Carpe PM

This blog’s traffic has increased a decent amount over the last year. Recently, the stats page has stated that the hits are mostly coming from the Google Images web site. I’m even the first image if you search for “at&t death star wallpaper” since I quick threw together a 1680×1050 image based on the silly wallpaper intended for the iphone. This is not important because I want to get hits with the stories I am working on. In the mean time, I have a job until Wednesday. Time seems to be moving more slowly before the end of this week. I will be off the map, out in the middle of nowhere, in just a few days. Just wait until you see what I bring back from the internet dead zone.

Below are some stills of video tests I shot in Arizona during Christmas. The next films I’m making will have the look of 35mm lenses. That’s because I’m going to be shooting through a 35mm lens set I bought. I have some 1970 era nikon lenses that I had to track down since the camera companies in my city carry pretty much only new stuff. These lenses are absolute gems. They’re still sharp and don’t breathe too much, if at all. The bokeh is not necessarily stellar, but I can live with that because story is more important and I can’t afford zeiss lenses with all I’m doing. Keep in mind the only overt bokeh in the tests is from shooting directly into the sun. I bet most lenses don’t look completely pretty when shooting into the sun. Also, the light streak shot on the highway is with the camera’s stock lens and was shot with the shutter wide open.

Nothing like taxes at the start of the year. It’s “fun” to know that taxes will only get more complex as I get deeper into the business world. I got a handy federal return. The really interesting part was the state sales tax for internet items. I purchased a new camcorder from a company in California. They first wanted to charge me the 8.5% sales tax, but I would rather pay 5.5% that I get here instead. So, they knocked it off. This is cause for much rejoicing because it turns out that the 5.5% sales tax for all my internet purchases last year work out to less that the singular amount assigned by California lady for my camera.

Oberon is progressing. I’m still thinking through what catalysts are necessary to develop an grander conflict from what I first planned. If I have to, I can always fall back on the base story. However, I’d like to weave some mystery and suspense into the script as I plan my scenes. In any case, I hope it all works out. I just need to convince those I need to use to make the story. If it doesn’t work out, I still will have a good number of hours of footage from some pretty cool places. And, I have other short films in the works too.

The first three seasons of Lost are available for free viewing on ABC.com. I had never had time to watch any TV during the college semesters. So, I’ve made up for it in the time I have before I go off to the end of the world next week by watching a good portion of the first season of Lost last night. It’s fun to see that the creators of Cloverfield have hit a gold mine in TV. It makes perfect sense that they would now be moving into films with such a great show under their belt and still going strong. For all the people who told me to watch this, I only ridiculed it because I was mad not to have time for it.

The show reminds me of Michael Crichton books, with its mystery, corporations performing exotic experiments, everyman characters discovering the are entangled in something scary, etc. I haven’t come across anyone comparing the show to Crichtons’ work before. It’s intriguing stuff and I know the story gets much more complex in the following seasons. Unfortunately that will have to wait until things have settled down, until I’ve moved to a new city. That’s not going to happen until this summer. Why? Why indeed? Let’s just say that I’m doing the coolest thing I can imagine that is possible without a lot of money. More on that in May. Now if you’re still stumped, then you either don’t know me or haven’t seen me recently.

I am learning many new things that film and computer science professors didn’t think to tell me or didn’t know before I graduated. It’s rather exciting to still learn when I am no longer a “student.” We are all students of the things we have a passion for. One of the most talked about things I’ve run across in the last week is a talk by JJ Abrams. He is the producer of the TV show Lost and the recent film Cloverfield, the upcoming Star Trek, etc. When JJ explains his concept of the mystery box, it gave me a fresh way of looking at story creation. I hope I can work with this guy some day. Until that time, I have plenty of things to think about and create. There aare plenty of other things I’ve been reading or run across, but I can’t share all my secrets. Can I? Well in that case….

I am going to work on film starting next month. My initial plan is to make a 30-40 minute film. This will allow me the chance to experiment with four acts and a basic character development. It may reach feature length, but that will depend on how much develops before next month. I consider this my graduation practice film and will not give away the plot.

I also have a basic love story that I would also like to try and tackle this month. I may not squeeze that smaller practice film in before this big one, but I may expand it as well when I return and make the script 30/40 length or more. In any case, I intend to film Oberon and should have some BTS, trailer, etc by at least May.