Happy 4th of July!  Today’s a fantastic day to hang with friends, watch fireworks, dance until 4am, and engage in all sorts of merriment.

Before I head out to do just that, I wanted to share something with you. Over a year ago I made a film that should never have seen the light of day. Countless near misses with City Officials ($4000+ filming fees, mountains of permits/etc., police harassment), hours of footage accidentally and irrevocably deleted, and almost unusable sound. Add those issues to the fact that I started and shuttered a company and started full-time with Involver less than 2 months after shooting was wrapped on this film and you can see why I’d buried this as the project that was destined to remain unfinished.

Due to some encouragement from the lead actress, and countless hours of basically pro-bono work from the film’s editor, it is actually going to get a shot at being seen. Can’t tell you how happy I am for this.

This film was written at a dark point, a place where I was unhappy with almost everything other than my art (and even then I was mostly unhappy about that). Looking back on it from today, I think it contains a valuable message, an idea that one can cling to in hardship and float to safety on.  Your road may not be well-marked or well-understood, but you can still take it.  Remember: “highways lead to where you don’t wanna be.”

I hope you’ll enjoy this *very rough* clip of Divergent Roads that I submit for your viewing pleasure:

I’m creating a commercial right now for the fourth project at my film school. It’s a standard 30 second spot and is centered around helping people find out what’s happening at night. I’m taking a non-conventional slant for distribution, instead of having a client who collaborates on the project I’m making my best guess at what the market wants. There is a certain risk associated with getting a commercial which is if you don’t pick the right filmmaker you don’t get what you want. If I can remove this risk and deliver a concrete product instead of a dream there may be a market that could be captured there. This is my flagship test into this idea and I’m excited to see how it goes. There are some variables in terms of creating the right product so that it fits the markets needs, I will figure those out soon (hopefully). Until then, this project has been a whole bucket of fun.

We filmed Friday, in an extraordinarily tight time frame (good work cast/crew!), my first project with DP George Manatos made me ecstatic. He’s extraordinary… glad to be working with him. We filmed in the Dogpatch and it was great to get some visuals in the “real” San Francisco. The historic district offers both community and industry in a well oiled package that would be circa 1930 if it weren’t for the excellent design elements that have been added in the mean time and the brand new T-Line. It’s simply beautiful. I’ll be sure to post the footage once it’s done.

OK, so I’m not sure how ethical it would be for me to tell you about the concept or video, so I won’t. I got my first paid film gig, monday and tuesday of this week. It’s a really neat music video. Clearly I’m low on the totem pole so I’m not told any important details, just when to show up. Once I get here this morning it takes me like .3 seconds to figure out who the band is. It’s The Matches, one of my favorite local bands. I’m really looking forward to nailing this video and being a part of Matches awesomeness.

The video is gonna kick some major ass, so look out for it and go see this L3 show at a venue near you when they start the tour (Feb. 2). So sweet, my first gig rocks! Gonna go spend the rest of the day with the band, sa-weet.

What a Gem! an online version of Kubrick’s first film. Worth the watch to see where he started and it’s actually a pretty interesting short film.It’s a 16 minute long look at a prizefighter on the day of a big fight.

I have been fully remiss in putting up my notes from Carson System’s Future of Web Applications… I am working on it. The reason I’ve taken so long is due to my busy schedule. I have a new job (more on this later) and I’m working on an expirimental film.

The film is a very cool concept, a visual metaphor for a tough, everyday human issue. It has really expanded my view on how to deliver messages and allows me to try new ways to do what I feel film should do… to question the way people see reality and try to give the viewers a new way to see things. I like films that challenge the status quo and make me think, therefore I’m exploring those types of films.

In exploring that I have found some pretty interesting problems. I have been running drafts of my script past some scriptwriters from my school and have found two major objections. The first is that some people don’t get it, it’s hard to see a visual metaphor on paper, but this still concerns me to some degree. I’m trying to figure out how to balance subtlety with universal understanding. What percentage of the audience has to “get it” for me to consider the film a success? A seemless balance where those who don’t get it still walk away entertained would be perfect (think of the simpsons, and the use of obscure references in that show), but I don’t think I’m going to get that when dealing with this subject matter (I am using a pretty vile metaphor for the real issue and when the scene involves kidnapping, torture, and ultimately murder, a viewer with a literal interpretation is probably not going to leave feeling all that good. I don’t want to be so obvious as to lose the surprise (and therefore lose the ability to really challenge someones established thought process) but I don’t want to be so subtle that only I get it. What’s the happy medium here? I’ve settled on 50-70% — as long as 5-7/10 people get the concept I’ll label it a successfully told story. The other issue is how to challenge the audience, if you are trying to attach a message or a thought to the film it’s hard to attract the people who disagree. How do you get them to give your argument a chance? I hypothosize that it’s best to avoid letting them know what the argument truly is for as long as possible. So I’m using a metaphor to try and then draw the correlation at the end and have people realize what the topic is after they have already heard the “pitch” so to speak.

This is all a guesstimation on my part and I suppose I’ll have to gauge audience reaction to this film and see what I need to refine. Anyway working title is Mental Animals, look for it in about 5 weeks. There will be at least one showing in the city and hopefully a few more – I hope some of you will be able to make it.