Lightsaber Haggling

3/4 done with Blinding. So far have been blessed with good fortune, i.e. no rain. My shoot was so dependent on weather that i was ready to sacrifice virgins to appease the rain gods. Blue, cloudless skies all weekend and I think it really shows in the rushes- rich blues, good skin tones. Am impressed with the Panasonic DVX100, although the focus ring leaves much to be desired.

Photo above is from a scene in the film. The actress' name is Crystal, a Vietnamese-Australian 8 year old girl who was just the easiest person to work with. Got her takes down in 2 or less, and she was outta there in an hour. The "never work with animals or children" filmmakers rule is definitely beyond this little girl.



This is me and Matt Foster (the film's lead) with Crystal and her family. Her sister Phoebe (beside her) was- get this- one of the young Padawan Jedi kids in Attack Of The Clones.

Me (trying to sound cool): You were in Episode 2?
Phoebe: Yes.
Me: Did you get to meet George Lucas?
Phoebe: Who?
Phoebe's Mom (to Phoebe): The bearded guy.
Phoebe: Oh. Yeah I did. Also Ewan.
Me (starting to geek out, but still playing it cool): That's great. So did you get to keep your Jedi costume?
Phoebe: No.
Me: Oh. That's a shame.
Phoebe: The bearded guy gave me a lightsaber though.

Long Pause. I let the moment sink in.

Me: A...lightsaber?
Phoebe: Yes.
Me: If I were to trade you this instamatic camera in my pocket for it, would you?

Phoebe looks at my one of my props, a rainbow coloured generic instamatic camera (appropriately branded 'Acme'), and for a moment, she actually seems to consider the deal. 'C'mon' I think, 'let the rainbow colours hypnotize you!'

Phoebe: No thanks.
Me: Oh well it was worth a try. So, what do you think of my short film?

See, now if Lucas had made EP2 anything like this:

As Epsiode 3 draws near I'd like to make a recommendation for all you Star Wars fans out there: rent/buy/steal and watch THX 1138 . Again and again. Watched the restored version recently and it just blew my mind. This is nothing like the George Lucas who made Attack Of The Clones. This is a more silent, cerebral piece which explains why Lucas was the superstar of his USC class. As I said it's nothing like the last two Star Wars films and it almost seems like this film comes from another part of his brain far far away. The better part.

Snag the special edition DVD, it's worth it. There's a special feature wherein Walter Murch (editing and sound demigod) pops in certain parts of the film and discusses how it was edited and sound designed. Also has a great featurette showing the early days of American Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppola's production company. It's always amusing watching old clips of all these super directors talk about their roots and that they too once upon a time dealt with shitty equipment, crappy food, and broken down transpo.

Lucas mentioned in an interview that now that he's done with the Star Wars films he'd like to get back to smaller, independent type movies. Let's hope they're as good as THX 1138.

Newtown.

A collage of photos I took today while location scouting in Newtown for my short film Blinding. Newtown is a great place, raffish and colourful, full of interesting stores and graffiti.

The more locations I find for Blinding, the more excited I get. I'm aiming to pump in as much colour and vibrance into this film and I intend to push the limits of video chrominance and luminance to rude, broadcast-unsafe levels. Why the hell not?

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Cut Short

Just got back from what could singularly be a low point in my early career. Had my film Locked show at a local screening called Caught Short along with four other indie shorts. The first four went well, some great music and acting in the others. Was nervous because Locked was screening last. For some reason I always have this pervading fear that something bad will happen everytime I screen a film of mine- audio will drop, picture will pixelize, a frame of someone's penis suddenly appears...

Two out of three for me. At the film's climax, audio and video suddenly crackled and pixelated and the whole film just stopped. A collective groan rose out from the 50+ people who were watching and it was then where I realized the new meaning of the word humiliation. The lights went on and people didn't get to see the ending, which was truly disappointing, because the vibe of the venue was so nice and it looked like people were really paying attention and laughing at all the right places.

I tried to figure out what went wrong and deduced it was one of those one-in-a-million DVD disc - DVD player incompatibilities, because the organizers told me they had watched it twice on another player and nothing went wrong.

It took every bit of my usually buoyant self-esteem to stand up and talk about the film's ending to the crowd and crack a few self-deprecating jokes in between. What made things easy was that the screening's organizers were very nice and supportive (they offered to screen it again next month), and I had a fair share of people coming up and telling me that they liked what they saw and asked for a copy so they could watch the whole thing.

Moral of the story? i'm not really sure. Bring a portable DVD player wherever I go? Bring copies of all possible formats with me (along with the matching players, projectors, sound system, etc)? A shovel to dig a large enough hole to crawl in? I guess the best thing to do just is laugh about it and realize that shit happens. Worse things have happened in my life lately that make moments like this trivial anyways.

Thank you to the two Sarahs from Caught Short who were nice enough to screen my film. Great event guys, will spread the word! Thanks also to the other filmmakers who went up to me and shook my hand in support. Hope what happened to me never happens to you! =)

This has really pumped me up to shoot my next short. Can't wait to shoot and show something redeeming! It all happens in two weeks.