strange frame: Love & Sax

I’ve been wary about film festivals. In 1999, I did the production on a feature film called Ka’ililauokekoa. It was a low budget film, but never the less did very well at the film festivals. When I did the math on the ticket sales at these festivals I found that these festivals grossed 2 times the budget of the film. This was very unsettling for me since the film never got a theatrical deal.

There are definitely festivals to go to where the exposure is worth giving the festival free content, but that is the conscious decision every filmmaker must make: Who am I willing to give free content to? What is the non-fiscal payback?

Tribeca recently announced they are following Sundance into the VOD distribution model. David Poland sums up this idea better than I can: Festivals Raping Filmmakers… Or Just A Friendly Reach Around?

A tsunami is due to arrive in about 1 hour. We’re all safe. Heading to our neighbors to have a better view of nature’s ‘festivities’.

The site had a spam attack. Over 3000 spam messages filled the Comments on the various posts. We only had about 100 real comments, but there was no easy way in Wordpress to preserve those and get rid of the spam. I’m pretty confident that the new filter will prevent this from happening again. Back to your regularly scheduled programming….

Art done on Monday and Tuesday. Animated on Wednesday.

I hope everyone is enjoying their VD!

For some people, VD can be a painful experience they have to endure alone.

Not everyone has someone to share their VD with.

To get the most out of your VD, share it with as many people as possible.

And remember, VD isn’t about the gift you give just once, it’s about the gift that keeps on giving all year long.

Happy Valentines Day!

Check out Susie Bright’s post about the origins of Valentine’s Day.

We’re in the final stretch. So, we are starting to look at the best film festivals to open at. I found this great site to peruse for festival info:

http://www.filmfestivalworld.com

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve been a little wary of comparing our film with others, but I think I found a film that has some similarities, had only a slightly larger budget, and was produced at about the same time: Wonder Woman (2009).

Both films are animated, of the same genre (sci-fi/fantasy), with a similar audience. Since this story of Wonder Woman started out in an all woman community, it could have had some empowering lesbian themes and inspired a generation of young heroines, but alas it wasn’t to be.

It did have a great cast (Nathan Fillion for one), some fantastic voice direction (Andrea Romano), and is worth a gander.

Of course, Wonder Woman has a built in audience, a great franchise opportunity, and tons of established backstory. We have to do all that from scratch….without super powers.

There is a fundamental question for film at the point in history when anything is possible:

Is film a metaphor or a mirror?

For a metaphor, I don’t need a false sense of realism that directors drop the moment they need to move the narrative forward.

IMHO, it is often distracting because as they reach for more realism, to hold that mirror to the audience, I see how they have fallen short. Most of us on this planet are not reflected in that mirror – whether we be too short, too tall, too dark skinned, too light haired, too male or too female. The script becomes camp and the suspension of disbelief is lost…

…but if the film embraces its role as metaphor. If the filmmaker is a storyteller, not a con man, we can slip into this new world with its quirks (Jeunet) and mannerisms (Almodóvar)…enjoying the play of it.

Each story is part of our modern mythology. Each story sheds light on our humanity.
Which stories will we spend time discussing?

Ultra Low Emissions Filmmaker. I guess that’s me.

You hear a lot of talk about “carbon neutral films”. Most of these films have a part of their budget set aside for buying carbon credits to off set the carbon foot print of the film. Usually in the form of promoting alternative energy – like wind farms. The films themselves chow carbon. Lots of it.

Today we bought tilapia to stock our fish pond. It is right next to our water tank where we catch 100% of the water we use. It is just south of our solar panel covered garage where we generate most of our power. By the time we get an electric car, we will be generating 100% of our power. Down by the house, we have a chicken run. 13 hens making sometimes 13 eggs in a day. Chickens are the easiest way to deal with your home’s table scraps and other compost. The chicken manure goes into our vegetable garden.

We also have 3 goats, 2 sheep, a mess of koi, and tens of thousands of guppies (to control the mosquitoes).

We try to limit our waste, but we only have to take the trash out once every 6 weeks.

If you think we are roughing it, trust me we’re not. We have a large pool, ocean view, and wild birds regularly roost in the tree line surrounding our house. We have two streams which will eventually have microhydro installations on them.

If you’d like to know more, just ask.

I’ve been corresponding with a fellow animator up in Canada for a number of years. Today he wrote a nice piece about my work on strange frame.

Joshua Tr3

Mahalo Keith!