35MPH

I like it. Of course, like you say, it all depends on the writing whether it’s Hemmingway-esque or a bad episode of Saved by the Bell. I’ll reserve judgement until then.

I think this group could very much understand the characters and the situation. While I wouldn’t say any of us have been there, I think we could all imagine it quite readily.

It’s also a very realistic concept in that the production requirements are minimal. Dialogue, location establishing shots, no effects. Unfortunately, the quality of the final product would almost entirely rest on the ability (and confidence) of the actors we had.

As a realistic show piece it would need to fall into the sub-twenty minutes category, which it sounds as if that’s where you’d be aiming. This would land it cleanly in the “shorts” category of most film festivals (I’m sure that was your plan).

In regards to flashbacks: personally, I love playing with temporal structure and am envious of directors who do it masterfully. Obviously our past efforts have specifically been built around that concept. While we don’t want to go overboard, it’d be fun to break away from the normal by playing an interesting twist on flashbacks.

Do you have anyone in mind to play the parts? Two main characters, max?

Howdy all! After several false starts, I’m off and running on the 35mph blog! More grabass from my blog, which is grabass from life as a grad student.

Alright…here’s my life, and here’s what I would like to do. I graduate in May, pass through NWArk beginning of June, and then spend June and July teaching creative writing to high schoolers in Kansas. After that, I’ve got no job, but lots of plans. If I find work between now and then, I’ll probably have a week or two to dick around, but if not, the tentative plan is for me to pull up in Fayetteville for a month or six weeks, and try to find some part-time work in production…work some commercial shoots or try to find a film in the area to PA for.

I also want to make a film, and since this is up and established and looking for work, here’s my pitch.

Log Line - A recent college graduate and his drug addict friend take one last road trip through their home state, before the addict unwittingly begins drug rehab.

Story - Matt, a college grad, heads out to Nashville to start a job and find his life. With him is Dennis, his oldest friend, who plans to start anew in Nashville again. But Matt plans a stop in Little Rock to take the unaware Dennis to drug rehab. The film chronicles the drive, and acts as a Hemingway short story, where they talk about everything but the problem that they both know is a wedge between them.

We’re looking at 10-12 minutes, mostly taking place along I-40 as I see it, with the possibility of flashbacks…but flashbacks have the ability to take serious topics and turn them schmaltzy, and I’m interested in chronicling friendship rather than drug addiction…Matt believes this is their last road trip, as everything will be different once Dennis starts rehab. And he’s correct. The quesiton at the crux of this — how would you say goodbye to a friend?

I’m working out first draft in my spare time, and wrestling questions about how to make this a drama of the mind rather than an after-school special (which it could easily tend towards if not kept in check). So that’s that. If it sounds interesting, let me know. If not, I’ve got another short that could be easier to film.

Excellent stuff, Bennett. Photoshop would definitely make it easier. But it never hurts to get your hands dirty. Sometimes the ease of Photoshop let’s you fly by the better options. In other words, when it’s so easy to make things complex, the number one rule of “keep it simple stupid” often gets overlooked.

So, you actually used scissors to cut up some prints? Jonesing for some arts & crafts time, Bennett? Think you guys will want to volunteer in this Film Festival with me? Take some time off and come up here?

Troy, you’ve been an awefully busy guy lately. Sounds tiresome, yet exciting!

Here’s the project I was working on a couple of weeks ago. Right now it’s just fragments of photographs placed on white poster board. It took a few hours to do and I think I’ll do it in Photoshop next time. The flash on my camera and a much too wide lens combined to make the thing look contorted and blown out. The lines are straight in real life. Here’s a crumby photo of it.

35mphlogo.jpg

Let me know what you think.

Sorry I haven’t posted much lately. I’ve been smashed at work with a full plate. Just a bit of info…

For most of February I was traveling around the country talking to publishers about our latest tech, RenderWare4. It’s something we’ve had in development for over two years now, and it still has another year before it will be finished. It’s aimed at the next generation of video game consoles (PlayStation3, Xbox2) and is a complete re-write of everything we currently offer. Really cool shit and it’s leaving a lot of people speechless.

March was pretty packed as well. I was at home in the office, but there were a lot of distractions. I’ve been working with a 3D tools company, Alias, makers of the modelling package Maya, to create a “cinematic real-time” demo for current and next generation hardware. It’s been really cool. I believe I’ve mentioned it before. I was working with art production house MondoMedia, who famously have worked on the cinematics for a recent James Bond game, 007: Nightfire.

The first milestone for our demo was GDC (which took place last week) and I only got the final artwork the Friday before. Needless to say I spent several long nights over the weekend working on this (until 4am Sunday morning and 5am Monday morning) because I had to get on a plane 930am Monday morning. Unfortunately, I didn’t get it as far as I wanted to (just the environments were rendering, none of the characters or special effects). Needless to say, I was a bit wasted at the end of the day Monday after nearly 48 hours without a single full nights sleep.

Going on in parallel with the demo at work was SXSW at home. Elizabeth and I (as well some friends of ours, Ben and Jenny) picked up film passes. There were definitely soom good flicks and I wasn’t disappointed with anything we saw. One of the highlights was Bush’s Brain which we were at the world premiere of.

GDC (the Game Developer’s Conference) was last week. Pretty cool stuff. We were one of the most dominant forces there with a huge presence on the show floor and meetings with most of the top movers and shakers in the industry.

But beyond the business stuff, the week was quite interesting in the “after hours” scene. To kick things off, Sony hosted an invite-only party Wednesday night. I was lucky that my Sony meeting was during the day Wednesday so I was able to get a ticket. The party kicked off as a fairly standard one: more free alcohol than is healthy, a huge assorment of food and a very decent club DJ on the turntables. They had some interesting big-screen visuals with the music, most of them tape loops of random things. The night got really interesting when the main act came on. The Crystal Method. These guys can put on a helluva show, even though it’s just two guys who look like they just arrived from watching football/soccer game down at the local pub. The show was awesome. I was about five feet from the stage and the music was about as loud as I can ever remember music being. I’m worried that I may have potentially vibrated my organs into different positions with their ultra-low bass beats. I didn’t have my camera with me, but a friend did and he promised to forward his pics. If you check out their website linked above, under the photo sections, there are some pics from their recent LOB tour where they stopped off in Austin (for SXSW) and the setup looked pretty similar.

The next night had two big headliner parties, one at the “cocktail hour” and the other post-dinner. The first was put on by Criterion (that’s me) and Sammy Studios, a big Japanese video game maker who’s been building a big American precense (the US division is a customer of ours). The second party was Microsoft’s Xbox party: Risque Cafe. Unfortunately, Microsoft is not quite as good at throwing parties as Sony. I guess Sony has all of these bands on their payroll (Sony Music, Columbia), whereas Microsoft does not. They just had a DJ (but of course had the required copious alcohol and food). They did have freshly hand-rolled cigars, though because it’s California, you had to head outside to smoke them (where you couldn’t take your drinks — tough choice for some!). They also had free massages, etc. I hung out for an hour or so shooting the shit with a friend while we finished our cigars then I hit the road for the evening.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. I’m about to dig into doing my taxes. How fun. Mr. Rolin Moe has asked to join our little blog to present an idea, so I’ve invited him to join. Rolin, take it away…

I shot three commercials on Monday. It was “run and gun” all day long, but we shot inside a Lasik surgery clinic for eye correction. It was quite interesting and gave me an opportunity to experience fitting the gear for a full production into a tiny space. We also used some creative light tricks to enhance the color of the lasers and such. It was a really fun shoot.

I also may be able to do a little traveling soon. I have lots of loose ends to tie up first, but everyone else at work is done with their vacations, so maybe I could take a little time off soon. Let me know of anything in your respective locations that would be exciting and cool. This doesn’t apply to CJ, as I know what is going on here all too well.

Where did everyone go?

Well, its been a while — regardless, I have some news that may be of interest to everyone. A new film festival — likened to the Sundances, Tellurides, and Cannes of the film world — is springing legs in Jackson Hole. Called the Jackson Hole Film Festival, it is going to bring top notch indie features and shorts to Teton County, Wyoming. All just in time for the Fall “off-season” — which won’t be an off-season anymore if this thing sticks around. I plan to attend and probably volunteer. Can’t hurt to rub elbows with these guys.