Open Position (a Kalamazoo 2880 film festival entry)

This is the 4th 48 hour film festival video that I've been involved with. Actually make that 5th. This one went k considering the resources we had to work with. We pulled bio pic and some other crap that was quickly ignored.

Anyways:

Premise: biopic is stupid and I had way too many people involved for this to be anything like Titus was last year. I leaned on some of my cartoon tricks of just throwing awkwardness at the screen. Interview and the quickest way to fail without requiring much in terms of acting, props or planning.

It wasn't a biopic although for a brief moment I thought we were going to follow around the interviewer documentary style.

Video: the goal was to just have 3 cameras running at all times. The goal was not met as one immediately failed and the other two had battery issues. I wasn't able to pay attention to everything so the focus is all over the place.

Audio: I borrowed a nice boom mic from the public access station but as you can probably hear I didn't use it. On camera audio was all I had time or effort for as usual.

Script/Acting: we wrote some questions for the interviewer and I shouted stuff at the interviewees. Everyone sat in a room and figured most of it out while I played with the set. I think the prep or at least the comfortability shows, which is great because we had a lot of new people and the returning "favorites" were tired/unmotivated/pressed for time.

Editing: for the first time in these things I thought I was doing better than I was. Had a watchable first cut at 11 minutes before 10pm on Saturday (8minute final due at 6pm Sunday). After calling it an early night and having a couple hours wasted Sunday I was pushing it for time. I wanted to do a color correction and sound fix but I realized that I had accidentally deleted 3 minutes in the middle and that Final Cut Pro decided it was done working for me on this project. A last minute search and rescue of footage and slicing for time constraints made this come out a lot rougher than I was hoping for. Thankfully I found a fun public domain track to edit for transitions.

Overall: it is more of the same from mr, I keep having the dream of stepping my game up and making something that is interesting to watch on a visual/audio level. Something that can live on its own without having me force it on people. But considering I had about half the time and effort to give to this as normal there is an efficiency savings that I should be proud of.

Longer slightly prettier to see and hear cut coming soon.

10 things that would help me be more creative/productive

1.  If I didn't have to wait for video to render/upload/convert.  I would be more willing to try new things if there wasn't such a lag time in seeing how it turned out.

2.  If I had an on camera surrogate.  So I could pay attention in front and behind the camera.

3.  If I had a larger living area to setup a permanent/semi permanent video room.

4.  If I didn't have to drive so far to/from work.  I would have more energy to work on worthless things.

5.  If I had a way to accurately dictate ideas while driving.

6.  If festivals/competitions were easier/cheaper to enter.

7.  If I had the same amount of subscribers that I had when I did the cartoon.

8.  If I could trust anyone to do anything without my direct supervision.

9.  If I could light and record sound easier and quicker.

10.  If I didn't have any other relationships, interests, or obligations outside of video stuff.

How many shots can I cram in 30 seconds?

THIS MANY
 

John Carter is lavish, long, and not interesting

I have heard two things about the movie John Carter; that it won't make its money back and either it changed too much or not enough from the book(s).  I will do my best to talk about other things.

The design of everything in this movie is so perfect it's boring.  90% of the cast is assisted or composed entirely of CGI and after 10 minutes I was accepting them as if they were the most boring objects in the world.  They did not take me out of the movie but they also made no effort to bring me in.  It all blended together with its bland design and technical competence.

John Carter is not strong enough a character to make me care about the insane amount of story this movie is trying to cram in.  The guy plays him fine, but in Star Wars there were multiple characters that people could identify with to lessen the burden of exposition.  But this movie falls on John's shoulders and aside from being a lovable brute, I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care about his issues on Earth and Mars.  His alien pet did remind me of Spencer though, so props for that.

This movie takes a while to start and a while to end.  The movie has a stuttering beginning and end.  This movie starts 3 times and ends 3 times.  Cut that out.  It is annoying.  You are not Lord of the Rings.

The princess in the movie is a much stronger actor and character than John is.  I know we need an earth connection but I think there is a better story from her perspective.  But then again she is a woman which no one would dare put an action movie around.

I have not given up on this...

even though they have given up on me.