looking for the indian shooting the star

It's been a while

2011-10-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

Almost two years long since I posted anything. The short finished and went into the world with much fanfare to my surprise. It's been amazing. One of my favorite highlights was a French student asking if she subtitle the film for her English class.

Then there's the other side. I got an email the other day that one of the leads in the short Phil had passed away recently. Just terribly sad news. I only knew him briefly but he was an amazing actor, professional and kind. A joy to work with that brought so much to everything he did. I'm currently writing a feature version of the short and to be honest it's sad to imagine that character without Phil. It's a sad day. R.I.P. Phil Davidson.

Monday Inspiration: Fahrenheit 451 Titles

2009-11-30T16:34:00.000-08:00

In 1966 Françios Truffaut released his first and only English language film, he worked for six years to bring it to the screen, and I like to think he had these titles in mind from the outset.

This is what every designer/title designer speaks to when they they talk about the titles being apart of a film and setting up the story, but rarely does anything thing work as well as these do. What's startling about them isn't the design or type or anything that you typically associate with title design. These titles have no type and they're deceptively simple. Just a series of single color ZOOM IN shots of TV antennas and a narrator speaking the names aloud. The bold colors evoke color bars, and this was also Truffaut's first color film, it feels almost like a painter saying "these are the colors I will be using throughout the piece."

From a storytelling viewpoint they're almost unmatched by any sequence I've ever seen. What better way to introduce the audience to a world where the printed word is outlawed than this?

poster_2

2009-09-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

did this more as a warm up to get back into using the cintiq.

暗闇の軍隊

2009-08-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

monday inspiration: Vania Zouravliov and Rockin' Jellybean

2009-08-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

Vania Zouravliov

Rockin' JellyBean

anime

2009-08-06T11:06:00.000-07:00

so I grew up watching Japanese animation whenever I could, but lately I've sort of fallen off the wagon, and then along comes this and remember what got you hooked in the first place.

Juan Francisco Casas

2009-08-04T09:46:00.001-07:00

so I just heard about this guy. does these drawing with a bic pen on 10ft tall paper. bad ass

Your Luck Day Poster

2009-07-22T11:44:00.001-07:00

in multiple colors.

"do you respect me?"

2009-06-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I'm waiting for the 37 bus to take me out to Alki, I was bored so I kept walking and ended up on 2nd and University, I had stopped because a woman was lacing up another woman's corset on the street and this odd sight seemed like a good enough reason to stop for a while.

While standing on the corner I was checking the bus time on my phone when I see two thuggish ruggish bone looking guys approaching, I drop my phone back in my pocket and resume waiting. One walks by me, goes and stands about 15 feet away, the other stops directly in front of me and drops a coke he was carrying at my feet. He then tells me to pick up his coke. I say "no." He then proceeds to ask me if I respect him, he shows me some of his ink, namely the one of a coffin with numbers on it, I'm assuming he didn't want my artistic opinion on them. Then again he says that I should pick up his coke out of respect. I tell him that I don't know him. It goes on like this.

All I know is that when someone like this guys asks you to bend down to pick up something for them, you don't do it. Eventually as he inched closer to me I the my hands up and said "I'm walking away" and I walked away.

I don't know if he picked his coke back up.

YLD: wrapped

2009-06-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

Photo by Matt Daniels

Here's Rider Strong. He was kind enough to come out and shoot with us for a couple days.

came across this the other day

2009-05-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

the opening title to our still un-produced internal short film at oh, hello. I like it, and it builds excitement for the next. which we're shooting in 14 days. so soon.

birthday movie tomorrow

2009-05-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

theme wedding penultimate

2009-05-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

YLD: 24 days to shoot

2009-05-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

We shoot in just over 3 weeks. I'm excited and cautiously optimistic. Here's the kind of stuff I do to prep for the shoot.

analogy of conservatives

2009-05-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

We've all seen this or I'm assuming you have. It's an optical illusion. The question is which table is longer?
The answer is that they're the same.
This is how I feel about republicans, conservatives and evangelicals. Even after you take out a ruler and see they are indeed the same, they will still tell you that the table on the left is longer.

the good and bad of this weekends movies

2009-05-04T11:36:00.000-07:00

the good:

the bad:

threadless 2nd try

2009-04-18T17:56:00.001-07:00

these balls are mega.

2009-04-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

Our first day of shooting for Your Lucky Day was really more of pre-day or a non-day, it was just a couple of hours in front of green screen so we can put together what should look like a live local lottery broadcast, hopefully the fake and the real will all be one unnoticeable whole in the final. But I did get to make these charming cue cards.

this jacket has 55 pockets.

2009-04-13T09:49:00.000-07:00

a lesson on business cards

2009-04-09T14:22:00.000-07:00

The Masochist

2009-04-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

Masochism. The Masochist. That's what the Wrestler could be called. That's what I'm calling it.

The Masochist starts out with Mickey Rourke not facing the camera, in fact much of the film takes place from behind Randy "the Ram" as he's called in the film. Tracking shots, grainy film, it all feels so real, so authentic, like that documentary "Beyond the Mat" a friend of mine who was wrestling buff made me watch, but like professional wrestling it isn't real, even if it kinda feels real it's still fake. This another one of Darren Aronofsky's mood pieces. All his films are mood pieces, not different moods really, just the same gut feeling you get watching "Requiem for a Dream" or "Pi" and to a much lesser extent "The Fountain". It's a queasy uneasy feeling you get while watching them, they've tapped into some part of your psych that just makes you want to turn away, close your eyes, and have this moment pass. He could probably make the greatest horror film ever made.

This is not the greatest sports film ever made.

For all it's indie trappings it's such a paint by numbers movie, side plots like Ram's budding relationship with a stripper named Cassie (or Pam, stage name vs. real name, play a pivotal role in this film) and his reunion with his long estranged daughter go down exactly how you expect them. Aronofsky's credit should be that he gets the maximum from these cliché scenes, but instead of making them work he should have spent the time taking them new.

Speaking on the down on her luck stripper, Marisa Tomei, gives a good solid performance, and is as you've heard is quite naked in this film. People are listing her nudity as a reason to see the film. I bring this up, because again it's a place where the movie that's trying so hard to be real let's you know it's fake, it's Hollywood. Hollywood movies always do this, they cast ridiculously good looking people in parts and then try and pretend they're plain and normal, no wonder teenage girls get eating disorders. If Marisa Tomei was stripper, she wouldn't be tossed off by everyone one in the club as she is here, if the movie was as real as it would like to pretend it is, the Ram would be only one in a line of losers vying for her attention. That they are both performers would be what their connection is, not just that he's the only nice guy at the strip club.

Then there's the wrestling scenes, each gut wrenching and harsh. Unlike in boxing movies where there's a man struggling to win, we watch Rocky get turned to hamburger because we want to see that even against the odds, he overcomes, his will, his drive, his heart pushes him on to victory. Here there is no competition, the winner decided beforehand. When we see the Ram cut his own forehead open with a razor, get thrown through a plate glass window, staple gun his own face and a litany of other injuries some occurring outside the ring, we realize that, more than to the roar of the crowd, as he would tell you, the Ram is addicted to pain.

Pain is what Aronofsky is all about as well, but not to himself. If Rourke plays the masochist, Mr. Aronofsky is a sadist. He wants he wants to hurt his performers, he wants to hurt his audience, no one is safe from his machine gun of emotional destruction. This is what he gets off on, not the triumph of will, or someone rising above the mire. It's people at their worst only getting worse. In Requiem of course you end up a an armless whore if you do drugs, in Pi you lobotomize yourself for thinking too much and here the Ram is ready to die play fighting. His detest for everyone on screen including his leads is what sets the movie and director apart from other filmmakers and artists, regular ones find the beauty in the everyday, Aronofsky finds the ugly.

The Masochist works best when it's just Rourke, camera behind him as he moves through his world, he feels so sorry for himself we can't help but join in.

Reno

2009-04-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I got the chance to go back down to Reno and meet with great group of filmmakers and talk to some high school kids about the "industry", and show my short film Pierre, a Hole With a View. It was great, really great. I learned a bit about craps, and how to lose at poker and blackjack, the value of neon, and how to stay lost in it.

The last day there we went up to Virginia City, an old mining ghost town that hasn't been ruined and turned into a tourist hole (Deadwood I'm looking at you). Took a stroll through the cemetery and on the way back to town tried to save a lost dog named Silver.

mercury PSA 1 step closer to done

2009-04-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning Nate and I went down to Glenn Sound for an audio session for a PSA we started way back in October for mercury poisoning. It's been a long road from then 'til now but I'm happy with the final product. Also in one of those fun little twists the client had demo love with Nate so he's doing the VO for the final spot. He sounds he pretty good, I'll assume it's one of the those Pro-Tools auto-tune plugins that they use to make Paris Hilton sound tolerable.

blog v2

2009-04-08T09:25:00.001-07:00

so after I gave up on my last blog I'm back and intend to do a better job this time. one word: updates.