As I was working on the Bleutuna Limited website and content, I started to think of how the site was laid out and how I was conveying information. And it was boring.
The way I’d set up the infrastructure, there was going to be tons of similar content and a ridiculous workload to get it all formatted. Even worse – no one was going to read it. There was nothing compelling to get users to actually engage with it. My eyes were glazing over and that’s always a bad sign.
That’s when my experience with working with salespeople came into play.
Salespeople love charts. They love diagrams. They love illustrations that show how things work together and the bulleted lists that go along with them. I began to think about what ProductionCliq was and how we fill in the gaps to a production, making sure all the necessary bits are there.
I started with puzzle pieces, but that wasn’t film centric enough. Then I played with a Bolex camera and its lenses, but there simply weren’t enough different elements to illustrate all the points and it didn’t represent what we do 100%. Bleutuna Limited doesn’t really shoot film. We shoot HD.
A hard drive was too tech heavy, so I looked around my room and found a big stack of HD-CAM tapes that hold all the original footage for my senior film, Sons of God, and then it all made sense.
The result is below and I’m pretty damn happy with it. First, because it’s not red. Second, because it’s a more flat, less gradiated vector drawing which I enjoy doing. Third, because I think it works extremely well in illustrating what Bleutuna Limited does, how we provide the necessary pieces to make a project a success and showcases that we work on many different types of projects in a concise manner.
The Wolfpack Film Group, along with tons of sponsors such as the Texas Motion Picture Alliance, is putting together a huge New Year’s Eve Party to celebrate the Texas Entertainment Industry. Oh, and portions of the proceeeds go to the WPOS Homeless Documentary.
The Karma Lounge in a swanky, downtown spot here in Austin, Texas, and so the goal was to create an equally swanky advertisement to appear in publications such as Insite Magazine.
I looked through a significant number of flyers, everything from raves to parties to things we won’t mention here. Most of them had scantily-clad attractive ladies as the crux of their marketing pitch. I chose to go a different direction.
The client wanted something bold, lush, and rich – which, honestly, keeps bringing me back to RED. I swear, if you didn’t know better, you’d think red was my favorite color. For some reason, maybe because I’ve done red really well in the past, clients seem to want me to keep working with it. This time round, though, I was able to add some pretty strong blue and orange elements that I think give this piece a different look than say the Lionheart or Red Luvs Ya brands.
Kamogawa Horumo – a lot of the films that early in the morning are Japanese, and while there was a time when my ultimate goal in life was to move to Japan and live/work for five years, the culture doesn’t appeal to me as much as it once did. This film, however, spends a lot of time focusing on the Japanese concepts of Oni spirits, training & fighting, and the control of proxy minions. Think Pokemon, or as I kept thinking throughout the film, Miyamoto Shigeru’s classic Pikmin game for the Gamecube. The story revolves around a club at a local Kyoto university and how it changes the lives of the protagonist. Who, in Japanese fashion, is a whiney pussy of man. This should be no surprise to anyone who’s seen Japanese material – as much as I love Evangelion, Shinji’s reluctance and selfish moping grate on your nerves. So is the case with Abe and his best friend. This fil was really slow to get going, with Peter Yoder and I both waiting anxiously for a corner to be turned. luckily, once it does, the movie becomes genuinely adorable and entertaining, regardless of it’s punkass protag. Ultimately, the movie is leaves you satisfied and happy, which is what you want, right?
7 out of 10 Stars/ 1 Sleepy
Anti-Christ – this Willem DeFoe/Lars Van Trier film is stirring up controversy wherever it plays. I will tell you nothing specific about the film other than it surrounds the death of a loved one and a husband trying to help his wife overcome her grief. I love and hate this film simultaneously. The artistry of the opening scene is fantastic, and wholly set the subject matter at hand. However, in a way eerily similar to Richard Kelly’s trainwreck Southland Tales, Van Trier is overtly pretentious when it’s unncessary, robbing the film of the seriousness and precious screen minutes it needs to truly tackle its subject matter. There are genuinely brilliant moments in this fil, characters and dialogue that anyone who has been in a prolonged, dysfunctional relationship will recognize. Not the exact words, but the exact progression of the conversations and the reactions/motivations behind them. This couple manipulates one another, and the film asks you to decide who is th villain (if one exists) and whether or not the course of events was deserved. Alas, you’re not given a picture of these characters outside the grief situation that serves as the inciting incident, so you are left feeling unsatisfied and potentially perturbed. Like the amazing film May, Anti-Christ could be an amazing character study into a particular type of psychosis, however, with the last shot of the film, it seems to be damning an entire group rather than a single soul, and that’s unfortunate.
6 out of 10 stars, huge points deducted for pretension/0 Sleepies
The Men Who Stare at Goats – I had never heard of this secret film, though many others had seen the trailer. Starring Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges, the movie is about a reporter who haps into a supposedly true story of the US government funding a secret organization to train soldiers in psychic warfare. The subject matter is handled neither with 100% respect or significant comedic disdain, which seems to be what viewers are disliking the most. McGregor is stunt cast, and while I want spoil what starts out as an interesting joke, the whole schtick gets really old after awhile, maki g you wish another actor had gotten the part. Everyone turns in good performances and everything happens basically like you want it to. The fact that it wasn’t more extreme in it’s presentation or attitude leaves you with a lukewarm feeling, which was ok with me. The version we saw was early, no color corrected, without final sound or music, and with watermarked stock shots still present. So maybe some editing and music magic can add the teeth this movie needs to really grab audiences. I don’t think it’s too late to I fuse a little bit of style into this flick and get audiences more interested.
7 Out of 10 Stars/0 Sleepies
So far the score for Fantastic Fest is one okay day, one good day. I’m talking about the films themselves, not the Festival itself. With the opening of the Highball, this years feet is rocking it as the most fun yet, though I admit to a bit of lamentation for the days of standing in long lines of filmlovers and meeting new people. But now I can actually get into the screenings I want, so that trumps the nostalgia factor.
Here’s something my close friends know about me, but others don’t: I fall asleep in movies. I know I’m a filmmaker myself, but I have a problem that if my mind isn’t actively engaged and stimulated, on come the sleepitimes. In the reviews below, I’ll be rating things in how many sleeepies I had and the how many stars from 1 to 10.
If something gets one sleepy that’s not the kiss of death. Just something to note.
First Squad – Mix Russian historical fiction with Anime mixed with some Nazi’s and live action, documentary style interviews to add verisimilitude. The story circles around a young orphan girl with psychic powers who is the last living member of her paranormal warfare squad (interesting sister piece to The Men Who Stare at Goats I saw on Friday). The film is handled like traditional anime, with crazy hair and characters, demons and ghosts, but tries to keep tethered to the real world. I don’t think the mixing of the two was effective and their goal of keeping the battles realistic and accurate essentially melded together to make a snooze fest. Most everyone that saw it with me said it made them sleepy. I personally fell asleep 4 times, which is pretty damn bad. Ultimately, if you love anime for the sake of anime, you can may enjoy the film, but it definitely wasn’t for me.
5 out of 10 Stars / 4 Sleepies
Gentleman Broncos – Take Wes Anderson and John Waters, mix them together in a blender and filter through uber strict Mormon ethics, and you’ve got the filmmaking style of Jared Hess. Gentleman Broncos is an absolute mess of a film. Never that funny, never that heartfelt, and never, ever believable. Napoleon Dynamite worked because Hess and the cast were able to do the rarest of things in filmmaking: creating genuine, original, quirky characters that you buy. Wes Anderson is the master of this. Royal Tennenbaums does it perfectly. Waters is on the other end of the spectrum – he makes movies so compellingly entertaining that you’re willing to go along for the ride and love each minute. Hess doesn’t do this. Gentleman Broncos has stupid, goofy, surfacely quirky characters with poor motivation in a world that is wholly boring and I consequential.
All this being said, Jermaine Clement’s Chevalier and Sam Rockwell’s Bronco/Brutus sequences are enjoyable, but not worth the price of admission. Wait till a friend buys it on bluray and catch it then. Or on cable. This movie is already so sanitized thatit could probably run on any network and the FCC wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
4 out of 10 stars / 0 Sleepies
Paranormal Activity – Not since the Blair Witch Project has a film been this scary and cringe-worthy. Not because of copius amounts of gore or crazy squirm-enducing torture porn, but for the same reasons Blair Witch worked: the fear of what you can’t see and the inability to get away from your location specific horrors. Handled with one cMera the entire time, in the style of someone goofing around with shooting footageof their own family, Paranormal Activity affords you the ability to truly put yourself in the shoes of the main characters and exist in the world. There are only three actors in the film: the female lead who has been followed by a spirit since the age of 8, and he live-in boyfriend who buys an HD camera to document the noises and odd things that happen to her.
And document it he does. The camera is handheld through most of the film, except in nighttime bedroom time lapse shots on sticks. This creates a perfect device to build dread, because everytime we cut to this shot, you know bad things are about to happen. This is a great film that deserves a full release and not to be remade (as is rumored) with bigger name stars. It works because of the situation and the unknown actors, like a Blair Witch before it, and audiences will respond equally positively. And no one will ever look at powder the same way again!
8 out of 10 Stars / 0 Sleepies
No, Dave, we’re not talking about any sort of sexual proclivity. It’s a new project we’re involved with, and it’s amazing. Fantastic stuff being done here in Austin, but this is all you can see for now….
The name of the project is Sodom: The Prophecy Armageddon, though we’ve discussed simply branding it as Sodom as it’s much more stark.
The first version of the website has been approved and will be launched shortly, at which point, I’ll post more here.
We’re working on a pretty secret, pretty badass project. Not going to go into all the details but Ben and I are doing some concept art for it. Here’s a sample – not colored, obviously.
Bleutuna, thanks to Paul Gandersman, has a new camera! The Panasonic Lumix GH-1! This joker is great and actually provides a much better image than the Panasonic HVX-200 that we’ve been using for years, and most imporatantly, allows us to easily use real lenses in the process!
Thasright! No more crazy rotating glass adapters with their own batteries, making everything hard to move and pan without dealing with a ridiculous amount of shakiness!
Paul and I will be headed downtown to shoot some footage for a couple of projects we’re doing right now, one being the feature film Conflict of Interest! So note to our actors who we contacted last week – get ready, cause we’re gonna’ shoot with you pretty damn quick!
We’ll be back with some nice new footage here soon – so stay tuned!
We’ve done a test screening and have more on the way. The feedback has been pretty good so far, but the work still continues. Today Paul and I will be going out and shooting some various insert shots that we think need to be there to really sell the whole thing. Its funny how the shot of a coffeeshop can add so much clarity.
For Conflict of Interest, the main character is the author of a ridiculously popular blog that begins to make big waves in the political world. So if you’re going to have a movie that is about a blog, you should probably at least have a blog design. And shots of people surfing it.
I wanted it to feel a little militaristic – representative of the grass-roots sort of revolutionary mindset that Outraged influences within his readers. It also had to have a sense of Mombaire. The logo features the Mombarian “star” prominently, the star that’s seen on both the Mombarian flag and the Kimaiyo flag during the film.
To view a “live” version of the design, Go here! Otherwise, just look at the design below:
Paul Gandersman and I went out and helped with an Austin School of Film shoot yesterday for local band Ringo Death Starr. LA based DubLab was heading up the whole thing. It was a great time.
Thanks Frosty, Bryan & Jennifer! Fun stuff!
Check out the video below. You can see my behind the camera wearing a Wilco shirt and later saying “Rolling!”
Quick “computer login screen” made for the film Conflict of Interest. We needed computer inserts of the main character Stan breaking into a computer. The easiest way was a simple, quick HTML walk-through.
Live Demonstration
Note the background is huge – as it was meant to be viewed full screen.
In the world of film and screenplay writing, there are literally hundreds of books and tutorials you can find to help you refine your craft. Every author has their own ways to help you get started.
Many times this doesn’t equate to simple suggestions, but to actual rules and structures to make sure you are hitting the appropriate beats at the appropriate times.
Click to Read it All!
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