consistently unassuming. He’s not scary at all. If the other actors didn’t ACT so scared we as audience members wouldn’t think he was bad at all.

Ugh. Will I watch episode three? Probably. I want to see Veronica Mars team up with Weevil one more time. But man, could they possibly get a writer from Veronica Mars to script it?? Bottom line here: know your audience, know your genre, and know your characters. If you have too many characters to properly focus on then it’s time to kill people off.

A bit of departure for this blog. I wanted to talk a little about one of my best friends. We met in High School, dated briefly, and remained in touch through thick and thin over the interceding years. Rosie went on to great things and we eventually found a way to bring some passion projects together - she was knee deep in creating sustainable business models in the Middle East and I wanted to make some socially conscious documentaries. The product of a long IM conversation one night gave us the idea to do a documentary about Oil and Islam. We were excited and began setting the ground work.

I hadn’t gotten far when I received word from a mutual friend that Rosie, that brilliant and beautiful girl I spoke with not but three weeks ago, had passed away in a car accident in Jordan. The news is still sinking in.

Anyone who followed the Seattle Mariners in the late 90s and early 21st century may remember her as a spectacular ballgirl for the club. She was much more than that, of course, but for a touching look on one aspect of her eventful yet short life, please read this article by Larry Stone at the Seattle Times remembering Rosie. She really was an inspirational person. And while our lives had taken different paths our friendship was the kind of thing that kept blossoming each time we caught up with each other. Hard to ask for more than that. I will truly miss her.

If you’re interested in this documentary and helping me fulfill a small dream of Rosie’s (she dreamt big!) shoot me a line off-blog. Thanks.

Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day is on sale NOW! Get the few remaining copies while you can at the reduced price of just $8! This is the Special Edition with extra features, Director & Crew commentary and it’s widescreen for your viewing pleasure.

You may also notice that there are some books listed there too. This is our Amazon store and I hope you’ll use it to find your filmmaking books (or anything you so desire). If you have suggestions for excellent filmmaking-related bookery, please leave a comment and I’ll add it in. I expect that store will be getting new listings frequently as my personal filmmaking library is pretty extensive and I haven’t even added half of the books I’d recommend.

Hope you’re enjoying the redesign of this page, too. I was a little tired of the default theme and didn’t like the other options out there so built my own. Let me know!

I love it. I’ve been working on a budget for a script a couple friends of mine wrote. I was directed to this video from Youtube and now I’m hooked. Check out the Indy Mogul site. Lotsa great ideas for doing things on the cheap. I love it when I find people doing things I’ve wanted to do but doing it way better than I could’ve dreamed. Father-Son high-five!

With the recent changes going on over at GadZook Films I thought it only appropriate that this blog get some of the love. I’ve been working nearly non-stop since Friday last to update everything. The last update to the site was done in, I think, 2006. This blog uses the default Wordpress theme but through some digging and helpful internet posts I was able to learn enough about PHP and CSS design so that I could get a matching color scheme and embed some RSS info in here.

I won’t say I’m an expert and I readily admit I have a long way to go to be fluent in PHP but I think I get the basics. Show me a PHP page and show me its corresponding CSS and I can probably figure out the rest.

How does this affect you, my humble filmmaker friend? Audience. Not my audience but yours. Most of the work I’ve been doing has been under the hood, streamlining code and adding information to make this whole site more easily visible to web crawlers and the like. This is important because it allows me to see where people are coming from and how deep they’re traveling through my site. Do people even notice I have a Projects page? They might have, except since it hasn’t been updated in two years they might’ve forgotten.

So after installing the Google Analytics code I was finally able to see an accurate idea of who was coming to my site (and my blog) and what they did while here. The answers weren’t good. 90+% were leaving the site after a few seconds having gone no where but the front page. People were not inclined to click through.

What’d I do? For one I added more dynamic content on the front page - hit refresh next time you go there… it’s new stuff! Most people came to this site for the blog, probably because I update it more than the site. So since that’s a change I’m working on I wanted to draw people back to the site. I dug around and was able to edit the sidebar.php with links back to the main site. Time will tell whether these actions will have any significant results, but the site is already retaining more visitors.

Why am I telling you this? Just having a YouTube page isn’t enough anymore. You need to give your audience a reason to keep coming back, to want to research and learn about your projects. Give them a starting point and embrace this social networking! It’ll set you apart. I’ll talk more about how I feel sites like Facebook and Myspace and to a different extent Youtube and the like should be used in a later entry. Cheers. And check out the new sections of the site. I hope to add more content as it becomes available!

Well, as you may’ve noticed, I’ve been doing some… uh… late Summer cleaning. I’m been preparing the old GadZook Films site for upcoming fun. I’ve added a lot of new videos (and added higher-resolution versions of some older videos), removed some icky, non-working links and slapped some nifty dynamic content on the ol’ frontpage. Watch that spot over the next couple of months and follow this blog for details. Keep in mind, the paint is still wet in places and some links are not working properly. Be patient… my poor little laptop can only encode so fast! Why don’t you subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog?

 Subscribe!

If you want to be really cool, you’ll add this blog to your Technorati faves. I promise I’ll continue to update this thing with words of wisdom. A lot of projects are under way and when they reach critical mass I’ll start releasing some more detailed information. Until then… stay tuned, enjoy the redesign and updates and I’ll talk to you soon!

P.S. Tell all your friends: Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day is on SALE! Only $8.00 plus s/h. Get it now in the GadZook Store.

OK, so a couple weeks ago I participated in what was my fourth 48-Hour challenge as part of the 48-Hour Film Project. With the Seattle leg of the challenge coming up this weekend I thought it’d be grand to share my knowledge on the subject to hopefully help some peeps out.

Here’s a helpful little guide to keep you sane and more importantly focused on making a strong product.

1) See your actors beforehand with your writers. Ask them to share a funny story or a special talent.

I’ve seen some filmmakers go all out and hold auditions for these things. I’ve seen others just pull in their friends who had no acting experience whatsoever. My advice? Work with who you know and are comfortable with. I’m not a huge fan of nepotism but in these contests you don’t have a lot of time to figure out how someone likes to work. If they can’t memorize quickly or (worse) are not the punctual sort you need to know ahead of time. Gather a small cadre of 5-6 actors that you trust, let them know straight up that you may never need all of them and introduce them to the writer. Hopefully the writer already knows them, but this isn’t crucial. In the realm of 48 Hour filmmaking looks and stereotypes often come before talent. It’s your duty to find strong actors that are flexible and can cover a wide gamut of potential roles. Remember, you can cast ahead of time, but it’s pointless to assign roles. Roles would mean having a script and having a script before Friday night is verbotten.

2) Make a list of all donated props/costumes with owners. Use this list when cleaning up at each location to ensure you get everything back. This goes double for any borrowed or rented equipment.

Our last short, Y Tu Nana Tambien, was made for almost no money. We didn’t rent any equipment and it’s against the rules to pay anyone to work on a 48 Hour Film Project production. My previous endeavors all had a slim budget of around $200 and with that we rented equipment like sound gear and lights. Making a list of props/costumes/equipment can help in the brainstorming phase on Friday night by allowing you to know your limitations. This will help you construct a story that you can tell within your means. You don’t need a lot of money to make a good movie. The best weapon you have is a killer script. Don’t try to blow your wad and show off the fancy location you got or the expensive camera you are borrowing. If it costs you time and disrupts the story, it’s never worth it. More on equipment below…

3) Check with all your cast/crew for any food allergies, dietary preferences and medical problems.

I’ll admit, I didn’t do this last time. Depending on the size of your crew and how well you know everyone you may never need to do this. But if you’re a go-getter who likes to secure a nice lunch (for free) a week ahead of time make sure that everyone can enjoy it!

4) Secure one or two locations at least a week beforehand. Develop your story using these locations no matter what.

This is important. For several reasons.

5) Keep cast/crew as minimal as possible so that you don’t have “too many cars on the road”.

This is pretty simple but I still see filmmakers overloading their set. The more the merrier does not necessarily fly on a 48 Film. You need to be able to shoot quickly and efficiently. Bring only the people you need to make that happen. A competent and talented DP can get by with maybe a couple grips. Yes, adding a gaffer might save time but you’ll need to make that call. If you’re renting equipment you’ll want people who are experience using it, but you don’t need to bring on every G&E guy in town. Odds are you’ll only have time to set up a couple lights that’ll have to last through several shots anyway, so no sense wasting everyone’s time! Also the fewer people you need to keep track of and feed the better. Keeps costs down, lunches short and enables you to do company moves (if absolutely necessary).

6) Commit to actors Friday night before 10PM.

In almost every project I’ve produced we’ve always had a rough idea of roles well before we had an actual script. If you don’t have an idea by 10pm for a script you’re in deep shit. Let your actors know and give them a reasonable call time. Just because you’re making an entire movie in 48 hours doesn’t mean you have to throw civility out the window! It may seem hard to fathom, but most people not directly involved with writing the script will want to sleep and calling them at 3am when you finish and giving them a 6am call time may result in testy actors… if you’re lucky. Also, you can let people know if you don’t need them so they don’t needlessly wait for your call all night.

7) Make sure key cast/crew gets SOME sleep in the process or else people will forget things.

My last film was probably my worst sleep wise. I got about 8 hours of sleep total for the weekend (Friday and Saturday night), which considering some crews don’t get any was still pretty good. Still, it’s important that everyone get some rest even if just a couple hours. PLAN FOR THIS. The harder you push the more your brain turns to mush.

Equipment issues.

I mentioned this earlier but I wanted to go into it a little more in depth. DON’T SHOOT BEYOND YOUR MEANS. Trust me. Everyone oohs and aahs when you show your HD masterpiece with backlighting effects… but in the end did any of it help tell your story? Never get in a pissing match with your fellow filmmakers over what you can bring to the table in the shortest amount of time. If something is gonna take an hour to set up, that’s an hour of shooting you can’t do. If you can’t fill that time with something else you are going to be an hour late. 47 hours to go! There just isn’t time to futz with fancy equipment. Like actors, work with what you’re comfortable with. If you can toss a 35mm adapter onto an HVX200 in 15 minutes and focus it and switch lenses like lightning - great! Go crazy. But don’t get all that just for the sake of showing off the look. Look occasionally wins. Story ALWAYS wins. What’s great is when you can marry production value with story. This takes practice. I’ve seen crews use the latest equipment, have huge professional crews and make the most excruciatingly beautiful pictures you’ve ever seen only to lose to a clever story about a bicycle made with still cameras.

Bottom line? Write what you know, with what you have using who you’re comfortable with. Stretching any piece of that equation is a fun challenge, but can lead to spontaneous combustion. Have fun!

Heh. This is kinda cool.

I love romantic illusions as much as the next guy, but c’mon! Learn the damned craft and THEN wax poetic about it. Jeez.