« April 2003 | Main | June 2003 »
May 30, 2003
Two Cities of Fun
If you're in Chicago this weekend you'll want to head over WNEP at midnight Saturday night to catch an encore show of Cinema 2.0. The kids will be doing Destroy All Monsters -- a brilliant Japanese giant-monster movie with an all-star giant monster cast. And Japanese ladies in sparkly hoodies. And people who keep flying around in a rocket ship. I'm sure it'll all make sense.
(P.S. WNEP, not the Playground, where the run was. Halsted and Belmont. Halsted and Belmont.)
If you happen to be in St. Louis and aren't sure what to do, oh, 3 hours from now, come on down to CITY Improv at the Union Station and see Bare at the St. Louis Improv Festival at 8:30 tonight.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:32 PM
May 27, 2003
Challenged
I just got back from the showing of The Challenge films. The Challenge is yet-another fast filmmaking project (I was having a conversation at the shoot last night and we were getting each confused between talking about The Challenge, the 48 Hour Film Project and the 72 Hour Feature Project).
The Challenge was a 62 Hour endevour, where screenwriters wrote scripts in 14 hours, production crews shot the shorts in 24 hours, and then editors edited the movies in 24 hours. An interesting twist was that many of the teams (writing, actors and production crews, and editors) were assembled randomly. And if even if you wanted to participate in all three phases of the project, as several people I know did, you still had to hand off your work at each stage to a different team. That was the weirdest part -- to try and film carefully enough that someone else could edit the footage under such time constraints (which care is probably normal good practice for shooting, but is rather different than the majority of the shooting I do for The Neutrino Project or the short I shoot and edit myself for things like the Fast Forward Film Festival or Vidiocy). Even with all my care, I got a little lecture from the editor tonight about things I could have done to make his job easier.
The actual shoot was long and tiring, but fun. We all showed up at 10 am on Saturday, I met the actors and assistant director for the first time, we got our script, and headed out to shoot. Our script called for a burly member of the cast to play a little Chinese girl, and once we had crammed him into a too-small tank top and skirt (and sometimes Depends) all we really had to do was point the camera at him and let the laughter ensue. Matt, the burly one, had also been a screenwriter for the project, so he had had no sleep and was rather loopy. Oh, and we had an 11 year-old in our cast, which kept the cursing down below the level I think we'd usually have on a shoot this time-constrained.
People kept asking me "are you always this patient?" In the morning, the answer was a puzzled "sure, shouldn't I be?" Near the end of our 10-hour shoot I had to grit my teeth to spit out "yes, yes, I'm always this patient."
In the end, our short came out fine. The editors made some different choices than I would have (I'm toying with the idea of doing an edit myself, but I'm not sure how much I care) but people laughed, so it must be all right.
Update: some behind-the-scenes photos.
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:03 AM
Careful What You Wish For
I complained before about not getting cast in a short film a friend of Shaun had written. Well, our friend Lance moved to upstate New York and I inherited his part in the short. Yay for being around.
We did the majority of the shoot on Sunday night. I was very impressed when we showed up at the director's apartment (which was also the set) -- he had built a 6" platform around 3 sides of his dining room for a stedicam operator to circle us while we did the main sequence of the film (a dinner party). And that was cool -- the director had hired a stedicam and it was very interesting to see how that gear works.
But... there was some sort of problem with the stedicam monitor that ate up an hour or so. And there were all the usual things-taking-longer-than-expected problems that any film shoot (heck, any technical project) faces. And I understand that under the best circumstances acting in a film involves a lot of sitting around waiting. But it all added up to a slightly frustrated evening. I was the last to shoot closeups and so I didn't leave until about 3 am.
Double-frustrating was that since we went late, we didn't finish all the shooting. So now I can't change my hair drastically (I was thinking of going blond for the summer again) until we shoot the remaining bits of this short.
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:08 AM | Comments (1)
May 22, 2003
Busy being busy
R. says she thinks I "have this desperation to keep yourself busy to the point of weirdness", that when "you stand still you think you don't exist". Really I just keep saying "yes" to too much. Really.
Things I've said "yes" to this week: staying in Chicago (well, I said "no" to NYC), directing a sketch comedy show (more on that soon, I'm sure), making dubs of a 100 different tapes for 100 different people, and remembering that I said "yes" to a fast filmmaking project a few months ago. That project is turning out to be much more complicated than I had thought.
When I do the Fast Forward, for example, I'm only screwing over myself and a few of my close friends if what I turn in isn't great. It's very freeing. But with the way this Challenge is structured I'm responsible for the success of writers and actors I've never met before. Eek.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:30 PM | Comments (2)
May 16, 2003
Snip snip
I feel a bit like Kevin Costner in the Big Chill (as in, he's not in there). Nina Metz wrote a very nice article that was in the Tribune yesterday about the Fast Forward Film Fest and similar events. I answered an extensive email interview for her for the article, but all my comments that she put in the article got snip-snipped by her editor. She did plug the combo Neutrino show in a side bar, though.
Speaking of that show, it was a hoot. The 7 pm show was great, with both groups doing fine work. For the 9 pm show we abandoned our usual narrative forms, mixed the actors and crews up between cities, and produced 21 distinct short films. People did lots of keeer-aze and experimental stuff -- from incredible camera work from Adam Devlin-Brown to people just getting naked. Oh, and I got a tattoo. In the show.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:14 AM | Comments (1)
May 9, 2003
Critic's Choice
Things are heating up as we move towards the Chicago Improv Festival. I've been spending all my time editing video for a play called Versailles that opens on Monday. And I've been spending all my time getting ready for doing The Neutrino Project at the CIF on Thursday. Which is 2 x "all my time". Oh, and we got the MSI gig. And Bare will be up at the CIF on Friday. Anything else?
Oh yeah, The Neutrino Project/Neutrino Video Projects is a Critic's Choice in this week's Chicago Reader.
We had a Neutrino Project rehearsal this week. We spent the first hour watching a great (and hilarious, but great nonetheless) video, Michael Caine on Acting in Film. We devised a great drinking game where you do a shot every time Michael Caine says, "Here, let me sit there and show you."
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:21 PM
May 6, 2003
Cool As Smurf
Well, we made it. Eight bad movies. Eight hi-larious make-em-ups.
Cool As Ice. What can I say. Vanilla Ice had one hit and someone rushed him into this movie, which is (vaguely) a remake of Rebel Without a Cause. It's painfully obvious at various points in the movie that they really only had 70 minutes or so of story and they padded and padded.
Emily Dugan went above and beyond rapping as "Papa Smurf" (as Vanilla Ice became in our version). Everyone in the cast got to show off the talents that they've developed over the last two months. Todd Leibov rocked out with the Casio RapMaster and Ben funked out on the bass. And then we had cake.
This was the only movie in the Cinema 2.0 series that was not available on DVD. My friend Merrie loaned me her precious VHS copy to dub for the show. She also loaned us the Cool As Ice soundtrack for our house music. (Merrie, get help.) I also threw the Gourds' version of Gin and Juice and Ben Kweller's BK Baby into the mix.
And... it's not over! We're doing a special show over at WNEP Theater as part of their Around Midnite Series. Saturday, May 31, at midnight. It's only $5 and we'll probably be doing a Japanese giant monster movie, since we didn't include one of those in this run. (I was publicizing a different date for a short while, but this is now the correct date.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:51 AM | Comments (2)
May 2, 2003
Bittersweet
I had a busy night last night -- right after work there was a "roast" for our retired Executive Editor, Arthur Kretchmer, who had that position for 30 years. Two highlights of a packed evening -- the best steak I've ever eaten (we were at Gibsons) and a woman jumped out of a cake. Well, popped out -- there wasn't much jumping. I've never seen that, except in movies and cartoons. I was curious, so I asked the person who organized the cake/woman/popping -- did she supply her own cake? No. He rented the cake and then hired the woman. Noted.
After the dinner, I ran off to see 2 Skinnie Js at the Bottom Lounge. The roast had gone on a little longer than I thought it would, and I had left my ticket to the show at home, so I was worried that I was going to miss part of the show. I did miss the opening band (sorry Bicycle, Tricycle) but I got there just in time to see the whole 2SJs set. It was a kick-ass show. Too bad they're breaking up. Quick! Become a 2SJs fan, before it's too late.
I've only really gotten to know Arthur over the last year or so, as he was preparing to leave. And I became a big 2 Skinnie Js fan just in time for their farewell tour. Sigh.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:28 AM
May 1, 2003
Yet Another Dubbing Show
There's a new TV show called Kung Faux that's doing dubbed Kung Fu movies, cut down to half an hour, with rapper guest stars.
And we've got our own rapper guest star for Cinema 2.0 this week. For closing night we're doing Cool As Ice. Word.
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:48 PM