Presenting Game Night, a short film

After years of not really doing anything with the short film I produced/co-wrote/directed in 2007, I finally posted it to YouTube. Everyone in the credits knows more than I do, so I thank them so much for contributing their expertise, and I apologize for being such a lousy producer.

I'd change a few things if I were to shoot this now, but I'm proud of the work we did, and I learned so much about the whole process from start to finish. Nothing teaches you more about filmmaking than making a film.

So here it is, after years of hiding on my shelf, Game Night.

Watching the kids in action

Last year I gave my students an assignment to write short film scripts as their final project. It went so well that this year I decided to expand it. Not only are they writing scripts, but they're filming them.

It's the greatest thing I've ever done, and I wish I'd thought of this years ago. The kids are really getting into it.

I'm going to focus on one group in particular. All names are fake.

So Julie has told me numerous times that she wants to be a director some day, and she definitely has the personality for it. She's bossy, opinionated, but well liked. Right now I'm watching her sit on a table, surrounded by her groupmates, as she lists the changes they will be making to the script after I gave them notes.

Annie, the script writer, is off in the corner, waiting to be told what changes to make.

Dariah, who was supposed to be the co-director, is so obviously the producer. She came to me for the notes on the script, she's planning all the locations, and when Julie got off topic, Dariah reminded everyone to focus on the material. She's taking money from the group to pay for props they want to use. (I do not require them to spend money, but they really want to.) And she has an assistant.

Kris, who is the star of this particular horror film, wanders around the room, occasionally cracking jokes, checking his cell phone, not able to focus on anything for more than five minutes.

The rest of the kids chime in with suggestions on how their characters should die.

Whitney, the DP, only cares about where they want her to put the camera.

I gave them notes to make the characters more developed because in their first draft people just go to a party and die and don't really exist outside that event, so now they're discussing how they can expand their scenes to create more conflict between the characters.

It's beautiful to watch.

Introducing Vampire Thingee

One night in Puerto Rico Best Friend and I watched Paris, Je T'aime. I had rented it from Blockbuster once and then never watched it, and one night I got a letter congratulating me on accidentally purchasing it. I'd still never watched it months later so I brought it to watch on the plane. I watched Predator on the way out, but it turned out we had a DVD player in the room.

So anyway, it was awesome and if I hadn't already bought it I probably would have gone out and grabbed it up at Best Buy. If you haven't seen it, it's a series of short films about Paris and love.

One of the shorts, which stars Elijah Wood, is about vampires. Somehow that short and the circumstances of my vacation bled together (Lookit! A pun!) to make me a really cool dream that night.

I had this interesting vampire dream that was so moving I actually woke up crying. I told Best Friend the story of my dream and she said "Aw, that's so sad!"

I knew I had to write it. The dream was a perfect story - perfectly me and perfectly bittersweet. So even though everybody and their mom has a vampire story I'm going to write it. It will go well with my zombie story. Why would I want to be different from everybody and their mom?

The thing is I'm not entirely sure what it's going to be. There's too much of a comedic element to be a serious drama and it's definitely not a horror. It's not an action story either. If anything it's more of a comedy but I don't want to cheapen the story by making it one of those silly monster comedies.

On top of that I'm not sure there's enough story here for a feature, but there's almost too much story for a short. In the end it's probably going to be a dark comedy short (as if I wrote any other kind of short) that will come to about 20 minutes or more.

Yeah there's not much of a market for that in our world.

I don't care. This story was the most adorable and sweet thing I've ever thought up and I have to write it. For me and my subconscious.

For now I'm just calling it "Vampire Thingee" and I'm enjoying myself. And it's giving me a buffer of time between drafts of my current feature project so that when I get back to my gang kid story I'll have abandoned it long enough to get some good perspective.

So now I've gone from zombies to vampires. I'm so versatile.

Jetlag

Ahh, Los Angeles. I was gone for ten days and now I'm back and I have like eighty thousand hours of television to catch up on so don't anybody tell me what happened on anything.

I was so jetlagged I fell asleep at 7pm and woke up at 4 am. I didn't even shower or anything, and I don't ever go without a shower.

I don't think that before today there had ever been a day in my life where I'd cleaned things before the sun was up. But since I left my window open ten days worth of LA soot had landed on my sheets and I was appalled at the amount of dirty dishes I had left myself to clean.

I only have just over a week left before I have to go back to work. I gotta say, spending a week in paradise is a fine way to get up the energy for a new semester. And this time I get to teach the Maltese Falcon and the accompanying unit on film noir.

In the meantime, here is another video from the Moments Before series.

Back

I'm back in the states and back to the Internet. I just spent the last week falling asleep to the sound of the ocean and waking up to the sunrise over clear blue Atlantic waters beyond the palm trees. I am less pale and my clothes smell like coconut because my bottle of Bacardi smashed in my suitcase. So thanks for that, Us Air. I smell like I bathed in Banana Boat.

But I had lots of fun in San Juan and would love to go back sometime. I even had a dream one night that I plan to turn into a short film script. I'm pretty sure it was inspired by the combination of spending the week at the ocean with my best friend and having watched Paris, Je T'aime the night before. That was a damn fine movie.

I'm in NC for now because flying a detour to visit my parents is a lot cheaper than making a separate trip. And Mom will wash the rum out of my clothes without even asking for quarters.

And I ate at Bojangles. I love LA, but they don't have Bojangles.

Two more weeks and I go back to work. I'm almost ready.

Testing, testing....

This is a test. I finally got around to adding HTML for scrippets so let's see if this works.

This is a scene from Guthrie, the short film I will be shooting in a couple of weeks.

[scrippet]
INT. APARTMENT - DAY

Guthrie, wrapped in his comforter, sits over a fondue pot filled with oil. Next to him sits an open can of sardines.

He has the sardines pushed up on the fondue fork and he's cooking them in the pot.

He pulls out his fork and blows on the sardine on the end.

He puts it in his mouth and struggles to swallow it, his tongue wrestling with the hot, oily sardine as it burns.

GUTHRIE
Oh!

He runs to a pot of snow on the counter and shoves some in his mouth.

CUT TO:

Guthrie stares at himself in the mirror.

GUTHRIE
Aliens. Could be aliens.

He stares at his reflection.

GUTHRIE
I was sleeping. Maybe they didn't know I was here.

He stares.

GUTHRIE
But why didn't I hear them? Was I sleeping that hard?

He looks at the wine bottles by the trash can.

He looks back at himself.

GUTHRIE
Huh. That's possible.

He slaps himself.

GUTHRIE
Ow!

He looks around and grabs a big knife out of his kitchen.

He slides the blade over his arm but doesn't even break his skin before he jerks his arm away and drops the knife.

GUTHRIE
Okay. Not in a coma.
[/scrippet]

Moments Before

The past couple of weekends I've been witnessing a crew film a web series starring The Beefcake called Moments Before.

This is my favorite. The Long Weight:


There's also two that were shot earlier. A Plate Too Far:


and Remote Destiny:


There are several more to come. I find them hilarious and they're only at most a minute long.

If only I'd thought of it ten years ago

Yesterday I went to watch some friends shoot a YouTube short and ended up doing a line of voice over and posing as a hot slutty lady on some dude's arm. That's always a fun way to spend a Saturday. So now for my second ever appearance on YouTube I will be exposing my cleavage. I'm afraid I've been typecast.

What was particularly fun about this shoot is that when I got there the guys had only a vague idea of a story. Beefcake and I made a Home Depot run and when we got back there was a hilarious completed script and something of a story. So in one day the short was written, lit and shot. And it's pretty damn funny.

A friend who hasn't been a part of the whole zombie script planning situation finally got around to reading my script this weekend. The general opinion was that it's well written and the characters are well developed and there are some good set pieces and some interesting moments, but it seemed like a pretty standard zombie film.

And yet, he also said he was expecting more of a twist at the end. What if the protagonists arrive at their destination to find that everyone there has gone crazy from being locked inside all the time....

Oh, wait, that's 28 Days Later.

Okay, what if they arrive at the destination and the people try to kill the protagonists and take their children.....

Oh wait, that's 28 Days Later.

Okay, what if they arrive at the destination and the people try to kill the husband and take his wife....

Oh wait, that's 28 Days Later.

I admit when I was thinking of this story I was really worried about the similarities between this story and 28 Days Later, but there are enough differences to make mine a new story. If I gave the ending a twist it would become a copycat script. There's pretty much no way around that. I like my script, but that movie has made it much more complicated to sell.

Stupid 28 Days Later.

I am hoping that when World War Z comes out it does terrific at the box office, because then studios will be all like "Who's got a big budget zombie action movie so we can take advantage of this new craze? Oh if only somebody had a zombie movie with explosions and tidal waves and setting castles on fire!" and I will pop into frame like a hero with my perfect script.

Or, I'll just use it to get a job writing something else.

How do I fake a winter wonderland for cheap?

While I'm still building my plan to eventually film The Corner, I am for the moment concentrating my efforts on Guthrie, a short I can film for ultra cheap with two actors in a studio apartment.

I'm contemplating playing the female role myself. She only has like three lines and half of them are from the other side of a closed door and I got a big head from my acting debut so I'm gonna try it.

I have one big problem with the short: It takes place in Oregon during the middle of winter. The guy never leaves the apartment so it doesn't impact the filming that much, but there is a scene where he looks out the window and sees the mountains and the snow-covered street below. There are no people, just empty street and I want his breath to fly out into the scene.

Clearly I do not live in Oregon, but I do live near the Hollywood Hills. And of course it never snows here, but it occasionally does there.

So, effects people, how do I do that? How am I going to fake a guy looking out a window into the quiet winter wonderland for next to no money? If I have to fly to Oregon it kind of defeats the purpose of doing this cheapo short. And no, I can't ditch the location. It's 100% relevant to the plot.

Any ideas?