And Again

SECOND draft of the script is underway, but what's getting tricky to manage are all the meetings I have to make for Fundraising with all the meetings I need to have for putting my core team together for production. And then there's finals week to take care of but that is the least of my concerns. This juggling is going to get trickier during production probably. Need to find my casting director and get started on that end as well. It's happening people, the production is starting to roll...

Sundance Film Institute released the list of 64 indy films that are going to compete for the top honors at Sundance next year. If any of you entered your flick into Sundance, you'll find out by the end of this first week if you got in or not. Some people are stupid enough to compete with some 3000 films for a spot among 16 films, and it saddens me to tell you that I am one of those people. My last short is entered and, well, I can't wait to find out that I wasted a humungous $60 on that stuff... gotta do it.

For those of you who did not see it, there is now a MAKE A DONATION button that takes you straight to Paypal on the Four Line Films website (the link for the Four Line Films website is on your right, in the LINKS section, under Help me fundraise. This plea for cash and funds is going to be a standard part of my updates because its on my damn mind so much. Seriously, just go over to the site and surf around, you will find plenty of reasoning and documentation as to why I need your help and you dont have to if you want to but every dollar helps. Thanks in advance!

O Yeah, and this blog made a 1000 hits sometime last night. Thank you folks! Comment more, its nice to find out who's reading though one mysterious reader sent me some very touching mail today. Thanks S.

Fundraising Season Begins...

It's time to raise some funds! I've converted the Four Line Films website into a Fundraising Site for now. Please check it out, report broken links or things you don't understand and if you can and want to make a contribution (and my day) give me a call or email me (muah!). Meanwhile, I'm trying to finalize some designs for a T-Shirt we are planning to make for fundraising. If you have any ideas, let me know. If you have an opinion on these, let me know. The T-Shirts will be plain blue / white / black and can have only 1 color of text on them (otherwise the cost goes up). So which of these designs printed on the center of the T-Shirt would most people like?

Three designs down here. How about (1) on a Blue Shirt? Or a White Shirt? Same for (2). And for (3), how would that look on a black shirt, with the logo at the center of your chest, really small one? Or a white shirt, with the logo all red, red lines, red text and all? Please email me your reactions.

Raging Cash

Saw Scorcese's Raging Bull in all its film print glory at Cornell Cinema tonight.. in fact, I just got back from the theatre.. sitting at State Street Diner, with a cup of coffee, waiting for Meg (Stilb) to come by and give me some feedback on the script.. I think I'm still numb from the movie... Chapman's choreography.. yehp, Choreography, was beautiful... I really want to know who composed that movie... I DPd a senior thesis this semester, Jamie Anderson's Oil and Vinegar, and I pretty much composed the whole film... so as I was watching the film today I was wondering who composed this film, Scorcese? Or Chapman? That brilliant short DOF rope in the ring, the opening shots, the long take intro for DeNiro, the final shot of the film... there were just so many brilliant compositions in the film, it was really inspiring. I went with Santi, and the first thing I told him was: I feel like storyboarding now. This is true. When you watch a film that really moves you in that sense, you feel like storyboarding, because you understand the inherent power in these images. IMAGES, they grab you in the gut and stay with you... really, if you have the chance of MAKING an image, why the F would you throw that away and compose something shitty... getting exposure is all production seems to be about, BUT, really, REALLY, its a waste of that opportunity if that is what you end up doing. So, thanks "Marty", thanks for that bundle of inspiration. Oscars for Editing and Acting. Only. How's that for sad?

I am in the fundraising stage for I, Love and You (ILU). And by stage I mean, I just realized that the budget is through the roof too huge for me to manage and that I NEED to fundraise some cashios if I know what I am doing. I am just flailing my arms about right now, trying to put together a team. What I really need is a producer... a producer who knows how to fundraise... got that? Contact me... haha.

Tomorrow evening, I see Scorcese's editor Thelma Schoonmaker at Cornell. It's going to be incredibly sold out and packed so I am going to get there early. She is a brilliant cutter and I have no intention of missing out on this. If people want tickets, I have some extras.. email me and we can figure it out. Need Rage. Need Cash.

Films that are Foreign

The Office of International Programs is having a film festival on campus tomorrow (Wednesday) starting at 6pm in CNS 112. The festival features work made by International students at Ithaca and should be very interesting. There are exciting door prizes for all who attend including an iPod Shuffle sponsored by our very own Dean Lynch from the SoC and movie tickets to Cinemapolis and Fall Creek Pictures. So come by for an evening of short and very foreign films. For further information contact Suds at iamsuds@gmail.com
Time: 6-8pm, Place: CNS 112.

See you guys there ~Sds

Cathy and Cake

The party was awesome, smeared cake on Cathy, met Beth Custer, saw Su Friedrich (got incredibly intimidated, never approached her, like: come on, what could I possibly saw that would not be a total waste of her time), re-bonded with Jamie-film-cast, spent time with Colleen, got feedback on scene from Rafi (a little bit), and life goes on... sleepies.

And it goes on

This is probably the worst part. Your stomach turns as you wait for feedback... I check my email a hundred times a minute. Did someone read it? Are they done reading it? It's crazy.. kicks me around... and people have their own films and schedules to tend to... sometimes I get the feeling that I am being brushed away... Understandably, there are screenings to happen and films that need our attention, but I really just feel like I wil get dicked over in terms of the amount of time.. oh well, as long as I get to speak to people on a 1/1 basis.

Hung out with Colleen last night, and we were up till 5am, discussing the script, tearing it apart. Need to start rebuilding, but this part of the process is great because you know you're just fixing things... and making the script better. This is only the first part of the process... and I think I want to have casting calls soon. I should write up character bios and yep... this one is going to be a tough cookie. Bring it on!

Cathy Crane's film on Simone Weil premiered on Tuesday night at Cornell Cinema to a full house. It was really nice to see her so happy, she was just so excited about sharing her latest cut with an audience. Doing festivals (and later this year, her DVD) for her just made me learn so much about the festivals I am doing for my own last film. I sent out my own film, Alones, to some friends in the industry in LA and got their feedback which was borderline positive. The film is 25 minutes long making it impossible to program, it is also not enough gay, not enough asian, not enough white, not enough student film, etc and it has technical problems in the sound sync and in that it mixes 16mm with DV. So. Right about now, I'm rethinking the 700$ I spent on film festival entries... But I should probably wait another month when the results start rolling in before I decide that it was a complete waste of time. The thing is that I wanted to honor the commitment everyone made and all the work we put into the film by allowing it the possibility of an after-life. And same for Cathy's film, we are going to find its home in the world. My prediction is Cleveland Int'l Film Festival. PS: We have both decided that getting her AND my film selected for the same festival will be super cool.

In the works: a website for Four Line Films (production company) and Alones (that last film I did). Second draft for I, Love and You (the film I am working on right now)
On the speakers: Philip Glass' soundtrack for The Hours.
Under the lamp: Marx's Communist Manifesto (fantastic, thanks Nick!)
On the Calender: Cathy's BDay party tonight post Beth Custer's screening of lost Soviet film, My Grandmother.

It's Done... for now

I finally got the balls to send the script out to all the people in my class and people I'm thinking of collaborating with. It's done... for now. I suck for not updating the blog sooner but I have been really down with work. In other news, I quit my ACP Experimental class... so the work on Thesis is going forward more steadily. I'm taking a breather.. and then the script gets its first rounds of thrashing and beating up.

Need to start casting calls... production start January 2006.