1 Step Forward / 2 Steps Back

Tennessee is delayed another few weeks. I really need to heed my own advice and not tell anyone when I'm leaving for anything until I'm already there. That being said, I won't breathe another word about departure dates until I'm in New Mexico.

Also, the side project I've been working on is now corrupted and won't open in Final Cut Pro.

Nothing was lost that can't be rebuilt in a few days but it's still a nuisance. Thankfully, I managed to make the videos available online for participating artists last night before waking up to this unpleasant turn of events this morning. About the project...

Side Project: Bkuarium



This project is comprised of four short videos (ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes in length) shot at the Brooklyn Aquarium. Each video will have several distinct audio tracks composed specifically for that video. The viewer will then be able to choose which track he or she would like to hear while watching the video to create several unique viewing experiences of the same visuals. For example, you would say, "I want to see Video 2 with Zirafa's music and then see it again but with Orange Drink's music."

This will be the first of (what I hope will be) the many video projects collected for the Hemlock Pictures DVD. Once BKuarium is up and running online, I'm going to use that to recruit other young video artists who are trying to get their work released. In an ideal world, this DVD will have something like 30-40 short form (1-2 minutes preferred, 5 minutes max) video art pieces put together and released by Spring '07.

The only news I have for PLAY is that the production company name we will use to promote the film to potential participants and investors is "Two Player Productions." A trivial piece of information I know but it's all I got. Levering is apparently working on some big update to the film's myspace page (linked on the right) so be sure to check that out soon, add it to your friends, and tell people about it.

Whew. I'm going to go look for breakfast and watch Family Guy.

Inside [Men]

Today, Ben and I went to see Inside Man, Spike Lee's most sloppily rolled joint to date. I won't bore you with my personal opinions concerning how incredibly inconsistent and flimsy this movie was but I would like to warn the creators of The Hollywood Experiment: This is the kind of piece of trash you can expect to end up with if your miserable little plan should ever succeed.

On the walk home from the theater, we encountered a crate full of film books that someone was tossing out. Among other things, we grabbed a few Italian cinema books, the Malkiewicz cinematography book we used at Drexel, and (just for laughs) something called "Film Directing: Killer Style & Cutting Edge Technique." It's depressing to think that this a title we're meant to take seriously as opposed to outright self-parody. Ok, I think that's enough pretentious babble for one post...I was actually kind of surprised by some of my thoughts today. I must remember to keep in mind that I really have no grounds for such arrogance.

Moving along to less personal matters:

Paul L (creator of PLAY) gave us an update on how things went at the Video Games Live Tour / Game Developers Conference in San Jose, CA this past weekend. He didn't have time to sit down with T. Tallarico as I mentioned in the last post but he managed to meet and hook a number of very prominent industry people who all want to be involved in the film. I won't give you the full list he gave me but some of the highlights included the composers for Halo, God of War, Everquest 2, Myst, Prince of Persia, and Warcraft as well as the creator of the Unreal series, the producer of the Metal Gear series at Konami, and the keyboardist for the Beastie Boys for good measure.

All in all, it seems like a pretty successful weekend for networking & the future of PLAY.

As for Tennessee, we're still in the dark concerning a departure date. All the press announcements and the film's newly minted imdb page indicate that filming is supposed to start in April (even though there's actually a month of on location preproduction before principal photography is set to begin) but for all I know, that could mean this coming Saturday or April 30th. Short notice on either date wouldn't surprise me. Still, I suppose I should get my room packed up in the next couple of days.

That's pretty much all the work related news I have for now. I'm going to drop LDE an email tomorrow and see if I can't get a better idea of when we'll actually be heading out. I hope they know we need plane tickets now that we've deemed Jim's car incapable of making the cross country journey...

Not Personal / Strictly Business

Kind of.

Part of this blog reflects my desire to have a record of all my film & video endeavors while the other part represents a fool's hope that he'll never again have to answer the question, so what are you doing these days?

Towards the end of this month, the DocuBoys (Jim, Owens, Jason, & I) will be driving out west with all our equipment to New Mexico to begin video documentation of the preproduction phase of the film Tennessee. Principal photography starts about a month afterwards and then my time over the next four weeks will be split between New Mexico, Tennessee, and locations inbetween.

Somewhere inbetween, Shadowboxer will finally have it's US premiere on May 12. Our Behind The Scenes Documentary will be cut up into 22 minute episodes and air on television (most likely B.E.T.) during the weeks leading up to the film's release. Don't know if we'll be travelling back with our boss (producer of Tennessee/director of Shadowboxer) for the premiere yet so I may be parted from all things East Coast for a good 10 weeks (my longest stretch away from the Atlantic, I think).

After Tennessee wraps, my attention will be focused on shooting PLAY, a documentary that examines the video game music culture on an international level. The project's creator, Paul Levering, is meeting up with the film's highest profile potential investor, Tommy Tallarico, tomorrow. In addition to traveling all over the US, the plan is go around the world to multiple destinations in Europe and Asia including a stop in Japan to interview the composers of the original NES games that inspired this whole genre.

Right so you can see there's a lot going on these days. I'd be a fool not to keep track of it all.

In the meantime, I've started working (on a temporary basis) in the shipping department at Gotham City Online, New York's largest online shoe retailer. I handled about three hundred pairs of women's shoes in four hours - stacking, sorting, and sending off down a conveyor belt...made me feel like a working class character in a Von Trier film.

That's not a complaint.

First Post

Just to see what happens.