strange frame: Love & Sax

Today we begin the last 100 days of animation production!

http://www.filmfestivalworld.com/

This has been the best resource for our film festival strategy.

A couple of days ago I booked our final mix at Skywalker Sound. We start December 6th. That should give us plenty of time to get ready for Sundance/Slamdance. If you don’t know about Skywalker Sound: wiki entry

I feel truly blessed that our film is going to get the same treatment as such blockbusters as Contact, Titanic, A Bug’s Life, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, The Incredibles, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and How to Train Your Dragon

And some non-blockbusters, but among my faves like Dogma and Clerks II!

All of these by our sound wizard Gary Rizzo. I only wish the VC people and distribution really understood the value of a great sound track and mix. Sound is fully half the film experience…maybe even more so. Why? Because bad sound can kill an otherwise good movie and good sound can save a bad one.

On this Tuesday, I’ll be doing the schedule for our final mix at Skywalker Sound. This locks in our finishing date.

Like my film prof Ann Alter told me, “Your film is like your child, at some point you need to stop nurturing her and send her into the world to fend for herself.”

Lena Horne, graced our planet with her beauty, sensuality, stunning musicality, and redefined film for minorities, died yesterday at age 92.

Here she is in ’strange frame’.

“Don’t be afraid to feel as angry or as loving as you can, because when you feel nothing, it’s just death.” – Lena Horne
Lena Horne on Wikipedia

When we started production on strange frame I had a few discussions with some big wigs at Buena Vista and Sony. Without committing anything to our production, they were laying in the heavy talk about doing our movie in 3-D. “If you really want it to sell…” blah, blah, blah.

Well, today, Roger Ebert, wrote a good article about the subject:

Why I Hate 3-D (And You Should Too)
I’m not opposed to 3-D as an option. I’m opposed to it as a way of life.

I write ‘good’ because he outlines pretty much all the points that went through my head some 5 years ago. The few other points that I mulled were outlined in an another well thought out piece called “The Final Word: Is 3-D better than 2-D?” By William Bibbiani.

Both articles are worth a read. I do have a low budget horror comedy in development. It might be fun to make in 3-D because the movie is supposed to be campy. Camp is how I see 3D and now I know I’m not alone in this.

New “Content Aware Feature” coming in Photoshop CS5

Amazing time saver

Florida state is trying to pass a tax credit for filmmaking in their state ‘as long as the film has no gay and lesbian content’. This makes me very sad, angry and determined to make ’strange frame’ a big thing. It makes Parker sad.

Scene 122 shot 4

I did the artwork and animation all on Monday.

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’.