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Alex

New York: The story so far!

19 June, 2007
Alex
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I’ve just received an email from a friend saying that this blog has become a bit technical. I’ve been chasing ratings: I want to keep those people interested in screenwriting and editing coming back for more. That means I’ve neglected family and friends. Sorry about that!

It’s been two weeks and two days of the course and everything is going well. We’ve had an interesting project a week. The first was a short documentary piece – cutting ten minutes of raw footage down to a short piece about using chainsaws to carve wood. Last week’s project was making a scene for an indie movie. This was made more difficult as the twenty minutes of footage was complete improvisation – shot with a single camera, which kept in a close up trying to keep up with three people arguing around a dinner table.

This week finds us working on a scene from a comedy film called ‘The Marconi Bros.’ It is still in post, but we have access to all the takes and setups from a single scene. The lead actor in the film will be hitting your screens this summer in ‘Balls of Fury.’

Sorry the entries on other subjects have been so long. If you skip those and look for the ones categorised ‘Alex,’ the amount of stuff here will be easier to get through.

Alternatively, you can click the Alex category button on the list to the right to see a list of just those entries. Click the title of an entry to read the full text.

Brooklyn Nights

15 June, 2007
Alex, film making, new york
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Over to NY Perks, a very nice venue in Brooklyn, for an evening of short films, including my friend Miles’s premiere of his second short film: Man Up. Got there just in time to be introduced to Jimmy Mar. He is the nicest nutter you could meet. He’s like a cross between Ice Cube and Kevin Smith, but scaled up to giant size. He’s one of the actors in Miles’s film. He and Mr. Robinson are developing a feature film that combines elements of ‘Do the Right Thing’ and ‘Friday.’

The first thing we saw was a trailer for a film with an unusual love triangle. Between a man, a woman and god…. The first short we saw was Squirrel Man by Jeffery Lynn Shepherd. This award winning short uses comedy and action to tell an age-old story in an original way. Once you see this film, you’ll never see feeding squirrels in the park in the same light.

Miles’s film, Man Up came next. It had the same themes as Squirrel man, but was just as unpredictable and original. I would be suprised if you could predict the ending of this one!

The third film was another award-winner: Gabrielle by Stephanie la Keem Jones. This touched on completely different themes – to do with fate and choice and taking the rough with the smooth. It had the feeling of a Twilight Zone episode…

The next projects therefore are the Jimmy Mar project, and a horror film that Miles has the ideal location for…

I also met the lovely Arie Thompson, who is launching an EP at a party next week in Manhattan. She seems like a real go-getter. She had an idea a few weeks ago, put it in motion, and next week she launches more music out into the world. I know it shouldn’t matter, but she’s even more beautiful in person.

Let’s go and see a documentary about Bolivian illegal immigrants…

12 June, 2007
Alex, editing, film making, new york, screenwriting
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…you might want to see this one!

Donna took me along to Paula’s place near the Lincoln Centre to see a rough cut of ‘La Americana.’

This is the docmentary to see if you want to explore the dilemma millions of people all over the world face: Choosing between being with those you love and supporting those you love.

What would you do if you had to go hundreds or thousands of miles to earn money to support your family. Some people don’t see their families for months on end. For illegal immigrants, months can stretch out into years. Imagine leaving your daughter at home and taking the huge risk of attempting to enter the USA illegally in order to earn money that can’t be found in your native Bolivia. What if you left your daughter when she was six, and she was about to turn 15. Imagine how much of her life you’ve missed out on. What if by returning home you cannot support your family any more?

That’s the story of ‘La Americana’ – by Nick Bruckman, Jesse Thomas and John Mattiuzzi.

The film looked very professional: the ‘rough sound mix’ was perfectly fine, with lots of good music; the picture quality was great; the scenes were edited very well and flowed into each other very well. All there is to do is to sort out the structure a little: to concentrate on the primary story to be told.

The reason I’ve venturing an opinion is because the team from People’s Televison, the production company, came up with a detailed questionnaire for the audience that I enjoyed filling in. Of course they basked in the compliments, but the also invited detailed feedback on sections of the film that could do with some improvement.

Most of my ideas were about structure – which came from my understanding of screenplays. I hope my feedback was useful.

Donna’s plan

11 June, 2007
Alex, new york
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Another day, another invite to a New York film community happening!

Firstly Donna’s plan: I showed Donna, Jean, Richard and Mr. Power some of my work at the gallery opening on Friday night. Having seen that Donna thinks I might be able to contribute to a pitch for a campaign for the Japanese National Tourism Organisation. A campaign to get more Japanese Americans to visit Japan. This campaign will also work for others to want to visit Japan. We’re going to meet up tomorrow evening.

Donna’s also been mentoring a documentary maker who’s made a film about Bolivia. At 7, we’re off to a private screening.

More as I have it!

The in sound of Inwood

9 June, 2007
Alex, new york
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Of course there are at least two. The ones north of Washington Heights used to be a single district settled by people from Poland. One side of Broadway features teeming hordes of Hispanic Americans. Ther other is the district that is ‘coming up.’ There are still some places that are affordable for the young creative people coming to make their way in New York.

This evening’s destination was the opening evening for an exhibition at the 207 Gallery. The very reasonably priced pieces are each inspired by New York’s subway system. The most memorable is a huge ball of twine coloured the same as the colour of the A train – the longest route in the system. It is over 31 miles long. The artist discovered exactly how long the route is in miles, feet and inches and made sure that twine making up the ball was exactly the same length.

The magical thing about the evening was the people I met, the people that Jean introduced to me: Tyrel the film maker and artist, Richard the photographer and Donna Tsufura the film maker.

A hulking spelling error

8 June, 2007
Alex, film making
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This morning was about documentary. To inspire us in our task of editing eleven minutes of verité footage down to a sixty second vignette, we were shown a bit of ‘American Dream’ by Barbara Kopple. It is the tale of a meatpacking plant’s attempt to save money by laying off workers and hiring others at reduced rates. It’s workers against the long-term unemployed in a small Minnesota town. It was edited like a feature – with even shorter scenes and bigger elisions between scenes (they ended scenes as soon as possible, starting the following scenes as late as possible in the action). For the first 90 seconds I was trying to work out how things were shot. After that, I started to care about the people involved and their story.

We also saw some clips from ‘Pumping Iron’ – a film that illustrated the world of body-building in the seventies by manufacturing a rivalry between Lou Ferrigno and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The battle was won long ago: my spell checker knows how to spell ‘Schwarzenegger’ but not ‘Ferrigno.’ The clips showed how each man was shot and edited in wildly different ways so as to increase the contrast between them.

We also watched the beginning of Woody Allen’s ‘Husbands and Wives’ – because it used the visual conventions and structure of documentary techniques. The first 10 minutes looked great. I’m looking foward to checking it out.

A New community

6 June, 2007
Alex, new york, screenwriting
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I’ve been very lucky in getting in touch with the New York film community.

My first contact is Miles Maker. He is currently based in New York, but back in 2005, he was in the UK. I edited his first short film back then. He’s done a lot more since. We met up on Sunday at the Entertainment Industry Expo. He introduced me to Jean Prytyskacz who is working on a series of specials on Hip Hop Comedians. She’s invited me to a happening at a gallery in the Inwood area of Manhattan (the latest ‘coming up’ area of New York). There I’ll be meeting more media people.

Miles took me to the soundtrack spotting session at Hughes House for his current short film production. It was inspiring hearing about the artiste’s career and current work. Amazing getting an update on Go-Go music – a genre that deserved to be a much greater movement than it was. I also had an interesting talk with Larry Robinson about new ways of marketing jazz music.

That Sunday night I did a search for “screenwriting new york” on Google. Two seconds later, the first link came up: a meetup of a group on Monday night! The small catch: the meeting was about reviewing a screenplay from a member of the group. I quickly read the first sixty pages on Sunday night, read the following 70 pages after my first day of my course (as well as the course reading homework)!

We all had a great debate about the screenplay and the method used to develop it: Blake Snyder’s 15-beat outlining method. At drinks afterwards, two people asked me to review their screenplays!

Miles and I will also be going to a panel on Thursday evening at the 5th Annual Hip-Hop Odyssey international Film Festival…

…what a friendly town!

Trying again, a log of a freelance editor

28 May, 2007
Alex
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Hello, all. This is where I’ll be keeping us up-to-date with my adventures in editing and design and art and ideas.

To start with an non-sequitur, here is the first in a series of doodles I’ll be posting. Some new, some old: This one is called t-italic. Based on an object I fiddle with. It might keep the RSI away

T italic