Five of my students have completed their second short film entitled SHATTERED. Mike Montesa, Peter Lowry, Lindsey Black, Brandown Marsala and Carlos Espinosa have dubbed their production group YumYum2 (I have no idea why). As you can see by the production stills, they’ve got a nice looking film. (You can see a few more stills and their VOLITION Poster on the same site.)
They’re getting ready to do the Film Festival Circuit (as soon as they get music clearance handled). The film is well-acted and visually compelling. They shot on mini-DV and then used two different post-production processes on the footage. Being the total techno-geek-nerd that I am, it was as exciting to see how these two processes effected the impact of the film.
They decided to use the Red Giant Plug-in Magic Bullet 1.x with the Berlin style option to make a cooler, more remote feeling film. The filter was simply dropped on the timeline and allowed to render. It took several hours for the five-minute film.
Then they used the NIK Color Efex Pro plug-in on the C41 to E6 conversion for a warmer feeling film. This required that they output the film as stills to be Batch Processed in Photoshop CS. There were 10,400 digital frames that took 4 DAYS to process. Then, the stills needed to be stitched together again in AfterEffects. It was an arduous process that crashed several times.
Ultimately, the question is how it affected the film. The audience watched it both ways. The general consensus was that the Magic Bullet Berlin version was more appealing for this particular film. There was an amazing amount of detail that was still visible in the NIK version.
For those who are unfamiliar with Mesa Community College, it is one of the largest (if not THE largest) community college in the United States. We have an average of 28,000 students per semester. The headcount in my program alone is 408 students.
Each year, we have an annual juried art show. The 1500 art students per term produce three to five pieces of art. The results in a potential 9,000 to 15,000 works that are eligible for the annual show. Of that number about 250 are selected. There are prizes for Best of Medium, Emerging Talent and Juror’s Choice. The top prize is BEST OF SHOW and, this year, the best of show went to Digital Filmmaking student Stephen Olmstead. To be fair, Stephen also took photography, drawing and design courses at MCC so it’s appropriate that he would win Best of Show.
His winning film was entitled Losing Jim. The cinematography is excellent. Since Stephen is also a musician, it’s not surprising that the music was terrific. This week, Kai Kim (MCC Drawing & Design Professor) and I will have the pleasure of attending the annual awards banquet at the college for the purpose of presenting Stephen with the award. Sweeeeeeet.
Danny Boyle podcasts on MILLIONSFox Searchlight has posted the Danny Boyle Weekend Read which includes a terrific 5 minute Danny Boyle Podcast about his effort to make and distribute MILLIONS. MILLIONS is the story of what happens when two orphaned boys find a suitcase of money. Boyle refers to MILLIONS as SHALLOW GRAVE for children.
I’m particularly fond of Boyle’s low-budget, digital feature 28 DAYS LATER. It’s sort of a darker, grittier, the logical extreme of Terry Gilliam’s 12 MONKEYS. One of my favorite things in the film is Toby Sedgwick’s infected priest. On the Sundance Channel, there was an ANATOMY OF A SCENE episode in which Sedgwick shared how he developed the chaotic body movement of the character. It’s worth watching just to see what he does with that character.
Morgan Spurlock’s 30 DAYS on FXIn last week’s podcast, I spoke with Mike Luciano about the new Morgan Spurlock series 30 DAYS on FX. Morgan Spurlock is, in my opinion, the classic Sundance Success Story.
Spurlock made an engrossing, informative, entertaining documentary with virtually no money. He was smart about the topic of his documentary. Using his body as a (relatively) scientific laboratory, he ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days. The success of that film and the formula he used led to his own series on FX. Now, a mainstream producer/director, Spurlock has parlayed his skill and savvy into his own series.
Like Angela Robinson (who made the transition with Disney’s HERBIE, FULLY LOADED) and Jared Hess (who was featured in Vanity Fair as one of the hot new directors), Spurlock is living the cinema dream.
