Unit 6.2

I’m technically rather good.

To begin we all pitched our ideas to Arit so she could pick the one she preferred, choosing Roberts Apprenticeman idea, about a superhero apprentice who saves the day by getting the admin done.

We storyboarded and got an idea of what was going to happen then Robert wrote a kind of script at home for us to use.

We bought clothes to use as costumes, aiming for silly rather than serious, then searched around college for props to use in each scene.

We shared the duties of lighting and camera work, usually depending on who had to be on camera at the time. As per instructions we took time to make sure things were framed (almost) correctly, and all the light balancing was ok, also making sure things like tripods we’re assembled levelled and straight.

I had to act the role of Apprenticeman so I had to appear on camera a lot, which is not something I want to do again in a hurry as I have known for a while that acting really isn’t my thing, but I managed.

In the video profile I typed up the script in a few minutes, simply told people where to set up camera and talked. 

I checked to make sure I was happy with the framing, and that there wasn’t too much background noise or people coming into shot from behind, and we finished it in less than 10 mins. 

Editing was trickier, however I really enjoyed it, as it shows you how crucial post production is to a final feature.  

Note: photos will be added when I get them from people at college.

Fair do's for Kevin Smith and his Red State campaign

Kevin Smith will always have a place near my heart. He is one of the main reasons I want to make films. Not only did (does) he make brilliantly observed, painfully funny films about the people who deserve screen time so much more than any aesthetically perfect and detached from reality star which Hollywood churns out, he made them independently. I'm not talking about the kind of independent where Robert Paterson stars in a 'minor' $10million budget 'indie' flick. I'm talking about friends with a budget of thousands (if that) working after hours due to their day jobs on a project  they've nurtured and tailored by themselves, without any studio overhead telling them what and how to do things. As a 12 year old kid who was completely mad about film but couldn't afford a video camera, that's inspirational stuff.

As his career has gone on, there always seems to be certain trends which follow Kevin’s films about: The first is that they polarize people. I've probably shown Mallrats to more friends than I should have, and every time its always the same responses, they either hands-down love it and bask in the awesomeness for its 90-odd minute run time, or they don't get it, don't find it funny in the slightest, and either suggest that the film gets changed or find something better to do than watch it. In my personal experiences I've never had someone say "Meh, its alright." This lack of middle ground means that commercially this is very risky endeavor, as you've got to make sure that the half who love it are going to be big enough in number to make sure the film breaks even. And when you already know that half of the potential market who would normally come to watch a film like this might not buy a ticket, simply because the name Kevin Smith on the front, it gets harder to convince people to give you money which they may never see again.
The second trend is that his films are often misunderstood, at least until people have had a chance to take some time to think about the film (usually a year or so). This results in films being dismissed on their theatrical release, taking bad box office results, and less money (if any) for the film makers to play around with on their next film when it gets underway, by which point a lot more people like the film that initially did not sit too well with them and suddenly have more expectations for the upcoming film, which has half the budget of the previous outing thanks to short mindedness.

But he manages. He continues to expand the Askewneyverse with film after film. And that’s one of the reasons why his fans love him so much. After his last couple of outings, which despite being semi-indie where as close to mainstream as Kevin had got to in years, it was not much of a surprise when I learnt his next film would be in the same ilk. I was surprised however, when I learnt his upcoming film 'Red State', would be a (as straight as Kevin can make it) horror flick with a pretty standard premise.

Now, according to Kevin Smith his upcoming film cost him $4 million to make. He had to blag as many friends as possible to come and help him for free. Everyone else who wouldn't work for nothing had to be haggled down to as little money as possible. 4 million dollars to make a professional feature film with A list actors like John Goodman in starring roles is cheap. Its dirt cheap. Its practically whoring yourself. Once completed, just under budget which is all the more shocking, he set about finding a distributor. This was where the real trouble begins. After many talk with companies he got told that to distribute it through the traditional methods, they would have to spend a lot of money on marketing. Approximately $46 million to be precise. The film cost less than $4 million. This means to break even, or make a profit, the film would have to gross at least $50 million. That’s a pretty big number for a niche, superficially anti-Christian genre film to gross in a God fearing USA. That, coupled with the points I made earlier means not a lot of people want to back it. So Kevin Smith, ever the innovator, came up with an idea.

Since the 90's Kevin Smith has quite famously had a very personal relationship with his fans. He achieved this through the internet. He frequently visits message boards and fan sites, talking with the people who watch his films, getting feedback, ideas and just generally fucking about, but at some point he stumbled upon an important fact. The higher the number of people talking on his films websites, the more people ended up buying tickets at the box office. So it occurred to him, why send millions upon millions of dollars trying to get your film known to the public, a public who have been notoriously harsh to Smith in the past, when you can show it off to the people who you know will come and watch it for free?

Its a very risky idea, a professional feature film solely advertised through social media and word of mouth and distributed solely by the film makers through money made by merchandising, not a distribution company, has never really been done before. Sure, online publicity stunts have been tried and tested to great success (see JJ Abrahams), but never has the success of a film been so reliant on the internet and word of mouth. But the question is, what happens if it works? How would the industry react to a film which has put close to no money into distribution, a big earner for a lot of companies, and managed to profit from it? The cynic in me thinks it will never happen. And even if it does, so many middle men will loose out on such a huge amount of money, I can see them kicking up such a shit storm, they effectively blacklist all films distributed through these methods. But who knows? Maybe now at the end of his career (Kevin has stated his next film will be his last before retiring from directing for good) he will pull it out the bag and start getting some of the success he's deserved for years. I mean, the last time he tried something as indie and ground breaking as this was Clerks, one of the most successful pictures of his career. Watch this space, as it could be one of the most important developments the indie film world has seen for a long time.

A round up of weekend film watching.

And just like that its Monday again, this time the weekend seeming shorter than usual thanks to the fact I  had one of the laziest weekends I've had for months: no parties, no raves, just doing nothing apart from watching TV with mates and going out to the shop a couple of time just so we can say that we had managed to leave the house at some point over the course of the days. But it did mean that some awesome films we're watched. Perfect Blue, The Maltese Falcon, Kind Hearts and Coronets, the whole of Elfen Lied, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Dr Strangelove, Millers Crossing, some Paranoia Agent, Yojimbo, some rioting on the news, a few hours of Manhunt (the ps2 game) and 2012, in all its shit drenched, well, shit. I'm probably missing a couple, but if I can't remember them, they can't be that great.

If I had more time on my hands I'd write about each individually, but I doubt that is going to be the case this morning, maybe I'll come back and edit the post later, but if not here's a summary on the best of the bunch.

Dr Strangelove (Or How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb). I actually can't count how many times I've seen this film. Peter Sellers never fails to impress as all three of his characters (I still can't choose between the stiff upper lip Colonel Mandrake and Dr "Mein Fhurer" Stangelove as best performance though). Stanley Kubrick, in one of the best plot rewrites I can think of, decided to change the story from a serious war thriller to a biting satire, and handles it perfectly, keeping the humor so deadpan and dry you'll need a glass of water to keep from dehydrating. From classic lines: "Gee, I wish we had one of those Doomsday machines", to classic scenes: The pilot, cowboy hat in hand, riding a nuclear bomb down to earth as its about to end the world. It's just one of those films I can watch over and over and still find something new to laugh at.

Elfen Lied: Now this is one cracked-out, messed-up, slightly offensive but almost brilliant anime. About a group of humans who start to evolve (I know its cliche-ridden but bear with it) special powers/extensions to the human body, specifically invisible hands which vary in length and number, capable of cutting through objects (or people) due to their vibration at ultra sonic levels, and their persecution by the rest of human kind due to their differences. It is a series which investigates the effects and limits of suffering. Fun times ahead! Every character in the series has suffered some kind of nasty traumatic incident in their past, whether its a murdered family, child abuse or being experimented on by the government from a very young age, resulting in a story that despite efforts to lighten the mood through snipets of humor, is generally very dark and downbeat. I won’t say too much about the actually plot line, as it's definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of anime, but it deals with all manners of taboos, on top of the ones mentioned above, has some nice twists and turns, despite practically giving away the final revelation halfway through the series, and one of the most inappropriate songs playing over the credits I have ever encountered, leading me to believe it had to have been a joke put in by the makers.

Maltese Falcon: People who know me in person (the only peeps reading this I imagine) are probably aware that I'm a huge fan of Film Noirs. I don’t know why. Maybe it because they are products of a long gone era. Maybe I'm a sucker for the Femme-Fatales. Maybe chain smoking in a raincoat down an alley is something I used to get up to in a past life. Who knows. But the point is, Film Noirs are awesome. Maltese Falcon is one of the better known and respected examples in the genre, starring a Humphrey Bogart dripping in cynicism trying to find, amongst other things, an expensive statue named the Maltese Falcon, and encountering murder, dames and crooks along the way. With Mary Mastor as the woman surrounded by danger giving a great performance and John Huston directing like a pro, this a damned good film and one to be watched regardless of whether your a fan of the genre.

Perfect Blue: Back to anime now, with a Lynch-esque surreal tale in which the borders of reality and fantasy are blurred and not much is as it seems. I say Lynch-esque, but surprisingly despite the film being highly influenced by the structure and narrative of Lynch, a kind of inspirational circle takes place as its Lynch himself who ends up being influenced the most by this film. Its pretty much a restructured and easier to swallow version of Inland Empire. Maybe I'm simplifying a little to much, but the similarities are uncanny: Both follow a young female actress who as she acts, looses track of what’s real and what’s not until her life and the film she is working on are indistinguishable. Very surreal, with long sections possibly being nothing more than the main characters imagination, its easy to see where Lynch got his ideas from. As great as the anime is, and believe you me, its an astonishingly assured, intricately plotted psycho-thriller of the highest caliber, I preferred Inland Empire. But that’s no reason to dismiss this film, Inland Empire is a masterpiece from one the greatest visionaries of our time, and seeing as this was the inspiration for said film, it had to have been doing something right. Unsurprisingly it’s not just Lynch who got inspired by this title. Darren Aronofsky bought the American rights to the film for $69,000 back when he was making Requiem For A Dream, just so he could the floating in the bath scene in his own film. Lucky for some I suppose.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man: Are you familiar with the band PiL, Public Image Ltd? Johnny Rotten, post Sex Pistols, adventured into the world of Industrial, taking punk and stretching into something noisier, harsher, darker and a whole lot less human. Metal Box, their second album is said to be one of the high points of the genre, even going so far as to rank 469th in Rolling Stones list of best albums of all time. But, really, the only run in with them which interested me was an EP I found in a charity shop called 'Deaths Disco', a funky avant-garde slice of disco-industrial-something, which if played at 33 or 45, sounds awesome either way. Anywho, I'm blabbling on about this because it ties into Tetsuo: The Iron Man: They are both high points of Industrial. Tetsuo, which has to be one of the most radical, engaging, at times cringeworthy, but always fearless films I've seen for a long while. Made in 1989 with a very limited crew, shot in black and white, and blessed with a genuinely outstanding special effects crew, it follows an unnamed man who inserts metal and mechanical objects into his body, as part of a fetish, the man who runs him over, and the curse layed on said driver which causes him to start growing metal all over his body. Words wont do the film justice, its so reliant on imagery it must be seen to get a clear idea of what its like. Its run time is only an hour and ten minutes, and it was shot in black and white, presumably for artistic qualities rather than censorship as I'm almost positive it never got a theatrical release, reinforcing its 'nothing but arthouse' attitude. All in all, a great film for technophobes the world over.