I wrote a little seven or eight page short last night that I want to shoot before we tackle Addict. It took about fifteen minutes to write; I guarantee it’ll take weeks to get shot and print back to tape. Either way, it’s gravy.
The casting for Addict is still swirling in my brain, as are the locations. I’m the “Producer” (hah!), so I have to do all this crap, of course. Where the hell am I going to get an office? Or a movie theater? Well, I have a lock on a movie theater, I think. I’ve negotiated for a movie theater location release before, I can just copy/paste those emails and send them to a theater here. Of course, this was in Destin, and it was a different theater chain. I wish that chain had a presence here. Ugh. Who the hell is going to play all these characters? Do I just try and find people I know? Should I run an ad? There’s no money to pay these people. I don’t even have money to pay my bills. Yeesh. Making movies comes before paying bills, though. Don’t tell my roommate — he’ll start to worry.
I still want to talk to the disgruntled ex-manager. He’ll be perfect.
We stopped at the drawbridge booth today and saw the girl who works there briefly. We didn’t have a camera, or intentions of any kind. I just always drive by that drawbridge and think, how crazy would it be to stop there and knock on her door? Would she come out? Answer: pretty crazy, and she would. She recognized us immediately (fan of the site!) and told us to get lives, then said her boss was on the line with her and she can’t let us in or she’ll get fired.
Pff, nice try. All the ladies tell me that. But that’s fine. I’ll go quietly.
Oh, we got a new car. It’s a 1995 Ford Aspire hatchback with ~106,000 miles on it. It had a back seat and a fairly nice interior, but we took care of that. It drives great, or as my roommate put it, “better than your Contour did.” That’s not very impressive, though. My Contour drove like crap.
We’re selling ad space on the car. If you want your name or web address, or any other message you can think of, scrawled onto the car before we destroy it, you can donate a dollar or more to the fund. The fund is basically going to pay for the cost of the paints and supplies needed to get the car going, as there’s no way we’re going to get enough donations to cover what we paid for it. Of course, only my roommate and I pitched in so far for the cost of the car itself. Hopefully we’ll get a little reimbursement from some of the other members of the group.
I usually make it a policy not to discuss specific people in these little entries. I’m breaking that rule today, as seen above. Too bad, though — he’s already “famous.” He can take it.
I watched some of the special features on my Back To The Future box set tonight. The sets of that movie really makes me wish that feature film production wasn’t going all digital and special effects driven. Digital film making seems so cold and lifeless, so… digital. It’s just a bunch of ones and zeroes. There’s no magic. It’s more technology than art. Sure, it’s a different kind of art, I suppose. I know some who call software engineering an art form. Still, though — there’s something magical about film that just can’t be captured with digital technology. They can try to fake it, they can come up with algorithims and gamma curves and frame processing techniques that mimic the look and feel of film, and they may eventually be able to fool people. But to me, it’s not the same, and never will be. And this is coming from someone who has never held a motion film camera. If I were to ever become a filmmaker, which I won’t, I would not want to helm a production that was being shot on green screens, or a high budget film that was being shot digitally, when film could be afforded. Sure, it’s more tedious, and more costly, but it’s beautiful. Keep your photorealism. Movies are about immersing your audience in a fantasy world. The audience does not want things to be photorealistic. The reality they are trying to escape is photorealistic enough for them.
I just killed a little black ant on my desk. They are not in my mind. They don’t bother me, but rest assured, these ants are not fictional.
Did you know Thrice did a cover of Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles? I sure didn’t. I’m going to hearken back to a very old tradition for my websites, which dates back to at least 2000, and link a song file. Every news post (as they were called at the time) I made back in those days came complete with “the song of the day”, and I would work the song title into a paragraph, of course, linking the title to the file on my server. It was my way of introducing my favorite songs to my friends. And now, my good friends, I am bringing this song to you. It’s up there. You probably blew right past it while reading this paragraph. Go grab it. I’ll wait.
Now, listen to it.
Like it?
NO?!
Have you even heard the original? You uncultured bastard. I can’t believe you’ve never listened to The Beatles. Look man, next time you’re around, I’ll burn you all my Beatles tunes. I don’t have a whole lot, but I have just been grabbing them from Limewire. Next paycheck I get, I’m thinking about swinging over to CD Warehouse and seeing if they have their greatest hits album. I’ll rip it and burn you a copy. Or you could just get your own. Cheap ass.
Writing about my old news posts made me go dig up some of my old websites. (Man, the comic that comes up on the archived version of my old comic site is so hideous. That was the only time I ever made one that looked like that. Eeeesh.) I used to have all of those sites archived on CD, so I actually had all the content and such that went along with them. One day, I dropped that CD on the floor and accidentally broke it with the leg of the chair when I moved it to bend down and pick the damn thing back up. These things happen.
Tags: Miscellaneous