larry hagman's news and notes 12.3.12

I want to open up with a belated farewell to Larry Hagman. Apart from his success on I Dream of Jeannie, Mr. Hagman created one of the best and most iconic TV villains of all time with J.R. Ewing on Dallas. Thanks to nights spent at my Grandmother's house, J.R. is absolutely ingrained in my memory and I think he made such an impact that he influences my definition of a certain brand of villainy and smarm. My Grandmother loved Dallas and J.R. was, as the phrase goes, the man she "loved to hate." (In fact, I would be surprised if that phrase wasn't coined in reference to J.R.) You have to give credit to Hagman for turning the series into a phenomenon. He could have phoned it in and made all the obvious choices on this primetime soap opera, but instead his performance was as charming as it was slimy and he turned a character that could have been completely one dimensional into the portrait of a complicated, Southern oil magnate that kept audiences guessing and loving to hate. I'll say it again: we love 70s/80s TV here and Larry Hagman was as it big as it gets. Mess with J.R. and you get open-hand slapped.

Now for the WSF news. Last week was a mess. I know. I completely dropped the ball on Indie Wednesday and there was no edit update. But mark my words, we will make up for it this week. Oh, yes. We will make up for it. Here's how the week is going to break down...

TUESDAY:  Come right back here tomorrow morning for the big advertising/business-changing opportunity announcement that I've been talking about. If you're a business owner, you're going to want to see it before anyone else does.

WEDNESDAY:  Indie Wednesday will be back better than ever. I swear it.

WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY:  Edit party. On Wednesday or Thursday we're having an edit party. Big time. And the whole gang gets to be there. Again, we might test the live stream of our edit party and if we do, you'll get a notice shortly ahead of time on our Tweeter or Facebook page. Also on the agenda for that meeting is some longterm planning. (Did that sentence have a dangling participle? ...I don't care, I dig it.) Todd, Allen, and myself will take the opportunity to lay out some major goals and make a WSF plan for the next few years. I'm excited. We're ready for it and it needs to be done. There may be some announcements that could come from it and, if so, you'll see them here.
So be sure to keep an eye on things here all week.

In other news, last week was big for us on the internets. Quite a bit of interest and some exciting correspondence from different folks and filmmakers and fans. One tidbit that I can go ahead and tease is that it sounds like Bizarnival may be part of a screening of short films in Lexington next month. It's a small program of shorts and one of the organizers reached out to us. Sounds cool to me. More on that as we hear it.

Have a great week and we'll see you tomorrow for announcement time!

news and notes 11.26.12

One of the Episode 5 storyboards drawn (quickly) with Adobe Ideas.

I spent the Turkey Weekend doing some storyboarding for our next Space Cops shoot. Can you tell? I've been experimenting with a production app called ShotList. It's a nifty little program that has the potential to be quite helpful to us on future shoots. We don't always have the time or the manpower to have a script supervisor, but I'm hoping having a detailed shot list on the iPad will make us that much more efficient.

ShotList allows you to plan your shooting schedule. You can add, edit, delete or reorder any of your scenes at any point across multiple days and update their status as you go. You can store up to six images (such as storyboards) on every scene. (By the way, I draw the storyboards on another great app called Adobe Ideas. If you like to draw, get it. For my money, it's the best art app I've seen.) From what I've been able to do on ShotList so far, I would recommend the app to anyone looking for help in scheduling their shoots. There is one other app called Shotlister (confusing, I know) that I would recommend looking at as well. Shotlister does realtime tracking of your progress to let you know whether or not you're on schedule. That sounds amazing, but personally I'm not sure I could schedule my shoots down to the minute. Who knows, maybe it's worth a try.

Tomorrow is an editing party! We'll be doing some more work on Episode 4 and we might experiment with streaming it live on YouTube/Google+. If we do, we'll send a last minute tweet or Facebook post to warn anyone who might be super interested. It's going to happen sooner or later and tomorrow might be a test.

Also, I have every intention of a special post this week. I've talked about it here briefly before. It's an opportunity for anyone who wants to do something special and amazing to market their business. If you want to grab attention, this is the post you're going to want to see. Stay tuned for that and more this week including Indie Wednesday.

indie wednesday: the possum posse

I'll make this short and sweet. Todd introduced us to Guy On a Buffalo while we were at REIFF and it's going to make you happy so you just need to go ahead and watch it.

This is a little change of pace, because the artists aren't filmmakers. Rather, they're a band called The Possum Posse. From what I can gather, The Possum Posse wrote some narrative songs to describe footage from the 1978 movie, Buffalo Rider (which looks wonderfully atrocious).

You can find all the songs/videos and even some t-shirts at guyonabuffalo.com and you can learn more about the band at ThePossumPosse.com and/or follow them on Twitter. One of the first things I thought when I heard them was how much they sound like Aaron Raitiere who was featured heavily on our Cannonball soundtrack. Anybody else think so?

One warning:  once again, you're going to have a hard time getting the song out of your head for the rest of the day.

skyfall's news and notes 11.19.12

First the Notes: What a season for cinema, right? Fall 2012 is bringing it. We started out really strong with movies like Argo and Looper and now, November has already brought us Wreck It Ralph, Lincoln, The Sexy Vampires and Werewolves Make The Girls All Squealy Movie and, in Mr. Bond's 50th year on screen, Skyfall.

Skyfall Review

Let me talk a little bit about Skyfall (while staying away from too many spoilers). A mini-review if you please. This movie is a mixed bag for me. When I was in middle school, I fell in love with Bond movies; primarily of the Connery variety. I liked the style and swagger and everything that you expected from the early films. But, as I approached college age, I grew tired of them. My tastes changed as I got older. Also, the tone and pace of modern action movies were changing dramatically at the time. More and more I began to find the Bond formula plodding and tedious. I mean, these movies are long and the older I got, the longer they felt. By the time Pierce Brosnan filled the tuxedo (about 15-20 years later than he should have) the pace had been increased somewhat, but the formula was still very stale, the plots seemed corny and the scripts uninspired. (Sorry Goldeneye fans.)

So, when the Daniel Craig reinvention occurred with Casino Royale in '06 and the purists started shaking their fists, I was on board in a big way.  Casino Royale was gritty and real (before "gritty and real" got ran into the ground) and it moved at relatively blazing speed. That movie brought James Bond into the real world and I think it was the best possible direction the franchise could have gone. How great was it to see James Bourne, er, James Bond seriously kicking arse and taking names instead of doing most of his damage with well-timed quips.

However, people like the quips. A lot of people. They like the quips and the gadgets and the cars and the women and the smarm and all that jazz that made Bond who he was for the previous 45 years. ...Enter Skyfall. Now that the franchise had been reenergized, the studio was apparently looking to marry Craig-Bond fans like myself with all the old-school Bond lovers (who were alienated by the new formula) for maximum money-making potential. Now, don't get me wrong. I like Skyfall. I liked it a lot. Sam Mendes crafted a film tight enough to bounce a quarter on. All the beats and emotions were organic. Nothing felt forced. If i have a primary complaint, it is in a return to decompressed pacing. The movie seemed to drag in parts. Maybe not as slow as Bonds of the past, yet still reminiscent.

Creepy time with Javier.

Most impressive about Skyfall was the (predictably) gorgeous cinematography of the incomparable Roger Deakins. Deakins is as good as it gets. We all know it and he certainly doesn't need me to say it. Daniel Craig was solid and cool as always. And what can you say about Javier Bardem? His ability to mesmerize and completely become a character, is possibly second only to Daniel Day Lewis. Bardem is the undisputed heavyweight champ of freaky creepo and I mean that in the best way possible. Man, that guy is good.

With all that said, my feelings are torn in regards to the intent of the film. I'm kind of amazed that the entire script was built around bringing Bond back to the status quo. Every set piece, every major plot point is designed to get us back to where we started. Going so far as to put him back in a 1960 Aston Martin with an ejector seat button on the stick shift and machine guns in the grill. Both overtly and all the way down to the subtext, the film asks the question over and over, "Was the old way better?" And it presents the answer as a resounding, "Yes." Admittedly, the message does get mixed in a few spots along the way. For example, when Q makes fun of the notion of an exploding pen. Apparently they want Moneypenny, a male M, more philandering, etc, etc, but they aren't ready to bring back jetpacks and laser watches. (And yet there is the conundrum of the Aston Martin machine guns... Like I said, just a couple mixed messages in an otherwise tight film.)

Should you see Skyfall if you haven't already? Absolutely. Do I feel good about the direction of the franchise moving forward? Yes and no. I expect more movies following the Skyfall blueprint that are sure to be entertaining. But, personally, I'll miss the faster pace and intensity of the Jason Bond / James Bourne style of Casino Royale.

WSF News

Most of you know by now that editing is underway for Space Cops Episode 4. We started shooting Space Cops 5 last week. And now Allen is writing the script for Space Cops 6. We'll be attempting to get together this week (difficult in the middle of Turkey Time) or next for both an edit party and to discuss what productions we want to work on in 2013. In the upcoming months Space Cops fans will go from famine to feast and I still fully expect to have the first new episode ready for a December debut. On the blog, you can expect your regular weekly updates and more.

indie wednesday: JohnBen Lacy

Today I want to share another film from Rivers Edge Film Fest. This is one of our favorite shorts that we've ever seen at any fest and the fact that it was produced for a 48 Hour film contest makes it all the more impressive. Storytime Time is an off-kilter tale of a photographer at the turn-of-the-century who wanted to travel back in time. This thing is weird and, if you know us, that means we love it. But it isn't weird and stupid or weird for weirdness' sake. Storytime is clever, with really funny and smart narration.

It was right up our alley and we were happy to meet two of the filmmakers, JohnBen Lacy and Mike Elsherif who (yep, you guessed it) were nice. Not only are they from Louisville, but JohnBen went to Centre [College]. Hands in the air for the Danville connection and more power to Kentucky filmmaking peeps. Sometimes you just know when to expect big things from people. This is one of those times.

news and notes 11.12.12

Our mercurial goat "friends".

Welcome, welcome. We've been some busy beavers here at WSF. Are busy beavers a thing? I think so. Right? After a great weekend at Rivers Edge Film Fest last week (that you may have read about here), we followed that up with a Space Cops shoot THIS weekend. We're normally very busy with the family life and whatnot, so it's uncommon for us to go back to back WSF weekends. Nonetheless, we pulled it off.

Saturday we headed just down the road to the friendly farmland of Junction City, KY. I know you're anxiously waiting to see the fourth episode of Space Cops, but Todd had a script ready for Episode 5 and we had incredible weather this weekend, so we needed to go ahead and make it happen.

Your head is already swimming with questions. What are the Space Cops doing on a farm? How do the very somewhat  barely friendly farm animals pictured above figure in? Well, hold your... horses. Muwahahaha. (See what I did there?) All will be revealed in due time. What I can tell you is that the script is crazy and a lot of fun. Goats, horses, donkeys, disguises, pranks, pint-sized villains... Episode 5 has it all. Space Cops fans have a lot to look forward to in the coming weeks.

The goats may have gotten a bit nippy/head-butty at times, but a big shout out to Hans the dog who literally followed us around for every moment of the six hours we were out there. Good dog, Hans! Good dog. And there were a couple of very personable horses we got to meet as well.

I'll be interested to see who scares you all more: Bo Jangles from Episode 4 or Cappella (Grace Sheene) from Episode 5. Both may give you nightmares.

We met at 9am at Space Cops HQ to costume up and caravan out to the farm. After a quick scout of all the locations on the farm, we got our first shot somewhere between 10 and 10:30. Episode 5 has a very large cast so there were lots of people on the set and we worked really efficiently, all things considered. After a couple hours of shooting, Blythe and Henry Sheene showed up to deliver the carbs and refuel the crew with some incredible white chili. Seriously... mmm. And after lunch we squeezed as many shots as possible into the next four hours. We got good stuff and we're hoping to finish up all farm scenes before the bottom completely falls out on our weather. So, everybody do us a favor and pray for a nice long Indian Summer.

Stay tuned this week for more posts, including Indie Wednesday. And if you want to see more pictures from Saturday's shoot, head over to Facebook and LIKE our page! We've been stuck on 225 likes over there for awhile and everyone is getting lonely.

indie wednesday: Rooney's World

As promised, today's Indie Wednesday features a film from some of the fine chaps we met at Rivers Edge Film Fest. Hudson Phillips wrote it (impossible for me not to think Wilson Phillips when I see his name), Jordan Noel directed it, and Mandy Campbell produced it. We met all three of the Georgia residents and they were all very friendly except for Mandy. She was awful.

I'M KIDDING! Obviously they were all awful. A perfect reason to put their short film here and sing their praises, right? I'm dishing out some mindbending sarcasm today! (For anyone keeping official score, they were all actually very nice.)

Rooney's World was one of the most entertaining, well constructed, and original pieces in the Festival. It delivers a range of emotions with genuine sentiment. It's just a solid piece of work that made me laugh, but also made me feel sad at times for the main characters, Dave and Rooney. So, congrats to Hudson and Jordan for some fine work and all the success that has come with it.

Post Script: I dare you... I defy you... to watch this and not sing the Rooney's World theme song at some point during the day.

REIFF 2012 - Day 3

Burgers N' Cream. (This would be the burgers portion.)

We're going to double up today with a Day 3 Recap of REIFF as well as today's News and Notes. So, lets get right to it.

I'll be honest, we were a little exhausted by the time Sunday rolled around. Saturday night we took the opportunity to actually do a little work. Todd brought along the script for Space Cops 5 and we spent an hour or two doing a read-through and making notes. (If I were a smart man, I would have taken a picture or video of that and put it here, but...) That's actually the first time we've ever done a full-fledged read-through together and there is no doubt that we need to do it every time. It would definitely help us polish all our scripts together.

The next morning, I wrote the Day 2 Recap for this site, we packed up and, after a short discussion, we all decided we weren't extremely excited about getting home at 1am. Therefore, the decision was made not to hang around for the awards ceremony. Even though we really enjoyed the experience last year, we just couldn't do it.

Instead, we made our regular Sunday stop at Yesterday's (or Burgers N' Cream? depending on which sign you're looking at) for some tasty burgers and frozen goodies. Then we swung by Maiden Alley Cinema to vote for our favorite films. We got the chance to make one last connection with Banks Helfrich from Orlando. He's the Director of The Ah of Life and a very friendly guy who said some really nice things about 3 Ladies and was happy to throw lots of advice on us.

After that, it was time to hit the road and make the four hour drive to Danville/Frankfort. Since we left early, we have no idea how all the awards shook out. If we hear any news, we'll certainly relay any interesting developments here.

When we parted ways at the Park & Ride, there were some rumblings that Al and Todd might make a stop to scout locations for Episode 5. If that didn't happen last night, they're planning to do it one evening this week and might include me via FaceTime. Look how advanced we are! We're like men from the future or something.

Last thoughts on Rivers Edge 2012? Another great Festival hosted by Landee and the gang as usual. Incredible weather this year, great grub, and fun flicks to watch. What else could you ask for?

Keep an eye out for Indie Wednesday this week, as I can guarantee one of the shorts we saw at Rivers Edge will be making an appearance.

REIFF 2012 - Day 2

With the thermos? Are you kidding me??

As is so often the case at Rivers Edge, the story of Saturday was food and films. We watched hours and hours of movies and consumed more goodies than should be humanly possible.

We awoke bright and early, scrambling to get ready and out the door in time to get our annual hot chocolate from Etcetera 2! This savory cocoa topped off by a mountain of whipped cream is as much a tradition for us as Kerchoff's sandwiches. It should have been commemorated with a photo but none of us could let go of our cups long enough for that to happen. Saturday morning the filmmakers meet at Etcetera/Kerchoff's for some more meeting and greeting, so we spent most of the morning meeting the very friendly Ryan Brod who hails from Portland, Maine. Ryan is half the filmmaking duo that produced a documentary about ice fishing called Hard Water. We're hoping to see it today but, if we don't get the chance, you better believe we'll procure a DVD. Ryan recently quit his job to pursue filmmaking full-time and we wish him runaway success!

The bull/buffalo (beefalo?) followed Todd inside.

Last year we transitioned straight from the breakfast meet and greet to lunch at Kerchoff's. I mean... you're already there, so...  Don't judge us. But, this year we watched a film block before returning for sandwiches, chili, and pasta salad. Kerchoff's, we love you. (But, you break our hearts on Sunday by shutting us out.)

I won't bore you with all the details. Like I said, it was a ton of flicks and basically just enjoying the outstanding weather we've had down here. Possibly the biggest highlight of the day happened when we perusing Lowertown Paducah and Todd found one of the greatest vintage lunchboxes of all time. Fallguy is one of the handful of shows that heavily influences what we're trying to do with Space Cops.

Today we're feeling the tug of home, so it's yet to be seen how much we'll accomplish before hitting the road. Here's one teaser I can guarantee: "burgers and cream."

REIFF 2012 - Day 1

A well-insulated, red bull in front of Yeiser? Better take a picture with it.

The first day of REIFF has come to a close and what a day it was. It started at 8am at the BG Parkway Park & Ride and is concluding in our oh so cozy hotel room. We drove straight through for four hours, actually passed Paducah and proceeded to cross the Ohio into Illinois. My first foray into the land of Lincoln. Where were we headed?

To Metropolis of course. That's right. The home of Clark K. Superman is right across the river. How could we not go? The only question is why has it taken this long. Let me just say that we knew from our first moments across the border, that we'd made the right decision. This is an... interesting place. We were beckoned by simple signs that offered the tantalizing promise of a "Giant Superman Statue." But before we could even wrap our minds around that, we ran smack dab into a completely different giant and this one's name was Big John.

Big John. Big groceries.

We were amazed by the size of the man and even more amazed by the size of his groceries. Somehow we pulled ourselves away from Big John and continued our hunt for the Man of Steel. We found him, my friends. In spades. It was easy enough. We kept going until we reached the corner of Justice and American Way. I'm serious. We took photos galore. (Just stop by Facebook for the whole collection of pics.)

You say you want more film fest news and less nonsense? Are you sure you know how we do things around here? Well anyway, we did see several good films today including a handful of shorts that caused us to laugh heartily. Our own screening went very well and we were able to return the favor of distributing the laughs.After our photo ops, it was time to high-tail it back to the Bluegrass State. Paducah held the moment we'd been waiting twelve months for: the chance to shove Kerchoff's Deli sandwiches in our faces. We were not disappointed and you can be sure that we'll doing it again at approximately 11:30am tomorrow.

We capped off our night by grabbing dinner at Cynthia's Ristorante (some proper Minestrone for me) and meeting a few fellow filmmakers at Night 1's after party. We chatted with the director of Storytime Time (from Louisville) before the party's bluegrass music duo got so loud that conversation couldn't continue and we retired to the Marriott where I now sit behind a desk to write this update for you fine people.

Tune in tomorrow on Twitter and Facebook for more realtime updates and later here for a full recap of Day 2. We're off to a good start and we're looking forward to more. Tomorrow gets started with hot chocolate and that's about all I have to say about that.