One week film challenge

Toshiba have offered to give me a laptop to review for a week or two. The details haven't been finalised yet, but I hope to get it later this month. They've said I can test it in any non-destructive way I can think of, so I'm going to see how good it is for making movies.

The challenge is to plan, shoot, edit and release a short film in a week, with as much work as possible done on the laptop. We'll start by batting around a few ideas now so I can put together a rough script or treatment for the start of the week. Work on the script over an evening, shoot stuff the next couple of days and then edit it all together.

I don't know when I'll be getting the laptop, and it may turn up at short notice, so I can't say when I'll be doing this. If you're interested, would like to be involved and/or can seed the project with ideas of what you'd like to shoot, please get in touch.


Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

Bluescreen

Today, I noticed some YouTube videos on Chromakey (Blue / Green Screen)

The tutorial can be found Here


Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

Writing romantic comedy

Less tongue in cheek guidelines for aspiring romcom writers.

Writing romantic comedy screenplays.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

"Without you I'm only me."

Screenwriter Ken Levine breaks down the modern romantic comedy formula.

Be sure to include five block comedy scenes. Zany sequences that generally involve destruction, humiliation, emasculation, dogs, and toilets. If they were making SOME LIKE IT HOT today Joe E. Brown would be giving Jack Lemmon a bikini wax. THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH would be Ben-Gay in Marilyn Monroe's panties.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

Memory - Part 5

The finale. Hannah learns the truth about her father's death, and is faced with a terrible choice.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

Memory - Part 4

Delayed due to my being away from the relevant pc over the weekend. Episode 4 of Memory.

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Memory- Episode 4 delayed

Episode 4 of Memory will be uploaded on Monday or Tuesday of next week. I apologise for this, but I am away from the computer holding all the necessary files for a few days.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

Memory- on location in the Green Building

Memory- on location in the Green Building
Originally uploaded by spinneyhead.

Part of a photo set from the day we shot in the Green Building. Mary prepares for the final scene.

The rest of the set is here. Tim also has two sets of photos, of filming and of the Green Building location.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

Memory - Part 3

Part 3 of Memory is now online.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

Episode 2 of Memory is now online. Hannah brings her friend George in to do some research, and more secrets are revealed.

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Memory - Part 1

Part one of the five part series is now online. The remaining episodes will be released every Friday for the next four weeks.

This is our first piece of narrative video, please tell us what you think and ask any questions arising. We look forward to hearing from you.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead, Memory

Earth shattering kabooms

Detonation Films provide effects footage of gunshots and explosions, ready for chroma keying and other methods of compositing. Some of them are free, some charged for.

via Indy Mogul

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

Memory is Not Part Of Manchester International Festival

But we are part of Not Manchester International Festival. Memory will premiere on the 29th of June, to coincide with the Festival's fringe, and there will be a get together to plan future projects.



Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead, Not Manchester International Festival

The very models of modern indie film makers- Learning from Four Eyed Monsters and We Need Girlfriends

Memory is ready to roll out- episode 1 will premiere on June 29th- and I'm contemplating new projects. What I want to do is a romantic comedy of self contained episodes, something a bit less involved than Memory.

We Need Girlfriends, by Ragtag Productions, is a good model for what I want to do next. Every month there's another seven minute episode featuring the romantic misadventures of geeky, insecure Henry, dumb, arrogant Rod and well meaning, average Tom. Newly single, the three must try to handle the complexities of New York's dating scene. They're hindered by live in exes, bad Myspace profiles and Rod's constant reinventing of the English language. Subplots and story arcs are carried over from episode to episode, and more than one story has generated merchandise.

Myspace supplies a lot of WNG's music and extras as well as a plot device. I imagine their friends list gets plundered regularly for help. They've mastered the art of asking for locations as well, filming in local restaurants and laundrettes. I'm only jealous because they're doing so much of the stuff I want to try.

I don't know what the cash flow is like for we Need Girlfriends, but I imagine it's heading toward being self sustaining as the mass of "Don't scam my squirrel" and Team Henry T-shirts start shifting. No doubt there'll be a DVD collection in the future. The ultimate success, up until recently, would have been spinning a tv series out of the concept. Now, however, that would be a retrograde step. Network television would water down the geeky purity of the show then cancel it because a lot of its natural audience lives elsewhere.

The cash flow for Four Eyed Monsters is more transparent. The front page of the film's site asks us to help Arin and Susan out of their $100,000 credit card debt by signing up to Spout or buying their DVDs.

The full film was put up on YouTube briefly and I managed to catch it. Mixing confession and fiction the result is something satisfyingly different. Reality and artifice blur in the film's ending and the acting/ directing team's video blogs about the experience so that it's hard to tell just how biographical the whole project is. But you simply don't care.

I'm not going to steal any of the stories or catchphrases from these projects. (Which is a shame, because there are some bits in We Need Girlfriends that are similar to stuff I'd thought of doing, and I'll have to fight not to claim Squirrel next time I spot a girl I fancy.) But I do want to foster some of their attitude. The internet has allowed them to find an audience and collaborators, as well as making it easier to distribute the finished product. It takes a lot of faith in yourself and your audience, and it won't always pay off big, but its a lot less risky than hoping to find one person in a studio who'll green light your pet project.

Spinneyhead will be working on an unnamed romantic comedy project soon. I'm plotting individual stories and whole arcs at the moment. If you'd like to be a part of it, no matter what you can contribute, please get in touch.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead, Indie Film

Fever Pitch

Got an idea for a film or TV show? Fever Pitch is a competition where you present first a 25 word pitch then a 150 word synopsis. The ten best will have five minutes to convince a panel of professionals and the audience of the genius of their idea at the 2007 Screenwriters' Festival. Closing date is Friday 2nd June.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

Script Frenzy

From the people who brought you NaNoWriMo comes Script Frenzy. The idea- wite a full length screenplay or script in the month of June.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead, Script Frenzy

Voice over

Voice over, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.

We spent a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon recording Mary's overdubbing for the film. Whilst it would have been better to have got the sound right on location, by having a muffled microphone or not filming on so windy a day, this worked out quite well. Alan is going to work his magic and we'll have dialogue you can actually hear over the wind noise.

More stuff on compression

Two useful links from Alan-

Wikipedia on video compression.

XVid setup guide.

Technorati tag: Video Compression, Spinneyhead

Mobile TV

Kyte.tv is a new contender in the world of online television. You can upload content and stream it to viewers around the world from your laptop and even some smartphones. How it fares against YouTube et al remains to be seen, but the number of channels available to content producers is a good thing.

Technorati tag: Video, Spinneyhead

The art of the edit

I found this in the Spinneyhead archives- Making the cut, an article about the art of editing film. It makes a good companion to the last post.

Technorati tag: Video, Editing Spinneyhead