'Working Title' production vlog 2

It's funny how when I'm at my busiest, but getting into a routine, I am managing to shoot quite a bit, and some pretty good stuff. It actually helps keep me fresh to have some days and hours where I am completely removed from filmmaking, like I used to last year when I made tons of shorts and had a blast doing it.

This past Sunday I shot on a four hour field trip driving around to various locations I had in mind for a long time. In doing that, I became so comfortable with handheld while driving (don't try this at home, kids), that I took my Casio on my commute today and caught some great stuff in a rain storm. At home, I reveled in the raindrops on my windows and played with both the Casio and the miniDV. I still won't give up on that camera! Here are a few clips of what I've shot with various cameras on different settings in various places over the past few days.

'Working Title' dailies

In preparation this week, I worked very hard to give myself room for a "create day". Nothing but artwork today for me. With all I have going on now, with three new clients in my regular business, making 'Working Title' continues to be a challenge. Now because of time and energy. It's important for me to have a full day to give my brain time to turn off and reset, for my health and for the project. Success!

To allow my creativity to come back, I did a go-slow this morning and only replied to one email to a close friend. I am not obsessively checking email or twitter. I was rewarded with the tingles and many feel-good moments while discovering new music with my new iTunes 9 (pretty sweet), and my first creation was an impromptu poem. That got the juices flowing.

I decided against shooting, which was my die hard plan for this weekend, part of the self-imposed, forced "make the damn movie, Lee!". I need a free create day, not a scheduled one. So after my excellent reset a.m., I did feel like working on the film and enjoyed organizing all the stills I've shot so far. I plan to use stills in the film itself, and I have some good sets to use flip-book animation style, as well as some for nice pauses in the story.

Next I started watching all the footage I've shot so far and titling and categorizing the short clips, all between a few seconds and a few minutes long. If anything, I over shoot. I don't know yet if that is good or bad, but I do it. For example, today I revisited 4 clips of the same spider walking up a curtain and 8 clips of my closet. That's right, a bit monotonous, but my eye wants options.

When you shoot with your still camera, your camcorder, and your laptop, each of these formats ends up somewhere different on your computer when you upload. So I'm finding all those events and clips and shots and naming them appropriately so I can cut together much more quickly when the time comes. I'm also deleting or moving the reels that I know I don't want to use.

I had already started a preliminary cut of the first part of the film to help me see what I needed to shoot to fill in the holes. Now I plan to do more of that with my newly labeled pieces of 'Working Title'. Dailies, weeklies, and monthlies. It's great to be inside of me, free, and still getting work done on the project!

'Working Title' production vlog 1

Here's a little treat from today's shoot. I remembered a couple of days ago about my iSight camera and how great it had served me for 'Absorbed'. And having to be ultra creative due to no help on the film right now, I decided to try shooting in the car on my own, with my laptop in the passenger seat. It worked!

I also tested out some handheld with my Casio. But I have to save something for the movie.

Stay tuned for the occasional vlog during production and post.

'Working Title' now in production

August was a crazy month, what with festival screenings in France, Italy, and online, interns, and fund-raising for 'Working Title'. I've been amiss to not keep you more updated on the new film, so here are some of the highlights.

Emily and I have been meeting weekly and in August turned our attention away from festival entries and networking to put most of our time and energy into getting through the remaining pre-production tasks for WT. I put in many additional hours organizing shooting priorities in light of the circumstances of possibly losing the main location, my own apartment. I was finally hit by the rotten economy and lost work for a couple of months. Instead of grinding to a halt on filmmaking, I took advantage of the extra time and set aside financial concerns and any task that required money. Fast forward, I still have my apartment and have paid work coming in now, and the fire lit under my butt was helpful and got us into production.

Pre-production has overlapped, however. Casting is an adventure, and I thought it would go so easily, because there is only one major role to cast. Ha. I've so far avoided Craigslist and tried casting sites such as ExploreTalent.com. But perhaps because the male lead part is so small, and unpaid, we have gotten little response. I've been reading my books and zines, and I know that I shouldn't be married to ethnicity in a role, but it is very important in this film. So the search continues. I've recently joined a Ning group Tarheel Films and posted a casting call there, as well as on the NC State list serve.

Shooting is now underway, but has been problematic. I had built the film's budget around a camera as my main expense, but I had not raised enough money, had lost my only income, and with seasons changing I couldn't wait any longer to begin, already past my original production goals. A promised loaner camera fell through also. So we are shooting the film with the consumer grade equipment already in my possession.

After my first full day of shooting, I was very disappointed with my miniDV camcorder that I had used to shoot 'Light'. For that film, I was focused directly on the sun, so light was not an issue. And the piece was so experimental, that I was not concerned with a perfect picture. But for 'Working Title' you will have to see the actors clearly in varying degrees of light (consumer grade camcorders are notorious for poor quality in less than bright light), and the footage has an annoying jagged outline on shots that are not close-ups of moving objects.

So I turned to my Casio still camera with the groovy video setting. Against my expectations, the picture quality is actually superior to the miniDV, but you know what issues that brings up--only 15 minutes of memory, short battery life with no power cord, and no manual settings, like shutter speed. We are doing some shots in a moving car, and shutter speed is an issue there.

But guess what? We are in production. Each camera is being used for the shots it is best suited. I take heart in the times we live in and all the support lately for no-budget films in the big festivals. I cannot sit and wait for money or cameras to fall from the sky. The year is passing quickly, the light is dying, the will, energy, and inspiration are waning. And a busy life goes on and on.

'Working Title' will be grittier than I had hoped. But that's ok, actually. This is how I've learned to make films, with what I have and what comes along. My goal is to complete shooting by the end of September and finish post by November 1st. More on that as time passes.

an Intern PA's perspective

Hey everyone! This is Emily, Lee's handy intern. She's asked me to write a post for her blog and gave me pretty much free rein in what to write about.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself first. I'm 21 and a recent graduate from North Carolina State University with a degree in Communication Media.

You never understand how much work a Hollywood director has to do to get where he is until you see someone start virtually from the beginning. Working with Lee has shown me how much effort and knowledge is needed to get a project going. You can't just wake up one day and say "I want to make a movie". Well, you can, but there is no guarantee that you'll produce anything worth watching.

'Working Title' has been in planning for at least a year. A year of developing scenes, finding locations, generally getting all the background work done. When I starting working with Lee a couple of months ago, all that was left was basically to film it and to work out a few kinks in the system.

Interning with Lee has given me a lot of hands-on experience that couldn't be gained from reading a text book. I've learned how one goes about entering festivals, as well as how hard it is to actually get accepted. I've learned how important social media can be, such as spreading the word on Twitter and Myspace.

Even with all that we have done, we still have a lot to do on the film. There are more scenes that need to be filmed, not to mention all the editing that goes on at the end. So all I can say is stay tuned to the Heaven and Hell Productions blog, and on Twitter, and follow along with our progress as we complete our first full-length film.

~Emily

Digifestival V voting begins!

There were some technical difficulties with the online film and video festival Digifestival V, originally scheduled to begin on August 15. But now everything is rolling, and the competition has begun!

My short film 'Light' is now in its online premiere, only for the run of this festival. This is probably your only chance to see this film in full online, so I do hope you take this chance to see it. 'Light' is an experimental film with my own music, and it has screened in festivals in Wilmington NC and Hot Springs AR.

An added bonus, I found out recently that two of my films were selected to compete, not just 'Light', as I was originally told. So both 'Light on the Creek' and 'Light' are up on the site and in competition in the Videoart category. That was a great surprise.

Here's how voting works: Go to the Digifestival.net site, scroll down to the categories, and click on Videoart. There you will find both of my film titles in the list. Click on a title, and my page will come up with the video in two formats. I recommend you watch the smaller screen version (the first option), because the larger size is not as good quality. But you can try both.

Below the video on the right are the rating options. Pick your choice there, and go back to the Videoart page to watch my other film.

I recommend you watch lots of other great short films while you are on the site. This is a nice opportunity for the filmmakers chosen to have international exposure and a shot at digital distribution via the Italian based company that runs Digifestival. Winners will also screen live in Italy.

Voting is open until September 15. Thank you for participating, I hope you enjoy the festival!

'How do I get my title on IMDb?'

I've had a few people ask me how they can get their films listed on IMDb. And who wouldn't want to? I'll tell you how it happened for me and some ways you can get your films, and a director page, onto the ultimate movie industry listing, Internet Movie Database.

The way it happened for me was a bit different than how it works now. Because I was invited to list on IMDb right before they began automatically inviting a much larger number of people. I started getting IMDb invitations for pages back in November of 2008. This was because of acceptances and screenings at festivals and winning an award at a festival that was listed on Withoutabox, a partner of IMDb.

Withoutabox, or WAB, and IMDb are owned by Amazon now. And these two film industry sites work very closely together, much more closely and out in the open than they did even last year. Withoutabox is a service for festivals and filmmakers, free of charge, with optional paid features. And as you know, IMDb is THE listing site for films, directors, cast, crew and everyone in the industry. IMDb pro is a paid service and allows members to obtain each other's contact info so they can deal and schmooze. I have not yet joined pro, but hope to at some point to benefit from an ad-free director's page and having my awards and resume posted, etc.

More about WAB later, but to get to the question at hand, the easiest, fastest way to get your title on IMDb, is to enter a festival through the WAB site. That's it. You do not need to be accepted to a festival, you just have to use the service to enter a festival. I'm not totally jazzed about this new policy (that started in December 2008), because to enter a festival, you don't need to have any kind of authorization that you are serious about filmmaking on any level. And now even those people can get pages on IMDb. But so it is. Remember, we are talking about Amazon and money...and more money. With IMDbs push to have filmmakers post videos, they get more hits and more ad hits. The more pages they offer to filmmakers, the more hits, and so on. And even though both WAB and IMDb are free to use, whenever you enter a festival on WAB, you pay the festival a fee, and there must be some money going to WAB from that income, or from fees to festivals. I don't know how that works, because I use the filmmaker side.

But I can forgive this new rule of 'everyone's in', because my work is on the edge of the shot-with-your-camera-phone type of filmmaking. And in this climate, we should encourage anyone to make films anyway they can. And that is being encouraged for financial benefits by many companies now (contests by cell phone companies, for example). But it is also starting to be recognized by festivals as a potentially legit creative medium. Who am I to take exception to that? I can't, and I don't.

Anyway, editorializing aside, list your projects on WAB, enter a festival, and as far as I understand it, you will get an email granting you a page, or pages, on IMDb. Then what happens? Long, long internet forms to fill out! They are continually updating this process since December (I've had to fill out forms a few times over the months for a few titles), and hopefully by now it is easier to enter the code they send you in your invitation email. Or there may even be a direct link option. I did receive some direct links, but they did not always work at the time. Just do your best to follow the directions in your invitation email. And follow the sometimes complicated instructions on the IMDb forms to the letter. All the detailed help info you need is on IMDb, they are great about that.

Also, once you are on WAB, that site now has links directly under your project to add video to your IMDb page or to visit your page. And to tell you how to get a page if you don't have one. Pretty much what I've told you here.

The other way, the old fashioned way--request an IMDb page, fill out even longer forms with verifying links of various types, and wait...wait. It's a longer wait for approval, if you get it, when you do it this way. But it is an option. For example, if you entered a festival that is listed on WAB, but you did not enter it through WAB, and you can give IMDb verification of this via a link to the festival's program on their website, you should be in. But you will still have to wait longer than if you entered the fest on WAB.

Now, getting on to WAB...just do it. This is the best way to get massive listings of festivals with direct access to enter them. You have to list every tiny little detail about your film, a bio, synopsis, run time, screening format, exhibition format, your favorite color. And it is totally worth it! Once you have set up your project (just go to the site and follow directions, and give yourself plenty of time), you can enter festivals at the click of a button, super easy. Choose festivals from your shortlist, emails that WAB sends to you, or you can search for festival city, keywords, type of films they accept, and more.

I learned an invaluable amount about my own projects and festivals by starting out with Withoutabox. It was later that I found other resources for experimental filmmakers out there, and starting entering more European and no-fee fests, which are not as common on WAB. I highly recommend you get onto WAB asap.

If any of you have updated info on any of this that does not match what I've said, please leave a comment here, thank you! See you on IMDb!