This Saturday night at 9:15, Collection will screen at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Alabama Shorts Block #3. The venue is the Alabama Power Building, located on 6th Avenue North. Visit www.sidewalkfest.com for more information. Enjoy the preview trailer.
Here’s the one-sheet for my latest short film, Collection, which will be showing at this year’s Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, Sept. 29 at 9;15 p.m. at the Alabama Power Building. Thanks to Natalie’s (my producer) sister Christie for the design. Awesome job.
If you’re an avid reader of this blog (thanks mom) then you will notice that it’s been about two weeks since I last posted. Normally I try to post three times a week, but often the daily routine gets in the way, as it did in recent days. However, I’d rather spend time on those paying jobs rather than spend time in this non-paying forum.
I returned late Friday night after almost a week in Gainesville, Fla. on a shoot for Lewis Communications. I was hired to direct a fund raising video for a new cancer center that’s being constructed on campus as a part of the Shands Healthcare System. The shoot was very run-and-gun, but the whole thing ran very smoothly. I had the opportunity to shoot on the Panasonic HVX-200, an HD camera that shoots directly to solid-state P2 cards, rather than tape. It was my first experience using the HVX and I hope to post more on that later.
The main topic of this post deals with my latest short film. I want to announce that Collection was officially selected to this year’s Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, September 28-30. Currently I am working with my editor and music composer to finalize the edit before we have to turn in our screener’s copies. It’s coming down to the wire and I am a little stressed about completing the film before the deadline. Leaving town for a week didn’t help matters, but now that I’m back in Birmingham I hope to finish everything up by the 10th. In the next two days I hope to finish the press kits and have those turned in to the Sidewalk office as well.
During the weekend of July13-15 dozens of filmmakers across the state of Alabama participated in the Summer 2007 Sidewalk Scramble, a competition in which teams have only 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit their films. I discussed the entire weekend here, in case you need to go back and refresh yourself. The screening for all the films took place last night at the Carver Theatre, and there were some excellent entries. Below is our film, entitled “Departure.” Let me know what you think.
The last few weeks have been non stop, and I haven’t had much of break when you consider that last weekend was the Summer Sidewalk Scramble. The Scramble is a local film competition wherein each team must write, shoot, and edit a short film in 48 hours. The people who agreed to get involved on my team were great. We had an excellent group of creative minds and talented actors who really helped to increase the production value of our entry.
We attended the kickoff meeting last Friday evening at WorkPlay where we picked up our information packets and heard a rundown of all the rules. Nine banker’s boxes were set up in the center of the floor. Each box represented the style of a real-life director. Each team leader tossed a golf ball toward the boxes. Whichever box your ball landed in was the director whose style your film had to mimic. Our team had to use M. Night Shyamalan.
At the second station each team had to pick a silly phrase at random from a bag. This phrase had to be included somewhere in the film, but it didn’t have to be a piece of dialogue. We had to incorporate the phrase “Eclectic Drool” into the film. At the final station, each team had to choose a number at random from another sack. Each number corresponded to an “inspiration item.” We received a hole puncher.
So, armed with these items and a list of rules, we set off to write. Our team finally settled on two main storylines, but really couldn’t make a decision. It wasn’t until our producer suggested a particular location that we scrapped those two ideas completely and wrote a third story, based on the location we had available. We called it a night a little after 1am.
Saturday was a long and tiring day. We began at 7:30 am and wrapped at 7:00 pm. We got behind schedule when a massive thunderstorm rolled through, during which I was beginning to wonder if writing so many exteriors was such a good idea. The storm lasted about 45 minutes, after which we were able to shoot the remaining footage we needed. We had to work a little faster and I lost some cutaways I wanted to get, but the principal photography was all on tape. A big advantage was the fact that we were in one location the entire day, which sped up the process a little.
Sunday we delivered our film a full hour before the deadline - much to my relief. The result was a short film entitled “Departure.” The screening for all Scramble films will be next Saturday, July 28 at the Carver Theatre. Social networking is from 6:30-7:00 and the films will start at 7:00. I’d like to encourage everyone to come out to see our film. Thanks to all those on my team who did such a magnificent job. I think we came out with a film that we can all be proud of.
June 26 was the final deadline for this year’s Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. Of course, on the days leading up to the deadline, I was out of town for various shoots, which hindered me from meeting with my editor to finalize the cut. So, as usual, I was cutting it pretty close. I was able to get a rough score from the composer on the 25th, but was unable to meet with the editor until the 26th. I looked at the cut, we dropped in the music, and my editor said he was going to make a few minor changes before taking it down to the Sidewalk office. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay around any longer, as I was on my way to Nashville to start shooting a documentary.
We didn’t have time to finalize everything the way we wanted, but thankfully the good folks at Sidewalk permit filmmakers to sumbit a work-in-progress. So, I’m happy to say that we submitted it by the deadline. If “Collection” does get accepted we will go back and tweak everything in the current edit. We hope to add in some establishing shots, some extra dialogue, and some sound effects. I also plan to color-correct certain scenes and re sync the musical score. Overall, however, I felt we had a strong cut that we could submit.
“Imagination,” one of my latest short films, was selected by the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival as a finalist in their “Crazy 8 Filmmaking Challenge,” a contest created to help celebrate the eighth year of the film festival. All films that were selected as finalists will be screened Sunday, September 24 at 4:45 pm at the McWane Science Center - 200 19th Street North, Birmingham, Ala. Make plans to attend.
The Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival has released the schedule for this year’s festival. The weekend kicks off on Friday, September 22 and runs through Sunday evening, September 24. Several great films are in this year’s lineup and many local filmmakers’ projects will be screened. In addition to the movies, Sidewalk offers the public a chance to learn about the process of filmmaking through panel discussions and mentoring sessions. Please support independent filmmaking in Alabama by attending the festival. You can purchase an opening night pass, weekend pass, or a single film pass. Be sure to visit their website for all the details.
The following article was written by Douglas Hopper and can be found on the NPR website.
Morning Edition, January 30, 2006 · Cell phones do just about anything these days. You can send e-mail, download music — and on some new phones, you can even capture video. But can you make a real movie with a cell phone?
Ithaca College in upstate New York has launched a contest to find out. It’s called Cellflix. Like any film festival, there are judges and there’s even a $5,000 grand prize. To qualify, submissions had to be shot on a cell phone or smartphone, be no longer than 30 seconds and include music, dialogue or other audio.
Make plans now to be in Birmingham this September for the annual Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. The dates are September 22-25 in the beautiful theatre district of downtown Birmingham. It is always a great weekend filled with excellent films. I hope to post more news regarding other festivals in the future, but if anyone has recommendations for can’t-miss festivals, please be sure to post them
