Greetings from the BoltBus to New York. If you haven't yet, check out tomorrow's (Saturday the 13th) screening of “Saving Corporate America” at the New York Television Festival.
In the flurry of activity leading up to this trip, I've been derelict in mentioning the DC Shorts film festival, in which a couple noteworthy pieces are showing. Firstly is “Attack of the Hot Female Alien Man Eaters” (poster below) which was directed by Janine Sides as part of the 48 Hour Film Project in Richmond last year. What makes this movie special (aside from the title obviously) is that yours truly is one of the principal actors. It's not often that I find myself acting in other peoples' work, normally I can't find anyone who's big enough a sucker to cast me, and I have to create my own movies if I want a role. Well happily I found that sucker in Janine Sides, and apparently I've duped the DC Shorts admissions board into thinking that my acting is passable. In any case, it's a 48 Hour Film, which means it's thin in terms of polish but thick in terms of good-ol'-fashioned entertainment. After all it's not “Surrender of the Busted Androgynous Neighborhood Wine Tasters”. Showings are Sat, Mon, and Tues. For more info and tickets visit the DC Shorts website.
Also in DC Shorts this week you'll find “All Roads Lead Away”, a film by Bill Coughlan/Tohuohu. He is a good friend and an oft collaborator (he's worked on the two biggest projects we've ever done: "Codeword Secret" and "Saving Corporate America"). This film was part of the 48 Hour contest in DC this year, in which Bill was not collaborating but rather competing. Well his film subsequently got accepted to DC Shorts, and our film “Mementos” got rejected. Kudos to you on a set well played Mr. Coughlan, but this match is far from over. Muah hah ha haaaa.
It's official: We will be screening our pilot presentation "Saving Corporate America" as part of the 2008 New York Television Festival (NYTVF). The screening will take place this Saturday, September 13th at 7:15 pm at the New World Stages in midtown Manhattan. The run-time of the pilot in its current form is only 14-or-so-minutes, which will be followed by a talk-back with me (Kevin/co-creator), Barry (co-creator), and Caitlin Foito (Manager of Programming at Fox Television Studios).
The pilot is about a bunch of elite attorneys that work for a high-powered DC law firm, trying their best to save corporate America from the tyranny of the little guy. It was shot here in DC and in VA earlier this year. And since it will easily be a week or two before a major TV network buys it and puts it in a primetime slot on the air, you should attend this free screening of the pilot presentation in NYC.
For free tickets (up to 10 tickets in an order for a $3.50 service charge), or more info about the screening, check out the official announcement at NYTVF.com.
First off is my friend Matt Compton, whom I've known since Star Wars movies were good, and elementary school sucked (I suspect the latter might still be true). Matt just finished producing the movie Seventh Moon. It was shot entirely in Hong Kong, directed by Ed Sanchez (The Blair Witch Project) and stars Amy Smart (The Butterfly Effect, Crank). They're gearing up for the world premiere of the film at this year's Fantastic Fest in just a couple weeks time. So here's the new trailer hot off the presses.
Edit: Because of too many problems with the embedded Flash player, I've given up on having the trailer on this site. If you want to check it out just go to the Seventh Moon site, but beware: it has a lot of visual spoilers that give things away. So if you like to watch movies untainted, avoid this trailer.
Next up is Ed Watkins, who just finished the short: Malice in Wonderland. It stars the oft-featured-on-this-site Casie Platt as Alice. Ed is an interesting dichotomy of a nature/wildlife documentary lover, and a special-effects lover. Until now we thought those were mutually exclusive (I'm really sorry to break it to you that "The Day After Tomorrow" was not a documentary). Ed's very different take on the telling of this story is a fun attempt to mutually inclusivise those worlds (hey if you make your own web site you can make up words too).
What's most impressive is that he did the mega compositing job on his own, armed only with a pile of footage off his fancy Red camera, a personal computer, and enough meth & blow to revive the U.S. economy. To be clear: Ed never confided in me regarding his record-setting upper drug use, but I'm 100% that's the only way he could've gotten through such an insurmountable composite job solo.
Speaking of Mr. Watkins' over-achieving, he's also made a handy little calculator app called iSee4K for people with the Red cameras to calculate depth of field, field of view, storage requirements, and then some. It's a free iPhone app, which is to say you have to buy an expensive phone with an expensive service to then get something Ed worked really hard on and will never see a dime from. I remember learning about "capitalism" in that elementary school I hated, but I'm having trouble figuring out how this fits into that definition. If you have a Red, or are just a photography nerd, in which case you've most likely already taken the iPhone plunge, check it out at the app store.
L to R: Ryan, Kevin, Barry, Ariana
Just a quick hello from Hollywoodland. As you dilligent readers know, Barry and I came out for the Independent Television Festival. We've had a good time so far, although I'm starting to suspect that everyone in this city isn't entirely 100% genuine.
Buddy Jackson screened moments ago to a nearly empty room. We DC-ers ended up drawing more of a crowd than the "home team" piece that we were paired with for the screening. That was a bit of a bummer. But we had a good chat with a network-type today about a possible short-form show that we could do in DC in the near future, and we're chatting up some other network types tomorrow about a less short-form less-DC show. So overall it seems like it will be a productive few days of meetings if not the "oh my God you guys are the guys everyone is talking about you guys I can't believe I've met you guys!" seconds-of-fame that one can occasionally enjoy at festivals.
We also saw Ariana Almajan ("Jenny Sellers" in Buddy Jackson) who came out for the festival, and Ryan Mulkay (Mementos, Codeword Secret, and the "Tennis Instructor" guest star in Buddy Jackson) who has recently made the big move out here to get serious about the acting.
Bed is calling: it's 4am EST. Two more more days of Los Angelesing to go, and some sketch comedy goodness soon to be up here on crisislab.com.
Once upon a time I was trying to put together a sketch show. I only managed to pull off a couple episodes, and decided that I needed to find some more man-power. The collaborative nature of filmmaking makes solo endeavors a challenge. So I popped open our friend craigslist, and went to one, and only one, audition. It was for a new web series called Buddy Jackson, and I gave an absolutely dismal audition for some patterned-shirt-loving bloke named Barry. I was quite certain I didn't get the part as Buddy, or was it Barry? Which was which? Hell I didn't know for months. But based on a glimpse of my prior work Barry was wise enough to cast the hyper-entertaining Danny Gavigan as Bar- errrr- Buddy, and invited me to help behind-the-scenes on production.
Well the rest, as they say, is incredibly recent history-- bordering on current events. I helped Barry in various capacities to create 24 whopping episodes of a live action web series well before its time. Finally its time is coming, and the Independent Television Festival in LA is going to feature Buddy Jackson this August 1-7. There will be two screenings of selected Buddy Jackson episodes (on the 3rd and 7th). Barry will most certainly be in attendance, and I'm hoping to go as well (I'm currently accepting cash donations). Hopefully I'll see you westies there.
Buddy Jackson, however, didn't quite sate my hunger for stupidity. So I enlisted the help of Barry, that hyper-entertaining dude that played Buddy (or is it the other way around?), and the mega-talented Casie Platt, and we've created some more sketch comedy silliness. For now all you get is a photo of us three performers looking stoic, but in the near future I'll put video excerpts up here. Both Buddy Jackson and the newfangled comedy show called Crisislab have been submitted to the New York Television Festival in which we had a couple entries last year. So fingers crossed we'll all be watching it on the big screen in New York this September.
Sorry for the short notice interwebs kids- sometimes life gets in the way of writing posts here. Tonight there is going to be a screening at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD, featuring the best 48 Hour films from 2007. We are lucky enough to have two films featured in this impressive line-up.
It is also the first time I'm going to get a chance to see Lizzie Strada on the big screen with an audience, which is wicked exciting. I hope to see you all there. And stay-tuned; more crisislabtastic nonsense coming soon on this site.
- Photo by Yuriy Zahvoyskyy
The best-of screening for this year's DC 48 Hour Film Project was last night. Mementos was featured, and in addition to winning the Audience Choice Award (which we already knew) it came home with the Best Acting award. I have to admit I'm pretty disappointed; I had my fingers crossed for the Best Original Song award, and it turns out that's not even a category! Not only did I not win it, but it doesn't exist. It's like Santa Claus all over again.
Thanks again to all who participated: the actors whose award-winning performances give me something to write about, and all of the crew whose tireless efforts allowed those performances to shine.
My good friend and oft collaborator Bill Coughlan also took part in the contest with his short All Roads Lead Away. He was dilligent enough to compile a list of all the winning films on his Tohubohu Productions blog. Which begs the question: if his blog is so much better than mine, wouldn't it just be easier to skip this site altogether and read his? Damn.
The short "Mementos" has managed to win the Audience Choice Award for its screening group in the DC 48 Hour Film competition. It will now be featured in the 'Best of' screening this Thursday at the AFI theater in downtown Silver Spring. The very cool news is that they are actually going to screen the film in full HD quality on the big screen. All are welcome; tickets can be purchased online (ours is the 9:30pm showtime), and you're encouraged to do so as the screening is expected to sell-out. I hope to see you there!
Tryst, the short film that yours truly was the director of photography on, has been accepted into the Boston International Film Festival. It is set to screen Saturday, June 7th at 10:30pm. You can get the most up-to-date scheduling info on the BIFF website. Unfortunately for me, this will join Cinequest and Cannes in the "film festivals in which my work is showing and I can't afford to attend" category.
In other news, Barry and I are about to buy our first video camera over the 5-digit mark. I think that means that we're getting serious about this whole thing. Stay tuned and I'll let you know how it works out. :)
Apologies to everyone in Interwebs-land that has periodically checked this site for the updates that never came. The good news is that now it'll be extremely concise.
Barry and I have been working away furiously on a ton of new content, most of which will be available here very soon. The highlights of the past few months (in no particular order) are:
- The World's Greatest Detective - Screened at the DC Shorts film festival and won the audience choice award for its group.
- The Kumbio Takedown - Our entry into the DC 48 Hour Film competition not only won Best Picture, Best Writing, and Best Acting for DC, but is also going to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
- Codeword Secret - Our independent television pilot was accepted into the NY Television Festival, where at least five different people complimented me on it. This wouldn't be the biggest of deals, except one of those people was from Fox Television Studios, and they've gotten us to make...
- Worthington PC - Another pilot we just finished rough cutting. More to come on this one, but because of the nature of it you'll never see it on this site. You'll have to be my super-cool friend and invite yourself over some day.
- PGP Players - Danny Rouhier, Danny Gavigan, Casie Platt and I (working under the apt moniker "Crisislab") won a national sketch comedy contest and shot off to NYC to film a terrible reality TV show pilot and put on a very not-terrible live show at Comix.
- Lizzie Strada - Getting to Cannes with a 48-hour film wasn't enough, we also had to take part in the Panasonic HD Showdown. Which, of course, we won with our classical adaptation period piece original-musical comedy shot almost entirely on greenscreen. The process was at times much akin to torture, but the final product is most certainly not.
- Crisislab.com - Due to the efforts of my dear mother, this site is breathing a breath of awesome CMS-based web 2.0 uber-awesome goodness. Her efforts will make the site not only work well, but stupidly easy to update, so I have no more excuses to disappear for so long.