There was a hilarious SNL short on tonight (really, the few good ones have really helped bring innovation back to SNL) — it was something I think that was based on the season ender of the OC and it was totally absurd and had guns in it (which means I like it more immediately). There was a really neat song in it as well that I think really accented it that much more, apparently the artist is Imogen Heap and the song is called Hide and Seek.
Add comment April 15th, 2007
Tonight we had our first rehearsal for Shakespeare’s Angels - so I got together with the folks at EdVideo in Guelph and started going over some of the sword fighting we would be doing between Jeff and Jen. On my way back, I realized that I was out of gas and needed to gas up before I was able to finish my drive home. I pulled into the station and fuelled up and then went to pay and found I had no wallet, but owed $37. This was a problem. After a short bit, I thankfully got a hold of Karen on the phone and she read out her credit card number and we punched it in so I could pay and leave. I drove back to EdVideo and recovered my wallet before heading back home for the second time. I’m very lucky I have a wife to rescue me from dumb situations.
Add comment February 3rd, 2007
Joined the second production meeting for the short film “Shakespeare’s Angels” which is supposed to be a cross between a mash of Shakespeare’s works and Charlie’s Angels. I got invited along because there was to be fighting and honestly, how could I resist? Turns out I get to play a bit part as well, which should be fun as well. Overall, looks to be a higher production comedy short which will have quite an enjoyable cast with whom to work.
Add comment January 21st, 2007
Ok seriously - The Break-Up is complete crap. As a comedy, if written well, it could have been not a bad premise… however, it wasn’t written as a comedy. It is an exploration of two people who have a fight, break-up, spend all their time trying to hurt each other and then at the end go their separate ways. On my new scale of poor-good-fantastic, it scores a phat 0. Not worth watching, renting or even knowing about. I can’t believe that movies like that get green-lighted by studios, have big name “talent” attached with a $50M budget. Sadly it has made about $250M to date which is just depressing since it will be considered a success.
2 comments December 26th, 2006
Craig’s film is done and there is a public showing. It’s actually a triple bill with two other local films (Kindred and Escalation) — all three are showing at the Breithaupt Centre starting at 4: 20pm with an admission price of $10 (on both Dec. 2nd and Dec 9th). More information can be found on Craig’s website for FBN Multimedia.
Add comment November 19th, 2006
Karen and I went to see the movie The Prestige tonight. Haven’t had a chance to see too many films recently, so it was very nice to actually have a bit of time to go see something. It was a very entertaining and well done story, definitely recommend going to see it. It also makes me want to learn more about Telsa, whom I’ve heard stories about that could almost be considered magic.
Add comment November 9th, 2006
Chad, Sean, Karen, Shae and I and got talking tonight about a film challenge — essentially something we could probably film in quick order potentially this weekend. Spent several hours talking concepts and came up with a few ideas (supervillan interview and effunowhutimeen, but nothing that we could shoot from without spending a bunch more time actually working through scenes. Still even if it amounts to nothing, it was fun to brainstorm ideas and we need to do it more.
Add comment October 13th, 2006
It’s been a long journey from when I first heard about this movie. I was angry, frustrated and unhappy that such a movie got green-lighted… seriously, COME ON! But something changed as it became more and more popular on the internet and it morphed from a crap movie into a movie that promised to be entertaining. It cost $33M to make and at last weekend count, it has made $28M (which is impressive for such a bad concept movie). The day started with going to the website and signing up to send personalized phone messages from Jackson where he talks smack and says to drop what you’re doing and go see the movie. A band of 11 of us went out for dinner and then to the opening night showing of SoaP. The theatre wasn’t 100% full, but it was quite packed as we settled down to watch this film. The energy was up and people were rowdy, cheering when the title came up on the screen. It was definitely “entertaining” but not very good. I definitely give it a solid 7 out of 10, and there are a lot more movies that I have enjoyed much less. The crowd was interacting with the movies shouting out “liar” when someone said it was safe on the plane and the entire theatre shouting Sam Jackson’s best line of the movie in unison at the climax. Snakes on a Plane is a movie worth seeing ONLY in the theatre and ONLY with a large number of people.
Add comment August 18th, 2006
Karen, Sue-Anne, Sean and I went to see Lady in the Water tonight. It was not a bad movie, but I preferred his other movies more. Rotton Tomatoes has a little heavy review of it.
2 comments July 30th, 2006
Finished my obligations (fighting obviously) for Atlantis today. I have no idea how it will turn out, but I’m not expecting to be that impressed as it was done very quickly with 1 or 2 actual takes of any given thing, so it will probably look rushed and not well executed (exactly what it was). The difficult part for me was that I had to wear a “head” that made me look like a minotaur (mostly foam-core arts and crafts kinda stuff), so it was extremely uncomfortable and restricted my visibility (hence I was trying to be very careful of where I swung my mace) - I’m doubtful that it will achieve the effect he was looking for (it probably would have been fine for theatre, but not film close-ups), but I guess we’ll see when we get to the finished product.
1 comment July 29th, 2006
A long time ago, I helped out some guys in Toronto doing a film fight sequence. It was a pretty wacky scene - a barely clothed guy walked in slow motion while 6 of us fought each other with weapons until we were all down. When Karen and I actually saw the movie, we both thought it was actually pretty good and that it might even win some film festival awards. Now the whole thing is up on Google Video (my section is at about 38m in, look for the blimp) and I recommend watching it (although it probably isn’t for everyone).
Add comment July 22nd, 2006
Every year, C. Edward Stewart does an independent film. And when I say independent, I mean independent, and so it has been for the last 5 summers. Even though they have been through varying degrees of quality, you must give him kudos for actually doing it, unlike so many others who merely talk about doing it for years. He has consistently gotten a final product every year, and in doing so, he has gotten markedly better at making films. I purchased all his DVDs, because I feel that we should support each other in this film community and that such tenacity should not go unrewarded.
Last year, I decided it was time I should help out, given that I have some unique skills to the area. It was very fun to be helping out as a worker rather than having to worry about the higher level details of the production as usually happens when our group of friends do a project. Now, it’s that time again — Craig is ramping up to start shooting his next film “Atlantis” this month and I’m involved again for the fight sequences (a fairly light commitment on my part, which is perfect). I must say, I’m looking forward to seeing the end product in the fall. If you want to get involved, you should probably look at the FBN Multimedia website for more details.
3 comments June 9th, 2006
It’s back again but sadly we will not be. Last year in the summer we got a team of 10 people together to do this fun contest. Essentially you drive to Toronto on a Friday night to get a bag with 5 eccentric things in it, drive back to Waterloo, film a short movie incorporating those things on Saturday and then drop it all off on Sunday afternoon. It may sound easy, but it’s not… Lots of writing, shooting and reshooting (bad camera settings), 4am editing, chafing at audio setup and sound mixing went into it. It requires smart people to pull it off and we had some really good teamwork with very complimentary skills.
Sadly (but also “yay!”) 4 of the previous team will be watching Lord of the Rings the Musical on the Saturday; You can’t really miss a day as the teams are seriously time constrained to begin with.
If you can rangle up reliable people, it’s a great fun — and the only way to get better at doing films is by practice. You can register for their contest on the Toronto Film Challenge website.
Our submission last year was called “Plum Scared“. (11mb WMV9 download)
Add comment June 1st, 2006
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Apr | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||